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Comment by gorgoiler | Hacker News Reader

That first sentence of yours really struck a chord with me. I tried to think of other examples:

Cars — essential for leveraging time to travel longer distances and carrying multiple passengers and heavy loads; ens up being used by one person to drive three minutes to get coffee.

Guns — to quickly précis a … complex topic: good guys, but also bad guys.

Electricity — power generation goes up decade after decade, but so too does consumption with wasteful consumption going hand in hand with productive consumption.

As you might be able to tell, I think the answer to the question “how do we stop technology X from destroying us?” lies in licensing and regulation enacted through legislation.

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I think those examples miss an important distinction. Cars, guns, and electricity are consumer technologies. They’re widely distributed, regulated, and constrained by market forces and law. Individuals can choose how to use them, and misuse is at least partially visible and contestable.

Surveillance is different. It’s inherently centralized and asymmetrical. By design, it gives one side - the state or large institutions - persistent visibility into everyone else, with little reciprocity. You can regulate how it’s used on paper, but the power imbalance remains.

It’s closer to nuclear technology than to cars or electricity. I can’t build a nuclear weapon or possess fissile material, not because it’s inefficient, but because some technologies are considered too dangerous to be broadly accessible. Mass surveillance belongs in that category. Once it exists, citizens don’t get to opt out, and meaningful oversight tends to lag far behind capability.

Licensing works when the technology is decentralized. With surveillance, the risk isn’t misuse at the edges - it’s concentration at the center.

clothing i think is a big one. Once the poster-child of industrialisation, now results in millions of tons being thrown away each other at a massive environmental cost.

> I think the answer to the question “how do we stop technology X from destroying us?” lies in licensing and regulation enacted through legislation.

In the golden age of the 90's we were able to ban CFCs, but I'm skeptical we could do that today. We no longer have that political ability, and I doubt we will get it back any time soon.

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