Why Strive for Technological Autonomy?
The Top Six Reasons to Change Our Relationship with Technology
Over the last two weeks I've introduced an idea called "technological autonomy" and defined it as "the independence from both the collection of data by the major tech companies and the algorithms they use to manipulate our behavior." We've arrived at a moment in American history where our perceptions of the world are distorted by a cartel of technology companies, and their social and political objectives are not aligned with our own. Last week I covered what technological autonomy is. This week I want to lay out a few reasons why we should strive for it.
There is a myriad of reasons why we should end our dependence on Big Tech. These reasons range from political to cultural, social to professional, and educational to personal. Since technology touches every aspect of our lives the benefits of technological autonomy will likewise do the same.
The first reason is a vision of the "American monastery," a place where we the 74 million can gather, preserve, and renew the principles of Western Civilization even as the current US regime abandons them. Now that the transition from the 9/11 era to the COVID-19 era is complete, we've seen a shocking emergence of authoritarianism in the form of lockdowns, neoracism under the guise of "antiracism," and a complicit media establishment which has redefined dissent as "disinformation" and dissenters as "domestic terrorists."
In this environment its crucial to establish a space in which we can transfer our values to our children and protect them from leftist indoctrination in the education system. Many of us currently - if permitted to do so by the authorities - have our children in schools, which are considering at this very moment how to integrate the neoracist "1619 Project" curriculum into their classrooms. In addition, in its "2021 Revision of the Mathematics Framework" the California State Board of Education has proposed to "counter racialized or gendered ideas about mathematics achievement" in order to "to encourage equitable outcomes." The subject of history is a common target of left-wing revisionism, but it appears even the universal language of math isn't safe from its encroachment.
But let's be honest. With the rapid decline of morals and standards since the 1960's many of us have forgotten those very same values that we claim to defend. Jake Angeli, the "QAnon Shaman" who became a symbol of the January 6th protest at the US Capitol, seemed more like a lost youth looking for something to believe in rather than a militant adherent to a coherent ideology. The evaporating of the American soul affects us all. By breaking our dependency on Big Tech, we can gather together to reclaim and strengthen our shared values of God, family, hard work, education, and personal responsibility. We could use a refresher.
The second reason to free ourselves from the algorithms of Big Tech is to preserve our ability to make decisions for ourselves. Our social media news feeds, YouTube front pages, and cables news networks are now no longer allowed to show us certain things that used to be commonplace. Do you suspect election fraud and want to organize a protest? Censored. Do you refuse to wear a mask and want your followers to know? Censored. Do you want to create a group for unafraid parents so your kids can play together? Censored. Taken together this creates a chilling effect which causes people to reconsider engaging in what used to be considered perfectly normal behavior. Moreover, the longer this censorship continues the more likely it is for those who espouse unapproved ideas to be considered "extreme," and the body of options from which we can make our decisions will become more and more narrow.
This takes us into the third reason which is the ability to organize and evangelize in preparation for the red wave of 2022. After the contentious election of 2020 many on the right no longer have faith in the American electoral system, which is a major obstacle to overcome in only two years. In order to restore faith in elections and get out the vote, we need the ability to organize while resisting censorship and biased algorithms. We need a way to counter the ugly and false characterizations made about us by the left. And we need a platform to engage in outreach to that loose outer orbit of Democrat voters who have conservative values but vote for the left anyway. If we don't learn to use technology outside the control of Big Tech, the spread of our ideas will be severely curtailed.
A fourth reason to leave Big Tech is one I've mentioned before: managing our social credit score. There are already companies out there called data brokers that collect, aggregate, and purchase information about each one of us. Much of that information comes from social media profiles even if they're set to private. Even now there is a demand for the ability to vouch for someone without having to get to know him first. For example, in addition to hiring managers searching the internet for public profiles of potential employees, how many of you would like to automatically verify your Uber driver or the man coming to pick up that item you sold on Craigslist before you actually meet him? I was recently traveling on business and the Uber driver who picked me up at the airport told me that he will not accept a passenger if his rating in the Uber app was below 4.8 stars (out of 5). "Too dangerous," he told me.
That system is coming. China has one already and the left is just salivating at the chance to extrajudicially punish us for such egregious crimes as participating in a protest or not wearing a mask. Before such a system is implemented nationwide - either publicly or privately - we should take this opportunity to learn identity management, obfuscation, disinformation (the real kind), and virtue-signaling with sock-puppet profiles in order to manage our social credit scores.
A fifth reason is to increase our technical literacy. Since most of us have better things to do than become computer experts, we're subject to the whims of algorithms developed by 22-year-old Stanford grads because they know more about computers than most of us do, and many seem to lack the ethics to do the right thing. They use techniques such as dark patterns and other user interface tricks to get us to sign up for services and subscriptions that we might otherwise not. They utilize well-researched psychological techniques to make their apps more addictive in the name of "engagement." Increasing our technical abilities will allow us to provide our own services for ourselves and our communities which we used to rely on Big Tech to furnish. This will lead to a decentralized technology landscape which is harder to censor and more resilient to disaster.
Finally, breaking our addiction to Big Tech will do wonders for our mental health. For example, one thing I find particularly disturbing is the mainstream media's habit of spreading the initial shock of an event when it first happens, but then relegating into obscurity the resolution of the issue as the weeks, months, or years go by. Even before Big Tech I can recall the days following the Columbine High School shooting. The cable news industry had just been established, and it devoted endless hours of coverage to the shocking details of the tragedy, much of it speculative. Over the following weeks opportunistic politicians used it as a basis for their attempts to further restrict our second amendments rights. Five years later the FBI and a team of mental health experts who studied the perpetrators released their findings. Among many other things we learned that most of what we were told by the media in the days following the tragedy were wrong. This report received almost no attention in the press, certainly not in any amount that would balance the constant stream of shocking images and speculative theories generated by the media at the time. Today through our devices we are constantly connected to the public dialogue, and Big Tech helps amplify the inaccurate and shock-based reporting that typically occurs at the beginning of an event. Stepping away from it all will help insulate us from the mental health deterioration that this constant connection to click-bait headlines and outrage-based reporting can cause.
In summary, pursuing technological autonomy will result in a future that is decentralized and encrypted. Trading in centralized services for decentralized alternatives will enable us to live healthier and more meaningful lives in a resilient and censorship-resistant environment. And trading non-encrypted channels of communication for properly encrypted ones will shield us from corporate surveillance and the manipulation that it enables.
Thumbnail photo “Sanahin Monastery” by Steven C. Price - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43610464
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