For most of the 20th century, technological optimism prevailed. Dams, railroads, and industrial projects were understood to bring future abundance. However this optimism has been replaced by its opposite. It is now accurately understood that developments are serving a narrow elite while imposing costs on the remainder of society. Costs such as environmental degradation, expansion of systems of control into private life, and the obsolecence of human life itself.

As technologies become commonplace, their use becomes mandatory. For example, abandoning social media can mean ostracism and exclusion from certain useful social engagements like marketplaces and event planning. Similarly, automotive transportation is not just a convenience but a necessity to participate in the industrial world.

This progressive restriction of freedom presents two common responses. The first is a defeated acceptance, attempting only to secure advantage for oneself and immediate circle while the situation continues to deteriorate. The second is a total rejection of technological development.

But the problem is not technology itself, rather its structure—who makes it, who controls it, what relationships it demands.

Consider the difference between an artisan's craft and a mass-produced object ordered from an e-commerce website. Between Linux and proprietary software. Between a protocol owned by its users and a platform that owns its users. In one case, makers retain autonomy and users have agency. In the other, technology is directed by concentrated interests.

This distinction runs through history. Authoritarian systems where humans become interchangeable components have dominated—but not because they are inevitable. Throughout history, people have built and maintained systems that worked differently. Systems which have provided opportunity for individuals and communities to develop their full capacities—moral, cognitive, aesthetic, practical. Technical means oriented toward these purposes enhance growth and well-being.

Technics here means more than the devices and macines conjured to mind by the term "technology"—it includes the social organization, governance, and practices that shape society. Protocols, funding mechanisms, and money itself are already the concerns of crypto and cypherpunk communities. Adalan is an academy for grounding this work in history, philosophy, and strategy.