The Philosophy of Freedom Tech
- The Layered Nature of Reality
- Strong Emergence and Human Uniqueness
- Top-Down vs Bottom-Up Organization
- Corruption and System Resilience
- Freedom Tech: A New Paradigm
- Core Principles of Freedom Tech
This is a very rough collection of ideas that came to my mind and I felt like writing them down. If you are going to read this, remember that these things may not make a lot of sense the way they are written.
The Layered Nature of Reality
The world works in layers. At the very bottom seems to be pure mathematical constructs of the quantum world. Above that is classical physics. Then chemistry and biology. Once we reach intelligence, we get emergence like ant colonies, and human societies. Above the Dunbar number (~150 people), simple tribes no longer work. We need to construct countries, judiciary, police forces, education systems etc. It’s because above the Dunbar number, we start dealing with strangers, and we need to be able to trust and judge them fairly.
For most of history, we weren’t very connected to each other, but since the Internet, we have become hyper-connected, so it’s time to rethink the social institutions again.
Strong Emergence and Human Uniqueness
In strong emergence, the sum of the parts tends to be greater than its components. You can’t study chemistry by looking at the building blocks of particle physics. That is why at an individual level, I believe humans and other apes aren’t very different. A lone chimpanzee, bonobo, or gorilla is not very different intelligence-wise compared to a human. It’s the emergent structures of language, rituals, shared beliefs and institutions etc. that makes us unique. We are just a slight bit smarter than the other apes so that our collective actions are able to give rise to all the very complex social structures and institutions. Alone, we are nothing. This is why it’s very important that we are mindful of what kind of emergent structures we are creating. Ideas like wokism, and communism can become destructive forces that bring down civilizations. Civilization being the collection of all the emergent structures created by a collection of humans.
Top-Down vs Bottom-Up Organization
We have two ways of organizing ourselves: top-down and bottom-up
- TCP/IP vs Reticulum
- Central banks and fiat currency vs Bitcoin
- Communism, authoritarianism, statism etc. vs anarchy, libertarianism etc.
- Traditional social media (X, Insta, Reddit etc.) vs nostr
- Big tech (think Windows by Microsoft) vs FOSS
This pattern is seen everywhere.
The top-down approach is: easier to understand, probably more efficient than the bottom-up approach, puts some humans above others in a power hierarchy, always eventually gets corrupted due to human nature, and then collapses.
The trust, justice, or coordination etc. is provided with a central group with global view in the top-down approach, and via web of trust, word of mouth etc. in the bottom-up approach.
Corruption and System Resilience
Corruption is a term that we use when a top-down system behaves in a way that it’s not supposed to. It’s when humans at a higher position start doing things that exploit others at a lower position for their own gains. We always have cancerous individuals and groups of individuals which prioritize their own benefits at the cost of the system, but in a bottom-up system it’s not that catastrophic.
When the top-down structures inevitably collapse, it’s the bottom-up structures that survive and help us rebuild civilization.
Freedom Tech: A New Paradigm
Freedom tech is a relatively new concept. I am not sure when it was coined, but it is a term that became popular once people needed to group Bitcoin and nostr together. We had terms like Web3, and decentralized tech, but we didn’t want to use those because they defined things in a less meaningful way. Freedom tech makes it clear that it’s a group of tools that help create these social structures in the age of the Internet where individual freedom is preserved. The Internet in this context refers to the interconnectedness of computers, and not just TCP/IP etc.
Computing devices like laptops and smartphones work as extensions of the individual. They help extend our memory (via file storage, note taking etc.), our senses (via cameras and microphones), our identity (via social media accounts, and other online presence), our thoughts, ideas and beliefs (via online discourse), and more recently our cognitive/thinking abilities via generative AI.
Freedom tech is all about building these hardware and software devices, and the way they interconnect in a way that preserves individual liberty. Because the Internet has increased interconnectedness by many magnitudes, the effect of the top-down and bottom-up structures have also increased drastically. Someone once said, the IQ needed to destroy the world keeps dropping, but it’s also true that the ability of us individuals to make the world a better place has also increased in a similar manner. With Bitcoin, nostr, reticulum and whatnot, we can build social structures that are extremely antifragile, and resistant to corruption.
Core Principles of Freedom Tech
To build freedom tech, we look at the following points:
Open Interoperability
Can a piece of software interoperate with other software using open protocols? Good examples are nostr clients using the nostr protocol, web browsers using the web, etc.
Self-Sovereign Identity
The identifier associated with the user should be generated by the user themselves. Think npubs, bitcoin addresses, reticulum addresses, as opposed to phone numbers, usernames, domain names, IP addresses.
Privacy by Design
Does the software utilize encryption to preserve privacy? Privacy is the ability to selectively reveal information about oneself to the world. No one should have access to any data that they don’t need. No one should have any means to break privacy in a system for any exceptions either.
These three are the very core of freedom tech. There are more principles as well. Things like:
Data Sovereignty
Can the user decide where their data lives? The option to choose which servers (even if their data is encrypted) or service provider they use while using a system is important.
Cryptographic Authenticity
Data that’s meant to be public should be digitally signed by keys the user controls to avoid reliance on third parties.
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