On technology and freedom

Charles Krauthammer's year-end observation, "Are We Alone In The Universe" prompted me to recall for how long I have seen humanity's tenuous grip on high technology-- including the means to destroy itself by nuclear weapons-- as inextricably linked to human freedom, and democracy in particular.  I developed my view during the Cold War era that nation-states that did not derive legitimacy from a politically free people did not have the right to possess the technological means to destroy civilization, even in self-defense.  The right to amass a nuclear arsenal, my assertion went, belonged only to democracies whose national powers were subject to the consent of the governed.

The "corollary" to my theorem proved it so: When the Soviet Union collapsed under, among other things, the sheer weight of technological advances in the West's anti-ballistic missile arsenal and its government realized that it no longer could no longer keep pace without trusting its scientists to work independently, the necessity for democracy seemed airtight.  In other words, without freedom, a society's technological advancement would hit a wall, making it incapable of defending itself militarily.  I recall thinking how Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost (openness they could survive without) was a risky prerequisite for perestroika (restructuring they could not survive without).

When I met Microsoft founder Bill Gates in 1995, I thanked him for ending the Cold War, quickly explaining my theory that the personal computing revolution forced the Soviet military industry to either trust their own people (and decentralize computational power) or surrender.  Gates responded he had not thought about the impact of his products quite this way, but he accepted my thanks.

In Krauthammer's piece, he argues that while politics is derided in the media and politicians might be intellectual midgets as compared to, say, nuclear physicists, it's the art of statecraft that has prevented humanity from letting its technological ingenuousness destroy itself.  (Score one for reading over math!)  But when I see technology and innovation more broadly, I am less equivocal; human freedom is why a civilization thrives economically, not how (e.g., free markets), but by feeding and protecting open thought and putting a premium on creativity above all else.

[Ahem: That's why I say it is freedom's ultimate duty to either remove nuclear weapons from non-democracies, or proliferate freedom and democracy to any country that dares to possess them.]

In the case of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon, there is no apparent political legitimacy to match such power.  If we were to go down the list, Russia, China, North Korea, Pakistan, and others would be morally excluded from the nuclear club, too, because they are not capable (for their lack of freedom) to meet future technological requirements to safeguard them.  The US has itself diverted enough engineering and scientific talent to keep and maintain its arsenal, but truth be told, it struggles to maintain its technological edge because America's "best and brightest" would rather make iPad and Android apps than guns.

The global borderless Internet and all its derivative open-source exchange of opinion and technological toys and tools-- which sprang 100% from the inextricable marriage between freedom of expression and technological prowess itself, has unalterably changed the measure of freedom on the planet.  (Thump our free, hairy chests on that!)  One can now truly hope the power of this global, backbone "utility" will only cause global freedom to exponentially expand and increase.

Yet in places like Syria, Egypt, or Yemen or Libya, this ultimate technological platform for freedom and free expression has just been used to launch an unthinkable1000-year biblical march backwards, against individual freedom and expression throughout the Muslim world.  I can only explain the paradox by saying that my cherished inextricable link between technology and freedom is broken, unchained temporarily. How else to explain the use of Enlightenment means to achieve Dark Ages ends?

Until every nation state sees their economic fortunes tied to technological advancement, and devotes the necessary support for freedom to sustain it, the threat of war over lesser, albeit important resources (energy supplies, minerals, etc.) will persist-- and the duty of free nations like the US will be to win.

But if Krauthammer's provocation is true-- that humanity is alone, abandoned by failed exoplanetary civilizations that destroyed themselves at the peak of their technological advancement-- know that we human folk have a vast undeveloped frontier called "freedom" untapped here on Earth, so ripe and rich, to explore and exploit.