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I've been thinking about what a technology project that was *actually* disruptive would look like.
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80 times out of 100 "disruption" means disconnecting labor from support systems. 19 it's about shifting economic control in some other way.
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So if we wanted to use technology in a way that didn't mean shifting societal controls from one group of rich to another, what would it be?
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The internet has given us the promise of no gatekeepers and easy mass communication and mobilization, but mostly we recreate the old systems
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So real disruption would, maybe, deliver on the promise to propagate control for real, not just move it into different systems?
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It's a real hard line to feel out b/c it is easy to slip into techno-utopian bullshit. And from there it is a short slide to sea steading
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An actually disruptive project then (mby?): open-source AI suites (or tech toolkits) to make it cheap to run for local elections.
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It has always taken a lot of time to run for pretty much any office, but technology has made it (so far) harder and pricier.
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There's no profit or return in a financial sense to such a project. But it would be disruptive, and reasonably power-spreading?
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It would be disruptive in a real sense, in a power-to-people sense. The profit would, long term, come from creating a better state.
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I'm trying to feel my way around what actual disruption looks like. I think that might be it. Projects which empower & make safe individuals
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It's not about how much money or power any single user could make, it's about the baseline of power all users of a product would acquire.
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IRL: Facebook is not disruptive. It recreates old systems of gatekeepers and control on to new platforms. But maybe Facebook Live has been?
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The point here being that it takes a tool of the state (mass surveillance) and gives it to the people. It's clearly given citizens power.
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It can be very easily subverted, but I think that it is the closest any Web2.0 product has come to being actually disruptive. Which is sad.
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So, what do you think a real disruptive project looks like?