And then there are self-regulating or self-supervising financial technologies such as distributed ledgers, whereby genuine bookings are confirmed by countless numbers of computers carrying out thousands of crosschecks on the bookkeeping of other computers. While these technologies may significantly reduce the likelihood of errors and fraud, they do not eliminate it altogether.
Faith in a thoroughly better technology-based world therefore seems to me to be a further expression of the yearning for simple realities and narratives that I mentioned at the outset. Technology does not, therefore, obviate the need for a critical view from the outside. It is my firm belief that the state cannot, and must not, withdraw from its surveillance function.