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| Silverfiddle Rant! |
“I think big data is so powerful that nation states will fight over how much data matters.” He added: “He who has the data can do the analytics and the algorithms at the scale that we talked about will provide huge nation state benefits, in terms of global companies and benefits for their citizens, and so on.” (Eric Schmidt, Google CEO)
WhatsApp--owned by Facebook--is a free app that allows you to have private networks and exchange text, voice, video, pictures, and even make free international phone calls. Yes, Free. The data Facebook gleans from users must be worth billions...
Turn off tracking on your cell phone? You just turned off the information that is fed back to you. The technology is still tracking you. Every non-cash purchase is tracked, catalogued and fed into Big Data.
Are machines conditioning us?
You automatically respond to your phone's noises and vibrations, taking your attention away from a good book, TV, movie, children, social activity, or engaged conversation.
When seeking help, we take instruction from chatbots and computerized voices driven by programmed algorithms.
Two quotes from The Atlantic's How AI Will Rewire Us:
Parents, watching their children bark rude commands at digital assistants such as Alexa or Siri, have begun to worry that this rudeness will leach into the way kids treat people, or that kids’ relationships with artificially intelligent machines will interfere with, or even preempt, human relationships. Children who grow up relating to AI in lieu of people might not acquire “the equipment for empathic connection,” Sherry Turkle, the MIT expert on technology and society, told The Atlantic’s Alexis C. MadrigalIf AI is creating socially-stunted human beings who cannot create empathetic relationships with others, another worry pops up: Are humans forming emotional bonds with AI?
As digital assistants become ubiquitous, we are becoming accustomed to talking to them as though they were sentient; writing in these pages last year, Judith Shulevitz described how some of us are starting to treat them as confidants, or even as friends and therapists.Will computerized technology become like eyeglasses or a prosthetic we cannot do without? We now have a whole generation of motorists who have never had to drive across their city or state without the aid of computerized navigation. Average intelligence is declining across the developed world.
Could humans become so hooked on technology that we would be literally helpless without it?
Is there a darker agenda?
Links:
Evan Horowitz: IQ Rates are Dropping
Daily Mail - Are We Becoming More Stupid?
Is there a darker agenda?
Links:
Evan Horowitz: IQ Rates are Dropping
Daily Mail - Are We Becoming More Stupid?
Haven't "machines" effectively been conditioning us since we first discvered the wheel?
ReplyDeleteHasn't every discovery purporting to save time and make productive labor "easier" and more "efficient" resulted in a whole lot of unintended cinsequences most of them undesirable?
Somewhere along the line someone said:
"Work expands to fill whatever time may be available for it."
Isn't that Somebody's "LAW?"
So in many ways isn't it true that much human "progress" has in fact made life a great deal more complicated, perpleexing and demanding?
Yet human nature being what it is it must be inevitable that we keep striving for ways to make life "better" –– easier, more convenient, freer, etc.
I don't for a moment advocate a return to our primitive state where life was "nasty, brutish and short," but I do think there OUGHT to be a way when we could decide for ourselves –– as individuals –– that many of the "improvements" thrust upon us at ever-increasing speed are NOT desirable from our PERSONAL point of view, and we shuld,therefore, be free to REJECT these things.
Unfortunately the computer industry has virtually ENSLAVED the entire civilized world, and the guys that produce these infernal devices really DO have us all by the sort hairs.
IS there any viable alternative to Slavery to the Grid, or must we must we meekly accept defeat, and resign ourselves to the dehumanizing fate designed for us by these Orwellian Master Manipulators?
Xaveria Humpen de Trumpe said:
DeleteYou said it all, bro.
Too bad most people have forgotten how to draw inferences and need everything spelled out now in big red letters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBPBuR1Agrs
ReplyDelete:) John Prine was on to something...
Delete:)
DeleteI WROTE THIS SONNET A FEW YEARS AGO AFTER TAKING A GOOD LONG LOOK AT BRUEGHEL'S PAINTING CALLED "THE REAPERS." SEE IF YOU CAN DECIDE FOR YOURSELF WHY I BELIEVE THIS RELATES QUITE ELOQUENTLY TO THE ESSENCE OF THE TOPIC AT HAND.
ReplyDelete___________ Stillness ___________
No sound beyond the dropping of the leaves
Or shushing in the treetops of the stirring
In the air and periodic whirring
Soft of wings and bundling of sheaves ––
Every now and then a bird may call
Looking for or longing for his mate;
Escaping still the hunter’s dinner plate.
Scythes swish steadily as grain grown tall
Submits to delicate compelling force.
Workers silently bent to their task
Over whom hot sunshine spills its rays
Reap swiftly knowing pain could come, of course.
Later, in the afterglow they’ll bask
Dreaming foolishly of better days.
~ FreeThinke
NOTE THE ACROSTIC: "NOISELESS WORLD."
:P
DeleteEgg-ZACK-Lee, FJ!
DeleteEgg-ZACK-Lee!
In 1886, a railroad station manager by the name of Richard Sears began selling gold watches for $14/each. Richard was making pretty good money doing this (above his salary), but he thought that he could make more money if he made his own watches. So, in 1887, he teamed up with Alvah Roebuck, a watch-maker. Together, they increased their sales by offering their watches in a catalog. They called it the Sears-Roebuck mail order catalog. It was a new twist on capitalist enterprise. Eventually, they offered everything from houses to clothing.
ReplyDeleteTime rolls on. People used to borrow money from HFC for such things as washers and dryers, but then someone came up with the idea of the credit card, which worked out great. In fact, with the credit card, it was possible for companies like Sears to accumulate data that would tell them what people are buying, what they aren’t buying, and how demands in one area of the country may differ from another. This would help Sears manage their inventories. It would be a great boon to managing the business. If consumers didn’t particularly like having big companies looking over their shoulder, the solution was simple: don’t apply for a credit card.
Sadly, after 136 years, Sears is essentially kaput. It couldn’t compete with the discount stores or the emergence of e-commerce. Computers (which includes iPhones) are the new credit card. They’re still accumulating data. Of course, no one imagined that the government could strong-arm these large data mining companies into providing this information to the National Security Agency. If consumers don’t particularly like having tech-giants looking over their shoulder, the solution is simple: don’t buy a computer or a cell phone. In fact, if you happen not to like tracking and data mining, don’t buy a car, either. Auto manufacturers are already analyzing your driving habits; it will only be a matter of time before auto companies will offer this data to insurance companies and police agencies.
Welcome to the new capitalism.
I heard someone--can't remember who--lament the demise of Sears and point out that they were the original Amazon, delivering everything from clothing, to kitchen gadgets to log cabin kits all over the US...
DeleteYes, welcome to the new capitalism... where Chinese-style state surveillance is the only thing keeping public spaces "public" and the curbs of "morality" get "shot to hell".
Delete"Other people's machines" are NOT "private spaces" where you can keep "private data".
DeleteThe misperception that ANY data you put onto a machine is "private" or should remain so is simply a "trick" used to by others to exploit your naivete.
Farmer,
DeleteRemember a few years back when somebody broke into the accounts of all those Hollywood actors?
I remember one actress express incredulity, saying, "But I had it in my cloud!"
Government killed the 4th Amendment decades ago, and now privacy is dead.
Welcome to the Brave New World
Next up... How to improve your Social Credit Rating!
Soon "Social Credit Ratings" and their monitoring by the Government will be the ONLY "Authoritative" source of morality left. After all, Capitalism's primary injunction is to "ENJOY" as all "harmful" ingredients (sugar/ caffeine/ MSG/ salt) have been removed from the product and harmless substitutes incorporated. All "harmful ingredients" except for those necessary to maintain capitalist consumption itself...
DeleteFJ,
DeleteDidn't you mean to say "Making Your Private Space Public?"
Because that is exactly what "COMPUTERISM" has accomplished –– its biggest and most devastating feat to date.
Made even more horrifying because –– like docile little lambs led to the slaughter –– most who spend every available waking moment glued to their SmartPhones have no idea of the enormity of what we have done to ourselves.
Haven't you ever noticed the most devastating and longest lasting attacks on LIBERTY creep up on us, and always seem to present themselves as "enhancements to our quality of life?"
BAH HUMBUG!
It's both.
DeleteWe were given free will thus choices.... The great strides and advancements of civilization occurred when "free time" was available to various civilizations.
ReplyDeleteWe forget the gifts given to so many with all of these tech advances, as well as enjoyment given. The drudgery of routine tasks removed.
I appreciate Siri at night telling me when to make my turn in the pitch blackness. The security of being able to make a phone call in an emergency.
I don't disagree with your statements, but I for one do not want to go back to the olden days. Parents need to be parents.
When the local Ralph's grocery store began issuing "loyalty cards" and I was signing up for one, the person behind me in line admonished me not to do so. She warned me not to do so because, "then they will know everything that you are buying."
ReplyDeleteI looked at her for a minute and then replied, "That's okay, I don't buy my pornography here." The checkout lady almost fell down.
"Could humans become so hooked on technology that we would be literally helpless without it?"
ReplyDeleteAnyone who lives with a teenager with an IPhone knows this must be a trick question because the answer is, sadly, too obvious.
Yes, helpless....nobody walks to the library anymore, people barely feel the happy touch of a real page as we turn it in a good book, I go to Ralph's grocery store and, a week later, I get coupons of all the things I bought, which I AM SO NAIVE ABOUT that I told a friend what an amazing coincidence that was! (Seriously...) Now I know better. And I don't like it ONE BIT.
Are we devolving into mindless drones of the NWO hivemind? If big tech has anything to do with it, yes.
ReplyDeleteAb-so-LUTE-ly YES!
DeleteBUT in the long run nothing will be able to kill the Holy Spirit who dwells in us, and eventually the dynamic this Unimpeachable, Undeniable Presence implements will never allow itself to be subjugated completely to the Forces of Darkness.
The fires of Resistance and Rebellion aganst tyranny and degradation may remain banked, and merely smolder, hardly noticeable for decades, –– even for aeons ––, but they can never be wholly extinguished.
"If ye have faith, even so much as a grain of mustard seed, ye can move mountains."
We'd do well to revive and recultivate that article of faith, because IT was the primary thing that enabled Western Civilization to thrive, prosper and become great in the first place.
Losing faith is certain to be our ownfall.
Z... you said, "people barely feel the happy touch of a real page as we turn it in a good book..."
ReplyDeleteThis might be one of the saddest bits of change we're living through. If people are not reading substantive books, it's not just America in trouble, it's the entire world. There's only so much content you can read, highlight, and reflect on using electronic means.
Some days you just need the feel of real paper between your fingers.
This broke a few hours ago:
ReplyDeleteQuest Diagnostics Says Up to 12 Million Patients May Have Had Financial, Medical, Personal Information Breached: It includes credit card numbers and bank account information, according to a filing.
Read it and weep.
Many millions of Americans have laboratory diagnostics (e.g., blood work) done by Quest Diagnostics. I know that both Mr. AOW and I have had such blood work done there. And we have also paid Quest's bills via credit card and e-check.
As the Pennsylvania Dutch are reputed to have said:
ReplyDelete"The farther ahead we go, the behinder we get."
YUP! That's because we strive to conquer everything BUT our Fallen Human Nature.
The key to our Salvation as a species is not PHYSICAL, it is SPIRITUAL.
This is just another piece of the puzzle, you know the one for everyone---the ~NEW ONE WORLD ORDER~.
ReplyDeleteDo you think after the masses have debt they did not put themselves into bankrupt, but Thieves did it to us from identity theft.
AND THEN COMES DEBTORS PRISON!!!!!
And then there is the comment I made a while back about
diseases once put off here in the Great U.S.A. > ARE BACK!
Herding the masses to BEG for Obama Care.
We Need To Refer to Nancy Polosi--"Typhoid Nancy"- NOW!
TsWs
:P
ReplyDeleteNot enlightening. Not instructive. Not amusing. Rather stupid in fact, and orderline offensive.
DeleteWhy did you link it?