Tristan Scott – Why Technology Is Slowly Killing Us

I’m a Bitcoiner and electrical engineer who got deep into health after hitting my head too many times playing college soccer. At BTC Prague 2025, I made the case that modern technology is robbing us of our physical health, cognitive autonomy, and individual sovereignty — and that most of us don’t even notice it happening.

We Have a Chronic Disease Epidemic — and It’s Not Normal

In the US, 60% of Americans have one or more chronic diseases. In Europe, it’s 30 to 70% in aging populations. Mental health deaths are rising. And children’s mental and physical health has been in freefall since around 2011 and 2012. What happened then? Smartphones happened. If you have kids or work in education, you already know this is a problem. A three-year-old throwing a tantrum when you take away their iPad is not okay. That’s a hallmark sign of addiction.

Our Devices Are Designed to Own Your Attention

The business model of Meta, Google, and every major platform is simple: keep you on screen longer, because your attention is their currency. To do that, they’ve built devices with bright, flickering, blue-heavy screens, and addictive algorithms so powerful that I personally can’t have social media apps on my phone anymore — because I get sucked in. We all do.

Indoor Living Is Killing Us

We are designed to thrive in nature. The natural world is the original decentralized system — built on proof of work, running optimally for millions of years. The further we remove ourselves from it, the worse we function. Indoor lighting can be 10,000 to 100,000 times less bright than outside. That missing light energy is energy our biology needs. We’re chronically fatigued, need three coffees to get through the day, and then can’t sleep at night. That’s not normal — it’s just been normalized.

Light Is How Your Body Tells Time

Blue light at 440–480 nanometers hits photoreceptors in our eyes and sets our internal clocks via the hypothalamus. Blue light isn’t inherently bad — in the morning, it’s fantastic. The problem is context. Our phones emit isolated, pulsed blue light with no balancing infrared. We stare at them after sunset, confusing our biology. The result is circadian rhythm disruption, which has been linked to virtually every chronic disease we’re seeing epidemic levels of today.

Flicker, EMFs, and Invisible Stressors

Every LED screen — including your phone — is constantly flickering on and off. That’s how brightness is controlled. Slow it down and you’ll understand why your eyes are exhausted and you feel on edge. Even agreed-upon electrical engineering standards acknowledge it can cause eye strain, headaches, and aggravate conditions in autistic children. Beyond light, non-native electromagnetic fields from the hundreds of devices around us at any given moment are a biological stressor. If you distrust centralized fiat money and big pharma, ask yourself: why would you blindly trust big tech and big telecom?

What You Can Do Right Now

Spend as much time outside as possible. You’re most sensitive first thing in the morning and before bed — protect those windows. Take meetings on walks. Switch to incandescent or full-spectrum bulbs. Wear blue light blockers at night. Put physical distance between yourself and your devices. It’s inconvenient. But if you’re serious about your health — especially if you’re raising a family — you have to be deliberate.

Building the Solution at Daylight Computer

Modern tech devices are robbing us of sovereignty on three levels: physical health, cognitive autonomy, and individual privacy. At Daylight Computer, we’re engineering devices that address all three. We’ve built a new display technology that is blue light free, flicker free, and usable outdoors. We’re building our own open-source operating system with privacy