Technology

I agree. I've thought a lot about how valuable signing a simple message with a key can be. In an age where machines can appropriate your likeness, how do you accumulate and shed reputation, how do you prove it was you? One low tech version was taking a photo with a newspaper to prove you are a real person. Another is exchanging a public key with a person in real life so you can have reasonable certainty that communications signed with that key are legit. Since this boils down to denying what our eyes have seen, governments and businesses who are very keen on control reality are making their plays. Even identifying yourself cryptographically is only a temporary fix to maintain an existing identity. Your kids will be profiled and mimicked from day one. This whole slippery slope we've been sliding down lately seems very foreseen. It feels like these traps were engineered a very long time ago.

I think education is the absolute most important thing for a functioning post-truth society. Kids need to smell shit from 20 miles away because the world is full of traps for your mind same as it is for your wallet and your physical body. We also need to be able to verify and trust our tech stack. We need to pass down the stories of the times common people lost and the times common people won. We need to read and discuss philosophy. We'll also have to tackle American religion head on. Also excessively addictive entertainment designs. We are a deeply flawed society and I'm not sure where we should start except for taking some of our time back so people actually have the opportunity to think about these things.