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View Full Version : Liberty vs. Technology: Can they Coexist?




itsthepathocrats
12-09-2008, 12:16 PM
????

itsthepathocrats
12-09-2008, 12:18 PM
nm

itsthepathocrats
12-09-2008, 12:19 PM
nm

socialize_me
12-09-2008, 12:30 PM
I haven't read the essay yet, but I will. I too have questioned whether all of this broadening of research will ultimately bring about a collapse of individualism and liberty.

Have you seen Wall-E?? It's amazing; everytime I look around I see people just glued to their cell phones, texting, and there's very little we do to break this cycle. On Wall-E, everyone is zoned out and tuned into whatever they're watching. It's really disturbing, and what's worse is this is very observable just by walking down the street.

Elwar
12-09-2008, 12:38 PM
Technology makes it easier to live without government. Online classes for homeschooling (kids going to some brick building is so last century), solar cells, water purifiers, composting waste (no more eminent domain for our utilities), home security, online books (good-bye libraries), web MD, fire retardent homes/sprinkler systems, etc...etc...

Technology breeds individual freedom. The more techonologically advanced we become, the more self reliant we will be. With technology providing all the basic necessities we will need government less and less.

Xenophage
12-09-2008, 12:46 PM
This is absurd Luddite bullshit.

Chains can be placed around a person's neck, or they can be tied to a heavy load to help them move it. Technology is a tool.

powerofreason
12-09-2008, 01:17 PM
tl/dr

AbolishTheGovt
12-09-2008, 03:45 PM
Your answer: http://jim.com/econ/chap07p1.html

regtoday
12-09-2008, 06:33 PM
Technology enhances individual liberty. Like ants follow chemical trails left by others, individuals online follow social media votes and ratings. A new brain has emerged. It doesn't take eons of evolution through millions of generations to evolve. It is evolving in real time. Every time a new web service comes around the brain evolves. It will evolve in it's own self interest, strengthening the individuals who are a part of it. Social media and the internet have enabled the human super organism.

The effectiveness of exercising individual liberty is experiencing accelerating returns. Indeed, it is what fueled this movement from the start. Take the money bombs or the Ron Paul blimp for example. An idea was put fourth, and with the click of a mouse thousands of individuals brought it to life. Ron Paul blimp was especially exciting because an organization had to be formed.

Promoting, forming and funding an organization online is virtually effortless. Organizations formed that way will become more frequent and more ambitious. Imagine, instead of people working through the government to accomplish ambitious goals, it becomes easier to put fourth the plan on the internet and have individuals make it happen by clicking their mouse.

When the culture becomes mainstream, when everyday people begin using social media to promote ambitious ideas, like the Ron Paul blimp, or a solar farm, wind farm, a political candidate, a new system of government will emerge.

Where is the capital of the Internet? With people using it to organize such huge mutually beneficial projects, where do they go?

Social media sites bring in add revenue. A community could organize an online capital, a social media service, where they promote ambitious ideas, as well as entertain and inform themselves. The online capital would bring in revenue, and through a system of representation similar to our government, they would determine how to spend that money. They would fund projects organized by the community.

The online government would provide ambitious services for free.

Individuals will retain control of their money after they spend it.

regtoday
12-09-2008, 06:43 PM
"technology will enable the social mainstream to impose its values universally"

When everyone has influence over the social mainstream, that is not a problem. Social media FTW:)

ronpaulforprez2008
12-09-2008, 06:59 PM
Technology makes it easier to live without government.

This is absurd Luddite bullshit.

Your answer: http://jim.com/econ/chap07p1.html

When everyone has influence over the social mainstream, that is not a problem.

Technology enhances individual liberty.

Sigh.....and these comments are in a Ron Paul forum :(

We have much work to do.

Argh!

awake
12-09-2008, 06:59 PM
The inherent problem with any leap forward in any technological aspect such as the introduction of the internet always presents the inevitable double edge sword , so to speak. Although it may seem that the internet is a liberty and freedom promoting tool, its design is intuitively functional for the purposes of data collection both voluntary and involuntary. Everything you have ever typed, every video you have posted and any social network interaction is and will forever remain in data mining storage - later to build an online profile for which a 'web check' will be required to fully bear out these collections.

Google stores every search you make. They store IP / Search Results for one year at which time they say that it is randomized for anonymity.

Obama actually asked potential administration employees to be 'web checked' before hire... this is the future of privacy - where you will have none. Every thing you have placed online will be open to potential employers.

Face Book - 1-out of 3 employers said they used it to screen. People fully volunteer all of their life placed online without any thought. It all can be looked at by the same agencies that can wiretap anybody for no reason whatsoever.

Kinda makes you wonder why they coined the term 'World Wide Web'
Because all I can see is a wholesale delivery and storage of millions of human beings personal data that can come back against them in the future - including this post.

AutoDas
12-09-2008, 07:05 PM
Yes.

Conza88
12-09-2008, 07:27 PM
You cannot have technology without LIBERTY in the first place...

Premise fails remarkably..

Andrew-Austin
12-09-2008, 08:15 PM
Yeah I didn't read the whole thing but just scanned it (sorry), since it sounds pretty bunk anyways.

Technology is not inherently bad or anti-liberty at all, only when big government swells into being does technology become a problem. Well even then its not the source of a problem, the government is, technology just being its tool. Its tax payers who fund the surveillance state and military industrial complex, not that they would if they had a choice in the matter.

To blame technology itself seems to broil down to the thought that 'guns kill people'.
No they don't, people kill people. Big government should be viewed as an anti-social monopoly only seeking to maintain its power and pelf through force, no shit such a creature is going to use technology just like the rest of us.




Sigh.....and these comments are in a Ron Paul forum :(

We have much work to do.

Get cracking then and post something of substance. :confused:

itsthepathocrats
12-09-2008, 08:48 PM
nm

Ex Post Facto
12-09-2008, 09:28 PM
I think the best idea out there to balance technology and liberty is the venus project. Technology only to assist us, meet our basic needs, and to free us up so we don't have to work.

The_Orlonater
12-09-2008, 09:43 PM
Sigh.....and these comments are in a Ron Paul forum :(

We have much work to do.

Argh!

Um, what?

These were pro-market responses and one guy quoted from one of the greatest books ever written.

I think you're on the wrong forum.

ronpaulforprez2008
12-09-2008, 10:56 PM
Um, what?

These were pro-market responses and one guy quoted from one of the greatest books ever written.

I think you're on the wrong forum.

Just try to capture the meaning of the following paragraph, especially
the bolded part. Let me know what you think is being said here.... then
let me know if you still think I'm the one on the wrong forum.


"There is no distinct line between "guidance" or "influence" and manipulation. When
a technique of influence becomes so effective that is achieves its desired effect in
nearly every case, then it is no longer influence but compulsion. Thus influence
evolves into compulsion as science improves technique."

regtoday
12-09-2008, 11:26 PM
"There is no distinct line between "guidance" or "influence" and manipulation. When
a technique of influence becomes so effective that is achieves its desired effect in
nearly every case, then it is no longer influence but compulsion. Thus influence
evolves into compulsion as science improves technique."

What your saying is we're all robots. I completely agree. What happens when the science is widely understood, and robots program robots?

CUnknown
12-09-2008, 11:27 PM
I've read the Manifesto several times, although it has been a while since the last time. I used to be a big fan, now less so.

It's true in my mind that human engineering poses a big problem for the freedom movement, and it is one thing that we must fight against, although only one among many. Technology such as RFID certainly people in this movement recognize as a problem. And a worse problem RFID implanted in people. And maybe even worse when RFID gets so ubiquitous that it is everywhere, in everything we buy.

Obviously people on this forum would see technologies such as genetic engineering to make a more docile populace something to fight against. And I'm sure most recognize that in a sense this is already here in the form of pharmaceuticals. That's something the Unabomber talks a lot about -- we are subjected to conditions that many people find intolerable without medications, so in a way these medications are allowing conditions to get as bad as they are, because otherwise there would be revolution (or at least civil unrest).

I think people are not reading the Manifesto with an open mind, because it is right up this movement's alley. On the other hand, the Manifesto does have flaws. One being that it doesn't fully come to grips with the liberating aspects of technology. The internet hadn't reached its potential back then -- there was no YouTube, no cops being caught committing crimes on video for hundreds of thousands of people to watch the very next day. There was no Ron Paul internet Revolution back then.

So, technology does have positive, liberating aspects. The Unabomber sees technology as bad at its core. You may have a different take on it. But, the Manifesto as a whole is not just "Luddite bullshit" and it can't be dismissed so easily. There are reasonable arguments both for and against.

I think it's an open question -- will the Government eventually censor the internet so that conversations like this cannot take place? Will we be RFID tagged against our will like animals? The Ron Paul Revolution needs to succeed so that technology can be a positive force for freedom, because if we fail it will certainly be used to enslave us.

regtoday
12-09-2008, 11:41 PM
"People spend a large and increasing amount of time submitting to canned entertainment rather than participating in spontaneous activities. As overcrowding and rules and regulations curtail opportunities for spontaneous activity, and as the developing techniques of entertainment make the canned product ever more attractive, we can assume that people will live more and more in the world of mass entertainment."

This was written before the Internet. The premise no longer stands.

Brian4Liberty
12-10-2008, 12:31 AM
You will be assimilated. You will submit to the collective. Resistance is futile.

Brian4Liberty
12-10-2008, 12:50 AM
A new brain has emerged.... Social media and the internet have enabled the human super organism.


Human super organism? I don't feel all warm and fuzzy about that...


Indeed, it is what fueled this movement from the start.

Yep, the positive side of the internet revolution...the ability to spread ideas without the censorship of the establishment and the mainstream media... at least there is little censorship now.

The future will tell how this ends up. Calls are already out there for central "editing" and approval of internet content.

Brian4Liberty
12-10-2008, 12:58 AM
"People spend a large and increasing amount of time submitting to canned entertainment rather than participating in spontaneous activities. As overcrowding and rules and regulations curtail opportunities for spontaneous activity, and as the developing techniques of entertainment make the canned product ever more attractive, we can assume that people will live more and more in the world of mass entertainment."

This was written before the Internet. The premise no longer stands.

You are an optimist. You see a glass that is 90% empty as if it were full. The vast majority of Americans only know what "mass entertainment" and the mainstream media tell them. Even on the internet, the mainstream media types dominate.

regtoday
12-10-2008, 01:03 AM
You are an optimist. You see a glass that is 90% empty as if it were full. The vast majority of Americans only know what "mass entertainment" and the mainstream media tell them. Even on the internet, the mainstream media types dominate.

True, but it will only take one killer app to change all of that. Whenever that app emerges it will take over the web in weeks. It will be a revolution machine.

Natalie
12-10-2008, 01:05 AM
RPF party in the chat! a drunken naked party! woo! "We're going streaking!" wooOOO!

Conza88
12-10-2008, 02:02 AM
RPF party in the chat! a drunken naked party! woo! "We're going streaking!" wooOOO!

Hahah.. are you drunk? :D

How many peeps at the party? Did JoespehTotalitarian try spike the punch? ;)

I was afk.. :(

Elwar
12-10-2008, 08:19 AM
Technology is a tool to be used by either side. Look at the printing press...it helped to spur a Revolution that gave us all of the freedoms we have today. It has also been used for propaganda purposes. The Internet was the place to be if you wanted any coverage of Ron Paul. Look at the oppressive countries and look at the more free countries and tell me which countries are trying to stifle the technology of the Internet and which are encouraging its growth.

Heaven forbid a mechanism is created that can kill another with a single trigger, that mechanism might be used by the government to destroy us all. Or it can be used by every individual to rise up and revolt against an oppressive government/king.

Mani
12-10-2008, 09:27 AM
Technology is a double edged sword.

It can be a great way to promote freedom and give knowledge and access to people and give them a voice as by the examples people have provided.

It can also be a great tool used to control what people can see, use, etc.

The internet has allowed us to spread and express our message of freedom. But countries implement blocks and even some of our current media in the US (paper, TV) are controlled.

But remember even the most controlled software system is susceptible to Hackers. There are good and bad hackers, there will always be hackers. hackers who find a way to get AROUND the controls.

So if you fear the internet could become another controlled medium, remember the Hacker will be there to break those controls.

Brian4Liberty
12-10-2008, 11:14 AM
We have created in the past 20 years something that has never existed in the history of man: 24x7 survellience of everyone. We have created the Big Brother of 1984, or Santa Claus if you prefer. They "see you when you're sleeping, they know when you're awake".

The only thing they can not do is read your mind, but even worse, they will infer your mind via all the information they gather. And yes, they will often be wrong. You visited anarchist websites? You watched "V" 75 times? You followed Ron Paul? You were in the neighborhood when the Federal Reserve was blown up? Sorry, you're going to Guantanimo. They know you were thinking about it. :rolleyes:

How are you monitored?

- Your digital cable box (what you watched).
- Your cell phone and text messages.
- Your IMs, chats, e-mails, facebook pages, websites visited, etc.
- Your GPS (cellphone too).
- Your car monitors your speed and acceleration.
- Cameras and microphones everywhere.
- Credit cards and ATMs cards (can also store purchases).
- Employee passcards, toll quick pass cards, etc monitor your location.


Is having a 24x7 survellience agent (with a perfect memory) a hinderence to Liberty? To the Constitution? To the 4th Amendment? This has never existed before.

ronpaulforprez2008
12-10-2008, 12:33 PM
We have created in the past 20 years something that has never existed in the history of man: 24x7 survellience of everyone.

The only thing they can not do is read your mind, but even worse, they will infer your mind via all the information they gather.

Yippee, someone who gets-it!

With network connected sensors everywhere, they are building the biggest control-feedback-loop ever. The world is a system, and in order to manage that system the managers need input via sensors, and then they need mechanisms to exercise control, such as the media (whether it be mainstream, alternative, or Internet). Technology is the tool set that facilitates this control.

On a side note, one type of sensor Brian didn't mention in his excellent post is the gyroscope, which really started (as far as the consumer is aware) in the iPhone and now is everywhere: cellphones, camera's, laptops, automobiles, etc. Did you realize that someone can monitor the gate of your walk by tapping into your iPhone's gyroscope, and from that information potentially determine your health? Next time you go to order that Pizza the pizza store isn't going to sell it to you because the pace of your walk has changed in such as way as to determine that you likely have heart disease.

:)

Oh, and for those who are so very supportive of the Internet and think that the controllers would actually shut it down in some way, just think about the fact that it was DARPA and various academic and government labs that spent 40yrs developing the Internet before they gave it to the public. That's 40yrs of modeling, scenario analysis and usage before it was released. Do you really think they would allow the public to have such a powerful technology without building in various failsafe control mechanisms prior to its release? It's the greatest monitoring and persuasion tool ever built, there is no incentive to dissuade the public from using it...none at all.

AutoDas
12-10-2008, 12:48 PM
uhh yeah whatever you want to believe. Technology is not evil just as guns are not evil.

Brian4Liberty
12-10-2008, 01:13 PM
uhh yeah whatever you want to believe. Technology is not evil just as guns are not evil.

Good analogy. They are only evil in the hands of a government...

ronpaulforprez2008
12-10-2008, 06:48 PM
"There is no distinct line between "guidance" or "influence" and manipulation. When
a technique of influence becomes so effective that is achieves its desired effect in
nearly every case, then it is no longer influence but compulsion. Thus influence
evolves into compulsion as science improves technique."

What your saying is we're all robots. I completely agree. What happens when the science is widely understood, and robots program robots?


Initially, the controllers program the robots to suit the controllers' ends. Over time, the robots help the controllers by: (1) programming each other, and (2) enforcing the controllers' programs. Of course, the Department of Education and the Mass Media are two of the biggest culprits here.




I've read the Manifesto several times, although it has been a while since the last time. I used to be a big fan, now less so.

It's true in my mind that human engineering poses a big problem for the freedom movement, and it is one thing that we must fight against, although only one among many. Technology such as RFID certainly people in this movement recognize as a problem. And a worse problem RFID implanted in people. And maybe even worse when RFID gets so ubiquitous that it is everywhere, in everything we buy.

Obviously people on this forum would see technologies such as genetic engineering to make a more docile populace something to fight against. And I'm sure most recognize that in a sense this is already here in the form of pharmaceuticals. That's something the Unabomber talks a lot about -- we are subjected to conditions that many people find intolerable without medications, so in a way these medications are allowing conditions to get as bad as they are, because otherwise there would be revolution (or at least civil unrest).

I think people are not reading the Manifesto with an open mind, because it is right up this movement's alley. On the other hand, the Manifesto does have flaws. One being that it doesn't fully come to grips with the liberating aspects of technology. The internet hadn't reached its potential back then -- there was no YouTube, no cops being caught committing crimes on video for hundreds of thousands of people to watch the very next day. There was no Ron Paul internet Revolution back then.

So, technology does have positive, liberating aspects. The Unabomber sees technology as bad at its core. You may have a different take on it. But, the Manifesto as a whole is not just "Luddite bullshit" and it can't be dismissed so easily. There are reasonable arguments both for and against.

I think it's an open question -- will the Government eventually censor the internet so that conversations like this cannot take place? Will we be RFID tagged against our will like animals? The Ron Paul Revolution needs to succeed so that technology can be a positive force for freedom, because if we fail it will certainly be used to enslave us.

I think one of the primary issue here is who controls the ideation, development, deployment and usage of technology. And the fact is that it is the psychopaths who are in power who deploy techniques that only service their end. I believe this is the problem that Kaczinski sees... and we've had a psychopathic power elite in charge since the beginning of time. So his calls to eliminate technology is with this strongly in mind.

Do me a favor and check out this page which is a summary of Ellul's discussions on Technique:

http://www.usd.edu/~ssanto/ellul.html

I believe Ellul saw the implementation of technology a foregone conclusion, saying: "Everything which is technique is necessarily used as soon as it is available without distinction of good or evil. This is the principal law of our age"