Originalmente publicado el 5 de Julio de 2014

I have the tendency to balance my full nerd side with nature. Camping really far away with the bare minimum. I like to go off the grid.

Not so many years ago we lived without checking on Foursquare, without telling what we were doing on Twitter or who is our partner on Facebook. We even lived without sms. Only with spare change in our pockets and ideas in our minds.

The digital revolution came and we went from connecting to the internet some times of the day, to struggle to disconnect some times of the day. We now are premanently on-the-grid.

Since I was born in a third world country where access to information was limited having nowdays the ability to be constantly connected felt awesome. All the information of mankind in one place. I could learn anything, free, I just needed to spend some time and I could learn the most complex networking papers or read the most touching poems.

Other problems araised, we started to get confused with the amount of communication we had… started to think that it was actual connection:

But like with everything there’s a trade off. Not everyone looked at the internet as an information source, a lot looked at it as an oportuniy but a handful of them started this ancient trend of privacy invasion.

We now know that a lot of goverments are eager to know everything we do. Obviously this is not limited to goverments but also companies, from small ones to mega corporations.

It does not matter if you use Windows, Linux or OSX you are on the grid and you know it. There’s no real freedom out there. Because it’s not about the software you use, it’s how you use it and in our specific case how you build it.

Security bugs (including, but not limited to, backdoors) exist in a ton of software and even in hardware. The curiosity to know and the interest to do so is a powerful hand that does not care about software or hardware.

Free of choice, free of thought, free of discrimination, of persecution. I do not accept the one true way of living ideals. able to run it.

I’ve started coding PHP, but I’m no PHP dev. I’ve worked with Python, but I’m no Python dev. Most of my career is around Ruby, but I’m no Ruby dev. I’m a developer. I love to code anything, in any language.

And I’m not tied to any OS, I’m writing this in OSX but I own several machines with several OSs. I enjoy being a poweruser in any system, as well as other people.

My war today is against people who want to tell me how to think, how to feel. Against people who wants to tag me and use me in a statistic.

My war today is against the ones who think their way is the only way, because once there was only one acceptable gender, one acceptable color, one acceptable faith.

A rock in a pond

For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.

Nelson Mandela

Sometimes enough is enough. Sometimes a part of you can’t take things anymore. Sometimes you are not going to wait for someone to fix things. Sometimes it has to be you.

Being a programmer is by far the most important thing that I achieved in my life.

Some things inspire you to go the extra mile. Some things trigger that part of you that was asleep. Some things happen all over again.

Disobey

And our topic is topsy-turvy: civil disobedience. As soon as you say the topic is civil disobedience, you are saying our problem is civil disobedience. That is not our problem…. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is the numbers of people all over the world who have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience.

Howard Zinn

These words made me realize something. This is not the first time this happened, some things in our world are repetitive.

These acts of defiance are a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. But that is not a barrier to battle the brutality.

Anarchy comes from the ancient Greek ἀναρχία, anarchia, from ἀν an, “not, without” + ἀρχός arkhos, “ruler”, meaning “absence of a ruler”, “without rulers”)

Anarchy is not only a political view, but also a philosofical one. Anarchy is often tied with violence, with hate. I’m seeing a world of violence, with hate.

I don’t want to have the one true way of living. I want to dedicate my life to give everyone the chance to choose, to love, to hate to be free in all extent.

I might be in the wrong path… but this time, this time I choosed this path and I’m going to defend it.

Programmers, designers, journalists, creators. That skill to make something from nothingness, that skill inherent in every person.

Being a rebel, an inconformist it’s also part of everyone. And at the end freedom, that gift with our first breath, is not optional. It’s not a law, a right… it’s a condition. A living being condition that can’t be removed, can’t be bought.

We are the victims of our own fears, of our own demons, of our own humanity. Today… today is the day we fight back.