Internet turns 25, kicked out by NSA parents

CC Liu, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly; Pat Morrison, AirTalk (scpr.org), Happy Birthday WWW! The World Wide Web turns 25, March 12, 2014

The Internet has always existed except for when it didn't, and that went on until 25 years ago today. Then this DARPA military tool was turned on civilians (BuddhaDog/flickr.com).

Bongo in a "Life in Hell" manual (DYT)

It's nearly impossible to imagine life in 2014 without the Internet, but 25 years ago the Web was just a twinkle in the eye of a computer scientist named Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

 

In March 1989, he wrote a paper proposing an "information management" system that grew into what we know today as the Web. A quarter century of Internet connectivity has brought us countless technical innovations (and cute cat videos) and has fundamentally changed our lives and the way we interact with each other.

• Social Media: The First 2,000 years

I became addicted as a kid.

But has it all been for the better? Most young adults can't remember life without the Internet as our level of connectivity expanded from the desktop computer to smartphones to wearable spy technology.

 

We've come a long way in a short period of time, so can we even imagine what the future will bring? 

OMG, what are they doing! (sodahead.com)

Two Internet visionaries give differing views of how the Web has changed us and what the next 25 years will bring. LISTEN TO AUDIO (28:39)

GUESTS: Host Pat Morrison with Jaron Lanier, computer scientist and author of Who Owns the Future? and Kevin Kelly, co-founder of Wired magazine in 1993 and author of the book, What Technology Wants.

 

10-year-old addict gets his daily fix on an Apple tablet (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images).

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Art by Matt Groening (The Simpsons, Futurama) for Apple, Inc.

Is porn bad karma?

Ashley Wells, Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, Pfc. Sandoval, Wisdom Quarterly (OPINION)

What if I just do it to pay my tuition...then it's skillful karma, right? Right? I could just do anything and say my intention was "good," right? Right? - Ugh, I already told you, read Wisdom Quarterly to figure it out.

 

I didn't think about karma, just rationalizing

Is helping create pornography "right livelihood," a kind of prostitution (exchanging sex for money), or human trafficking?

It seems it is. The Buddha defined the Noble Eightfold Path factor of "right livelihood" (sammā-ājīva) as not engaging in trades or occupations that, whether directly or indirectly, result in harm to ourselves and others. In both the Chinese and Pali language canons, it is said:

What is right livelihood? A disciple of the noble ones, having abandoned a dishonest means of maintaining oneself, keeps life going by some right livelihood. [This kind of tautological definition, which seems to say nothing, is common because all of the pertinent terms are detailed in the discourses.]

Before buddhahood, Siddhartha indulged in sensuality and found it disappointing and leading to harm rather than enlightenment and leading to liberation. The Buddha understood its lure, having experienced it firsthand, but also realized the escape from its alluring trap.

  

Rahula, Bimba, and Siddhartha

More concretely today interpretations include work "integrated into life as a Buddhist" (TheBuddhistCentre.com), something ethical, "wealth obtained through rightful means" (Ven. Basnagoda Rahula) -- honesty and ethics in business dealings, not cheating, defrauding, or stealing (Lewis Richmond). As people now spend most of their time at work, it is important to assess how our work affects our minds and hearts. So important questions include, How can work become meaningful? How can it be a support, rather than a hindrance, to spiritual practice -- a place to deepen our awareness and kindness? (Richmond)

The Buddha defined right livelihood, at a minimum, as avoiding five types of business:

1. trade in weapons and instruments of killing,
2. trade in human beings: slave trading, prostitution, or human trafficking (the buying and selling of children or adults most commonly for the purpose of sexual slavery, forced labor, or commercial sexual exploitation [such as the production and dissemination of Internet porn] for the trafficker or others,
3. trade in flesh: "flesh" referring to the bodies of beings, which includes breeding animals for slaughter,
4. trade in intoxicants: manufacturing or selling intoxicating drinks or drugs,
5. trade in poisons: producing or trading in any kind of poison or a toxic product designed to harm.

Can sex work ever be free of exploitation and therefore something worth advocating?

 

Could I take it back or get more money?

So is acting in, creating, or promoting porn "bad," "wrong," harmful, unwholesome, unskillful, unprofitable when such karma (deeds) finally ripen? Who really cares? Belle Knox is partly right -- we watch porn. We don't act in it, film it, promote it, profit from it, or encourage exploitation.

 

It seems she will regret it and probably already does. Western mores encourage us to feel shame, guilt, regret, remorse, worry, misgivings, and even panic about SEX. Let's not. Let's be sex positive. Sex is fine; sexual misconduct is not.

 

Sex and sensuality (kama) themselves are not "sexual misconduct" (kamesu micchacara). Knox is talking about the two as if they were the same thing. Go naked, be free, look beautiful, enjoy sensual pleasures, make love (not war).

 

This whore was suspended for doing porn

Let's go even further and decriminalize sex work because "shaming and blaming" are part of how we exert social control on each other (in our species and our pets) and how it was done to us by our elders. This all goes far beyond "sex" to what we think is offensive, acceptable, discomfiting, and decent. Judging makes us hypocrites. So rather than judge, let's be mindful of our own actions. The world will be the world, and we don't have to be the world.