Against technocratic authoritarianism. A short intellectual history of the cypherpunk movement

Abstract

This essay aims to correct the established idea that the cypherpunk movement was organically embracing libertarianism. By addressing the cypherpunk movement, the intellectual roots of many of the concerns about freedom and about a surveillance society that dominate this internet age come to light. The cypherpunks, a heterogenic group of entrepreneurs, engineers, and activists in the San Francisco Bay Area, argued in the nineties that the Internet would make more pervasive the phenomenon of surveillance of individuals. In the context of this increasing process of surveillance, individual autonomy would be dismissed as an obsolete fiction and social engineering would be elevated to totalitarianism. This article frames the cypherpunks as a movement in opposition to an emerging technocratic authoritarian order.

Keywords:

• Modernization
• cypherpunk
• technology
• late modernity
• crisis
• freedom

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to two anonymous reviewers of an earlier version of this paper for providing insightful comments and directions for additional work which has resulted in this improved version.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The Cypherpunk Archive can be found at https://lists.cpunks.org/pipermail/cypherpunks/2013-September/000741.html. Part of the primary documents issued by the cypherpunk leaders can be also found at http://nakamotoinstitute.org/literature/.

2 For the remark on Foucault, see Timothy C. May, conversation with the author (11/15/2017).

3 References are to Ryan Lackey, May, John Gilmore, and Julian Assange.

4 Mario Savio, Sit-in Address on the Steps of Sproul Hall, delivered December 2, 1964, The University of California at Berkeley.

5 Harvard Crimson, December 15, 1964.

6 Mario Savio delivered two speeches on December 2, 1964. The second speech was published several weeks later with the title “An End to History.”

7 Savio, ‘An End to History.’

8 Savio, ‘An End to History.’

9 Jude Milhon was at Selma in 1965. She was also instrumental in the development of the first online classified in the early Seventies. Phil Zimmermann (born 1954) participated in antinuclear sit-ins and went to jail twice.

10 Mario Savio, California’s Angriest Student, Life, February 26, 1965, 100–101, 100.

11 For the remark on ‘traffic data,’ see David Chaum, remark in front of the author (1/11/2019).

12 For the remark on Foucault, see Timothy C. May, conversation with the author (11/15/2017).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Enrico Beltramini

Enrico Beltramini is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont, California. He holds doctoral degrees in Theology (Vidyajyoti College of Theology), History (Royal Holloway, University of London), and Business (Manchester Business School, University of Manchester). His works on technology theory has been published in international journals such as Philosophy and Technology, AI and Society, and Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy.