#title Technology is the Antithesis of freedom #author Potash #date 2025 #source #lang en #pubdate 2025-04-02T19:14:08.509Z #authors Mbe, Potash #topics anti-tech, ideology, philosophy, technology Every step forwards for technology is a step backwards for freedom, look throughout any stage of the progression of technology and you will find regression of freedom. What created the state? Technology Agriculture allowed society to become more complex, and therefore it required greater organization. The natural, and universal result of this greater organization was the creation of the state. The state only came into existence after the creation of agriculture, and the existence of agriculture lead to the creation of states all across the world. It is abundantly clear that the creation of the state was an inevitable result of Agriculture. What gives the state the power to enforce it’s rule? Technology The state has been around for a long time, but not all states are created equal. Many ancaps and libertarians have pointed out that people had far more freedom under Feudal Monarchies then we do now. This is true, but it isn’t because Monarchs all happened to be benevolent freedom loving hippies, no the state has always had the same incentivization to expand it’s power at the expense of human freedom it has now. The reason feudal states were more free then modern states is because they lacked efficient mechanisms for enforcement of the law. Enforcing rules is much much harder without an advanced communication, surveillance, or weapons system. Technology gave the state all the tools it needed to enforce it’s rule. This is also much of the reason why punishments for crimes were so much more serious back then, the state lacked efficient enforcement mechanisms, so it had to rely on fear to enforce it’s rule. As an individual, if things got really bad you could at least run away and know that you would be free then. Now? There is nowhere left to run. Wanna live on a national park or Government land? Sorry, the feds will hunt you down and make you pay your taxes + imprison you for breaking retarded regulations. What created, and gave infinite power to the Bureaucracy? Technology Technological Advancements inevitably make society more complex. More complex societies require greater organization, greater management, and greater regulation. The inevitable result of this, is Bureaucracy. We now live in a world dominated by Bureaucracy. We are no longer dependent on ourselves, and to a certain extent our tribe for our basic necessities of life, but instead upon a handful of ultra-powerful bureaucracies. The Bureaucrats aren’t you, or me, and they definitely don’t have the interests of freedom in mind. They are concerned only with their own interests, and regularly chose to restrict freedom if it is in their own interests. You and I have essentially no influence over the decisions that they make. We can cope about it and pretend we do by voting, or boycotting, but the reality of the matter is that no action we can personally take will have any significant impact over the decisions of these bureaucracies and will will inevitably be subject to them regardless of what we have to say about it. Technological Society has to crush the individual, and force him to live under the boot of the Bureaucracy in order to function efficiently. What gave governments and corporations access to all of our private information? Technology More recent Technological Advancements have been used to restrict freedom in numerous ways, and if I wanted I could go on and on and on listing all of them. But this post will already be long enough, so instead I think I’ll focus on the most egregious of these, which I find to be the fact that the US government has access to all of our private information. They have access to our location, any conversations or messages we may have with anyone else, anything we’ve ever searched for or looked at, basically our entire life. This is the cherry on the top of this shit-sunday. All of the stuff I’ve mentioned before is bad enough, and it’s already basically gotten rid of real freedom we may have. But apparently that wasn’t far enough, we had to eliminate the concept of privacy. If your a pro-tech anarchist whose managed to get this far into this wall of text, then I’m assuming your thoughts on it are probably something like this: “Sure, technology can be used to restrict freedom if it’s used by the wrong people. But that doesn’t make it inherently bad. Just as much as the wrong people can use technology for bad, the right people can use it for good. Technology isn’t the reason the state has power, the reason the state has power is because most people support the idea of the state and are complicit in it’s rule.” This sounds pretty reasonable on it’s face, but when you think about it a little it falls apart. The average person doesn’t pay their taxes and obey laws because they love the government, and want it to have more power over them. Nobody wants to pay taxes, or go through Security at the airport. They do it because they have to. Chances are, your the same way. You don’t want to obey stupid laws, or give money to the government that’s bombing innocents or imprisoning people for smoking weed. But you don’t really have any choice in the matter, if you don’t do these things and you get caught the consequences will be greater then if you do them, so you are essentially forced into doing them. So no, the mindset of the average person is not the reason why the state exists. The reason the state exists is because technology has created an environment where it is inevitable, and has given it efficient mechanisms for enforcement. If you have any doubts left, look towards the attempts that have been made to eliminate the state within technological society (Revolutionary Catalonia, the “free” territory of Ukraine, etc), they managed to both completely fail to eliminate the state, and collapse entirely within a few years. It’s time to stop shoving our heads in the sand, and acting like technology is not the enemy of freedom. Enough delusion, Enough cope, Enough sugar-coded lies about how it’s not really technology’s fault that it caused all of the major setbacks for freedom throughout history. No more It’s time to embrace the truth, no matter how much you hate it. Technology has been the antithesis of freedom throughout all of history, and it always will be. So it’s time to make a choice: Technology or Freedom Which will it be?
** Appendix: A Response by Mbe
As far as I understand your argument, you posit the following doctrines: - A wrongful understanding of what technology really is. - A wrongful dichotomy between technology and freedom. - this leads to a rejection of historical implecations. - it asumes a linear power dynamic - you assume technology leads to a centralization state. Before I delve into this argument, I think it’s important to clarify what technology is, since you fail to do so. I do not claim to define concrete technology per se; rather, by viewing technology as a concept, we can better understand a set of phenomena that often remain invisible, even where technologies are perceptibly manifest. While this conceptual framework may be indispensable for comprehension, technology itself is neither clear nor simple in definition. Nor does this view necessarily imply the existence of a unified "technological system"—though, as we shall see, such a systemic understanding may be crucial. Historically, techniques have been studied to uncover the reasoning behind technology—or, in this case, the very means to achieve an end. However, I will employ the term *"technique/method"* in this argument for two key reasons: - It allows us to perceive these phenomena as an ensemble (a cohesive set of interrelated elements). - It enables us to distinguish between invisible processes and tangible outcomes—thereby avoiding the assumption that technology is reducible to machines (i.e., the ends). By doing so, we reject older assumptions—namely, that technology is synonymous with machines or mere tools. Consider a hammer: If there is no rational instrument of reasoning, then that end becomes useless. The development of the hammer and its use follows the rational development of the means, which in turn makes a hammer a hammer. In this case, machines or technology are, in a sense, natural. What matters is what defines its purpose because, without it, a hammer is just a stick glued to a stone and serves no use. This demonstrates that human beings have always been technical beings. Modern hunter-gatherers—particularly the Hadza—exemplify this, structuring their gathering and hunting into a rationalized process. But this rationality is not confined to subsistence; it extends everywhere possible. Human resources, after all, is called so for a reason. Yet this perspective alone is insufficient. If we stop at the individual technique—the hammer, the algorithm, the assembly line—we miss the larger reality: technology operates as a system. A system is not merely an aggregation of tools but an interdependent network where changes in one element propagate through the whole. Technology, in its modern form, is precisely such a system—self-reinforcing, driven by internal progression rather than external forces, and reshaping society not through isolated innovations but through structural integration. This systemic nature explains why technology cannot be reduced to its visible components. The hammer exists not as an isolated object but within a framework of metallurgy, labor organization, and economic exchange—each itself a subsystem of the larger technological order. To study technology as a concept is to recognize both its tangible manifestations and the imperceptible logic that binds them into a coherent, dynamic whole. Thus, while we begin with technique as the very means, we must ultimately confront the technological system—an environment that does not merely contain tools but redefines the very conditions of their use. Only then can we grasp why technology is neither neutral nor passive, but an active, structuring force in modernity. - Consider the city as a example: it is the purest expression of technique as a milieu—a closed system where natural reality is excluded and replaced by technical imperatives. Outside the city, only two options remain: the urbanization of rural areas (submitting them to technical logic) or their desertification (where “nature” is reduced to a resource for exploitation). In both cases, the means reshape results, reorganizing human behavior and physiology to serve the system’s demands. Thus, the modern means—in this case—are the totalizing problem because they subordinate humanity to questions of yield and production value. As a result, non-technical values like justice and autonomy become obsolete. because technique reshapes the milieu, it means that the debate consitiutes of axiomatically order, (where 4 > 3 remains an irrefutable truth regardless of context), its implementation becomes compulsory. Philosophical considerations hold minimal relevance in this equation. Furthermore we can breakdown this ensemble into 3 key notions using Bertalanffy System theory: - Each element has a meaning or significance only within the ensemble. - Any modification of an element has repercussions on the ensemble and modifies it. Any modification of the ensemble likewise modifies the elements of their relationships. - Privileged, almost exclusive relationships exist among the elements of the system, regardless of what is situated outside the system. Some of the best sociologists have noted how social ensembles must subordinate their elements to technical necessity - a process that fundamentally modifies these very elements. As R.P. Lynton observes: "The industrialization of a community in Europe or America, on the one hand, or of Siam, Nigeria, Turkey, or Uruguay, on the other, poses the same problems." The outcomes in Siam, Nigeria, Turkey, and Uruguay ultimately proved remarkably similar to Algeria's industrialization, which demonstrates this universal dynamic. In each case, the imposition of economic techniques necessitated the dissolution of traditional family structures, driving urbanization to sustain industrial growth. However, this transformation crucially modified the very relations that the social ensemble had previously maintained, revealing technology's power to reshape social structures even as it pursues economic objectives. thus ethical problem, that is human behavior, can only be considered in relation to this system, not in relation to some particular technical object or other. Learning how to use “rightly” or “do good” with such and such a technique does not much matter, since each technique can only be interpreted within the ensemble. *** Should we then blame technique as a result of this? Not quite, because technique is, at its core, fundamentally oriental in origin. Historically, technique was very rarely based on scientific foundations, nor was it systematically applied to all domains of life. For example, the Greeks approached knowledge with a purer form of contemplation—such as geometry as earth measurement rather than as an axiomatic science dealing with abstractions (like Euclid's geometry, which concerns idealized forms that do not exist as material objects). Even in the case of Archimedes, his machines were destroyed after they demonstrated the precision of numerical reasoning. In a more pragmatically driven society, such inventions might have been embraced. Yet they were not, because these were matters of hermeneutical (interpretive) understanding—subjects that did not align with their intellectual priorities. From the 14th to the 18th century, techniques began to accumulate and expand into epistemological domains—philosophy, science, psychoanalysis, and sociology. As a result, technique evolved into an autonomous force, necessitating its application in all spheres of life. The bourgeoisie recognized this shift and systematically integrated technique into production. This led to: Economic techniques → Organizational centralization → Rationalized institutions (police, military, bureaucracy). What occurred was a process in which techniques generated new challenges. For example, after an increase in production, the masses had to be persuaded to buy these products, prompting the development of economic techniques. This, in turn, created a need for organized transportation, leading to advancements in transportation techniques. It was soon realized that cities had to adapt to support such growth, resulting in upgrades like roads and traffic controls. Ultimately, the state had to become rationalized and all-knowing to function more efficiently. This led to organizational centralization, because centralization perfected rationalization, which then gave the rise to rationalized institutions such as bureaucracies, militaries, police forces, and propaganda techniques. This ultimately leads to a contradiction in your claim that technological advancements necessarily result in this outcome. Finally, quoting Potash: The reason the state exists is because technology has created an environment where it is inevitable. What we observe is not a situation where technology created an environment, but rather one where technique enabled systems to be deployed in ways that necessitated an omniscient state. While you're right to call this an inevitable outcome of certain forces, we must recognize these as more than just material conditions—as established previously. What becomes evident is that the crucial factor is this co-dependent process - one that must ultimately be grounded in the technical milieu itself, for technique constitutes the fundamental ensemble; external factors remain secondary. *** What is the conclusion of all this? The state, bureaucracy did not emerge through some Darwinian social evolution, nor was it the inevitable product of technology alone. Rather, it arose from a technical necessity—a co-dependent process where advancing techniques (administrative, military, economic) and institutional structures mutually reinforced one another. This symbiosis created conditions where centralized authority became the optimal solution to problems generated by technical expansion: standardization of laws for commerce, coordination of infrastructure, and management of increasingly complex social systems. So no, technology has not been the antithesis of freedom throughout all of history. In fact, it has helped humanity reach new heights and perfect human abilities. What tragedies have occurred were just that—tragedies, not the inevitable outcome of some predetermined process.