What I call a "disturbing dream"...

I always had a funny feeling, when reading Ayn Rand, that although one was free to pursue one's own interests as one saw fit in an Objectivist world, that generally, people who didn't do things that The Rational Person would do were somehow... defective by Objectivist standards. I remember once attending some sort of Objectivist evening event in Manhattan, where all the guys wore tuxes and tried to look like Howard or John and the ladies were all decked out in evening finery and tried to look like Dagny. Since I was on active duty at the time, and because I owned no tuxedo, I decided to wear my Marine Corps dress uniform and look like... well, a Marine.

It turned out that, although the military plays a valid role in the Objectivist world-view, actually being a member of that military was enough to make me a pariah and the butt of some snide remarks at that gathering. Sure, the country may need jarheads to defend it against foreign threats, but no right-thinking rational person would ever actually become one voluntarily. I get the feeling that any "student of Objectivism" found to have actually contributed money to a charity would be treated about the same way.

Pretty much all of us who were "into" Ayn Rand at our school were, to one degree or another, oh-so-serious about Objectivism (I look back at some letters, articles, and journal entries from that era and cringe a little. "A is A," indeed!) For example, my roommate in junior year (who was a very smart fellow and whom I recall fondly) seemed intent at times on living a "pure" Objectivist life, which I'll oversimplify for the sake of this post as: give nothing for free, take nothing for free.

While that may sound like a good way to live (and generally speaking, I believe it is), like all good things, it can be taken too far. Glancing at a newspaper over his shoulder, for example, was once a cause for comment (he paid for it; I'm reading it). He once volunteered to pay me because he'd listened to some music that I had played in the room. (Between my refusal and his not being able to determine "fair" payment, the idea thankfully died quietly.)

Which leads - finally - to the subject of this post: a disturbing dream I had last night.

In that dream, I'm living in a kind of semi-nightmarish world where, basically, you pay for everything, or at least for all information. Information not only isn't free, but you can't even retain a copy of what you pay for.

Using the argument traditionally put forth to justify the government's monopoly on radio and television, "bandwidth" is now government property. You must have a license to put up web content or to create a domain.

The Web has been completely "revised"; it resembles the old Web in terms of operation, but has been transformed into a new and very commercial medium.

There's good news if you are worried about people making copies of what you make available as a Web content provider: government-mandated hardware and software features make it possible to send information to consumers in such a way that it cannot be saved (short of, perhaps, photographing one's computer screen or sticking a microphone next to your computer's speakers). Other settings control whether recipients can print what they receive and, of course, how much recipients will pay to receive it.

If the hardware and software features aren't enough to deter the curious, the law makes it a felony to bypass (or attempt to bypass) these features, but that should surprise nobody.

The Web is now fundamentally a one-way medium, in that the vast majority of data flows from providers Out There into one's computer. It differs from traditional television in that it allows consumers to choose what they wish to view and at what time. The medium also makes it very easy to do banking, pay taxes, order merchandise, and carry out any number of activities... each for a small fee. (These fees are, fortunately, not that high, since having each transaction automatically logged in any of several major marketing databases helps offset costs.)

Hardly anyone sends letters by mail, anymore. To get a government-approved e-mail address, you must provide two forms of identification and pay an annual license fee that is pegged to your education and income (the better to address the gap between information "haves" and "have-nots"). The Postal Service collects a fee for every message you send. The fee covers the cost of automated systems that examine mail messages to make sure they contain no copyrighted or "objectionable" materials, and no secret messages. Encryption is strictly government-controlled, and one must apply for and have a good reason to have an encryption key.

Then I woke up.

Sounds like one hell of a book.

Cheers...