We’ve been dreaming, sleepwalking to avoid our reality of war and strife. As in “Don’t dream it’s over”, we skip the front page and go right to the TV page.
Amuse ourselves to death. Why not. It’s “free” (paid for by programmatic advertisers).
In modern parlance, it means to click on YouTube page – our new TV page – to view virtual signaling which the machine remembers and reflects back to us. As a result, we keep crawling deeper into the tunnel of our own making. It’s 50th anniversary of Future Shock – Toffler’s version of hologram, tele-transportation, self-driving vehicle and prosumer-ism (ghost work).
Re-engineering of future life, non-stop. Next! next: un-filtered then personalized data – sold and resold to spam mailers, till death do us part. In the age of AI, “immortality” might be possible with photoshop and recurrence of content for future post. Andy Warhol was prescient:” In the future, everyone is famous for 15 minutes” (today’s podcast landscape, with unlimited data plan, folks can just yap and yap, in the hopes of being “Liked” 24/7 AI-assisted search – by mistake or on demand).
Exploitation in exchange for “platform”.
The price tag to play the game and play along (for FMO – fear of missing out). To participate in our virtual “community”: 8 hours sleep (off-grid) 8 hours off-line and 8 hours online.
The medium is the message. The medium becomes the Master. We’re not brainwashed unwillingly. We’re into it, slowly then suddenly. Before long, we’re deep into it. By its sheer volume and by default (digital opioid). I verified my observation yesterday: one guy on the treadmill, one guy walking outside and one guy stopping at the light (in car), all three were obsessed with their phones.
All re-imagined, re-invented, re-engineered and re-modified; resulting in attitude readjusted. It’s a digital version of succumbing to a machine-ruled world, carrying out machine-aided tasks (they make “casual” the process called corporatization of private and public space), at first, enlightening now enslaving.
The “sharing economy” with some cherries pay out. Now, it’s so democratically and globally “distributive” that miniature tasks e.g. multi-lingual spelling correction and translation, nuances and colloquial expressions, search and inquiry, medically and surgical second opinion, double-blind clinical trial outsourced and offshoring, all made possible. We barely scratch the surface of Metaverse. Freud would roll over. So would Jung. More so B.F. Skinner of the Behavior Modification school.
Not too farfetched is Bitcoin (at 10,000) = new diamond. Easier to change hands (in Marathon Man’s closing scene, our sadistic Nazi diamond-dentist had to swallow his full – throat dry and muscle-tearing measure of justice). Life in the balance.
Today, one can hardly pee or pump gas without voice or print advertisement in the face.
Our blood stream (EMR) our river stream (DWP) and our financial stream (FICO) flow through server not sewer.
What’s been important and of high value (face-to-face coffee to catch up, part of our quality of life and leisure-seeking) all passe (horse manure in Paris and London vs Tesla quiet ride; check out my other blog “carriage and candle”). Our reigning Antoinette is torn between on and offline, fighting COVID virus and malware virus.
A divided life, of two minds living two lives with two faces in two spheres simultaneously. What was called “absent minded” now common place. Even desirable, since those who “excuse me, I must take this call” now democratized to all 8 billion + folks.
We have become minimalist, while machine maximalist. 1984 “think different” ad needs to update: “Let them eat cake”.
All self-corrupted and consolidated under a new subsidiary, 21st-century version of Dr Evil, whose life span extends much longer (thanks to medical and methodical surgical procedure), but inferior in quality as compared to yesterday. Apple vs Orange?
Just say it, when I see it.
Future shock 2.0 trumps Walden 2.0. The return of shock. To the system and to the individual. Faster and more encompassing (TikTok and Tesla, Alphabet and Amazon, X and Meta) dominate; while we deplete, deprived if not deleted, with less capacity and willingness to resist i.e. frog legs in slow boil (low-interest rate creditors = new feudalism). We possess neither pitchforks nor torches.
It is by no accident that the regime of Assad manufactured laboratory drugs for the mass (medicine of mass destruction) or that McKinsey paid out 650 million dollars for a lawsuit regarding their complicity in opioid push. Hook’m.
FTX? what’s that. Theranos? We don’t remember. No cure yet for dementia.
Bernie? Bernie who? Ponzi or Pips, Madoff and Ebbers, both reeled in gullible people. The multi-level marketing, a penny (bitcoin) from each and every one (8 billion and counting). Confidence man has neither boundaries nor borders. Grifters sans Frontières
Life goes on and people turn older and grumpier. All “night hawk” at nearby 24-hour diner. “Black coffee, please”.
In my younger days. I wouldn’t listen either. I preferred to become my own man and own my mistakes. I want to travel the rough road, as Dreamers and Doers, adjusting the gap between the ideal and the real.
In Frost lines, picking my apples ” cherish in hand, lift down and not let fall”.
With re-engineering, all of our senses are in play. Once, they were joking about “Smell vision”. Today, it’s text-to-voice, video to audio. Scrolling up (touch) to see (visual) and hear (audio) while munching (taste) and smell the food.
As if sight and sound were not enough. CNN Ted Turner was not content with just billboards in Atlanta. It had to be cable TV, then cable-news (first Gulf War), delay broadcast and re-post podcast. Today, with Instagram, everyone knows about Syria, Sudan and Sydney.
Drone-like life. All of a sudden, those you love are gone. Poof! Shock. Yet singularity is nowhere near. Just nearer. Like a mirage and/or a forward-looking disclaimer (Oh, you didn’t read our multi-pages legalese in fine print before clicking “I agree”). Always “only time can tell”.
AI will rise and fall, then rise again. Twist and shout with trajectory very much like Y2K or Challenger crash (or deep-sea submersible). Only brands (reputation) endure even in our Age of “move fast, break things”. Everyone wants to personify Phoenix that rises from the ashes.
No one wants to be Icarus, who flies with wings of wax, with face melted and deformed (bad visual for podcast). We no longer talk much about women and their qualities. It’s a visually oriented society, with Tik-Tok our chief cosmetic medi-tourist agent from developing countries, nip and tuck, two for the price of one.
Mask. Only if we had a mother – played by Cher, who loves us unconditionally.
Talking of masks. There will be a lot of “unmasking the machine” since machine tries to impersonate human, with real-life recording, real-life look and real-life print (again, Marathon Man, …” hey, open the door — I am from across the street – voice and facial recognition). How would they know what we think and like? We told them and forgot about it. Meanwhile, spam mail remembers and reflects back to our surprises, just for a click-bait.
If back to school, I would study re-engineering not Engineering. I would major in biometrics to help verify (Linked-in verified, wow, a new badge) and authenticate (digital safe box, like Paze). Google has been doing that, the robot is not me and I am not a robot (traffic signals, motorcycle, an upside-down dog and a staircase).
The future won’t look like today. Population growth, mixing on and offline (the illusion of a larger crowd). We might not be able to distinguish real extras on the NYC sidewalk from a manufactured one; real boobs from fake boobs, real from fake news. P.S. hats off to Ruth Marcus of WP.
It’s hard nowadays just to pee or pump gas in peace. It’s harder to live a full 8-hours without the encroachment of a collateralized and synthetic life.
Even B.F. Skinner refuses to reincarnate in this heavily behavior-mod environment, or Andy Warhol ‘s sipping his Campbell soup art creation. Meanwhile, old Wendy grows older and grumpier: “Where is the beef?”
No more (blood) diamond digging. During the Gold Rush, or prune picking in Northern CA it’s those heavily capitalized middlemen – tool salesmen – or today’s programmatic advertisers that win. So conducive to buying:” Just swipe”, not “swallow!’ as in Marathon Man, without water, throat-tearing. Our hunted-turns-hunter applies a measure of justice, in his amateurish steady stance, gun and gaze. An eye for an eye (Old Testament), oral for oral, w/out anesthetic or water.
Re-engineering has its unintended consequences. Always a trade-off when messing with the natural order of things. Best scenario: machine becomes more like human. And as far as that goes, we know how things often turned out. Don’t believe me, just turn on 24/7 news and History channel (from B-52 to atomic bomb). But then, you’d rather “go right to the TV page”.
Hey now, hey now.
You’d rather not waking up to the reality of war and strife. (American Dream, China Dream). “Don’t dream it’s over” …” just skip the Post and go right to your post”.
Thang Nguyen 555 