Actually, encryption was restricted in the United States. In the 80s, the NSA tried to classify classic textbooks such as Bruce Schneir's "applied cryptography" as military grade weapons so they could control their export and publishing. They didn't want strong cryptography to fall into the hands of the Soviets
this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2025
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Late Soviet Union might be a similar to what you are looking for? I wasn't alive back then, but from what I recall from reading old science magazines as a kid, there were few home computers, lots of "radio-hobbyist" stuff (DIY electronics from radio to computers), and praise for "inventor and rationalizer" for the good of the people. On paper at least. I think most interpersonal communication was over the phone or amateur radio, or even telegrams.
I don't know much about how modern China goes about it though.
But TBF it's very difficult to speculate about message encryption. Thinking back from my own experience, digital communication (over the internet or even SMS over cell phone networks) was not common until 90s-2000s, and encrypting them became a concern not too long ago, early 2010s I think? Before that, it was HTTP (without the S) and unencrypted AIM chats over the Jabber protocol.
Why is this sub 95% political
The current “liberal” Australian government are doing their best to turn the internet into a government controlled propaganda machine. Most “liberal” governments around the world are the ones starting to become authoritarian, implementing censorship of the internet and speech, jail time for internet posts, endless tracking of everything you do online, etc.
If a networked system of computers existed, it would probably look a more like Minitel and be very tightly controlled. I would expect that all computer communication would be available to be reviewed by various government agencies.
amateur radio was illegal to encrypt
Amateur radio is still illegal to encrypt (with some exceptions for controlling satelites), because private communication isn't the point of amateur radio.
Besides, (in most countries) there are some topics that are illegal to talk over amateur radio about, mainly stuff like politics and religion. You're also not allowed to offer telecommunication services (i.e. pass messages on for others). Enforcing those sorts of laws would be impossible with encryption.
But to answer your question: I think we probably wouldn't have had an internet. Authoritarian regimes thrive on stability and maintaining the status quo, I think someone high up would have quickly decided that developing that sort of tech is too risky.
An Internet without privacy and encryption sounds awful. But one where it's illegal to talk about politics and religion sounds pretty tempting at times...
I mean, amateur radio was illegal to encrypt
Was? I'm not familiar with a jurisdiction that presently allows licensed amateur radio operators to send encrypted or even obfuscated messages, with the unique exception of control-and-command instructions for amateur radio satellites. The whole exercise of ham radio is to openly communicate, with other frequencies and services available for encrypted comms and whatever else.
To be abundantly clear, I very much support encryption because it keeps good people honest and frustrates bad people. But it's hard to see how, for ham radio, encryption could be reconciled with the open and inviting spirit that has steered the radio community for over a century. In a lot of ways, hams were doing FOSS well before the acronym came into existence.
I have great admiration for the radio operators, precisely because when all the major infrastructure falters, it takes only a battery and a wire up a tree to recover some semblance of connectivity.
(this is entirely tangential to the OP's question, but I feel like hams deserve a good word every so often. Also, I understand that last weekend was ARRL Field Day in the USA)
Was?
Lol english is not my first language, I mean like: "encryption on amateur radio has already been illegal since the very beginning of its use" and obviously still illegal now
I mean I guess Ham Radio is just meant as sending postcards over the air.
The internet would probably not exist outside of government and military use. Without the consumer incentive there would be no profit incentive and technology as a whole would have stagnated and the majority of computers would be akin to institutionally owned datacenters and supercomputers but with vastly inferior capabilities to the ones we have now.
However, non-networking devices would still exist and be popular, so things like videogame consoles would still be seeing some development, and possibly so would personal computers which rely on physical media being traded person to person.
I am certain technology around electromagnetic waves and telecommunications would continue to develop, possibly much slower, and that people would utilize it to create networks even though illegally, but it would be very few and niche.
if most of the world were under authoritarian regimes instead of liberal democracies?
Well, most of the world is actually under authoritarian regimes and not liberal democracies.
So what is it what you are asking?
Well, most of the world is actually under authoritarian regimes and not liberal democracies.
Not the parts where 90% of the research and development for our current information technology was done.
Then you have an answer for OP.
I always say and think about all this from the perspective of billionaires .... all they ever care about is money and the free flow of money everywhere. As long as money is moving and people believe in it, praise it and worship it, everything else can be tolerated and controlled.
The internet and free flowing communication allows for money to flow a lot .... without it money would quickly become segmented into tight regions and countries and everything becomes closed .... which makes it harder for money to flow, which makes it harder for a billionaire to make more money.
Same with World War or even nuclear war ... I don't think it will ever happen on purpose because once that first bomb goes off, billionaires will cease to be billionaires as the world financial system collapses. The billionaires won't care how many millions die, they'll be more upset that their imaginary digitally managed wealth will either decrease a lot or even completely. They know that in a post apocalyptic world, no one will care if you claim to be a billionaire if banks no longer exist. You might say that billionaires will have gold stashes around to fund their own personal army .... but that won't work either because their army will just kill them to take the wealth.
All of it is possible because of human greed .... all of it is under threat because of human greed .... and all of it is held in balance because of human greed.
Before the rise of liberal democracies there where no billionaires though. If they never had existed the world might look different now.
Yes there were ... we just didn't call them billionaires ... we called them Kings, Queens, Supreme Rulers, Emperors, God Kings
The world looks exactly the same now as it did 2,000 years ago politically because the idea of supreme and infinite wealth never went away. We've always had men who believed they could rule or own the entire world ... and we still do.
Look at Iran before and now. Irak before and now.. there is a reason we have Arabic numerals. You don't have to wait .. look at how many advancements come for democratic vs undemocratic..
For the record, the Arab world wasn’t always anti-science. It was religion that got them there.
Not all authoritarian regimes are anti-science. Some would be very interested in things for domestic use, it might be slower, and such, though.
It was religion that got them there.
That's... what? Like do you think the Assabids were atheists during the Islamic Golden Age?
Yup. So during the Abbasid caliphs, religious scholars weren’t as influential. They were definitely Muslim, but they weren’t opposed to science.
But then, the religious scholars became both more influential and more conservative. The secular scholars started asking questions that were, how shall we say, uncomfortable?
You can also see this shift in the transition from a more rationalist Mu’tazilite tradition to Ash’arite.
This is the inevitable shift. As science seeks an understanding of the universe, through observation and experimentation rather than faith it’s finding an understanding that best explains a universe without god.
It is inevitable that the religious mind either abandons their faith, or abandons science. (Unless of course we stumble onto evidence for god. But, I don’t believe that’s gonna happen.)
Ultimately, if god existed and created everything… science would be another form of worship.
Okay that is literally not true. First, Ash'arism is also rationalist so yeah no. Like you do know many prominent Muslim scientists from the time period were themselves Asharite right? Second, the Islamic golden age didn't die due to the power of religious figures; it died due to the sacking of Baghdad and continued right up until that moment. This happened more than two centuries after the creation of Ash'arism, and again many important developments happened in the Caliphate in the interim. Third, the Timurid renaissance came about a century later in a mainstream Sunni Muslim (so definitely not Mu'tazilite or some such) empire. In short:
It is inevitable that the religious mind either abandons their faith, or abandons science.
That literally didn't happen.
Ultimately, if god existed and created everything… science would be another form of worship.
Yes, as clearly stated in the Quran, that is literally the point.
Sorry my people's more than a millennium-long history doesn't conform to your preconceived notions, but can you please not make shit up? Here's a Wikipedia article. And in the first place, Arab distrust of science is a much more recent phenomenon that came after centuries of Ottoman neglect and is fading away right as we speak despite some of the most conservative mainstream theologies in the history of Islam.
We actually have Indian numerals, we just call them Arabic because those are the people we copied them from. That was more than a millennium ago though, so how is it relevant to OP's question?
I mean its not even too late for this to happen starting like right now 2025, right?
No, it's not. The US, and increasingly the rest of the western world, is infected by a bunch of politicians who think '1984' is an instruction manual rather than a cautionary tale.
IT being used to weaponize surveillance against the people is happening right now.