Freedomwill not depend on new tech

between technology and the state, might be badly flawed.

There are two ways that technology might not actually erode state power. First, new technology might provoke governments to crack down and reduce individual freedoms. Second, governments might use new inventions as a means of controlling their citizens’ lives.

As an example, consider the internet. When it was created decades ago, many predicted that the free sharing of information would weaken the grip of governments over their people.

Since monopolies over information are one of authoritarian states’ traditional methods of control, that prediction made sense.

But in the past decade, the internet has not achieved results in terms of increasing aggregate liberty. According to many nongovernmental organisations, freedom has been in retreat:

Strong, capable governments like those of China and Russia have created elaborate systems of control to prevent the internet from giving rise to popular discontent.

To be fair, some degree of crackdown is probably inevitable. The internet doesn’t just enhance the power of liberal activists; it also serves as the chief recruiting and coordinating tool for international terrorists.

But authoritarian governments aren’t just cracking down on the internet – they’re adapting it for their own purposes.

The internet, it turns out, isn’t just a way for activists to link up – it’s a way for governments to watch everything that the activists do. No longer must secret police services infiltrate dissident cells – they only have to read their tweets.

Many other technologies have yielded similarly disappointing results for liberty. Automatic facial recognition technology may soon place us under universal surveillance.

Does this mean that the new wave of technology – what some call the ‘‘second machine age’’ – will usher in the kind of dystopia so often depicted in science fiction novels? No. I believe that what’s happening now is fundamentally similar to the upheaval in the Industrial Revolution. The coming of mass production and industrial warfare in the 19th and early 20th centuries changed the nature of the challenges to human liberty.

Corporations gained unprecedented power over the daily lives of their workers and created pollution that wrecked the health of millions. Governments used electronic communications and gas-powered vehicles to dramatically extend the reach and destructive power of their armies.

Eventually, humanity figured out how to meet those challenges. Unions and progressive government curbed the worst corporate abuses, at least in the West. Strong independent media acted as a check on the state. Liberal industrialised nations slowly got the upper hand over totalitarian ones.

In the same way, I expect us to meet and defeat the current challenges to human freedom.

But it will take more than just building new tech. It will require new social movements, new ideas, new arguments – new reasons for people to fight for liberty.

Techno-libertarianism is too deterministic in its belief that new tools are all we need. Tools need people to use them, and freedom won’t guard itself. Bloomberg

A lot of people find it off-putting when people seem to be busy taking photos and appear to ignore what’s around them. This is especially the case with the rise of smartphones which has made everyone a photographer.

But the study shows you actually ‘‘see’’ more of the event when taking a photo. That’s because you are focusing on what you are taking a picture of and that intense study makes it more memorable.

However, the study only focused on photography of certain events, such as tourist destinations which are classed as ‘‘slow moving’’.

It cast doubt on whether enhanced enjoyment from photography would apply to ‘‘fastmoving’’ events such as the dying moments of a sports game. It also proposed that too much photography at certain social events such as a dinner at a restaurant would also decrease enjoyment.

I think smartphones have changed photography for the better. Not only is snapping pictures fun, but so is looking at them later and sharing them with friends and family.

However, it’s important to remember to pause during your photographing. First, to make sure you aren’t getting in anyone else’s way, and second to enjoy the moment with your own eyes.