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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

There is a bitter irony in how the technology that was supposed to bring us to a Friedmanite border-less world is also propelling us towards an Orwellian one where the power brokers can achieve omnipotence and force projection without, eventually, requiring the buy-in of a single human being.

The problem is that techno-authoritarian systems, e.g. what N Korea is approaching, are very stable once properly assembled. The "human" regimes, i.e. liberal democracies, have to constantly fight against slipping into that horror. We need to find a way to change this equation because it asymptotically solves for a very dark future. From a systems theory perspective, the solution is ironically a random and sufficiently destructive agent - a joker.

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Nord Korea is not as stable as it seems, they are really much defined by their foreign policy. Technology there is comparable to Cold War times. UAE or Saudi Arabia is a much better example for something like that.

> There is a bitter irony in how the technology that was supposed to bring us to a Friedmanite border-less world is also propelling us towards an Orwellian one where the power brokers can achieve omnipotence and force projection without, eventually, requiring the buy-in of a single human being.

I disagree with this. You are still free not to use technology even in an "Orwellian regime". The Internet hasn't made things worse. Would you rather live in a country with no Internet at all or a country with their own Internet?

The same network technology that makes the internet and applications on it possible enable mass surveillance, the intelligent processing of that data, and efficient execution on it as well. It isn't an either or question but an and one.

Thus, it isn't that one can choose not to use technology and thus avoid its Orwellian repercussions as much as the existence of the choice in the first place implies both use cases (promoting freedom/connectivity and facilitating surveillance/oppression) exist. Your decision to participate or abstain has little bearing on an ambitious dictator's.

No Internet at all is surpassing a propaganda net.

In order for people to stand up against oppression it helps when they can "feel the pain" and not have it muffled by some cheap painkiller substitutes.

NK stable? they depend on aid from the rest of the world to keep them from collapsing and selling their weapons to terrorists, let alone attacking SK.

The only reason they haven't been nuked yet is because it's right next to China, and because they are so miserable sending them some food scraps is cheaper than bombing them.

I treated North Korea asymptotically with respect to technological development and authoritarianism. I should have been clearer about that beyond using the word "approaching". Sorry about that.

Think of an authoritarian country with universal surveillance and the ability to dispatch fully automated enforcement. That system is very stable at eliminating chaotic subsystems before they become threatening. It is also remarkably resilient in its ability to contract to its power base, re-charge, and then re-project from a solid platform (think Assad and his Alawite base except with no question of wavering loyalty). This makes it resilient even during tail events.

"The only reason they haven't been nuked yet is" that they would retaliate against South Korea: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1928023

burgerbrain 506 days ago:

[...] there is an absolutely absurd amount of conventional artillery positioned at the DMZ just a few dozen kilometres away from Seoul. If all out war were to occur the city, with it's 25million or so citizens, could be levelled in hours.

Internet is not propelling us towards an Orwellian reality and this decision by Iran is a testament to that -- it turns out that even petrodollars-fueled authorities can't control the Internet to a satisfying degree. It's also very difficult to gauge the value of mass surveillance because it leads to considerable problems with data analysis. While this report is a little light on data for obvious reasons, it offers an interesting perspective:

"The federal government is drowning in data now. The decision-makers have the ability to ask certain kinds of questions. But they cannot possibly handle the amount of specific information that has been computerized."

http://lewrockwell.com/north/north1118.html

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