mspohr shares an excerpt from an article written by Cory Doctorow via The Guardian: The inequality of badly-run or corrupt states is boosted by the power of technology — but it’s also easier than ever to destabilize these states, thanks to technology. The question is: which future will prevail?” [The article discusses two sides to the issue:] Here’s the bad news: technology — specifically, surveillance technology — makes it easier to police disaffected populations, and that gives badly run, corrupt states enough stability to get themselves into real trouble. Here’s the good news: technology — specifically, networked technology — makes it easier for opposition movements to form and mobilize, even under conditions of surveillance, and to topple badly run, corrupt states. Long before the internet radically transformed the way we organize ourselves, theorists were predicting we’d use computers to achieve ambitious goals without traditional hierarchies — but it was a rare pundit who predicted that the first really successful example of this would be an operating system (GNU/Linux), and then an encyclopedia (Wikipedia). [Cory also has a new novel, Walkaway , which explores these ideas further.] The future will see a monotonic increase in the ambitions that loose-knit groups can achieve. My new novel, Walkaway, tries to signpost a territory in our future in which the catastrophes of the super-rich are transformed into something like triumphs by bohemian, anti-authoritarian “walkaways” who build housing and space programs the way we make encyclopedias today: substituting (sometimes acrimonious) discussion and (sometimes vulnerable) networks for submission to the authority of the ruling elites.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
https://slashdot.org/slashdot-it.pl?op=discuss&id=10684111&smallembed=1