Many words are being intentionally debased of late. Sovereignty is certainly one of them. It is not a term created by those who want to lord over others. Quite the contrary, especially when used to express self-ownership.

Self-ownership, also known as sovereignty of the individual or individual sovereignty, is the concept of property in one’s own person, expressed as the moral or natural right of a person to have bodily integrity and be the exclusive controller of one’s own body and life.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-ownership

and according to https://newearth.media/individual-absolute-sovereignty/, the

Characteristics of Individual Sovereignty· Requires the conscious exercise of inherent natural rights· Is concerned with learning information and the application of knowledge· Is generally successfully embodied by those with a high degree of moral fortitude· Permits one to perform any act, which does not harm another man or woman, without regard to statutory regulations· Returns power to the individual· Gives one control over their own life path· Provides one with freedom of choice

sovereignty; apparently derived from the Latin word superānus

Whilst one can easily see how Totalitarians, both of the Marxist and Fascist types abhor the notion of individual sovereignty.

This post is about individual technology sovereignty.

In context of early days of computing

It was not until Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and other pioneers in Silicon Valley promoted the idea in the 1980s that each person could be liberated through their individual use of computers, that the technology became an enabler of individual sovereignty.

Prior to that, computers were used, initially by the military for calculating artillery trajectories, then developing atomic weapons etc. International Business Machines (IBM) built enormous computers to assist large enterprises with their operations.

During the 1980s and 1990s as computers became attainable for the everyday person, what was not immediately attainable to all was the knowledge in how to operate them, especially as the software to operate them was still being developed, often by users themselves.

As discussed in my earlier post: my home computing journey“..Thus from the very outset it was ingrained upon us that both the hardware and the software were distinct, revered and when combined, magical.

Computers were initially difficult to use. Before Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) and handheld mobile touch interfaces, it was not at all easy to see the vision the pioneers had for computers. This was especially the case prior to the internet’s emergence.

Now that we are here, it is possible to own your own computer, be it a handheld smartphone or a desktop gaming PC, a server for media and file sharing, or just about any scale system one can imagine. Owning the software is an altogether different matter, and as for owning, or retaining sovereignty on the services running on the computers, that is almost entirely impossible if you want to take advantage of the network effects of those services being connected to other users.

You can buy or acquire software to run on your computers. These software exist as part of an ecosystem of complementary applications, utility tools and underlying daemon or background processes that facilitate the GUI and interconnected services we’ve become accustomed to.

We are a slave to the design decisions of the engineering teams who creating all the software components. Mostly for the best, and especially during the crafting of the internet protocols, these decisions enabled efficient communications, fair and open to all access for all.

The slow creep of todays robber barons

Scott McNealy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, famously said in the day, “The Network is the Computer”. This statement which alludes the the dividend we receive from a computer, the work done, is eerily similar to the known “network effect” of scale in modern web services.

In the 1990s, we installed software to gain functionality from our computers. During the early 2000s, we connected them to the internet, and started sharing and interacting with other computers. As bandwidth was limited, this was not a multimedia experience. Eventually services like Flickr, Dropbox and Gmail proved to be so usefull, that our computers ceased being functional without them.

Some online services that your computer, that thing in your hand, now connects to, you pay money for. Some offer free tiers of service that are designed to entice you to pony-up for the paid versions.

Most online services on the other hand are free to you, because you are not their customer. You are their product. And some of the brightest minds on the planet turn their considerable engineering and finacial resources towards refining their product, and marketing and selling it (selling you), to their customers in largely unregulated dark markets.

The Network Effect is especially relevant in online marketplaces. With scale, more diverse suppliers flock to the growing pool of consumers. The same occurs with streaming services, with film/tv finance flowing to the larger pool of viewers.

This is a shame, and just as crony capitalism eventually produces too-big-to-fail financial institutions, this concentration of users and engineering talent directs the innovating minds towards capturing eyeballs and monetising and stealing our children’s future, instead of tackling the important structural engineering challenges of the 21st century.

What was originally an open internet, is increasingly irrelevant, as the majority of users spend almost all their time within a handful of apps and their associated services, because that is where the action is. In some parts of the develping world, Facebook is considered The Internet.

More darkly, the barons and their virtue signalling minions that run these networks, have an unheralded amount of social and political power. If history is any guide, this concentration of power will not end well.

So, how to regain your family’s tech sovereignty?

Plainly, being aware of the structure of the system, and how you interface with it is paramount. I’ll endeavour to flesh-out what knowledge to seek to empower you to not become a victim to the tech oligarchy. The tech robber barons.

Secondly, developing your understanding the technological environment is just as foundational. I’m going to make a few recommendations. These will be in addition to the obvious ones your better instincts are already suggesting.

Finally, together we need to spread the word. I recommend illuminating one’s friends and associates as to the benefits of seizing personal tech sovereignty, not merely the menace of today’s technology environment.

  • knowlegde
  • habits
  • changing the system