Computers are now making decisions about who to kill without the aid of human oversight - to the extent this insanity exists, Steven Hawking has lent his name to a petition of world leaders opposing Artificial Intelligence for drones. Synchronistically during the flight in which I began this essay, the random films available included “AI” - a cute film wherein Pinocchio meets the microprocessor; and the latest from the Terminator franchise in which the former governor of California hams it up on camera for a gazillion(x) wad of $s. “Skynet” is unvanquished; I guess so some bean-counter-intern can practice squeezing cabbage from a turnip. I used to think computers were nothing more than an on/off switch to the Nth power, I’m coming to believe they are more of an effort to squeeze blood out of stone, with us being the stones. Originally heralded as the ultimate in labor saving devices for its ability to save labor as well as calculate Pi to googol decimal places, computers and their stepchild the internet are now the most lauded and overwrought purveyors of pornography our infantile species has managed thus far, (paraphrased out of context from a TED presentation by Clay Shirky). If computer power has enhanced our capacity and perception all that much, how is it no one is computing parallels between the increased rate of destruction of our planet with processor speed or computer memory? How is it possible to have such unparalleled poverty, corruption and war (and fuck Bono’s giddy shilling for ruling class about the any-moment-now party-line end-of-poverty bullshit). How can so many be kept in the dark from a simple addiction to an empty media stream?
Lest you believe me a luddite, this essay is written on a computer and will be published on the internet with little hope of ever reaching print - a great irony to use the same channel which is being used to oppress the best part of humanity with trite trinkets and baubles not dissimilar to what the Dutch paid for Manhattan. Today instead of costume jewelry, the invaders are using virtual puppet shows to captivate consumers, and as Albert Einstein said “manipulate the emotions of the masses and thereby control them.” Nor am I immune to the siren song - the illusion of not being invisible which Zuckerberg and company have so glibly foisted, spliced, conjured in their quest for amassing gobs of pelf at the expense of all which could have been accomplished with this communication technology or might have been developed had we not allowed ourselves to be bamboozled by a bunch avaricious pin heads posing as visionaries. It seems that the more complex our world becomes, the easier it has become for a handful of humans to twist larger and larger bodies of people into a predictable pattern, or at least so predictable as to monetize a keystroke or click of a button. I refuse to be consigned to the pale echo of myself which Zucky and company attempt to constrain into evermore rigid venues stripped of any of the joy and suffering which I prize as evidence of my existence.
While writing this at the eastern edge of Kathmandu valley in Nepal, I had to reconcile an irrational fear and unnecessary anxiety about change to the status quo of a tenuous domestic happiness against the reality of the addition of a calm and compassionate rocket scientist from Kazakhstan into my fantasy cohort of compassionate souls - ostensible champions to an underserved elementary school in semi-rural Nepal. Shakespeare said truth is stranger than fiction, and of all the scenarios and the public notices I’ve viewed and posted on the “internet super highway,” or Zukè`s twisted toll road, my continued astonishment at the richness and complexity of the people I cross paths with and the challenges they face, dwarf any diluted silhouettes contrived by the lords of the data stream. Nor do I see the ham-fisted efforts of digital designers to fashion a narrow gauge description which fits their business model coming close to facilitating the nuance which comes from the skin to skin, breath to breath reality one gains listening, walking and sharing with those in our midst, and I have dear friends I’ve never met, or will possibly ever meet which without the internet would never have been possible. How can we who occupy this wondrous dying planet seize the initiative to exploit technology rather than each other. What irony that an inanimate technology with the capacity to amplify each voice and transform the fractured broken chorus of people kind into a pool of knowledge accessible to each and every hungry mind but is now used as no more than a goat’s bell apprising the lords and masters of our exact whereabouts and activity of each person yoked to a +/- 5v shackle.
Am I shrill in my denunciation of the waste and utter incompetence of current design and architecture of today’s computer interconnections, perhaps. Given the ability of the sirens of media to shout over any and all other voices than those specifically in lockstep with the infantile and grossly irresponsible concept that 1) being like them is a worthy pursuit 2) doing what they say will lead to a seat at the grownup’s table - I may not be shrill enough?
I haven’t written a word in weeks, if not months. There is nothing or anyone to blame, but sitting here searching for words to describe the multitude of experiences and emotions of this journey, I feel weakened. How does this pertain to an essay on the Internet, and why do emotion and personal expression seem so inextricably connected? I just about abandoned this effort to begin emails to people rather than an amorphous dialogue with readers of an indeterminate composition: that anything is "either/or" is part of the indoctrination to on or off species from an analog anatomy.
It is now the next day and my toe is cringing from repeated soaks in saltwater for a hangnail - those funny contradictions, the painful cutting to a “V” of a nail edge that is throbbing to the contrary. I wonder if the tension is analogous to Leonard Cohen’s “bitter searching of the heart,” or when Lao Tzu says “pretty words may be ugly and ugly words may be beautiful”? Writing is an odd balm to the disquiet of sitting in the midst of another culture’s high holiday and knowing so little or being known so little. But somehow this all pertains to the internet, for the content we sift through like children at the seashore sifting through sand for treasures is not within the capacity of the “rainbow makers” of media to provide. It is only within each heart to process or not, to feel pleasure or not - just like the writing discipline for me wicks away the discursive chatter so easily mimicked in the 5 second pageantry scrolling from interminable flicks of the wrist. Nor is it lament I seek to share, but rather a demand on myself for more than the egocentric stroke from yammering on line, or fake feeling of contribution by believing you have more than anyone else no matter how much you give away. Yet oddly coming full circle to what it means to give, and whether this contrivance of broadcast upon which you read this means I have actually shared - you have something you did not have before. I care about that - and you didn’t have it prior to this point in your curiosity.
Is that enough to blow Hurricane Patricia the fuck out before she hits landfall making more rugged a whole lot of already rugged Mexican lives? There is the Lorenz Attractor which says if enough people actually were able to blow hard enough at precisely the correct moment as determined by scientific law the hurricane would cease; however that loving killjoy William Shakespeare got there first - “so near, yet so far. I have to say I’m riding with Lao Tzu on this, for the simple fact that I have no control over any other person. So while I may be willing to blow for the benefit of others, it is more likely the act of expunging my frustration with this semi-cogent diction of addlepation is as close to rabble rousing as I’m going to get. Besides, people mostly look at you as though you’re cray when you stand up in mixed company and declare “hey everybody, listen to Bill Nye the Science Guy and blow hard when he gives the signal”, but then for all you know, I’m hardwired into Google Inc, and have closely coordinated the time of release for this document based on a data feed of what makes people laugh mined from the “youtube” analytics.
note: that derisive snort you just made is enough to avert, not Patricia but the hurricane forming on her heels which would have dwarfed Patricia in its savagery and intensity - I hesitate to say stranger things have happened. but then again I never thought I’d be duped into working for a smarmy Harvard non-grad for laughs because the rat bastard is too cheap to pay me my worth. go figure . .
note: that derisive snort you just made is enough to avert, not Patricia but the hurricane forming on her heels which would have dwarfed Patricia in its savagery and intensity - I hesitate to say stranger things have happened. but then again I never thought I’d be duped into working for a smarmy Harvard non-grad for laughs because the rat bastard is too cheap to pay me my worth. go figure . .
jts
http://josephtstevens.blogspot.com
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com
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