DIGIFIZZY de Emma-Jane MacKinnon-Lee

Self Sovereignty

Freeing Capacity.

Raised in a technological era, ranging back much earlier than most of us realise, it has become an almost expected bit of social conditioning to think of every major advance as being simplistically good for expanding personal freedoms.

But, a closer look shows that there is more to the story.

The more interesting question is what do major technological leaps actually do to either liberate us from previously severe impositions or constrain us in new and profound ways?

Let’s jump loosely along a look back through some of the most impactful moments in technological history to get some sense of where this thread leads.

From the loom to the lock and key, from writing to cryptography, from the telegraph, telephone, radio and television to the airplane and motorized vehicles of all kinds.

The ones whose impact we often overlook, like the washing machine and refrigerations, and the ones we know all too clearly today we can’t imagine living without, like the personal computer, the internet, mobile phones, and most recently, blockchain.

The last of these fits quite clearly in the tense boundaries between technologies enhancing or limiting our capacity for freedom in our lives.

One of the biggest questions asked by anyone that is yet to be convinced on just how transformative the technology is, can be;“Why blockchain?” “Why blockchain when it is inefficent, might cost more money and the legacy system running now works just fine?”

What they don’t see are all of the hidden costs, externalities and trade offs with all of the technologies that we have already integrated deeply into our societal understandings.

While computers, telephones, television, radio and similar information technologies have done wonders for the spread of open knowledge throughout the far reaches of the world, in ways previously unimaginable, they have also been used to reinforce and embolden regimes of brutal centralisation and repression.

When any single or small group of powers is able to gain control of who has access to a powerful technology and how it can be used, the radical increases in capacity offered by these advances can become instead vast repositories of information secretly collected and stored in order to keep a populous in check or means of mass distribution for disinformation and propaganda.

The natural counter to this is the wide spread distribution and decentralisation in not just know-how in using these technologies but the creative ingenuity required to break them down and build them up from scratch.

Knowing how these systems tick and how to maintain, tinker with, deconstruct and advance them ourselves is the most critical aspect of what determines whether a particular technology advance has a broadly positive or negative impact on humanity.

So, how does blockchain fit into this and what does it really do for us?

Quite simply, it is the most direct technology advancing our precise ability to coordinate socially and yet fully voluntarily and independently.

Because of the sequential nature of consensus validated time stamps, the number of previous nearly impossible to account for question marks and expenses that have become now simple to resolve (through layer 2s, ZKs and all of the rest), the fluidity of navigating points of social conflict and opportunity becomes the most important aspect of the game itself.

Congratulations on one year of DIGIFIZZY! Many more to come!