Technology

Technology articles feature analysis about censorship, ethics, entertainment, psychology, and philosophy.

All technology related articles at Brownstone Institute are translated automatically into multiple languages.

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Digital ID in Canada. Is the US Next?

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With Canadian authorities creating the infrastructure required to implement a digital identification network, some are concerned that a social credit system similar to the one in China is just around the corner. Their concerns are warranted. Digital IDs lay the path for social credit systems. Without them, a credit system would be impossible.

Digital ID in Canada. Is the US Next? Read Journal Article

Data Theft and Government Power

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In the United States, according to Bennett Cyphers, a technologist who focuses on consumer privacy and state legislation, data brokers have formed an unholy alliance with the country’s military, intelligence communities, and law enforcement agencies. This immense, highly secretive partnership was established for one reason and one reason only—to surveil the actions and activities of U.S. citizens.

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The Triumph and Glory of Air Conditioning

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The story about the mass production of air conditioners is that what were once status symbols are now common. Crucial here is that people got very rich making air conditioners common. It’s how the world works. Or at least how to grow rich in the world. The best way to become very well-to-do very quickly is to produce in abundance, and at low prices, what used to be scarce and nosebleed expensive.

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Elon Musk

The Long Knives Are Out for Elon 

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The hounds have been released on Elon and that they won’t be called back because overt rebellion must be seen to be punished, lest he try again or others are encouraged by his example. But Elon has successfully powered through a lot of threats already, and seems to have locked in many new political alliances that can help tide him over during threats like those he presently faces. If he now lays low enough, he will eventually be forgiven.

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What Happened to Don’t Be Evil?

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Big Tech platforms openly collude with governments to suppress the speech of their own people, while overtly abusing the legal system and paying massive settlements to conceal the evidence of their collusion. They craft the false illusion of consensus on political issues of their own choosing, a power unprecedented in our democracy and historically held only by the most despotic regimes, promising in every instance to wield it for good, but falling short every time.

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World Economic Forum Pushes Facial Recognition Technology

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The dangers posed by digital IDs cannot be emphasized enough. As the researcher Brett Solomon—a man “who has tracked the advantages and perils of technology for human rights” for well over a decade—previously noted, the mass rollout of digital IDs “poses one of the gravest risks to human rights of any technology that we have encountered.”

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World Health Organization Deploys Another Disease Threat to Push Global Survelliance

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Vaccine passports and contact tracing are intimately tied to surveillance. More specifically, global surveillance. As the draft notes, the WHO will carry out “coordinated global surveillance of public health threats.” This can only be achieved by member states, all 194 of them, expanding their surveillance systems and contributing to “the WHO’s global systems for surveillance.”

World Health Organization Deploys Another Disease Threat to Push Global Survelliance Read Journal Article

The Battle for Control of Your Mind

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These new digital surveillance and control mechanisms will be no less oppressive for being virtual rather than physical. Contact tracing apps, for example, have proliferated with at least 120 different apps in used in 71 different states, and 60 other digital contact-tracing measures have been used across 38 countries. There is currently no evidence that contact tracing apps or other methods of digital surveillance have helped to slow the spread of covid; but as with so many of our pandemic policies, this does not seem to have deterred their use.

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