Technology, Freedom, and the Digital Deadly Sins

Ryan Shae, technology entrepreneur, gives a talk at the College Freedom Forum 2019, on the role that technology is playing on human organization and freedom. Shae states that society is at a crossroads of human organization, between democratic freedom and authoritarian control. On one hand, he explains, we have technologies that give more power to authoritarian governments and on the other, we have technology like social media and apps, that empower individuals to communicate and organize. "We have a choice for the future of humanity. Do we wanna live in a world that is top-down, governed by the few with the power to command and control? Or do we wanna live in a world that is bottom-up, governed by the many, with the power to self organize?" Ryan talks about our societies digital deadly sins: Surveillance Censorship Hacking Propaganda Coercion We need to make our democratizing technologies resilient to intervention; they often have some of these properties: privacy-preserving, censorship-resistant, hack-defending, decentralized and self-organizing, explains Shae. Then he describes some privacy-secure technologies for daily activities and other decentralized, self-organizing technologies; he then goes deeper into Bitcoin. "As consumers, what can we do? Use privacy tech, hack-defending tech and Bitcoin to transact”. Finally he describes actions we can take as employees and voting citizens, to decentralize the internet and a future of self-organization.