Here’s a riddle for you: A businessman has a meeting at a downtown Chicago building with tight security. He checks in with the front desk, gets a temporary pass to the floor his meeting is on and clears the metal detector. Ten minutes later, he’s seated in the company’s conference room. He has his laptop in front of him, pen and paper in hand — and a gun in his pocket. So, how did he manage that?
Stumped? Cody Wilson, a technological innovator based out of Austin, Texas, has the answer. He’s the inventor of a plastic gun that is made using a 3D printer — a gun he calls the “Liberator.” The federal government ordered Wilson to take down the printing instructions for the gun, in part because a plastic gun could elude security measures like metal detectors.
Now Wilson has started work on a new technology, Dark Wallet, an encryption software that will make Bitcoin transactions nearly impossible to track and is set to debut — for free — in the next few months. Dark Wallet’s name is more sinister than that of the Liberator, but it shares the same goal: To increase individual freedoms by helping people cut ties from bureaucratic structures. The key to personal liberty, according to someone like Wilson, is anonymity.
If social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn make up the popular media’s version of the technological revolution, Dark Wallet is the counterrevolution. Facebook is about expanding your connections and putting your life on display; Dark Wallet keeps you hidden from view. With Dark Wallet, an individual could purchase drugs, solicit prostitutes — you name it. The power of this type of technology doesn’t come from the kinds of weak social ties that expose people to new ideas on platforms like Twitter. It derives from its ability to unnerve and to undermine the status quo.
In fact, the Wall Street Journal quotes Wilson as saying he aims to build technologies that are “crisis-forcing.” This is probably too strong a description of the reaction to Wilson’s efforts so far, but Wilson’s Dark Wallet and the Liberator do force us to re-think the bounds of what modern technologies can accomplish. If a 3D printer can be used to make prosthetics and hearing aids, it can also be used for weaponry.
As entrepreneurs, we should all take note, not because these applications pose a threat to us — either to our companies in the competitive marketplace or, as the government fears, to society — but because the way they were developed provides an innovative framework for how to approach our own R&D for new products. Wilson didn’t reinvent the wheel; he built on existing technologies and made them his own. He molded the applications of Bitcoin and 3D printers to fit into his own personal philosophy of individual liberty. He also tapped into the types of worries many Americans have about how their use of technology may expose them to government and personal threats.
Let’s return to the riddle that we started with: A businessman walks into a meeting with a plastic gun. Some of you may view this as a positive, anarchic stand against current laws; others as an expansion of violence in our society. Either way, I’m willing to bet you reacted strongly to the scenario. This is technology at its most disruptive. It forces us to rethink our use of existing technologies, our opinions on current events and our views on the role that the government should play. It also makes us confront a question that has been looming since the recent security breaches at places like Target and Snapchat: How do we walk the technological line between internet openness and anonymity? In other words, when should technology go dark?
All of this is a pretty powerful reaction to something made of plastic. We’re interested in hearing your thoughts on the appropriate balance between the openness of social media and the closed-off secrecy of dark technologies in the comments. Of course, you won’t be able to go dark and stay anonymous to participate — even if all this talk of dark technology has now made you wary. But we think a conversation like this warrants openness, and we’re eager to hear your ideas.
Find more stories from Chicago Ideas Week at blog.chicagoideas.com
More Top Picks Best Saucepans
.