That makes little sense. Schneier was talking about the far future. It's certainly not an assumption that people make as they go about their daily lives. "Eventually," we'll be a spacefaring civilization, so why bother with anything on Earth?

Also, if you're going to claim something absurd like technology and freedom being incompatible, you're going to have to do better than quoting the Unabomber.

> Also, if you're going to claim something absurd like technology and freedom being incompatible, you're going to have to do better than quoting the Unabomber.

You're making two mistakes...

1) Technology being abused to curtail freedom isn't "absurd," but a routine occurrence in our world. From traffic cameras to chipped passports, for every freedom we gain from technology, we lose at least one.

2) You're shooting the messenger. While I also disagree with his pessimistic conclusion, there have been many truths said by those we seek to demonize.

I take issue with point #1, that is true in a lot of cases but not necessarily so, it all depends on what people are willing to accept. While I do agree that the notion of privacy will always lose to technology, and if you believe that privacy is key part of freedom (debatable) then I grant you that point.

1. Counter example: The development of better agriculture freed serfs & at a later time in the US slaves.

2. Modern travel has freed people from oppressive regimes around the world.

3. The internet is having a liberating effect on the freedom and control of information.

4. Modern medicine frees us from the threats of many diseases.

Technology can be equally used for good and evil.

Your definition of freedom, as implied by items 4 & 1, is sloppy and dangerous. The parent posts use the word freedom in the political sense, as an antonym to slavery, subjugation, and tyranny.

Modern medicine raises our standard of living by eliminating disease, which is mostly irrelevant to a discussion of the unique causal effects technology has on freedom.

The best take on privacy I've ever read (and the only one that actually made me pause and wonder about the hidden assumptions in my thinking) was Jonathan Franzen's Imperial Bedroom ( in http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&... , although I didn't find a direct link).

He basically claims that privacy as we know it is an invention of our age (late 20th century, early 21st), and, as such, it is not necessarily something worth keeping at all costs.

Clean water, improved healthcare, ..., the internet are all modern innovations, however, I think they are worth keeping.

Just because we survived without something in the past, doesn't mean it isn't something worth fighting for.