Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder

17 Jun 2002, 15:51 p.m.

I've decided that totalitarianism, being a form of security, is…

Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2002 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.

I've decided that totalitarianism, being a form of security, is a process, not a product. As such, "Is This System Totalitarian Or Not" is a question that sort of misses the point. Did this system aim for totalitarianism? To what degree did it succeed? That's how I unpack the question.

To midterm!