Excellent piece! I've been thinking about this a lot.
My sense of direction has tanked since I started using WAZE, and I don't even believe it helps me avoid traffic anymore. Instead, I think it's controlling the flow of traffic while it keeps tabs on all of us.
Life on auto-pilot is void of meaningful effort and it shows. There's a sense of adventure and accomplishment that comes with figuring things out and many of us have lost touch with that part of ourselves. Convenience makes us think of effort as burden. The path of least resistance is designed by globalist technocrats, will be paved with graphene and leads to digital slavery.
Josh, Your best piece yet. The core idea here that needs some specifics (you have started) is how one draws the line between using technology (which almost all of us do extensively) and being captive to it.
The other underlying observation that could stand development is "who is helping you". I was a loud supporter of early Internet-based support for painfully repetitive/inconvenient life processes. People would say "But then Google will know all about you!". I noted that my local shopkeeper knew all about me (vis-a-vis whatever wares they carried) and the more they knew, the better job they could do to help me out. The same applied to Amazon/Google/etc. very early on. As long as their motivations were to find me things I was more likely to like/appreciate/buy we were basically aligned.
The problem completely changes when the government decides that it wants to use this stuff NOT to provide you what you want but to control you. That completely changes the equation in a radical way. If we could assuredly keep the government out and reset the incentives I would modify my views from where they have eventuated.. The power of any of these tools to be appropriately responsive is not only deprecated but actually turned against one when the government gets involved in any way. The government is NEVER your friend. So we lose much of the capability we should have.
Perhaps impossible to pull off, but the ability to block the government from things we do (and perhaps this is the one time in my life where the will might be there) will determine the trajectory of many of these elements as people wake up and understand what is at stake.
Why are you being so nice to me? It makes me uncomfortable! 😉
But seriously - your observation about the distinction between beneficial tech convenience and government control is crucial. Like you, I once optimistically believed tech could democratize access and improve our lives - I spent decades building that future. The local shopkeeper analogy is apt; there was an implied social contract of mutual benefit.
But as I explored in a piece on the Tech-Industrial Complex - written for Brownstone a few months ago - that social contract may have been illusory from the start (https://brownstone.org/articles/anatomy-of-the-tech-industrial-complex/). These platforms weren't just co-opted by government control - many may have been seeded by intelligence agencies from their inception. This forces us to grapple with whether we were all useful idealists in someone else's long game.
The question now isn't just how to keep the government out of tech (though that's vital), but how to rebuild systems that truly serve human flourishing rather than control. I'm wrestling with my own role in helping build what I now see as a digital panopticon. Hope lies in people like you who understood the risks early and can help chart a better course. My belief is that if we have any chance, the future will be decentralized.
"We must actively cultivate independence alongside innovation...True freedom isn't found in having everything at our fingertips—it's in maintaining the capability to live without those conveniences when necessary."
Lots of great lines in this piece, Josh! You are insightful. I've been saying that I wish we could have the convenience of our technologies without the menace of those who want to use them to control us.
Incidentally, my first piece published at Brownstone was "Convenience Is An Opiate."
Lori! I had no idea you were reading but thanks for the kind words.
Yes - the challenge is finding that sweet spot between technological convenience and maintaining our independence. Looking forward to reading 'Convenience Is An Opiate' - sounds like we're thinking along similar lines. I'd love to discuss in greater detail sometime.
Excellent piece! I've been thinking about this a lot.
My sense of direction has tanked since I started using WAZE, and I don't even believe it helps me avoid traffic anymore. Instead, I think it's controlling the flow of traffic while it keeps tabs on all of us.
Life on auto-pilot is void of meaningful effort and it shows. There's a sense of adventure and accomplishment that comes with figuring things out and many of us have lost touch with that part of ourselves. Convenience makes us think of effort as burden. The path of least resistance is designed by globalist technocrats, will be paved with graphene and leads to digital slavery.
Josh, Your best piece yet. The core idea here that needs some specifics (you have started) is how one draws the line between using technology (which almost all of us do extensively) and being captive to it.
The other underlying observation that could stand development is "who is helping you". I was a loud supporter of early Internet-based support for painfully repetitive/inconvenient life processes. People would say "But then Google will know all about you!". I noted that my local shopkeeper knew all about me (vis-a-vis whatever wares they carried) and the more they knew, the better job they could do to help me out. The same applied to Amazon/Google/etc. very early on. As long as their motivations were to find me things I was more likely to like/appreciate/buy we were basically aligned.
The problem completely changes when the government decides that it wants to use this stuff NOT to provide you what you want but to control you. That completely changes the equation in a radical way. If we could assuredly keep the government out and reset the incentives I would modify my views from where they have eventuated.. The power of any of these tools to be appropriately responsive is not only deprecated but actually turned against one when the government gets involved in any way. The government is NEVER your friend. So we lose much of the capability we should have.
Perhaps impossible to pull off, but the ability to block the government from things we do (and perhaps this is the one time in my life where the will might be there) will determine the trajectory of many of these elements as people wake up and understand what is at stake.
Why are you being so nice to me? It makes me uncomfortable! 😉
But seriously - your observation about the distinction between beneficial tech convenience and government control is crucial. Like you, I once optimistically believed tech could democratize access and improve our lives - I spent decades building that future. The local shopkeeper analogy is apt; there was an implied social contract of mutual benefit.
But as I explored in a piece on the Tech-Industrial Complex - written for Brownstone a few months ago - that social contract may have been illusory from the start (https://brownstone.org/articles/anatomy-of-the-tech-industrial-complex/). These platforms weren't just co-opted by government control - many may have been seeded by intelligence agencies from their inception. This forces us to grapple with whether we were all useful idealists in someone else's long game.
The question now isn't just how to keep the government out of tech (though that's vital), but how to rebuild systems that truly serve human flourishing rather than control. I'm wrestling with my own role in helping build what I now see as a digital panopticon. Hope lies in people like you who understood the risks early and can help chart a better course. My belief is that if we have any chance, the future will be decentralized.
"We must actively cultivate independence alongside innovation...True freedom isn't found in having everything at our fingertips—it's in maintaining the capability to live without those conveniences when necessary."
Lots of great lines in this piece, Josh! You are insightful. I've been saying that I wish we could have the convenience of our technologies without the menace of those who want to use them to control us.
Incidentally, my first piece published at Brownstone was "Convenience Is An Opiate."
https://brownstone.org/articles/convenience-is-an-opiate/
Lori! I had no idea you were reading but thanks for the kind words.
Yes - the challenge is finding that sweet spot between technological convenience and maintaining our independence. Looking forward to reading 'Convenience Is An Opiate' - sounds like we're thinking along similar lines. I'd love to discuss in greater detail sometime.
I'd like that!