[schoen]

I really believe in technological progress and would strongly defend and advocate for it. I'm also very distressed by the idea that we have an absolute ratchet of more surveillance (and registration, monitoring, and licensing of people and their daily activities) over time.

My intuition has always been that these things don't have to go together, but it's often sounded like a number of people who've thought about it a lot expect that they do! (One reason is that technological advances create new technical means of surveillance and new technical means of data analysis which can include more storage and analysis of personal data. Another reason is more like Kaczynski's account above, that people are afraid of bigger or more frequent harms that can be caused by more-empowered individuals, so they put in place more restrictions or surveillance to try to mitigate or deter some of those harms.) Can anyone reassure me about this? Is there a future in which people have greater capability, and there are also fewer institutions or mechanisms proactively monitoring us?

I'm aware of portions of the history of that conversation but would love to hear your take or the take of other HN members.