I was recently asked as part of an application to take part in a technical program (related to the building of digital IDs using blockchain technology), what my superpower was and what I would use it for and how villains would try to misuse it (or something like that). I assumed it was meant to be humorous, but this was my reply.
My superpower is appearing supremely dull and uninteresting while possessing piercing insight and analytical powers. I would like to empower individuals, aka humanity, via technology. Villains, i.e. governments and other mafias, are increasingly seeking to use technology to control individuals.
We are truly at an inflection point in human development. Software is taking over the world. This technological advance has produced the capability to communicate and work with fellow humans from across the entire globe. Advances such as this have also occurred across a whole range of disciplines and spheres. This new technological interconnectedness creates huge new opportunities from the benefits of cooperation, but also produces great non-linearity which makes the future more unpredictable. Unpredictability represents unforeseeable threats.
Governments have a primary agenda, which is continuation of government, whereas humanity has (or should have) a primary agenda which is continuation of the existence of humanity. Governments view technological empowerment of the individual as a fundamental threat, since the cooperation it permits disproves the requirement for centralised control and exposes the failures of centralised control. Governments are therefore seeking to use technology as the means of maintaining supremacy.
We are already seeing this with “vaccine” passports etc., which are actually nothing more than movement licences. Coming soon : social credit score, online centralised government databases, online centralised non government databases which can be coerced by government agencies under threat of legal sanction, video surveillance using facial recognition, monitoring of all online activity, censoring of online comment not in keeping with the official (usually untrue) narrative, CBDCs with in built programmability to limit the freedom to spend. This pathological behaviour is now normal from those who secure public office across the entire planet. Their intentions have been made clear.
We cannot stop this technological advance but we can provide a cooperative and anti-authoritarian alternative to centralised government controlled systems.
Cooperation takes different forms, but all require trust. Commercial cooperation is founded on contract; the ‘actionability’ of contracts enables the parties to trust each other. Other forms of cooperation, such as voluntaryism, are founded on free will and mutual understanding which leads to trust and this enables the choice of doing something because it is good or right, rather than required by threat of sanction.
Trust is absolutely the key component of cooperation. In the digital world, identity is absolutely the key component of trust.
The challenge we face is to create the means of allowing individuals to possess their own digital identity without allowing that identity (and all its associated data) to become the property of the state.
By providing for a privately controlled digital identity, we maintain the ability for the individual to maintain their autonomy. Autonomy is the essential component of integrity. Integrity is the essential component of good judgement. And good judgement (like not trying to genetically engineer viruses in labs to be more harmful to humans) is what is needed to avoid falling prey to unforeseen non linear threats.