It's hard to be a human in this culture. Nearly every truly powerful force is nudging us or shoving us in the direction of being mechanical beings who only seem able to deal directly with the surface of life. Data and algorithms rule. Data is the breakdown of reality into flatness--it takes the multiverse we live in and crushes it into an unrecognizable pancake--even if you don't believe in a multiverse you will agree that data and software cannot create the full-spectrum experience of life human beings are heirs to.
Through the use of algorithms a low-bandwidth reality out of multiple bits of data is being built. To put it another way, reality is recreated in a simpler more controllable way that enables the authorities to monitor and control every aspect of life and do its best to discourage high-bandwidth and more funky lives. Soon, as robots take over more of life we will have artificial programmable sex robots. The idea is that technology has become the medium that creates life out of ideas about life. Life itself is thus defeated.
We are now living in a society that has a highly detailed dossier on each individual in the USA and probably many more societies where none of us has anywhere to escape the bureaucracy--and, indeed, that's where we are headed--doesn't matter whether it's a government or corporate bureaucracy--it is now in the process of becoming all one. Google, Facebook, NSA, and all the security services all will soon have the same information and the same dossiers with some minor changes in meta-data and algorithms depending on the purpose of that bureau. I have no "solution" to this problem. If something is in a database, and this includes our medical files, it can be hacked or accessed by the security services because they are increasingly uninterested in the rule of law and appear, like their corporate comrades in arms, to worship power and have the muscle to enforce that power.
Creating a machine-oriented culture has as its main agenda to de-humanize culture by making machine virtues more important than human ones. Practicality, efficiency, materialism, predictability, conformity, and control, control, control are the final goal of all this. This certainly helps the ruling class but I'm guessing the machines will eat them in the end.
I'm not going to criticize the scientific revolution, the growth of a technological society and all the rest of it. It is what it is and it has gotten us to where we are and who we are. Indeed, this world we live in was pre-figured by, most famously, by Francis Bacon and later by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust. It was "in the cards" so to speak that we would arrive to this point in our history. Many of us and maybe, though it may be a stretch, most of us know that "something" is wrong with our current arrangements. Why? We are experiencing an epidemic of anxiety, depression, drug addiction and, in fact, addictions of all kinds whether gambling, sex, or binge-watching or binge-eating or just playing out some repeating family or personal drama. People of the past ritics on the left and right have, over the past few decades, warned us of the results of our tendency to be seduced by technology and consumerism which go hand-in-hand.
When we move our affections from people to consumer items a serious shift occurs inside of us. We give, in our minds and in the culture, a status to mechanical devices and objects that goes beyond the things in themselves. We move beyond using objects, tools, technology to solve particular problems and, instead, use the objects to simply to use them. I stay on my phone simply because its there, it's easy, it's there and I can accumulate images and information just to do it. I do sometimes use the internet for research but mostly I use it simply to try and justify, back-up my own beliefs or I use it to cover wars and political events much as I would watch a sporting event. Am I learning anything new? Not really--just passing the time. Technology is perfect for just passing the time without solidly engaging into something coherent--my involvement is almost necessarily incoherent, confused, and an escape from my own frustrating life. I also know, very well, that this tool COULD be used to accomplish quite a lot yet my will is so weak in the face of it that I lose sight of my purpose or purposes in life. We are floundering in an ocean of confusion and paradox and we don't care anymore because I can play a game, watch a video about almost anything I can imagine. I can find something that would meet any possible sexual fantasy and many that I didn't know even existed. I can find pictures and information on even minor celebrities and their dysfunctional lives. I can go find out trivia in almost any area of life. I can find magic spells, mantras to cast out demons, I can find out anything I want about religion, war, gaming cheats and so on fairly quickly. I am, in many ways, a kind of magician with great powers yet, I feel powerless and adrift.
This is what the decline of humanity looks like until we learn to use machines, technology, algorithms and data for making human beings more aware and happier rather than control, control, control.
Through the use of algorithms a low-bandwidth reality out of multiple bits of data is being built. To put it another way, reality is recreated in a simpler more controllable way that enables the authorities to monitor and control every aspect of life and do its best to discourage high-bandwidth and more funky lives. Soon, as robots take over more of life we will have artificial programmable sex robots. The idea is that technology has become the medium that creates life out of ideas about life. Life itself is thus defeated.
We are now living in a society that has a highly detailed dossier on each individual in the USA and probably many more societies where none of us has anywhere to escape the bureaucracy--and, indeed, that's where we are headed--doesn't matter whether it's a government or corporate bureaucracy--it is now in the process of becoming all one. Google, Facebook, NSA, and all the security services all will soon have the same information and the same dossiers with some minor changes in meta-data and algorithms depending on the purpose of that bureau. I have no "solution" to this problem. If something is in a database, and this includes our medical files, it can be hacked or accessed by the security services because they are increasingly uninterested in the rule of law and appear, like their corporate comrades in arms, to worship power and have the muscle to enforce that power.
Creating a machine-oriented culture has as its main agenda to de-humanize culture by making machine virtues more important than human ones. Practicality, efficiency, materialism, predictability, conformity, and control, control, control are the final goal of all this. This certainly helps the ruling class but I'm guessing the machines will eat them in the end.
I'm not going to criticize the scientific revolution, the growth of a technological society and all the rest of it. It is what it is and it has gotten us to where we are and who we are. Indeed, this world we live in was pre-figured by, most famously, by Francis Bacon and later by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust. It was "in the cards" so to speak that we would arrive to this point in our history. Many of us and maybe, though it may be a stretch, most of us know that "something" is wrong with our current arrangements. Why? We are experiencing an epidemic of anxiety, depression, drug addiction and, in fact, addictions of all kinds whether gambling, sex, or binge-watching or binge-eating or just playing out some repeating family or personal drama. People of the past ritics on the left and right have, over the past few decades, warned us of the results of our tendency to be seduced by technology and consumerism which go hand-in-hand.
When we move our affections from people to consumer items a serious shift occurs inside of us. We give, in our minds and in the culture, a status to mechanical devices and objects that goes beyond the things in themselves. We move beyond using objects, tools, technology to solve particular problems and, instead, use the objects to simply to use them. I stay on my phone simply because its there, it's easy, it's there and I can accumulate images and information just to do it. I do sometimes use the internet for research but mostly I use it simply to try and justify, back-up my own beliefs or I use it to cover wars and political events much as I would watch a sporting event. Am I learning anything new? Not really--just passing the time. Technology is perfect for just passing the time without solidly engaging into something coherent--my involvement is almost necessarily incoherent, confused, and an escape from my own frustrating life. I also know, very well, that this tool COULD be used to accomplish quite a lot yet my will is so weak in the face of it that I lose sight of my purpose or purposes in life. We are floundering in an ocean of confusion and paradox and we don't care anymore because I can play a game, watch a video about almost anything I can imagine. I can find something that would meet any possible sexual fantasy and many that I didn't know even existed. I can find pictures and information on even minor celebrities and their dysfunctional lives. I can go find out trivia in almost any area of life. I can find magic spells, mantras to cast out demons, I can find out anything I want about religion, war, gaming cheats and so on fairly quickly. I am, in many ways, a kind of magician with great powers yet, I feel powerless and adrift.
This is what the decline of humanity looks like until we learn to use machines, technology, algorithms and data for making human beings more aware and happier rather than control, control, control.
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