Although technology is largely neutral and the ethics of technology are based on human choices, some technologies are more conducive to promoting freedom than others. I refer to such technologies broadly as liberative technology (#libtech). Decentralized and federated services like the #fediverse are one form of libtech, as is truly decentralized #cryptocurrency like #cardano.
@katoshi Not sure if tech is neutral or having hard time thinking if it's not profit and regulations first AND THEN whatever on top (as long as primary forces are in place with profit and regulations).
Internet was commercialised - before it was a laughed at geeky dialup texty nerdy component soldering thing until bigboys / U$ Investment / vulture capitalism etc got involved and broadband.
Wasn't much respect for people or much money doing forums / dial-up file silos / meetup events, though the telephone backbone made it real cheap and even free locally.
Now look... just the neutrality by government or bank related things is usually pure filth first and then people can play around like it's neutral / be advertised to / harvested / laws subtly passed or forced.
No free lunch. We are lunch since it's inception made from innocent Tesla's who they would prefer resell / manipulate than give tech free / neutrally... or you think people still play nice / towards freedom or even gov × banks are neutral?
@katoshi would be true...unless created and sold again by those same people (making it political still)...and also not possible without them and the things already put in place (empire).
So I guess I'd like to stick to this line to see where we get - as actually apart from things like matches and making your own wheel, which it's all near impossible, the controlled iteration feels deliberate without being too conspiritual (but yes they conspire- now more than ever as 'business' itself is about power / empires).
Any and every toy and tool can be / would be taken away if at all seen as any threat to power and control iterated by gov or banks.
(e.g. even matches, if it would change balance in power and freedom that much, it would be removed (or safety mechanism / another layer put on).
Indeed anything released to public, (if it encouraged more freedom most effectively) simply would be removed / not allowed / co-opted. Can't have risk to happen to their own self-given jobs of ruling / keeping power.
Much like all tech that has embedded seemingly these thoughts, we might only get democracy or voice AFTER political tech has been installed and and agreed.
Gov's would never let that happen.
Maybe makes sense put that way since we're born into each iteration of power and control and it seems we naturally wouldn't see the accumulative changes or intentions - the plans of power, let's say).
I accept more-neutral tech before or more innocence in the past (also from lack of access to modern techniques of exploitation) but now more than ever all processes have been corrupted (extremified, maximised, dug into etc, effected, steroided up etc.)
Kind of like salad that no longer touches any soil and is purely chemical fed. Just meanings have been lost so muvh more and more, though you might see and even think the taste of a salad. It almost isn't or provides less as biodiversity etc as it is grown and in other ways bad / negative (the sewage fir ecample) eventually becoming downfall of, well, humanity via tech itself (and waves of power-iterating people) doing things having lost sight of humanity from almost beginning.
Just less chance or space for neutrality is nearer today's reality. The focus as time goes on and development is all geared for other purposes already.
Who and what funds things is perhaps too hard to see and can make tech look innocent from the many default things underneath aforementioned.
@freeschool I will repeat my main point again. Technology per se is morally neutral: fire is neither good or bad in itself, but the moral element is supplied by human actions. That being said, there are certain technologies that though they may be developed for nefarious purposes may have qualities that can be more easily diverted towards human freedom (the decentralized nature of internetworking is a case in point).
I don't swallow black pills. Sorry.
@katoshi
could you clarify what this means:
"I don't swallow black pills."
@katoshi A mechanism built to trap people is morally questionable, even if the smallest tools seems innocent.
The people ratifying things is much more the case, even for the basic tech, so beyond your almost-nonexistent fire and wheel (unless you can make fire or a wheel) everything is under someone else's control or inside that construct. So yes fire but no you can't make it and yes they have thought of almost anything that would let people rise from poverty or suppression.
The example of a gun might be extreme but when a computer fires signal in a supermarket telling system to increase price since there is so much demand and chance to profit behind people's back, humanity starts to go backwards and die from people paying much more arbitrarily- happens all the time and just dont see it.
The force is using tech though might seem basic messaging between components or neutral.
The how and why it's used is very important. Happy to leave it on that note if you like.
Reminds me of boys seeing a car and saying "wow" like it's a magic machine and then tens of years later realising the whole industry of cars is not great and magic goes away. Things do look nice and neutral, at first...
@freeschool The internet is not a good example since it was a child of the Military Industrial Complex. It started as a research project of DARPA (DARPAnet). It "escaped" elite control with commercial companies like AOL providing access as ISPs to the general public. Amateur radio would be a better example of a liberative technology.
When I say technology is largely neutral, I include fire and the wheel as technology. They have no intrinsic moral value, only the use to which they are put.