It seems to me there is a lot of risk in that if the technology is not sufficiently decentralized. It's still possible today, if you want to unplug, to just turn the smartphone off and leave it at home. We can pay for things in cash and use public phones (or borrow someone else's) to make calls.
The more indispensable, unobtrusive, and portable the tech becomes, the harder it gets to escape from it. Done poorly, I could see it becoming an avenue for unprecedented centralized control.
I’m not sure I follow your argument?
Technologies like Tor, private keys, private servers / relays which increase privacy are the current trend.
What I do today is far less traceable than it was in 2020. I only see that trend continuing.
I agree that if the trend towards decentralization and privacy continues, then everyone benefits. My concern would be the new technology adoption outpacing the adoption of privacy-focused and/or decentralized technologies or protocols.
If the majority of people adopt a new device or technology that is more revolutionary than a phone without adoption the corresponding decentralization and privacy protocols like we see here on Nostr, that could be a danger. And it seems inevitable to me that big corporations or governments will try to sell the next revolutionary thing in a way that forces you to buy into their ecosystem, just like Apple has done with their i-devices.
Yes that is the fight.
I have seen over 30 years of centralisation / decentralisation back and forth.
Originally with the move from mainframes to PCs.
We are definitely heading towards the decentralisation phase.
This will swing back to centralisation eventually.
History teaches us a lot.
I believe privacy will win that fight.
ICE car manufacturers fought EVs and lost, Governments are fighting DeFi Crypto and will loose and large corporates will be replaced by DAO’s.
EVs started in earnest in 2003 with Tesla, Crypto started in earnest in 2008 with Bitcoin and DAOs started in earnest in 2013.
The manufacture / sale of ICE only cars will become illegal in the UK in 2030 - 7 years away.
In June this year, the US treasury started hyper inflation of the US dollar when it broke the debt ceiling of $31.5 trillion by restarting the money printer. All other currencies throughout history have hyper inflated out of existence within 15 years from that event.
In September this year, Apple announced its long awaited new feature of a “pink” watch and its flagship product the iPhone will now be made out of titanium.
