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In The Constitution of Liberty, Friedrich Hayek gave a dire prognosis for the future of technology: "[W]e are probably only at the threshold of an age in which the technological possibilities of mind control are likely to grow rapidly and what may appear at first as innocuous or beneficial powers over the personality of the individual will be at the disposal of government. The greatest threats to human freedom probably still lie in the future."

Hayek, like most of the leading intellectuals of his time, did not foresee the emergence of the Internet  the quintessential Hayekian spontaneous order. As a decentralized communication system facilitating the sending and receiving of messages by billions of people, the Internet has greatly shifted the balance of power away from governments and toward sovereign individuals. Even in its early days, the Internet played a vital role in bringing about the downfall of the Soviet Union’s government. Since then, it has catalyzed tremendous economic, social, and political liberation in countries ranging from Cuba to the United States.

While governments have tried to use modern communication technologies to monitor and regulate private individuals, their efforts are doomed to failure stemming from a much more powerful and competent market response.

Hayek Did Not Know the Internet

When Friedrich Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty was first published in 1960, the Internet did not exist; nor did its military predecessor, ARPANET, which was initiated in 1969. Fifteen years after the horrors of World War II, the means by which the totalitarian regimes of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union used mass broadcasting technology to indoctrinate their people were still recent memories. During the Nuremberg Trials, Albert Speer himself expressed the Nazi regime’s effectiveness at using technology to spread propaganda: "Through technical devices like the radio and the loudspeaker, eighty million people were deprived of independent thought. It was thereby possible to subject them to the will of one man." Faced with such facts, Hayek understandably feared future uses of mass broadcasting technology.

Indeed, in a world where the only mass communication technologies were radio and films, the scales of power were shifted toward totalitarian governments and away from sovereign individuals. According to Christopher Kedzie, "Since traditional broadcast media are located closest to the dictator’s optimum they are almost certain to be employed as a powerful political weapon."

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September 20, 2008

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