3:25 p.m.
Re: Vass Bedna. As U.S. state and Big Tech become one, we become digital serfs, and it
sucks. The Globe and Mail, March 12, 2026
I ask myself, if “Canada” gained the national digital sovereignty outlined in the
attached essay, and therefore had the same capacity for surveillance of Canadians as US
corporations now do, what difference would it make to me? While I agree with the red
flags raised in this article enough to contribute it to our discussions, I feel the need
to outline what I expect remains a contrary and perhaps naïve opinion. To me, the real
societal issue is individual digital autonomy, not just Canadian digital sovereignty as a
matter of national security.
Beginning in 1992, as the Internet emerged and I became involved in community networking,
I have frequently stated that the online simulation of me through data collection is an
extension of myself. Therefore, it must belong to me, not to the agencies that collect
the data that makes it possible. Data about me as their property makes me a consumer, not
a person. In the early days of the Internet, there was a debate about this, under the
awkward heading of user-centric digital identity. That debate faded from sight, largely
because the corporations participating in it didn’t want it to succeed. As artificial
intelligence magnifies the capacity to simulate my identity by many orders of magnitude,
that debate, under the heading of individual digital autonomy, needs to re-emerge.
When technological advances cause major societal changes, the language used to anticipate
the consequences is the one describing the existing technologies affecting the
organization of society. A simple way to express this is how we referred to automobiles as
horseless carriages, understanding them in terms of the existing transportation system,
not the one about to extend the possibilities of transportation into entirely different
phase spaces of land use and social organization. It is only now that we are leaving it
that we have a vocabulary to describe the societal and environmental consequences of
living in a car culture. To reframe our understanding of what is happening to us, we have
to evolve a new vocabulary.
It seems to me that the context for applied imagination, origination, creation,
invention, authorship, and even learning is rapidly changing. As a consequence, maybe we
should consider that the assumptions behind the ideas of copyright, privacy and
intellectual property are now becoming the equivalent of the horseless carriage? While I
admit that I don’t have the capacity to frame the necessary new language to anticipate the
changes on their own terms, I believe that insisting on individual digital autonomy in the
ownership of the simulation of myself highlights those changes in a way that is useful in
making a start.
Digital serfs of the world, arise! You have nothing to lose in a redefinition of the way
your efforts are rewarded.
GG