The phrase, information wants to be free has been attributed to Stuart Brand, the editor of the Whole Earth Catalog,

which was primarily published in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and which influenced a whole

lot of technologists and thinkers operating out of California, in particular at the time,

promoting ideas about self-sufficiency and ecological concerns,

and a sort of DIY do-it-yourself ethic, which jibed with the hippie-influenced, at times techno-spiritualistic philosophy

that was popular out there at that moment, and which also went on to inform a great deal of the ideological underpinnings of the modern tech world.

One such cluster of considerations relates to intellectual property.

At the beginning of the microprocessor revolution, which we're still living in now, an age that is defined in many ways by the

pervasive technologies that have helped create the digital world, our always-on communication

channels, the countless new entertainment mediums and creative tools and surveillance capabilities

we enjoy and leverage.

There was a concern, as all this was being imagined and predicted and built,

the superstructure of it was being built at least,

that we could accidentally push ourselves into a more authoritarian,

invasive, abusive, and unequal state, if we're not careful.

Because just as these tools could be used to liberate people and free our minds and bodies

in ways previously unimagined, it was also possible these tools could be used for the opposite

instead, for oppression, and the reinforcement of existing

socially and economically and spiritually, stratifying structures.

So information wants to be free was in some ways a statement about how we as a species

would soon have the ability to generate more, learn more, do more than ever before,

and we have to choose whether to lock down all the fruits of this amplification of our capabilities

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