By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com
Graduation season. Parties, commencements, speeches and lots and lots of photos. Recently, I loaded all of the pictures onto a PC and saved them into a folder, digitally labeled and timestamped, for posterity. The next day, I noticed a message from Microsoft. It said: “Click here to see the photo album we created for you!” I clicked and saw the very same photos I had loaded just hours before. However, I never requested for my personal memories to be shared, let alone arranged into an album organized by the company whose operating system runs my computer. Evidently, somewhere a while back, a box must have been checked, or unchecked, thus surrendering my right to privacy.
Every day I receive e-mail requests from Linkedin.com, Facebook and other networking websites to follow, like, or join, with people I am actually acquainted with in the real world. The messages ask me if I “know” them as I see their photos and information along with the opportunity to electronically consummate with them, should I so choose.
Except I don’t Facebook, am not Linkedin, and wouldn’t care to Twitter to save my life. Neither do I Snap-a-gram or Insta-chat. But I do e-mail, text, blog, and surf all throughout the Ethernetic Webisphere. Furthermore, in three dimensions, I also shake hands, pat backs, punch shoulders and give hugs whenever I can. Nonetheless, in so doing, I do wonder how all these internet applications and websites find me. I assume they identify the connections to round off established social circles via my e-mail as accessed through the shared contact listings of those who know me.
One time I was having lunch out of town with a friend when he looked up to the waitress and said that he knew her parents. Because she had never seen him before, she seemed somewhat startled, shocked in fact, until he explained how he knew all about her from her parent’s various postings on Facebook. I also had a friend once tell me how the Facebook “Memories” program resent an embarrassing message and photo he had posted years ago while extremely intoxicated. Evidently, Facebook doesn’t forget.
On another occasion I received a call from someone who needed a ride home. No problem, except they were located two hours away from the city where we both lived. Fortunately though, when they called, I was not far from them. When I asked how they knew I was in town, they said they saw a snapshot of me that my cousin’s wife had posted on Facebook a few minutes before. Later, when I asked to see the photo during our ride home, I saw an aerial view of myself sitting around a fire-pit with my cousin. It was taken from the deck above where we were sitting and without our knowledge.
It is a small world, and getting smaller. Indeed.
Someone who once worked for me fell ill on Christmas day several years ago and was taken to the emergency room of our local hospital. The doctor identified an abdominal abscess and immediately prescribed the proper course of treatment. None of that seemed out of the ordinary until it was discovered that the doctor did all of it while working at a hospital in New Zealand; half a globe and seven time-zones away. My friend literally received her prognosis on Christmas from a doctor living in tomorrow.
These are just a few of the examples I was reminded of while recently reading a seemingly prophetic book called “The Circle”, by Dave Eggars. Published in 2013, the story fictionalizes the actual, and now common, experiences as described above. In fact, if I was paranoid, I would swear the narrative was nothing more than a CIA commissioned psyop designed to soothe the masses into the inevitable future of progressively encroaching electronic enslavement. The movie, which I did not see, came out in April of this year and starred Tom Hanks and Emma Watson.
The story centers around a young millennial in her mid-twenties and just a few years out college, who lands a universally coveted job at The Circle, a high-tech firm along the lines of Google, Apple, and Facebook combined into a facility housing 10,000+ employees and daily growing. The self-contained complex is divided into the separate ages of Mankind with names like The Enlightenment, The Renaissance, Industrial Revolution, et al.
With near monopolies in the search engine, free e-mail and cell-phone texting software markets, the Circle is run by “Three Wise Men”, one of which developed TruYou, a ubiquitous online platform, which combined social media profiles, payment systems, passwords, e-mail, user names, and virtually every other online application into a single, unified operating system:
TruYou – one account, one identity, one password, one payment system, per person…. Your devices knew who you were, and your one identity – the TruYou, unbendable and unmaskable – was the person paying, signing up, responding, viewing and reviewing, seeing and being seen. You had to use your real name, and this was tied to your credit cards, your bank, and thus paying for anything was simple. One button for the rest of your life online.
Eggers, Dave. (2013). “The Circle”, First Vintage Books Editions, May 2014, page 21-22
The world of The Circle allows people around the globe to interface online via biometrics, including facial and voice recognition. Tablets are provided to schoolchildren complete with cloud technology; and the employees of the company are offered comprehensive healthcare with wrist monitors to measure all bodily functions. In the health center and all around the campus, signs remind those in The Circle of simple, yet comprehensive principles in the form of direct aphorisms:
ALL THAT HAPPENS MUST BE KNOWN
TO HEAL WE MUST KNOW. TO KNOW WE MUST SHARE.
Like Google’s real-life successful enterprise to digitally map the entire earth, so do those in The Circle engage in various ancillary projects like counting all of the grains of sand in the Sahara desert and photographing every tree in the Amazon. One of The Circle’s Three Wise Men even commissions a team of high-tech savants to develop a state-of-the-art submarine to explore the earth’s deepest ocean trench in a manner eerily reminiscent of Elon Musk’s (Tesla) and Jeff Bezos’ (Amazon.com) private endeavors to dominate outer space.
Also similar to Google’s and Microsoft’s global educational initiatives to wire every child on earth into the matrix, the electronic tentacles of The Circle also reach into schools across the world. On The Circle campus there is a building called the “Protagorian Pavilion” with a granite slab out front that states: “humans are the measure of all things.” Although not clearly stated as such in the book, this is an obvious tribute to the Greek sophist, Protagoras, who said that “man is the measure of all things”. The Circle, therefore, utilizes a software platform named ClassRank whereby students are ranked in every state and nation according to test results, class percentile, the school’s relative academic strength, and other factors against any variation of socioeconomic and demographic classification.
The Circle’s own employees are identified according to an application called PartiRank which is based on digital participation, and social media integration. In The Circle, the highest ideals are recognized as Passion, Participation and Transparency. This is manifested in the form of fictional $59 satellite-operated, concealed cameras that can be wirelessly positioned, then connected to social media where people can “like” each other to receive access to each and every device.
Ostensibly, the ubiquitous video network could be used to prevent human rights violations, and eliminate crime, in every nation of the world. The Circle named their ever-burgeoning visual grid, “SeeChange“; and it would most likely give GoPro the shutters, if not underexposure, or premature calibration.
As one of the Three Wise Men of The Circle, played by Tom Hanks in the film, tells the female protagonist in the narrative:
But my point is, what if we ALL behaved as if we were being watched? It would lead to a more moral way of life. Who would do something unethical or immoral or illegal if they were being watched? If they’re illegal money transfer was being tracked? If they’re blackmailing phone call was being recorded? If their stick-up at the gas station was being filmed by a dozen cameras, and even the retinas identified during the robbery? If their philandering was being documented in a dozen ways?
…we would finally be compelled to be our best selves. And I think people would be relieved. There would be this phenomenal global sigh of relief. Finally, finally, we can be good. In a world where bad choices are no longer an option, we have no choice BUT to be good. Can you imagine?”
Eggars, “The Circle”, pg. 292
The Circle measures all things for the good of mankind. And, in the book, the end-goals are the completion of “circles”. There is a brief mention of CircleMoney designed to eliminate the need for paper cash and curtail crime; a program entitled TruYouth whereby microchips are embedded into children for safety and tracking purposes, thus circumventing any kidnapping attempts; a smartphone software application called Homie, that scans the barcodes of all the products in one’s house so it can reorder as needed; solar-powered drones that can “travel unlimited distances, across continents and seas”; PerfectPast where billions of internet users fill in historical gaps by loading photos and information allowing The Circle to utilize facial recognition software, and other diverse tracking systems to match and make connections to multitudinous historical happenings known and unknown; WeaponSensor that “registers the entry of any gun into any building”; and SoulSearch which utilizes the Circle’s tracking systems, and the worldwide populace, to locate any missing fugitive within minutes.
In addition, there are other law enforcement tools offered by The Circle including one which identifies previous criminals, and the nature of their past crimes, by assigning colors to their physical forms as viewed through the retinal software of the police. At The Circle, the signs are clear. They say:
SECRETS ARE LIES
SHARING IS CARING
PRIVACY IS THEFT
As mentioned before, healthcare is a priority to those in The Circle. This is evidenced by a complete health-data program which monitors all employees at the Circle in real time. A health summit of sorts is also revealed where the leaders of “all the major health insurance companies, World health agencies, Centers for Disease Control, and every significant pharmaceutical company” meet at on the Circle campus and agree to universally shared information. This is viewed as the completion of another “circle”.
Of course, when there were those who expressed concerns over fears of potential totalitarianism, the protestations were summarily dismissed as the ravings of “lunatics” donning “tinfoil hats”; a description which, most interestingly, escapes the understanding of the story’s female, millennial protagonist.
…of COURSE it will work, they said – and when it does, you’ll finally have a fully engaged populace, and when you do, the country and the world will hear from the youth, and their inherent idealism and progressivism will upend the planet.
Eggars, “The Circle”, pg. 402
Near the end of the book, the idea is presented to use the TruYou system to integrate with the government as a form of voter registration, tax collection, payment of fines and even as a means to require mandatory voting by 100% of the citizenry; thus creating a perfect democracy, saving the government billions and eliminating lobbyists, polls, and perhaps even the need for Congress.
… and she thought of that painting of the Constitutional Convention, all those men in powdered wigs and waistcoats, standing stiffly, all of them wealthy white men who were only passably interested in representing their fellow humans. They were purveyors of an innately flawed kind of democracy, where only the wealthy were elected, where their voices were heard loudest, where they passed their seats in Congress to whatever similar entitled person they deemed appropriate.
Eggars, “The Circle”, pg. 403
Yet the new system “would explode it all” and was viewed as “the only chance at direct democracy the world had ever known”. This is presented as the final step of closing The Circle. To the enthusiastic employees it meant:
“Everyone on Earth has a Circle account!
“The Circle solves world hunger.”
“No data, human or numerical or emotional or historical, is ever lost again.”
“The Circle helps me find myself”.
Naïve? Perhaps. But are utopian dreams ever considered impractical in reality? Obviously not, especially when considering Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, and his recently stated desire for universal income.
Yet, the chief architect of The Circle, and one of the Three Wise Men, said it this way:
….if you can control the flow of information, you can control everything. You can control most of what anyone sees and knows. If you want to bury some piece of information, permanently, that’s two seconds’ work. If you want to ruin anyone, that’s five minutes’ work. How can anyone rise up against the Circle if they control all the information and access to it?
Eggars, “The Circle”, pg. 487
That’s it, right there, isn’t it? The old maxim of: Knowledge is power. In the book, this axiom was exemplified when one of the Three Wise Men was shown to have the ability to scandalize any U.S. congressman who threatened to apply antitrust laws to break up The Circle’s monopoly. Perhaps this is an example of art imitating real life?
Given the early twenty-first century revelations provided by the NSA whistleblower, Edward Snowden, could it explain why Chief Justice John Roberts wrote both the majority and dissenting opinions on the initial Obamacare ruling, which caused even liberal media outlets to label as swing justice? Could it explain why the establishment Republican’s refuse to repeal Obamacare now? Is it why the swamp will never be drained in Washington DC?
Any technocratic, utopian dreams of Collectivism in the extreme, contains the hope that complete transparency will eradicate lies and establish accountability. And with no lies there will remain only justice. See something, say something. Security? Or privacy? Given the duality of mankind, these two concepts have become mutually exclusive. Safety, in the modern world of mass destruction, must always take precedence. Right?
Yet, this is the real problem with dystopian tyranny. What is good for thee, is not for me. The elite cynically oppress the proles while telling them it’s for their own good; for their safety, or for the good of Mankind overall. While, at the same time, they shroud themselves in secrecy and corruption, shielding their own asses, and wallets, with the unadulterated power of an avant-garde, weapons-grade, nation-state working in collusion with multifarious, multi-national corporations.
Even after American citizens paying full price for products today, or through taking advantage of “free” services offered by U.S. corporations, these companies in turn, demand we “click” to “accept” the “terms” of our surrender; including our Fourth Amendment rights and usually in deference to the proprietorial protection of the corporate entity’s intellectual property rights; and, always without an attorney present.
Then, global corporate monoliths like Microsoft, Apple, Samsung, Amazon, and Facebook, additionally, share our personal information with the NSA, or CIA, or FBI, et al, all for our own protection, and the common good.
Yet, somehow, elite billionaires like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk regally rise above the fray and escape the daily drudgery of the little peoples. They preach diversity and open borders from within their gated compounds; and advocate equality while claiming some are more equal than others.
The author of “The Circle”, Dave Eggars, while preaching on the positives of Hillary Clinton in 2016, once called then presidential candidate, Donald Trump, a world-ending meteorite. Moreover, a peculiar and trivial tidbit here: On the final track of the musician Beck’s 2006 album “The Information”, entitled “The Horrible Fanfare/Landslide/Exoskeleton“, you can hear the audio of Eggars and Hollywood director, Spike Jonze, responding to Beck’s question, “What would the ultimate record that ever could possibly be made sound like?”
Interestingly enough, Spike Jonze later wrote and directed the 2013 movie “Her”, that has been described as a film depicting the “essential need for sociability and love uncomfortably linking it with our antisocial dependency on technology.”
Eggars, in “The Circle”, that was coincidentally published in the same year as Jonze’s movie, describes a scene where a family friend becomes frustrated with the female protagonist’s addiction to technology:
No one’s forcing you to do this. You willingly tie yourself to these leashes. And you willingly become utterly socially autistic. You no longer pick up on basic communication clues. You’re at a table with three humans, all of them are looking at you and trying to talk to you, and you’re staring at a screen, searching for strangers in Dubai.
Eggars, “The Circle”, pg. 262
It is later in the story, though, where the heroine describes why most people voluntarily yoke themselves to technology’s electronic chains:
….most people would trade everything they know, everyone they know – they’d trade it all to know they’ve been seen, and acknowledged, that they might even be remembered. We all know we die. We all know the world is too big for us to be significant. So all we have is the hope of being seen, or heard, even for a moment.
Eggars, “The Circle”, pg. 289
In the age of dash-cam videos broadcasting worldwide the drunken decline of professional golfers, almost one- third of all internet users now view videos on YouTube, a subsidiary of Google, the largest internet search-engine company on the planet. Beginning in 2015, YouTube had attained such high-priority status that they could require quid-quo-pro demands to their content providers whereby their videos would be removed unless creators subscribed to the new “YouTube Red” service agreement for a $9.99 a month subscription. What a great way to launch a new product. Simply demand that your customers have to buy it under penalty of duress. Why didn’t Obama and the Democrats think of this when they launched The Affordable Healthcare Act? Oh wait.
The top-three most-visited websites on the internet today consists of Google, YouTube and Facebook; a search engine, a video sharing platform and a social-media network. And, as of last year, Apple was the most profitable company in the world, raking in 79% of all global profits. Like government, they are all continually enlarging and growing more powerful every minute of every day, with no end in sight. They are expanding circles.
As one of the Three Wise Men of The Circle, tells the protagonist of the story:
A circle is the strongest shape in the universe. Nothing can beat it, nothing can improve upon it, nothing can be more perfect. And that’s what we want to be: perfect. So any information that eludes us, anything that’s not accessible, prevents us from being perfect.
Eggars, “The Circle”, pg. 289
And,
I truly believe if we have no path but the right path, the best path, then that would present a kind of ultimate and all-encompassing relief. We don’t have to be tempted by darkness anymore… I think we can be better. I think we can be perfect or near to it. And when we become our best selves, the possibilities are endless. We can solve any problem. We can cure any disease, and hunger, everything, because we won’t be dragged down by all our weaknesses, our petty secrets, our hoarding of information and knowledge. We will finally realize our potential.
Eggars, “The Circle”, pg. 293-294
Yes, utopian dreams do often take the form of tunnel-vision, like gazing through portholes into oceans of possibilities. The circle can represent perfection, a distant twinkling star, mysterious and interminable; comprised of the irrational and transcendental number that is Pi. A circle can also be a hurricane, or a corral where horses are broke, then trained into submission. Or a cage, a noose, or an eye. In any event, within modern society, all of the circles are near complete. To infinity, and beyond.
“The Circle measures all things for the good of mankind.”
That gave me a good laugh and then I stopped reading.
Why would you stop reading? You missed the entire point, Stupid.
OK, I’ll finish the read later since you must consider it to be so important.
The Circle is the new reality. You MUST have a Facebook account if you want to read a news story. That or register and have a password for every newspaper you might ever care to read.
I can no longer access Facebook chat on my iPhone because I have forgotten my Apple password and must download the Facebook Messenger ‘app’ from the Apple ‘app’ store. Think about that. Imagine if I bought a car from Ford and Ford changed the software they used on MY car and told me I must get new software from Toyota or MY car will no longer work!
We are slowly being ensnared in this electronic web and there is no way out! It is the most important development of my life.
Unit, you say “It is the most important development of my life.”
You really need to get out more.
I hope he meant “sinister” but I agree with you to a point. I simply decided if I couldn’t just text people because they have Messenger, which is FB related somehow… then they didn’t need to hear from me.
Turns out the brave new world snuck in with the cowardly nerds.
Do you ever use Drudgereport.com? There are other places to get news besides MSNBC.com, ABC.com, CBS.com, NBC.com and PBS.com; you just have to go out and look for them.
Way to go Un. This is really a great offering. And the underlying premise of their efforts, as Dick Cheney put it, is total information awareness. Now that they have it we still have banks stealing money. We still have polititions having sex with children. We still have lunatics and they still kill people. Their premise is wrong. Just because you know everything does not mean that human nature changes. Just because you know you are being watched does not mean that humans won’t cheat.
Psychopaths want to watch your every action for nefarious reasons; if they were really after terrorist, how could so many muslims be free to kill dozens of people every day?
“Evidently, somewhere a while back, a box must have been checked, or unchecked, thus surrendering my right to privacy.”
If you’re running Windows 10 you should be aware that it is the worlds largest spyware program.
It even stores data on your computer that it can send to other computers requesting it so Microsoft doesn’t have to use their own servers to store it.
They assume your permission to do all sorts of things with your computer behind your back unless you have specifically denied them the right to do it, and they do it in ways that, at least technically, allow you to decline but are so slickly done almost no one does because they don’t realize it.
There are programs, both paid and shareware, that are available to clean all this stuff out for you if you don’t know how or don’t have the ability to find out how to do it manually.
I read some shit about Win10 awhile back. One thing I read was that an auto-update of Win7 might install Win10 on the computer being “updated”. A few of my computers run Windows because of the hassle it would be to write drivers for some of the more expensive hardware I use with those computers, but what I read did inspire me to make a few changes.
The two computers I use most in my business now have XP installed where they originally used Win7. The one I have in my home office for my wife to use runs Win7. All the Windows computers have auto updates disabled and all have Malwarebytes installed. The other computers I use to surf the net and do my purchasing online run Linux distros.
For now, Windows is a necessary evil, but as I get time to work, I intend to eliminate the use of MS software altogether.
FWIW,
I haven’t done it in quite a while so I don’t know if it is still valid, but XP could still be updated long after it was no longer updated or supported for PC users by using some simple code that convinced Microsoft that it was an bank auto teller machine doing the update and not a PC.
Seems that the teller machines ran on a version of XP and it wasn’t practical to try changing them to newer versions of the OS so they maintained security updates for the XP based systems for them.
I ended up going directly from XP to 7, it was not an easy chore but ended up working out with little loss of anything important. I remain using 7 since I see no advantage at all to going to anything else for my purposes and some of my essential software simply will not run on 10.
Actually, I don’t want their updates for XP. My XP machines don’t have much internet activity and their only function is to print on laser printers and generate documents for use on my other machines. I can import documents to be printed and save documents created on the XP machines to a flash drive for use on the Win7 or linux machines.
Win10 is also a data hog.
I live where there is no wired internet, so my connection is wireless and metered, but, Win10 is not designed for this type of connection. it is designed to continuously update, and also upload all your personal data, all the time.
There are a lot of settings you can check off to try to keep the data usage low, but it does not seem to matter.
anon,
might you be persuaded to expand on your
hint? Please.
“But my point is, what if we ALL behaved as if we were being watched? It would lead to a more moral way of life. Who would do something unethical or immoral or illegal if they were being watched?” That’s what Jesus Christ and Santa Claus are for. We don’t need google doing that. Here’s a creepy one, one of my employees just told me. Friends of his were discussing a product called damp-rid. I don’t know what it is. When they next went on their computer, they started getting ads for…… damp-rid. The machine picked up their conversation. Must have checked a box.
Great article, Thanks! The simmering question underneath it all is:
Can man attain perfection, or are we damaged goods to begin with?
History so far has proven the latter, but time will tell, maybe we are essentially good after all. This question underlies the current progressive/independence debate going on today. Progressives who consider man to be capable of obtaining perfection, embrace the ideas of The Circle and in deed, are the force behind globalization today. Those independent thinking old white men of a few hundred years ago, saw man’s darker side and developed checks and balances to distribute power across branches of government, rather than see it settle into the hands of a select few. Old fashioned ideas? As Google, Facebook etc. consolidate power, the final verdict will be manifest, the only question I have is, will I be alive to see it?
By “checks and balances” NS, you must be referring to the Robert’s headed US Supreme Court and the ruling on Obama care. Works great just as intended! What a country. The best government money can buy.
“Can man attain perfection, or are we damaged goods to begin with?”
———–
Of course we are damaged goods. God gave us free will which negates perfection. The churches love that since it allows them to preach the concept of salvation. So the premise of “The Circle” cannot be achieved, thankfully. Who wants to become a mindless robot? Oh yeah, the transhumanists like Elon Musk and Ray Kurzweil, that’s who.
The mega corporations like Faceplant, Macrosoft, and Fooltube only care about power and profits. Their CEOs profess social justice but are simply corporate fascists in disguise.
Great article, Doug, and I’ll post it on Straight Line Logic later today. Your intellectual curiosity is boundless and your connections and contrasts are fresh and unexpected. A Straight Line is the antithesis of a circle, which makes me hopelessly out of step. That makes two of us, but as your article makes clear, the inside of the circle is nothingness. We’ll all be “seen,” but we’ll have nothing worth seeing.
Great post Uncola. I’m wondering reference this… “Finally, finally, we can be good. ”
Who defines “good” in that scenario?
Unattainable!
Great analysis.
I now have to get my new laptop checked since it has Windows 10 and now I know why I get all the stupid emails from accounts I closed or deactivated long ago.
Someone told me that any geometric shape in the world can be formed with triangles, even circles. I don’t know if you ever read the little book “flatland” but I think the idea is mentioned there. Since the lowest two dimensional being there is the triangle, ahem… yes female… it seemed to me an important point in a world where women were the social networking agents for culture. Written in the late 19th century, the imagery is both simple and profound.
What I bring to this discussion is a simple idea I formed as a young girl reading it at the request of my aunt, a spinster schoolteacher with an unnatural interest in string art and geometry. If women are triangles, composed of only three points instead of higher level shapes, then the ability to link on three points with other triangles to form any shape in the universe should make them even more powerful than the rulers of flatland… the Circles.
Of course, that was when I was a kid being told I could think whatever I wanted, long before the realities of the world intruded on my imagination. But my point is this: If this new electronic intrusive world can’t be defeated on its own terms, CHANGE THE TERMS.
I now need to have my cyber-aware son explain this Windows 10 business to me and decide if I want to get the uninvited nosy nosensteins out of my memory bank.
Good points for a jellyfish.
http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/~banchoff/Flatland/
Nice one Unco, All our worst nightmares are becoming real life.
From the movie.”But my point is what if we all behaved as if we were being watched? It would lead to a more moral way of life. Who would do something unethical, immoral or Illegal if they knew they were being watched?”
That sounds sweet and nice, except we all know for certain that the (owners) cameras would somehow be down for service, or broke anytime there was a question about their behavior.
I loathe fagbook and little zuckie. It turns people into mindless little retards. Although to be fair these people were pretty suggestible to begin with. I have a sister who I swear has lost 20-30 IQ points since making fagbook her entire life. She has been banned from the doom stead in perpetuity because she refuses to leave her phone in her car. She wants pictures and videos of everything. Her life is one big appropriation.
As an aside we just had my cousin and his wife here for a wonderful weekend.No tee vee, no phones, no ((un))social media. Just good food, good booze, good conversations. like in the old days when get togethers consisted of people talking and listening to each other without interrupting.
Most of the time I am using a Chromebook that I have had for maybe two years. I have never committed to the damn thing and ONLY use it as a guest. I have email at the office, NO private email period in my household and NO social media whatsoever.
I don’t have a problem with requests from Linkedin or anyone else as I am just a guest. Works for me.
Whenever I post these essays, I always look forward to see what comes back. So far, I have been very humbled, and honored, to read the commentary above. The fascinating perspectives, insights, references, tips, and ideas have been pretty spectacular this morning, and have already launched several new lines of thought in me noggin. Thank you so far. I really appreciate it.
Thanks Uncola,
for telling us what time it is in a clever well
written manner. Here we are, self sacrificing
to be “known” for a moment here and there.
However, various forums/clubs have existed
(where like the like minded share their interests)
forever. Yet, computer communication does belong
to the providers of free services.
Forums like TBP go to controversial topics…
consider Holly O and Stuckie. Did Stuck actually
tell us he is restricted (by law/under threat) to
posting once a month on TBP? I must have read that
wrong.
Most of us less clever PC users are responding and
purchasing and communicating and banking even,
essentially under a single account. Wow, not good.
Facebook, posting pictures of everything, Linked in
etc., Google (startpage) searches, and you tube
viewing and commenting, and Amazon purchasing =
a voluntary give over of our privacy. We are doing this
to ourselves.
The thought police, “hate” speech laws, PC limiting
expression, = we are in for it soon. The hammer will
drop. In the meantime we can be grouped and
marked. This is our world. Really, the only
antidote would be to restrict or eliminate our on-line
presence. Another tool would be to stick to polite
noncontroversial speech. What fun would that be?
That is a good rumor, Suzanna. Stucky is just limited in his ability to get online. The legal issue he referred to happened in 2011 and you can find an article/post called “Free Stucky” here that Admin posted making fun of his experience.
Stucky has his hands full with his elderly parents and his move to greener pastures. I think.
In a hundred years or less, this is where we are headed:
“Tech-proficient generally meant cerebral neural implants and direct interface capabilities within the general citizenry, since most jobs required direct links with computers and access to the VR facilities of the Net… most kids got their first implants at age three, before starting school… just to handle the volumes of data they were expected to learn… Direct linkages were even more necessary once you hit flight school, and had to learn how to handle a fighter directly, mind-to-AI mind. Gray still hated the whole idea of having an implant, of having a tiny AI daemon in his skull, watching everything he did, recording, intruding. There were protocols for shutting the thing off when you wanted privacy… but the mere act of shutting down was recorded and could be questioned later…”
Ian Douglas, Earth Strike, 2009, Harper/Collins
Like cloning, the Web, organ transplantation, and gene modification (CRISPR) tech, when it can be done, it will be done. If not here, then in China, Russia, or some other country.
How we deal with it is the only thing in question.
Great article! Thank you!
I don’t know why people use fakebook. Google is easier to understand, since no other search algo seems to perform as well as Google. That being said, I hate google. I hate the other search engines based on their poor and unreliable performance. I hate google because they’re a bunch of bastards. That’s why I like DuckDuckGo. At least that one is ostensibly privacy-friendly.
Youtube is entertaining, but the content is obviously changing and becoming shitty. You can trace this in the last year or two with some content providers, like StormCloudsGathering quitting entirely, and others, like PewdiePie having meltdowns on camera, and still others, like VSauce embracing Red. Youtube is nuts if they think they’re going to pull off a crackdealer-type deal and go from free to charging for the videos now. I ain’t paying for what I can get free elsewhere, like bittorrent, or other sharing sites. And none of the stuff on youtube is worth paying for, anyway. I like a lot of random crap, but I don’t need to pay for MattPatt’s vids, cute cat videos, or idiots acting like idiots.
‘The Circle?’ No screams about the implicit anti-semitism, yet? Shocking.
On the opposite side of the privacy argument, I have a college buddy who was a govt contractor who used to work for a really sick, twisted weirdo who was an ex-marine and a tranny. My buddy told me he was absolutely crazy and an awful leader who lived a sordid hedonistic lifestyle going to BDSM clubs and hosting parties with prostitutes, strippers, and other trannies, and doing hosted sex-parties for paying customers. He brought this stuff to work and tried to get my buddy to join him. I had a hard time understanding how that dude could keep a security clearance, but my buddy explained to me the primary interest is not being blackmailed or extorted, so I guess if you put all your garbage out on the sidewalk for everyone to look at, there’s nothing left to hide. Perhaps, in this new world, true freedom can only be achieved not by hiding your secrets, but putting them (or even worse false secrets) right out up front. Maybe it’s freakshows, like the tranny guy, who are the free ones, because at that point there’s nothing left to lose?
For instance, instead of trying to hide behind tiny shreds of privacy and unreliable proxies and not using ubiquitous websites and apps, use them all, and construct for yourself the absolutely most embarrassing profile possible for them to parse. Admit to your hairloss fears and look up anti-fat pills and miracle dick pills and enroll in stop-smoking support groups online and join AA-type social sites and put right out in public your almost unstoppable urge to masturbate on the bus and your never-ending urges to molest little boys and admit to crimes that occured before you were even born, like killing JFK and kidnapping the Lindberg Baby, and like hard-core muslim clerics and sign up for cheater websites and so on and so forth. Get on all the KKK mailing lists. Order really crazy sex toys and inflatable sheep off Amazon. Go to Ikickcats.com, or whatever, and list your love of awful things. Have a reverse electronic tent revival where you embrace satan and all his ills and dump normalcy and decency to be the most twisted online person ever.
I think it was Pahlaniuk that said “It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.” Once you create the most awful, terrible profile for the world to see, there’s nothing left to lose. They got it all. No data left to mine. No extreme too extreme, no interest left to find, and no reason to observe you anymore. They got all of it. Your Room 101 opened and revealed.
I love my privacy, despite the fact I know I have none, but maybe I’m doing it wrong. At this point, it seems like its’ either unplugging entirely and becoming a digital Un-Person, or becoming Hitler/Manson/Satan/Trump.
Nah, that’s a waste of fuckin time. Even if they ain’t out to get you, that doesn’t mean that they won’t.
http://www.cc.com/video-clips/az3sy8/chappelle-s-show-if-the-internet-were-a-real-place
If the Internet were a Real Place…
That was pretty funny
Knowledge is power*…when deployed in (& against) the vacuum of unexamined lives. Unexamined examiners examining the unexamined “works,” until it doesn’t. Will technology close that circle? Only if it gets to that singularity level, bypassing people. Then, likely, the machine will examine thusly: You have been weighed, you have been measured, and you have been found wanting. ~ A Knight’s Tale by way of Daniel
Despite it being nothing but a bells & whistles deathwish, the wiseguys won’t stop trying to make manifest their fevered dream control freak voyeur god. Too bad they’re incapable of self-examination & so unable to cut to the suicide chase.
My money’s on the examined lives…the ones who have seen, acknowledged & remembered themselves.
(We watched “Hidden Figures” the other night. The movie treatment struck me as “the Egyptians were black (Africans)” & lets – we must – tear down the Confederate monuments. But the protagonists were real, to some not unembellished extent. What always strikes me is the brilliant people, geniuses, who only too happily sell themselves to warlords. Idiot savant brilliancy. Who’s afraid of Rainman? I’d be much more afraid of Virginia Woolf. Lol….)
*Is crude in the ground power? Is it wealth? Is it anything at all except, possibly – but not inevitably, potential?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAjV47wKjh8
Yes indeed, some folks think this could work. But complexity is its own undoing.
All this requires uninterrupted electrical power 24/7/365 and 1/4; it requires design, maintenance, updating; it requires cooperation, if only by the ones who don’t understand what it is doing to one’s soul.
But healthy, happy, sane human beings require privacy, seclusion and peace&quiet; when you cram too many rats in a cage, they become dysfunctional, fail to breed properly and die even when provided sufficient resources (nominal food, water & shelter). Cramming all humans into an electronic cage, can you foresee the results?
And how long before those resourceful humans start:
– Neo-luddite activities (Smash the transformers, cut the cables! Bring on the unobserved night!)
– Building areas forbidden to cameras, phones and those who like them?
– Setting off EMP devices randomly?
When the Crunch hits, it’s quite likely the grid will go down; the only electric power available to the masses may be whatever wind / solar / wood-powered boiler sources they can operate and maintain themselves. In that case, Zuck may be sitting there cursing the darkness that settles over his electronic surveillance machine as the hungry masses chop down the door looking for food.
James – If I ever do decide to write that next, great, post-American novel, and decide to call it “Bring on the Unobserved Night”, would I have to dedicate the entire book to you? Or would a brief thank you in the author’s description at the end be sufficient? Just checking. 🙂
I believe in value given for value received (your article above). Free of charge, no credit needed!
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/06/04/christian-farmer-barred-michigan-market-views-gay-marriage/
“What would the ultimate record that ever could possibly be made sound like?”
Actually, the ultimate record was made quite some time ago. It’s called “Trout Mask Replica” and it’s by Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band. The funniest, weirdest, most tragic, perplexing, side-splitting, heart-breaking thing ever put on wax. It’s very musically complex and ambitious, though, so it takes a while to get used to. The first time most people hear it, they think it’s insane gibberish. But be patient, keep listening, and you’ll discover the “ultimate record”.
I wish I could remember who it was and when I was told that “information is the most valuable commodity in the world”. I know it was at least 30 years ago because it was 30 years ago that I was first offered a grocery store discount card. I took the application home and filled it out using totally fictitious info. I’ve continued to do the same thing all over the internet. I refuse to give out info I deem unnecessary in real life too. The amazing part of that is that people doing the requesting seem to be taken aback by it like it’s perfectly natural to give out such info. The funny part is that although I refuse to fill out all, or parts of various forms, no one ever questions it.
I’m sure TPTB can easily match my IP to every other IP address I’ve ever used and connect everything I’ve ever posted or looked at to me if they want to but fuck ’em, make ’em work for it!
I haven’t seen the movie and quite forgot about it after initially hearing about it, but after reading this, I downloaded the book. It’s disgusting.
The first part of it sounds interesting, like a strange high tech place we’ve heard about before, such as Google’s sleep pods, the exercise areas and sports games during work, the weird meetings, etc. But it starts to get creepy as the main character realizes, more experiences than realizes, that the social media aspect of her work dominates her life and is unavoidable. First, it’s the surprise revelation she’s forced to track countless feeds of social media sites and comment threads and if you do not post enough comments (wear enough pieces of flair), you’re not contributing to the group and you’re hurting the group by not participating. Then, it gets worse when she’s called to a meeting with her boss and a hurt person she doesn’t know who had a brunch she didn’t attend. Apparently, she was invited several times to attend this brunch due to the social media algo finding mention in her past that she visited Portugal, but she wasn’t paying attention to it because she had thousands of messages to go through and missed it. The host of the lunch apparently had what was considered a reasonable grievance against her, a person he never met, because she didn’t attend. Strangely, she was expected to know what the problem was before she was informed of it. She pretended she missed it because she was new and didn’t know the guy, which helped save her. Then, they had to hug and an HR report was filed stating she was now great friends with the brunch host. Reading this made me want to slap the fictional people involved. I’m only a few chapters into this and it’s making me sick. I know it’s fictional, but I also know in real life there are people just like this and these fucking snowflakes are pathetic.
I suspect the collapse can not come soon enough…
Oh, and the part about tracking all children everywhere to prevent kidnapping is frightening. The solution to the problem, according to one character, is to implant a tracking chip directly into the child’s bones so nobody can remove it. That sounds lovely! Compared to the relatively low threat of kidnapping, the pain of bone implantation (and associated health risks, such as life-long EM exposure) is probably a minor cost to pay for security and peace of mind.
GilbertS definitely reads for comprehension. A+. For anyone else who would like to buy, or download, the book, the embedded “The Circle” link in the above article connects via TBP’s Amazon tab. The 6% kickback helps Admin and The Man With No Name to keep this gig running smooth. Or just use TBP’s Amazon tab. Duh.
That was an exceptional piece that covered things I have been pondering for a very long time, thanks for the effort.
Whenever I hear Utopian prattling I think of this-
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I found the comments about the circle representing perfection to fit the image. Watermelons were perfect for being watermelons and they had their own shape, but then humans made them more better by making them square so you could ship them easily.
Humans would be more better if they weren’t humans, but then they’d be akin to a square watermelon.
The things that make our lives significant and filled with meaning aren’t confined to moments where smiles are spread across our faces in selfies or we upvote something or share. We learn from our mistakes, we become resilient because of our failures, we redeem ourselves through an understanding of our errors and we gain our character through our ability to endure loss.
There is an ebb and a flow in life; a never ending sin wave of comings and goings, ups and downs, good and bad and it is through these natural and necessary processes that we become more fully what we were meant to be. The very idea that human tinkering can fix human nature is absurd beyond comprehension and yet it appears to be with us always.
This too, shall pass.
I saw what you did there. Sine wave? Or sin wave? Which one is the more better application, given the topics being discussed? ?. According to some theologians, this may be the heart of the issue, methinks: Man striving to be as god(s). Thanks HSF
Apples are round. Take a bite. God! Is there anything new under the sun?
I was playing to the back of the room.
“And, as the laughter subsided, it was back to business as usual, at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop…”
“The very idea that human tinkering can fix human nature is absurd beyond comprehension and yet it appears to be with us always.”
Yup. Human nature is not a problem to be fixed. It just is. But, there is no “meant to be,” either. Read ‘em & play ‘em as dealt. But read\play abilities are dealt, too. There is no writing involved.
“what if we ALL behaved as if we were being watched? It would lead to a more moral way of life”.
I disagree with this and this is where the utopia these types desire (zuckerberg, bezos, gates, etc..) turn dangerous. People being the sh!ts that they are and have been forever will continue to be sh!ts and in fact become less moral because they will simply become desensitized to being watched and just say fu<k it watch me be a sh!t you voyeuristic masturbating ahole.
Watch me bang the neighbor's wife and use the cat to wipe my pecker – while you're watching and judging I'm out here not giving a flying fu<k. Zoom in a little closer I've got some peanuts in this pile of sh!t I want you to see.
Morals are for morans.
There are sick and twisted perverts out there who film their evil and broadcast it live.
https://www.rt.com/news/374710-sweden-rape-streamed-facebook/
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-sweden-rape-facebook-idUSKBN17R1S8
It’s hard to decide what to get more upset about: the fact these abominations did this, or the quote from the court:
“The men had denied the charges, saying the woman had given consent to having sex with them. However, the court said the woman had been heavily intoxicated by alcohol and drugs and was in a very vulnerable situation.
“It is not possible for a person in that situation to give consent. They should therefore be held accountable for rape,” said Nils Palbrant, chairman of Uppsala district court chairman, said.”
So now the courts are where we decide, ex post facto, that she did or didn’t give consent? I’m not talking about THIS case, where she obviously didn’t / couldn’t, but the next time you take someone home, can you be sure she won’t decide afterwards that you raped her? Or, isn’t this the case already?
http://www.bluerepublican.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Campus-Sexual-Consent-Form.pdf
I THINK this one’s a joke, but in California, you never know …
They complain about the whigs and yet it is lost to them they want to be the whigs of the new society. They want the power and will pass that power to those of their choosing just like those in the pic of the declaration of independence. They want to control all aspects so they can be the ones starving out the non compliant ones. Like china u cannot buy or travel