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

摘要

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.