Protocols of Freedom
Originally published on May 9, 2024 on CzechCrunch in Czech. Reposted here as part of the archive.
Does the language we speak have anything in common with computer code? And if so, is it important? Today, we will explore how language and computer code shape our rights and freedoms, and why their interrelationship is key to understanding current technological and social challenges.
Forty years ago, between the written and oral exam in Mathematics III at Czech Technical University, my friend and I set out to defend the Czech language at the Institute for the Czech Language. We disagreed with the discussed change to remove i/y in the past participle and write only soft i. If only hard one! We considered it a betrayal. To our surprise, we weren’t taken away by the STB from the reception, but by a brave associate professor who informed us that we were the first demonstration in defense of the Czech language in the institute’s history, dating back to 1891. We were pleased. She promised us she would defend hard y with her own life and told us to get out and go to that exam.
I mention this to show that I am a veteran in defending language and open protocols in general, so this is no random shot. Just as our satirical protest decades ago stood against regulations that threatened to limit our freedom, the same is happening on the internet today. This parallel shows that the fight for freedom of speech is endless, whether it’s about words or code.
The freedom to express your thoughts and control your own property is the foundation of a free life. And just like language, Bitcoin—a decentralized and incorruptible form of money created in computer code—is a tool that protects this fundamental freedom. That’s why a similar struggle is taking place at their core: the fight against manipulation and censorship, and the effort to preserve their true essence.
Computer code is a language like any other. It serves to express our thoughts and ideas, and although it hasn’t looked like it in recent weeks, it is even protected under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which protects not only what we say but also how we express it.
My favorite novel character, the philosopher and doctor Amadeu de Prado in Night Train to Lisbon, says: “Words must be immaculate like polished marble and pure like tones in Bach’s partita, which transforms everything that is not themselves into perfect silence.”
In this brilliant reference to the power of words to preserve meanings in their purest form, he expressed not only the hope that words remain transparent carriers of true thoughts but also concern about their vulnerability. Today, this reference is more important than ever.
Why? The most important and oldest communication protocol of humanity—our language—is becoming a battlefield. It’s an attack on words, their power, meaning, and our ability to understand them and have the courage to defend them. Words like race, woman, patriot, Judaism, gender, or justice are today as safe as juggling with unpinned grenades.
Why have we started to fear words? And what else will we fear?
Words are the basic building blocks of our understanding of the world. If we allow their degradation and abuse by an endless parade of pseudo-sensitive topics, they lose this ability. Wokism, a story as old as humanity. We started with the best intentions and ended up as always. The effort to recognize one’s privileges, maximize equality, and minimize oppression has evolved into a puritanical authoritarian farce that dogmatically censors everything within reach, erases people from public life, and discards abused, emptied words along the way.
Language evolves to reflect the world and maintain our ability to describe it. But this is something fundamentally different.
When people cannot rely on the meaning of words and lose the ability to communicate and navigate the world, the foundations of democratic discourse weaken, and our shared identity is lost.
When people cannot rely on a financial system that is supposed to serve them, not spy on them, censor their transactions, and devalue their assets, it undermines not only the foundations of economic independence but threatens the entire economy and questions personal financial sovereignty.
In a time when both words and money face attacks on their credibility and independence, protecting them as the foundations of a free society becomes imperative. Bitcoin and language—as pillars of decentralization and free expression—remind us how closely financial sovereignty and freedom of speech are interconnected. Protecting one is defending the other.