Technology is not inherently good or bad, it is simply, as I often say, an increasingly large lever for those good and bad people who use it.
Blockchain, like the internet, computers, etc… is one of the largest scale levers ever built, and while new technologies may replace it, the idea is still essentially the same: As long as technology enlarges the freedom to express and share ideas via:
- increased privacy (blockchain)
- increases autonomy and decreases dependence on business/govt. (peer-to-peer)
- reduces time needed to share ideas (speed),
- more people get involved (size)
then we can presume that free speech may become the greatest constructor of good or weapon the world has ever seen. It will simultaneously free humanity to become its greatest and its worst self.
Is there any technology or idea that does not simultaneously decrease and increase risk in some way? or increase benefits as well as costs. Whether nuclear power versus nuclear bombs, or guns for protection food versus attacking innocents, most technology, social systems, political structures, etc… (e.g. bureaucracy) are simply machines which extend human behavior, behavior which is always changing over time.
Likewise, free speech is one of the greatest forces on the planet for either good or evil, and to say that it is purely good, all the time, is a bit foolish since it depends on who uses it, and how people are feeling that day.
Why The Blockchain is Valuable to the Formula
The blockchain has two main benefits over other technologies today:
- Privacy because of its powerful encryption, and
- Peer-to-peer which lets people communicate without intermediaries.
- Accuracy because every computer that is on the network has an identical copy of the ledger, or the accounting record.
In a way, blockchain is a micro-model of democracy in technology. As a result it can empower people in various ways such as:
- freeing citizens from banking and government theft of savings,
- decrease currency manipulation (which is why it will probably increase with popularity as central bank fiat experiments fail),
- increasing free speech
On the other hand, because blockchain protects us so well, it also protects all the bad people that want transaction privacy as well (e.g. mafia, drug money, etc…), which is why government is often trying to shut it down.
The blockchain will provide three things necessary to create global, free speech.
- Disintermediation
- Anonymity (privacy)
- Accelerated communication
- Global scale
The first two are necessary components of free speech online. The latter two are simply catalysts, or accelerators, for ideas which in turn, can drive human behavior in any direction.
Dis-intermediating of Business & Govt is Already Happening
Disintermediation, or cutting out the middle man, is a main attraction of Blockchain. The people and organizations that add unnecessary friction to our lives. Talking to whom we want, when we want, without anyone to interfere or say “no.”
In recent years, more and more political suppression has been going on by major platforms such as Facebook (countless cases), Youtube/Apple Itunes (e.g. shut down one of the largest channels Infowars), Twitter (several cases), Google (now algorithmically suppressing all alternative/conspiracy websites), and others, often due to media outrage. I admit, a lot of them have false and even dangerous ideas, but the devil is in the details.
This is interesting considering Google’s own mission statement which focuses mainly on freedom “We believe that everyone should have a chance to be discovered, build a business and succeed on their own terms, and that people – not gatekeepers – decide what’s popular.” and “We believe that people should be able to speak freely, share opinions, foster open dialogue, and that creative freedom leads to new voices, formats and possibilities.”
Freedom of speech, and freedom in general always sounds like a great idea in theory, until either people disagree with your ideas, or bad and dangerous ideas grow in popularity. John Stuart Mills was the father of the modern free speech ideas we have today, largely based on the assumption that all speech should be free unless it harms someone.
Section 230 is a hot topic on this front, because as that article points out, once you start censoring any “hate speech” the definition of hate speech is always going to change over time, a slippery slope of increasingly claimed to be “hate speech” even if its just discussing political ideas of the day.
True, there are probably some risky, malevolent groups out there promoting bad and half-truths, but there are also likely other groups looking to stand for pro-citizen, anti-tyrannical, anti-terrorist, healthy views, but only the bad guys, like school shooters, seem to get much attention, which unfortunately just helps them reach their goals, because “any PR is good PR”. But does this mean we start censoring?
The good guys are worth discussing too here. Anti-tyrrany is as popular today, and perhaps reaching a new peak, but since it’s more agreeable to talk about foreign anti-tyranny instead of our own (just like how we can talk bad about China’s currency manipulation, but not our own trillion dollar QE printing presses).
In Hong Kong, disintermediation of communication platforms like Firechat and now Bridgefy (1, 2) is growing faster each year, and we can see the growth of populations being influenced on an increasingly larger scale like never before, and a faster, or more efficient rate. True, social media has always done this, but with peer-to-peer + blockchain, the ability for government, companies and ISP’s to try to regulate. The only option may be to try to shut down the software companies themselves, which may be difficult to do if the software is also distributed the same way.
Which Platforms are Out There For P2P Blockchain?
Phone apps are not the only option here:
Blockchain chat, or crypto messengers, are increasingly common.
Peer-to-peer+Blockchain Twitter/Social Network (micro-blogging) Platforms
Twitter: Twister, which I found interesting to use, but still very small adoption rate.
Facebook / social media: I have not found a running peer-to-peer platform for desktop but Voice.com, which has not launched yet, claims to give users more control back, although I asked the company about censoring and have not heard back yet. They seem to want to focus on popularity–again, great until bad ideas get popular.
Peer-to-peer+Blockchain Websites/Internet
You can find a summary of each here but they all have a small user based as well:
- IPFS, https://ipfs.io
- Beaker, https://beakerbrowser.com
- Freenet, https://freenetproject.org
- ZeroNet, https://zeronet.io
Why Peer-to-Peer Will Grow
Is there anyone that does not want less control, privacy invasion by government and businesses alike? Of course not. This will free good people and it will free bad people.
The Risks
Some worry about a future world, like in Orsen Wells “1984,” where govt will take complete control of surveillance on its citizens, and that is a real risk, but currently blockchain threatens that undermine that idea (unless the NSA cracks it). Im sure as citizens increase in freedom, govt will continue to put pressure to infiltrate, because you know, risk of a few bad apples.
So assuming it’s bullet proof, what risks exist of expanding, unfiltered, ideas? On one hand, you would expect society to use these ideas like Mills said, to use collective wisdom to dismantle bad ideas, and promote the good ones, but that works when societies, and its various political/economic systems are healthy.
Speed
It is true that free speech has always existed at the local level, but what makes the transferring of an idea so bad when it can spread to millions of people within seconds?
Overall, increased speed is risky, but driving a car at 200 miles per hour carries far more risk when something does go wrong.
Less Need to Investigate & Contemplate Ideas
Never before, with a “thumbs up” has it been so easy to spread ideas without much thinking at all. I’m sure this trend has probably been underway slowly for 100’s of years, but not it’s probably accelerating somewhere, perhaps near the speed of Moore’s Law.
Why? Never has life been so easy as it is today, therefore carefulness must decay overall in response. Critical thinking is more optional than ever because the real demand for it is decreasing.
Increasing Noise & Competition for Our Attention
Strangely, people may read more than ever but its more shallow than ever as more and more news, notices, alerts, and distractions consume us. As a result of a longer and faster feed, it is getting more difficult to make deep, meaningful though and attention to any single idea, movement, or action plan.
Size
Size is the twin of Speed. Because the internet/networking is increasingly global, with more people and more time spent per person on it, the ability to have an idea influence a large population is increasing faster than ever.
Large populations are acting as a result of internet usage. Even smaller cases like the revolts in Egypt show how a large number of people can quickly get involved in any sort of event such as pro-democratic, pro-riot, or pro-anything else.
When networking and language (via real time translation) becomes universal around the world, we would naturally expect to see larger events result when they do happen.
Technology is changing people’s behaviors, ability to think, and so much more, whether we know it or not.
Unpredictability
In another article, I write specifically about technology’s increasing unpredictability in its real world outcomes. Order and reason are not always the norm, and may even be decreasing overall.
Whispers and whims can often lead to global phenomenon overnight. In other words, it’s not just good ideas that funnel up from global networking, but it is any idea, no matter how insignificant or random it seems, that can surprisingly float up to the top. For example, when the most popular singer in the world is the result of her accidentally sending an audio track to her producer, then we ask, is this due to reason, effort, and logical progress, or, is it completely random?
P2P and Mob Rule
Earlier, I pointed out the parallel between blockchain and democracies in that the collective is in some ways more trustworthy than giving power and control to a few. So how can democracies or free societies eventually fail?
Because If anything, blockchain will finally free citizens to communicate with each other with absolute freedom, and yet this may become a tipping point that old philosophers predicted to be the outcome of dying democracies.
What would prevent an insignificant, yet potentially “disruptive” (oh and I love to use that word to describe “disruptive tech’s” effect on society) idea from going viral, and entire populations creating large-scale havoc? Nothing, and the best term to describe this is probably “mob rule” or mobocracy.
Mobocracy, or “ochlocracy” as Polybius said was the final end game of all democracies, when the voice of the people completely overran the political system.
Essentially, when citizens gain ultimate control over a political system, leading to unrulable citizens who have no respect for government, law, courts, authority, etc.. as they make all the decisions without order. History has a few examples of such. Have we ever lived in a time when anyone from anywhere could be seen and heard at a global level (blogs, blog comments, video sharing, social media, etc…). In case you missed it, ordinary people are clearly growing in power like never before. Freedom of the press is increasingly meaningless because increasingly anyone can publish.
Perhaps the recent joke that went viral in which 2 million people agreed to raid Area 51 (a government compound suspected of harboring aliens/ufos) is indicative of the collective, unpredictable power occurring already (although 3000 showed up and no one raided), it does make you wonder about the ability for citizens overthrow at some point, esp. if the global banking and the economic system fails, which by the way is increasingly likely ever year with negative interest rates, high debt, and other historically unprecedented bubbles, on a global level, which I wrote about on my economics website.
At a high level, I see governments pushing to increase their scope and control in a rapidly globalizing world (e.g. a dystopian global govt.), but in the end, or simultaneously, I think collective citizen power will attempt to balance. Eventually, the building will come crashing down either way.
HumanIT 