Have you ever thought about a question, why WeChat, also known as Weixin, cannot send messages to Snapchat, while QQ Mail can send emails to Outlook? Most people take these two things for granted, that users of different email companies can naturally communicate with each other, while users of different instant messaging software cannot.

Similarly, no matter how many social products emerge, we naturally assume that they cannot communicate with each other. Data is controlled by the company, products belong to the company, privacy must be surrendered, and recorded life data cannot be exported.

Is this series of things that are taken for granted really taken for granted?

Slavoj Žižek pointed out in "Violence" that the purest form of ideology is the absence of ideology (Žižek, 2008).

In other words, when an ideology has occupied such a dominant position, it is difficult for people to see it as a specific ideology and think that things should be this way. Without awareness, there can be no reflection. This is particularly evident in technology. Technology is often seen as a neutral tool of ideology. Users of software often forget that software is created by people.

This is particularly evident in the technology represented by WeChat (Facebook). WeChat and email are products of two different ideologies on the Internet.

Do we really need a centralized WeChat server? Must the profit model be selling user data? Can't the users of a product have control over it? Must individuals accept the monopolistic terms of big companies?

To address these issues, let's first review the history of email and why it didn't become WeChat.

When email was first invented in the 1970s as a technology transferred from the military to civilians, it was pure and open. With the rise of commercialization, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, just like now, big companies started looking to profit from it. At that time, emails were easily intercepted, and the degree of spam and marketing advertisements was no different from the pre-installed software on mobile phones today.

There were even companies specifically selling email addresses. Does that remind you of the buying and selling of phone numbers today?

Let me give you a famous example:

In March 1996, Juliette Assange posted a message with an advertisement titled "Emailer Profit Center," which used a "multi-level marketing" campaign to sell millions of email addresses to commercial companies. "Who wants to be the first to destroy this website?" Assange asked other cypherpunks.

Julian Assange is the founder of WikiLeaks, and the cypherpunk community is the one that created Bitcoin.

In that era, the challenge facing cypherpunks was how to free personal email data from corporate control.

Today, people take online privacy for granted. They can send a hundred emails a day without worry. But back then, these new things needed someone to develop them. Governments and businesses at the time were reluctant to allow ordinary netizens to have the freedom of encryption. Governments, especially the US government, hoped to leave a backdoor in the system.

It is because of the generation of cryptographers, computer scientists, and mathematicians who propelled the cypherpunk movement that we can write emails in this way today.

Let's review the history of cypherpunks. In that era, how did they think and what did they do?

Let's go back to around 1992. Through mailing lists, people gathered to discuss topics such as computer technology, politics, philosophy, and mathematics. The number of list members never exceeded 1000, but it was these people who laid the foundation for the future development of cryptography and became pioneers in the modern debate on online privacy.

On November 22, 1992, Sunday, Pacific Standard Time, Tim Mayer published the famous "Crypto Anarchist Manifesto."

He wrote:

Computer technology is on the verge of providing the ability for individuals and groups to communicate and interact with complete anonymity. Two people may exchange messages, conduct business, and negotiate electronic contracts without knowing each other's real names or legal identities. By extensively rerouting encrypted data packets and implementing tamper-proof boxes, interactions on the network become untraceable. These tamper-proof boxes implement encryption protocols that almost perfectly prevent any tampering.

Cypherpunks discovered that the best technical method to deal with those who want people's data is encryption. Encryption is based on mathematical principles, and the cost of encryption and decryption is asymmetric. Even if you are the most powerful person in the world, you cannot decrypt a message encrypted with RSA.

From then on, cypherpunks began to change things through the development of tools. They had a motto: "Cypherpunk, write code!"

Some works directly developed by cypherpunk groups include:

The famous PGP, which protects users' privacy through asymmetric encryption, making it impossible for intermediaries to view email communications.

TOR is also a work of cypherpunks.

Indirect achievements of cypherpunks include mint chips and the recently rising Bitcoin.

Our current era is different, facing different technological problems.

The ideas and spirit left by cypherpunks have not changed.

The question is, what should we do?

What kind of thinking can solve contemporary problems?

The post-cypherpunk era.

In the present era, privacy breaches are becoming more severe. With the development of artificial intelligence technology, internet giants have even greater control over users. They have personalized systems and may know us better than we know ourselves. Machine learning algorithms analyze your mood when you miss a period, and they keep a record of every time you type and delete. Every "I love you" you send to your family may be an insurance advertisement they want to sell you, and every mention of a family member's illness in a chat may attract a flood of ads from Putian hospitals.

• Open protocols.
• Community autonomy.
• Encryption protection.
• Public services.

These cyberpunk ideas are not outdated, we just need new products, new scenarios, new ideas. Replacing Facebook is not the next Facebook, and replacing WeChat is not another WeChat.

The new generation shoulders the responsibility of history. They are not inferior to the previous generation, and they also have the powerful weapon of blockchain cryptocurrency provided by Satoshi Nakamoto.

The seemingly powerful empires of Facebook and WeChat are not invincible. When they are at their peak, I can already see signs of collapse.