Dear Friends,
It seems to me, as with all new ideas, digital technology has been applied to everything, and especially to those things where it doesn’t belong. When electricity became widely known, it was also applied to everything. There were people who claimed it would bring the dead to life. The same was thought about radiation. It could do almost anything. Today we’re mesmerized by the idea of digital technology and how it can fix everything. Even make us immortal. Then apply it to none existent problems and create huge ones. Like elections, surveillance and money. One way to tell if an innovation has made things more efficient is… if it’s made them more efficient. With elections… instead of the several hours it used to take, now it takes weeks. Is that a gain in efficiency?
New technologies have that whiz bang feeling to them. Because anything new has the benefit of novelty. Novelty is a form of potential. So we ascribe all the potential we can imagine to any and all new technologies. It’s only after the technology is mature do we realize the foolishness of our initial dreams. By then however, some new wiz bang tech is upon us with all the potential we can imagine, mesmerizing us again. It’s human nature. We did it with every new tech, from stone arrowheads to quantum physics. This attribute makes us egoistic, arrogant and stupid. Because we believe we are more advanced than we really are. Making us take dangerous chances, because we think we know what we’re doing. When we’re actually hypnotized by the whiz bang.
Sometimes the new idea isn’t as efficient, secure or problem free as the old one. It’s just new. This is the case with digital voting. By every measure, but one, it’s less efficient. It takes longer to tally the votes, it’s less secure and it undermines people’s trust in the system. On the positive side, digital voting allows the elite to commit industrial vote fraud at scale. So there is that. Nevertheless, most would argue the negatives outweigh the positives. Yet the elite will forge ahead with implementation of digital voting everywhere. Because while it undermines democracy… it empowers them. So, we can expect digital voting to become ubiquitous, as our elections become ever more corrupted and we become ever more jaded. Like electricity and radiation however, it may not live up to our expectation of it.
Electricity and radiation, as it turns out, can’t resurrect people, while digital voting, and digital currency aren’t secure. We’ll have to wait to see if digital technology can make us immortal. All technologies have their place though. Electricity bestows on us a myriad of powers… just not resurrection. Radiation gives us the ability to see into solid matter, but causes cancer, not mutant super heroes. Digital technology is the same. It’ll allow us amazing abilities, but using it where it doesn’t belong, is foolish. Digital tech has opened up the information age, but it probably won’t make us immortal, nor make our elections safe and secure. Scientists can experiment with digital technology all they want, downloading consciousness into a computer, I just wish the politicians would stop corrupting elections with it.
Wise and pragmatic people discard ideas that don’t work. No matter how whiz bang they are. Scientists have pretty much stopped trying to resurrect dead tissue with electricity, as they don’t bother trying to create mutant super heroes with radiation. Being poor applications of the technologies. As elections are a poor application of digital technology. Technology is astounding and empowering but can be destructive. The wise see it for what it is and embrace it when it works and discard it when it fails. Pragmatically accepting results, to judge an idea, system or… technology. In the case of digital tech, it’s time we accepted it doesn’t belong in elections. Unless we want election fraud. Then it’s more efficient to simply do away with elections altogether. Use new tech where it belongs… not where it doesn’t.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
