Technology Is an Absolute Value; the Problem Is Daily Life and Institutions

Technology is better the stronger it is.

I don't doubt this premise. Whether it's AI, semiconductors, satellites, robots, biometrics, or on-device computing, technological capability is close to an absolute value. When your technology is weak, your options shrink. You have to live inside platforms someone else built, rules someone else made, security systems someone else designed. A society with strong technology at least has room to choose for itself.

Weak technology is not a virtue. Being slow is not, in itself, a virtue. Failing to reach the masses is nothing to brag about. When technology can't make its way into everyday life, productivity falls, value creation lags, and the whole society stays bound to outdated ways.

So technology must be strong. It must advance quickly. Good technology should be made in greater abundance.

The problem is not the technology itself.

The real problem is the security instincts, the everyday instincts, and the institutional standards of the society that receives it. The same technology can widen freedom in one society and bind people's bodies and lives ever more tightly in another.

Technology is power. And power is necessary. But where that power flows is not decided by technology alone. It's decided by the instincts of the people who receive it, the ways companies use it, and the boundary lines drawn by institutions.

Take biometric technology as an example.

Facial recognition, iris recognition, fingerprint recognition, voice recognition, pupil tracking, gait analysis — none of these is a bad technology in itself. Used well, they are excellent technologies.

If they can catch forged identities, filter out dangerous people at the border, accurately identify patients in clinical settings, and securely process sensitive data inside a personal device, then they are clearly good technologies.

On-device biometrics, in particular, may point in an even better direction. If the raw data never goes up to a central server, is processed only inside the personal device, and only the authentication result is used within the scope where it's needed, you can secure both safety and convenience at once.

So there's no reason to oppose biometric technology.

The question is how far down biometrics descends.

In domains like borders, airports, military facilities, high-risk financial transactions, and the prevention of medical accidents, strong authentication may be necessary. But once that technology trickles down into the whole of everyday life, it becomes a different story.

“Register your face and it's faster.”

“Authenticate with your fingerprint and it's more convenient.”

“You don't have to, but then it'll take a little longer.”

“For security reasons, we recommend biometric authentication.”

“Most other people have already registered.”

The moment these phrases become everyday, biometrics stops being a convenience and becomes a pressure.

Formally, it's a choice. But in reality it isn't. They say you don't have to, but if you don't, you become slow, inconvenienced, and the odd one out.

Rather than technology setting people free, it becomes a society where people can only move once they've passed through the technology.

A biometric dystopia doesn't arrive one day all at once with a banner reading “The surveillance society begins now.”

It comes far more gently.

Faster.

Simpler.

Safer.

More efficient.

More contactless.

Smarter.

It comes wrapped in words like these.

At first people use it because it's convenient. You wait in shorter lines, you don't have to memorize passwords, you don't have to pull out your ID, and everything is handled right there in the app. Companies love it too. Identity verification gets easier, fraud goes down, and customer churn shrinks. Public institutions love it as well. Complaints get processed faster, administrative costs drop, and management becomes easier.

It looks like a win for everyone.

But one question is missing.

Can the person who doesn't use that biometric authentication still live with the same speed, the same cost, the same rights?

The moment the answer to this question becomes “no,” it is no longer a convenience.

It is, in effect, coercion.

Biometric data is different from a password. A password can be changed. A card can be reissued. An account can be created anew. But a face, an iris, a fingerprint, a voice, a gait pattern, a gaze response — these are hard to change.

So what happens when this body becomes society's authentication key?

The face becomes an ID card, the fingerprint becomes an access pass, the voice becomes a means of identity verification, the gaze becomes interest data, the pupil becomes reaction data, and the gait becomes a tracking ID.

From that point on, a person is no longer a citizen but a measurable bodily object.

The good society I have in mind is simple.

It's a society that is strict on the outside and free on the inside.

At borders, airports, harbors, and points of entry, it can verify strictly. It matters that the state blocks external dangers. Guarding against forged identities, crime, terrorism, illegal immigration, and national security threats is necessary.

But once citizens and residents are inside society, they shouldn't have to keep proving their bodies over and over. In everyday life, people should be trusted by default. You can't turn the entire interior of life into a border.

A good society ends it at the border.

A bad society turns its whole interior into a border.

When biometric authentication becomes part of daily life, countless small borders spring up inside the country.

The apartment entrance becomes a border.

The office doorway becomes a border.

The banking app becomes a border.

The hospital reception desk becomes a border.

The unmanned store becomes a border.

The airport smart pass becomes a border.

The mobile ID becomes an internal passport.

In the past, strong identity checks existed only at high-risk points like borders, airports, military bases, and courts. But once biometric authentication becomes part of daily life, people have to submit their bodies at every ordinary threshold.

When you enter your apartment, when you enter your office, when you send money, when you log into an app, when you go to the hospital, when you apply for a service, when you buy something — every single time, you have to prove “who are you?”

This is less technological progress than the internal bordering of everyday life.

The reason Korea is especially at risk is not only that its technological capability is high.

What matters more, in fact, is the culture of daily life.

Korea loves things that are fast. If authentication is fast, people use it. If it works through an app, people use it. If it shortens the line, people use it. If it cuts the inconvenience, people use it. Once a new system feels convenient, the whole society follows quickly.

This is also a strength.

Korea has the power to adopt new technology quickly, lay down infrastructure fast, and rapidly raise the quality of its services. A city like Seoul has plenty of opportunities to make money, information moves fast, and people, capital, and markets are compressed together. It's a good environment for building technology, shipping products, meeting customers, and getting validated quickly.

But that very strength becomes dangerous when it combines with biometric data.

In Korea, biometric authentication likely won't arrive only by state decree. It's more likely to arrive as a convenience of daily life.

Airports in their own way, banks in their own way, telecom carriers in their own way, apartments in their own way, companies in their own way, hospitals in their own way, schools in their own way, apps in their own way — each can demand “more convenient and secure authentication.”

Each one looks reasonable on its own.

The airport says it's for faster departures. The bank says it's to prevent financial fraud. The telecom carrier says it's for identity verification. The apartment says it's for security. The company says it's for access control. The hospital says it's to confirm patients. The app says it's to protect accounts.

The problem is when all of these are added together.

From the individual's standpoint, it becomes a society where, all day long, your body is inspected by little gatekeepers.

It becomes hard to tell what is truly coercion.

Even when the phrase “you don't have to” is attached, if not doing it is inconvenient, then it's already close to coercion.

There's an important balance here.

The popularization of technology is necessary. If technology stays only inside labs and a handful of companies, the productivity of society as a whole doesn't rise. Good technology has to enter everyday life. That's how value is created, services improve, and more people benefit.

The question is whether every technology should be adopted at the same speed.

Payment technology, work automation, on-device AI, security software, medical-assistance technology, administrative automation — these may be all the better for being popularized quickly. But technologies like biometrics, which are hard to undo once collected and which turn the human body itself into an authentication key, need an entirely different standard.

Technology must advance quickly.

But the right of access to the body must be opened slowly.

We must not casually demand information like the face, fingerprints, iris, voice, gaze, pupils, gait, and heartbeat in the name of everyday convenience. We must be especially wary of private services making excessive biometric authentication the default in the name of “security” and “convenience.”

A good technological society is not a society that doesn't use technology.

A good technological society is one that, even while holding strong technology, doesn't demand people's bodies too often.

This issue isn't merely a matter of privacy or security. At a deeper level, it's connected to quality of life.

When people say it's hard to have and raise children in Korea, it doesn't simply mean that housing is expensive and education costs a lot. Those are huge, of course. But underneath it all lies this feeling.

That having a child feels less like creating one more free life than like inserting one more person into a system of high-density competition, authentication, education, real estate, taxes, comparison, and management.

No matter how hard parents work to earn money, that money doesn't transfer cleanly into their children's freedom. Leave behind a house and taxes and regulations follow; provide an education and yet another competition awaits; try to create a good environment and the pressure of the whole society remains intact.

Even when a child has something they want to do, the options are limited.

On the surface we say “do what you want to do,” but the actual conditions are different. You have to be able to survive in Seoul, to be able to recover when you fail, to not fall too far behind in the competition over school pedigree and credentials, and to cover the cost of survival.

Then the child ends up choosing not what they want to do but what won't ruin them. Not the work they have a talent for but the work that can be explained to society. Not the work that has to be nurtured over a long horizon but the work that can be monetized quickly or converted into credentials.

What parents want to give their children isn't simply money. It's the right to choose.

And in Korea, the cost of maintaining that right to choose is far too high.

So some delay marriage and childbirth, some give up entirely, some look abroad, and some choose to end the line at their own generation. It's hard to call this simply selfish. It may instead be the result of looking at the structure coldly.

Technology is supposed to make life easier, but if instead it creates more authentication, more management, and more evaluation, people will hesitate to bring a new life into that structure.

I don't reject technology.

On the contrary, technology must be strong. AI must be strong, on-device technology must be strong, satellites must be strong, security must be strong, semiconductors must be strong. If your technological capability is weak, you end up subordinated to an order someone else built.

It's just that when you put strong technology into everyday life, there has to be a standard.

Does that technology make people more free?

Or does it make people authenticate themselves more often?

This question is what matters.

Good technology should ask less of people. It should make them submit less, expose less, and send less to the center. Sensitive information should, wherever possible, be processed inside the personal device, and raw biometric data should not leave it. A non-biometric alternative should always be guaranteed at the same level.

Biometric data is not simply personal information. It is the right of access to the body.

Gaze and pupil data are not simply advertising data. They are the right of access to attention.

Neural data is not simply health data. It is the right of access to the inner self.

Without this sensibility, technology — however good — can damage the quality of life.

Technological capability is an absolute value. The stronger, the better.

But quality of life is not decided by technological capability alone. It's decided by the security instincts, the everyday instincts, and the institutional standards of the society that receives that technology.

Technology is power, and power is necessary. But if that power isn't used in the direction of setting people free, in the end it only creates more thresholds, more authentication, and more submission.

A real utopia is a society that filters out danger at the border and is free on the inside.

A real dystopia is a society whose entire interior becomes a border.

And the moment biometric data becomes the default means of authentication in daily life, we can drift very quietly toward that dystopia.

It won't arrive one day all at once.

It will probably come like this.

“Register and it's more convenient.”

“Authenticate and it's faster.”

“You don't have to, but it may be a little inconvenient.”

The moment those words become everyday, we may already be crossing an important line.