[RhetoricThug]

Thank you for your interest in this thread, SSDR.

Scientific process that is a step closer to economic socialism.

I find your statement to be an inaccurate assumption and I offer you a different interpretation of what is happening on planet Earth. Over in this thread: viewtopic.php?f=12&t=176082 I discuss at length implications of the scientific process. We should keep in mind, science is apolitical.

Few excerpts: A totalitarian world government, namely a Technocracy, is being created today. There's no guarantee that communism will be implemented. Capitalism as a noospheric operating system is responsible for great technological development. Socialism and communism missed the boat, humanity is rapidly entering a stage of civilization that has given up collective sovereignty to data/information processors. Advances in technology inevitably lead to more control and less personal autonomy. This can be summed up by the adage- “you can't manage what you can't measure.” The very nature of scientific development is to quantify physical systems so we can better manage phenomena.

Programming (the modification of perception) is as old as human language (oral and written) and perhaps as old as the human experience (a moment in the Ouroboros endo-exo-vibration when humanity learned how to adapt to things from the natural environment through trial and error and mimesis). Wild human behavior has been hunted by communicative survival strategies or ethos-programs for centuries. I'm not sure how human thought compiles or projects its potential for amalgamous concentrations of synchronous perceptions, but it is certainly a thing to be studied or least considered when we analyze the activities (and perhaps functions) of human consciousness. Nevertheless, for better or worse, It has been the subliminal goal (unspoken creed) of the tribe and modern society to modify the individual for the pursuit of group-oriented POWER. The nature of power dynamics depend on the circulation and diffusion of energy systems. These energy systems are made up of raw materials/components which have been refined by the human capacity for cognitive-physiological pattern recognition and used to reshape our experience of reality and the expression of human organization (milieu). All technologies have played a role in the reshaping of human organization. From the Promethean flame to electric circuitry (and everything in-between, stone-bronze-iron-steel, reinterpreted input/output signals), energy systems have rewired societal nervous systems (how a group behaves or communicates collectively). A more recent (r)evolution occurred when Norbert Wiener established the field of cybernetics. A marriage of electronic processors and the great triumph of the industrial era mindset or compartmentalization of thought and action (behavior), gave rise to the cybernetic communication (feedback)loop. This technological loop is a selective augmentation that found a way to piggyback the figure-ground interplay of the mind-matter interface (the resonant interval of human perception).

...

The environment will eventually become a human technology, and when it does, it will require constant maintenance, because the whole of it will be an engineering problem. My point- Intelligent systems, namely societal networks, as they evolve (extension of the self-propagating nature of consciousness), become more complex. Complexity as a systems characteristic places limits on human behavior and the idea of freedom. Furthermore, as we simplify operations through automation, lessen the workload and shift the workflow away from human input/output, automation imposes restrictions on free-will, which ultimately limits the idea of individual autonomy. Once we exit Earth and enter a man-made environment, our survival depends on the technological support systems we've created for space travel. These new conditions create a totalitarian environment, because there will be little room for erroneous behavior. In a way, It will resemble military life, and most activities will be influenced by the group or team you're living with.

Not an "Empire," but more of a global, unified "Nation" that by older terms to understand, is purely "international."

Perhaps you're looking at the technocratic zeitgeist as a material system rather than a symptom or expression of thought in action. Empire is merely a state of mind, a nation is a psychological and cultural gestalt. Consciousness is an international (well, primordial) force, fragmented by environmental media (material vibrations, even space-time for instance), and technology is trying to put Humpty Dumpty (crown of the crowd, from which the egg of innovation incubates) back together. Which could happen, if a society of humans end up in an engineered container of information (static environment, or socially engineered group dynamics). However, it's unlikely because biology mutates, and consciousness is always trying to solve problems it created.

It is a possibility that future wars will either be fought by non human technologies and robots, or wars will cease to exist due to the whole world being unified.

Perhaps human competition will persist off planet. A living economy (instantaneous transactions and realtime representation of energy... No delay) merges with biological circumstance. Remember, technology is just an extension of man's inherent nature. Technology is nature being nurtured by a mind that is in a feedback loop with material inputs/outputs. There's no separation between consciousness and technology, all technologies are projections and prosthetics of the human sensorium.

If it does not defend the personal privacy of people, and has no regulations to protect individual privacy for each person, then unfortunately yes.

For the scientific process to prosper, research must be transparent, therefore all data must be collected. Privacy is a research barrier.

It is a technological possibility. However, I personally do not support this since automobile traffic movements are unpredictable, and driving environments constantly change.

Great, but noospheric motion is like the ocean, it doesn't favor one boat's orientation.

If reproduction rates are not controlled. Automated robots, automated assembly production, and technologically advanced methods of agriculture can help provide benefits for elderly population, and the disabled of whom have no offspring, or not enough offspring to provide benefits for them.

Curious, does nature have a credit limit? Is developmental evolution in debt? Does extinction payoff?

I disagree. Ecological crisis will not be caused by excessive pollution since eco friendly industry will evolve via inventions and scientific progress.

We'll see. Scientific progress is the redistribution of evolutionary forces. Humans never invent, only discover.

Moreover, you may have trouble seeing the world as I describe it. Sorry.

I disagree. This existed since the beginnings of humanity via people disliking each other due to biological and eugenic racial differences. An example are sub Saharan Africans hating racially white, Germans or Italians.

I disagree with my own statement today. See, the noosphere is always shifting as it sifts through its disposition. Remember, being present is an information bias.

I disagree. Such actions will make humans extinct. If a global, nuclear war will not start like a World War 3 between the Soviet Union and the United States due to the results of a global nuclear war making humans extinct and damaging the Earth, then there is no possibility that humans will choose to battle non human, man-made machinery/robots.

Depends upon which newsreel, er noosreel you watch.

Yes. This will help full fill each individual's personal desires.

This will transmute reality and rob people of autonomous thought. Slave to desire.

Maybe.

Communism will be the final political and economic phase of humanity.

It's a very old concept, so I doubt it. Thought recycles and reorganizes itself.

There is a technological possibility. I desire for this to Never happen. If this happens, humans will be fully controlled, having no personal privacy.

In the name of science, AMEN.

Yes, and this will be very helpful to people.

Wealthy people.

People usually confine to ideologies that are taught to them via media. This has been happening for decades. For example, in the United States in the 1950's, their television media manipulated their masses to go against socialism.

Yes, information environments influence reality.

I disagree.

Why? We're a post-literate society.

This has been happening for centuries. Organized religion is an example of this.

Organized ideas create organized groups. Dogma is as dogma does. Political fervor operates the same way as religion.

Communism will be the final phase of humanity.

Yevgeny Zamyatin — 'There is no final one; revolutions are infinite.'

I disagree. How to think is more critical, and intelligent then to only think what to think.

Machines will think for society. Machinima culture.

Yes. This will be very useful since advanced, intelligent AI can psychologically help the humans they are interpreting, and can help determine what production will be done to give the maximum satisfaction for their interpreted humans.

Filtered thought will be curtailed thought, thus the lack of free thought.


Thank you for your precious time and attention, for it is fleeting and snowballing simultaneously.










Be seeing you,

-RT

[SSDR]

Thank you for your interest in this tread, SSDR.

Your welcome.

It's a very old concept, so I doubt it. Thought recycles and reorganizes itself.

Communism is not an "old" "concept." In terms of time, Communism is an universal topic. A topic that can be adapted in any time period.

In the name of science, AMEN.

It would be terrifying to have no personal privacy due to the amount of information that future technologies can display for each person.

Why? We're a post-literate society.

A basic forum of literacy should be known from humans to maintain some form of "Emergency" communication at the minimum.

Organized ideas create organized groups. Dogma is as dogma does. Political fervor operates the same way as religion.

True.

Yevgeny Zamyatin — 'There is no final one; revolutions are infinite.'

An anti socialist "revolution" or counter revolution can exist, but I predict that communism will be the final phase of humanity.

Machines will think for society. Machinima culture.

True.

Thank you for your precious time and attention, for it is fleeting and snowballing simultaneously.

Your welcome.

[RhetoricThug]

Your welcome.

It would be terrifying to have no personal privacy due to the amount of information that future technologies can display for each person.

If humans wish to engineer and "intelligently" shape their evolution and maintain various life systems, science must eliminate privacy. Again, privacy is a research barrier.

The proliferation/diffusion of new technologies reshape our milieu. Behavioral modification can be achieved this way. Incremental nudging occurs at such a slow rate, most individuals are not aware of the changes that affect the group. Technology can amplify soft power effects and incentivize the emergence and convergence of particular cognitive patterns in a society. Likewise, divergence can occur on a cultural level and socio-economic/political elements may be molded by media (not news media, I'm talking about hardware and software environments).

The human mind is like water and new technologies operate on our senses like liquid receptacles. If you want a particular thought to form, mold the receptacle to mimic a particular myth or image. Humans adapt to technological environments and new thoughts form from/through these environments. For example: A cell-phone has built-in behavior modifiers, as a new information environment. The technological transmission and transmutation of the communication process reorganizes creative inputs/outputs. Nevertheless, unforeseen or hidden variables may be cause for social mutation. It's the technocritter's (ethereal threats, twittle hackers hell bent on bludgeoning reality and killing off H. sapiens) task to twist valves and control the flow of evolution.

A basic forum of literacy should be known from humans to maintain some form of "Emergency" communication at the minimum.

In a telepathic communication model, literacy becomes purely figurative. Curiously, the use of language as a container and representation of human experience reverses roles. Literacy shall obscure (because the occupational perspective is a limited one. A specialist or highly literate individual is a cyclops. You know, it takes many humans to build a computer network. It takes one computer network to build many humans) rather than reveal the intricacies of thought and emotion. Machine languages will become increasingly complex and foreign, outpacing and out-spacing (capacity-wise) the human mind.

Predictive neurolinguistics will intercept human thought, because human thought will be subservient to multidimensional comprehension programs (which will not be programs, but I'm trying to convey a vision here). This will happen due to the limitations of the human mind/matter interface. Cognition and perception must be defined by the interplay of vibratory resonance in a physical system, therefore a human's thought will always take longer to process than a machine's thought. Even if humans merge with prosthetics of the collective imagination of mankind, the fragmented nature of individuality shall remain. Individuality places limits on awareness and the interpretation of phenomena as filtered and processed for communication. As an individual, I have a finite amount of time and attention. Multidimensional computations can process more potentialities.

Finite sensibility vs infinite potentiality.

An anti socialist "revolution" or counter revolution can exist, but I predict that communism will be the final phase of humanity.

This is propaganda. Believe it or not. There's no final phase. There's no permanency.

[SSDR]

If humans wish to engineer and "intelligently" shape their evolution and maintain various life systems, science must eliminate privacy. Again, privacy is a research barrier.

To humans who are to be used as "research objects" yes. But once researches have concluded, humans who have access to evolutionary technologies that researches' have concluded do not need to be tracked since the technologies they use have concluded their researches.

The human mind is like water and new technologies operate on our senses like liquid receptacles. If you want a particular thought to form, mold the receptacle to mimic a particular myth or image. Humans adapt to technological environments and new thoughts form from/through these environments.

I agree. Humans are flexible creatures, that is why humans and human made technologies have evolved so much - Because human psychologies are like "water." There is no fixed human nature.

In a telepathic communication model, literacy becomes purely figurative. Curiously, the use of language as a container and representation of human experience reverses roles. Literacy shall obscure (because the occupational perspective is a limited one. A specialist or highly literate individual is a cyclops. You know, it takes many humans to build a computer network. It takes one computer network to build many humans) rather than reveal the intricacies of thought and emotion. Machine languages will become increasingly complex and foreign, outpacing and out-spacing (capacity-wise) the human mind.

So you predict in the future, all forms of human communication will be audio and verbal? Or at the minimum, have no need for words and literacy?

Predictive neurolinguistics will intercept human thought, because human thought will be subservient to multidimensional comprehension programs (which will not be programs, but I'm trying to convey a vision here). This will happen due to the limitations of the human mind/matter interface. Cognition and perception must be defined by the interplay of vibratory resonance in a physical system, therefore a human's thought will always take longer to process than a machine's thought. Even if humans merge with prosthetics of the collective imagination of mankind, the fragmented nature of individuality shall remain. Individuality places limits on awareness and the interpretation of phenomena as filtered and processed for communication. As an individual, I have a finite amount of time and attention. Multidimensional computations can process more potentialities.

AI can have more abilities than human psychologies. AI can also evolve, and invent themselves and improve their own intelligence without any involvement from humans who use AI technologies.
Finite sensibility vs infinite potentiality.

This is propaganda.

Non socialist caricature of socialism.

Believe it or not. There's no final phase. There's no permanency.

But in the future, when there is no currency, no need for organized religion due to advanced technologies being available to cope with troubles, and the abolition of the social construct of the family institution, these are all basic elements for communism.

[RhetoricThug]

To humans who are to be used as "research objects" yes. But once researches have concluded, humans who have access to evolutionary technologies that researches' have concluded do not need to be tracked since the technologies they use have concluded their researches.

In a technocracy, all members of society become data processes and therefore become quantifiable units of energy in an ongoing engineering problem. Again, all technologies affect evolutionary developmental biology and psychology.

I agree. Humans are flexible creatures, that is why humans and human made technologies have evolved so much - Because human psychologies are like "water." There is no fixed human nature.

However, there is a concentrated effort to engineer human nature.

As stated, Wild human behavior has been hunted by communicative survival strategies or ethos-programs for centuries. I'm not sure how human thought compiles or projects its potential for amalgamous concentrations of synchronous perceptions, but it is certainly a thing to be studied or least considered when we analyze the activities (and perhaps functions) of human consciousness. Nevertheless, for better or worse, It has been the subliminal goal (unspoken creed) of the tribe and modern society to modify the individual for the pursuit of group-oriented POWER. The nature of power dynamics depend on the circulation and diffusion of energy systems. These energy systems are made up of raw materials/components which have been refined by the human capacity for cognitive-physiological pattern recognition and used to reshape our experience of reality and the expression of human organization (milieu). All technologies have played a role in the reshaping of human organization.

So you predict in the future, all forms of human communication will be audio and verbal? Or at the minimum, have no need for words and literacy?

Human communication will not involve the tactile retrieval of external stimuli, propagating sound waves will not depend on the air as a substrate for communication. Telepathic systems will obsolesce known senses. These technologies will most likely emerge from military research (due to expediency). The manipulation of frequencies (see full-spectrum superiority) will replace the manipulation of standard communication techniques.

Finite sensibility vs infinite potentiality.

Glad you like it.

Non socialist caricature of socialism.

Binary thought will be obsolesced by multidimensional logic systems that can formulate and process more variables (hidden or otherwise) and existential potentialities. Advanced technological simulacra must be apolitical, because political dogma is thoroughly irrational and 3-dimensional. Imagine classical physics to relativity or quantum mechanics, the exponential jump in the way machines interpret phenomena will obsolesce human government.

But in the future, when there is no currency, no need for organized religion due to advanced technologies being available to cope with troubles, and the abolition of the social construct of the family institution, these are all basic elements for communism.

In the future, humans will go extinct. Consciousness is a self-organizing self-replicating metamorphic force, it doesn't conform to any idea of finality. The condition of being at an ultimate point of development is a phantasmagoria. There is no final resting place of the mind. The mind is the splitting of consciousness into singletons, consciousness is the universe unfolding ad infinitum.

[RhetoricThug]

Supplemental reading in this thread: Consciousness as Content viewtopic.php?f=53&p=15053129#p15053129

[RhetoricThug]

Scientific Totalitarianism

Never let a crisis go to waste. Whether Trump is a cunning Pentagon frontman with a gift for presidential buffoonery or a pathological Wall Street gangster, it matters not. Whether covid-19 is a bioweapon or emerged naturally, it matters not. The global system has been exposed. Fear has replaced reason. What will follow... Technocratic lockdown or (r)evolution?

Trends for a post 2020 world:

Spanish cops deploy speaker-drones to enforce coronavirus lockdown
The remotely controlled flying machines were adapted to carry a range of equipment, including chemical spray jets for disinfecting outdoor spaces, thermal sensors to detect people’s body temperatures, and loudspeakers for ordering people to return home or to wear a mask when out and about.
https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech ... -lockdown/

One of the largest cities in France is using drones to enforce the country's lockdown after the mayor worried residents weren't taking containment measures seriously
In February, videos of drones flying over Chinese cities and giving orders out to citizens about staying at home or wearing masks flooded the internet.
https://www.businessinsider.com/coronav ... ent-2020-3

As Coronavirus Surveillance Escalates, Personal Privacy Plummets
Tracking entire populations to combat the pandemic now could open the doors to more invasive forms of government snooping later.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/tech ... ivacy.html

A catalyst for more digital isolation and interaction
Food and grocery delivery workers explain what online shoppers should do to make their work safer and easier.
https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/3/22/21 ... 9-pandemic

It's Time To Get Serious About Social Distancing. Here's How
"Every single generation has a role to play," Birx said Tuesday at a White House press conference. "We're asking our older generation to stay in their homes. We're asking the younger generations to stop going out in public places, to bars and restaurants, and spreading asymptomatic virus onto countertops and knobs."
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-sho ... here-s-how

Uncharted tyranny for the human psyche. It's not the Great Recession, it's not the Great Depression. More monopoly money and debt. Existential crisis, climate change accelerates. Will there be a jubilee for the great unwashed mechanistic mind?

Fed Official Warns of 30% Unemployment
An unemployment rate that high would be far worse than what the country weathered during the Great Recession.https://www.usnews.com/news/economy/articles/2020-03-23/fed-official-unemployment-could-hit-30-as-coronavirus-slams-economy

The Economic Devastation Is Going to Be Worse Than You Think
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... es/608461/

Air pollution falls as coronavirus slows travel, but scientists warn of longer-term threat to climate change progress
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/21/air-pol ... hreat.html

Political bickering while Rome burns
Senate floor erupts into partisan fury as coronavirus response bill bogs down again
Democrats accuse Republicans of trying to rush bill, but GOP lawmakers say Congress is running out of time. “This is unbelievable,” Collins says.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-polic ... -stimulus/

Despite profits for pharmaceutical companies hospitals are not ready for reality
'This system is doomed': Doctors, nurses sound off in NBC News coronavirus survey
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/sy ... y-n1164841

Time is ripe for (r)evolution

[Patrickov]

Time is ripe for (r)evolution

The problem is, again, how.

On a side note, sometimes wildfires are bad because we are not the ones who started them in the first place.

[RhetoricThug]

There's no "end game" for scientific totalitarianism. Control systems tighten incrementally.

Quietly, behind the daily noise of Trumpian politics, bickering world religions and dark environmental warnings, an unquestionable civilization-changing phenomenon is occurring: The 50-year old microprocessor continues to evolve, exponentially. While the human brain approximately doubled in size over the last 200,000 to 800,000 years, the microprocessor doubles its speed every 18-24 months. Some experts think in just 15 years time, our smartphones will be more intelligent than we are. In three decades, they will almost certainly be hundreds of times smarter than we are.
https://www.newsweek.com/quantum-archae ... ife-837967

Snowden Warns Governments Are Using Coronavirus to Build ‘the Architecture of Oppression’

Benjamin Netanyahu suggests microchipping kids

Cyber experts slammed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his proposal to "microchip" children who return to schools and kindergartens as the coronavirus lockdown is lifted, Ynet reported on Friday.

While speaking at a press conference on Monday, Netanyahu suggested the Health Ministry use new technology to help Israel adjust to its new routine as the state is lifting the coronavirus lockdown. "That is, technology that has not been used before and is allowed under the legislation we shall enact," he clarified.

"I spoke with our heads of technology in order to find measures Israel is good at, such as sensors. For instance, every person, every kid – I want it on kids first – would have a sensor that would sound an alarm when you get too close, like the ones on cars," the prime minister said.

...

On Wednesday, Walla reported the movements of all vehicles in Israel were tracked by police and stored in an unregulated database named Eagle Eye. A source cited by the media site said the information "may be kept for years on end."

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) reportedly submitted a request under the Freedom of Information Act that police disclose the extent of the operations of Eagle Eye, as well as the time the information on citizens' movements is stored in the system.

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/benja ... rts-627381

Microsoft Would Like to Use Your Brainwaves to Mine Cryptocurrency, Please

"Instead of massive computation work required by some conventional cryptocurrency systems, data generated based on the body activity of the user can be a proof-of-work, and therefore, a user can solve the computationally difficult problem unconsciously," the inventors write in the patent application's summary. "Accordingly, certain exemplary embodiments of the present disclosure may reduce computational energy for the mining process as well as make the mining process faster."

https://www.popularmechanics.com/techno ... ocurrency/

Trump Plans to Legalize Mining the Moon

President Donald Trump and his administration are moving ahead with plans to mine the moon for valuable regolith. The new Artemis Accords, linked ideologically with NASA’s Artemis program, are a U.S.-led international agreement about using the moon for materials.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/scienc ... s-accords/

The Air Force’s Secret Space Plane Is Part of A Plan to One Day Shoot Microwaves to Earth

“The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, will transform solar power into radio frequency microwave energy which could then be transmitted to the ground,” Air Force officials told reporters during a telephone briefing.

https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2 ... th/165198/

^Energy applications part of weaponization of space.

Additional information
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=166559&start=20

Elon Musk says Starlink satellite broadband to start beta testing this year

Broadband is in higher demand as much of the world spends more time at home due to the coronavirus pandemic, and Elon Musk's SpaceX is scrambling to provide more access.

This week the company launched another batch of 60 satellites to bring the total size of its growing Starlink broadband constellation to more than 400. While it has the go-ahead to launch more than 12,000 satellites in the coming years, Musk said Wednesday that a "private beta" test of the service will begin in about three months, followed by a public beta about three months later for testers at northern latitudes.

In response to a Twitter user, Musk said Germany qualifies as far enough north, which could mean that much of northern Europe, Canada and the northernmost parts of the US may be eligible to try the service.

https://www.cnet.com/news/elon-musk-say ... tart-soon/

Lockheed Martin wins DARPA contract to integrate Blackjack satellites

Blackjack is a project to deploy a constellation of 20 satellites in low Earth orbit by 2022 and demonstrate that a LEO system can provide global high-speed communications.

Lockheed Martin will define and manage interfaces between Blackjack’s satellite buses, payloads and the so-called Pit Boss autonomous data processor. The work will be performed at the company’s satellite manufacturing plant in Sunnyvale, California.

“This is an exciting new approach to plug-and-play design for LEO,” said Sarah Reeves, vice president of missile defense programs at Lockheed Martin.

https://spacenews.com/lockheed-martin-w ... atellites/

Pentagon Seeks Ramp Up in 5G Investment

5G "is a critical technology to the Department of Defense" and "enables high bandwidth, real-time, densely-connected networks, which represent many of the use cases central to defense command, control, and communications," Charles Clancy, vice president of intelligence programs at MITRE, wrote in an email to Avionics International.

https://www.aviationtoday.com/2020/02/1 ... stment-5g/

Excerpt from US Space Force General John Raymond

“I spent most of my military career, integrating GPS and other space capabilities into everything that we do as a joint force. And today there’s absolutely nothing that we do as a joint force that isn’t enabled by space and specifically GPS,” explained U.S. Space Force Gen. John Raymond in his opening remarks before the Senate Armed Service Committee.

“It [GPS] has revolutionized military operations and it is employed in every step of the kill chain to defeat our adversaries,” the nation’s top military space officer added.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/06/pentago ... risks.html

COVID-19, climate change may accelerate public acceptance of CRISPR-edited food

Gene editing, like genetic modification, is a technology that has attracted a fair amount of skepticism from European regulators and citizens. However, proponents argue that it will be an invaluable tool in the construction of a future-fit food system. FoodNavigator speaks to Dr Oliver Peoples, CEO of Yield10 Bioscience, about changing attitudes to the science.

https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2020 ... ited-food/

Boston Dynamics Spot robot dog reminds park visitors to maintain distance
The dog-like robot is getting a trial run as a social-distancing reminder machine in Singapore.

Singapore residents are able to go outside and exercise in their neighborhood parks as a break from the government's stay-at-home recommendations during the coronavirus pandemic. Visitors to the Bishan-Ang Mo Kio Park may encounter the unusual sight of a bright-yellow Boston Dynamics Spot robot dog with an important message.

https://www.cnet.com/news/boston-dynami ... -distance/

[RhetoricThug]

Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction Isn't Just Happening, It's Accelerating

"We can confidently conclude that modern extinction rates are exceptionally high, that they are increasing, and that they suggest a mass extinction under way – the sixth of its kind in Earth's 4.5 billion years of history," the team wrote in their 2015 paper.

https://www.sciencealert.com/the-mass-e ... tists-warn

Humans continue to set up tighter control systems around Nature in an effort to understand and manipulate the underpinnings of life on Earth. In response to an anthropogenic climate crisis more surveillance comm overlays are implemented.

With an Internet of Animals, Scientists Aim to Track and Save Wildlife
Using tiny sensors and equipment aboard the space station, a project called ICARUS seeks to revolutionize animal tracking.

"The sensors allow animals to be our eyes and ears and noses in the world, and we are linking it all together," Martin Wikelski, the director of migration research at the Max Planck Institute, tells Inside Science. Wikelski has championed the project, called ICARUS (International Cooperation for Animal Research Using Space), for just shy of two decades and hopes to expand it in coming years to a network of satellites capable of tracking hundreds of thousands of animals in real time, reported Andrew Curry for Nature in 2018.

...

“In the future, we’ll use every animal that flies as a meteorological drone,” Wikelski told Nature. “To measure the temperature in the middle of the Pacific at 20-metres altitude is impossible, but birds do it all the time.”

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-ne ... 180975072/

Military’s AI hub is ready to think about war, Gen. Shanahan says on last day at Pentagon

“We have to get AI right for our own purposes and our own national security,” Shanahan said of the JAIC’s work. “We can’t afford to let up on the gas pedal one bit, I would say we have to go faster.” The general is retiring from a decades-long career in the Air Force as the inaugural leader of both the JAIC and the DOD’s Project Maven.

...

The lines of effort in the Joint Warfighting initiative include the military’s futuristic network-of-networks Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2); “Overmatch,” or using AI to wield more firepower and ability than an enemy force; “Joint Fires,” where weapons are coordinated to increase lethality; electromagnetic spectrum operations that disable communication networks; and “Strategic Mobility,” for which AI can help facilitate logistics.

https://www.fedscoop.com/jack-shanahan- ... c-warfare/

JADC2 ‘Experiment 2’ provides looking glass into future experimentation

“In the future, true overmatch and dominance occurs when all DoD service components and Multinational partners share the same common operating environment,” Davis said.

JADC2 is a combination of new technology, processes and new organizations that will enable the joint force to converge effects from all five domains. The Army has several on-going modernization efforts to increase interoperability, situational awareness and lethality that will enable any shooter, with any sensor, through any command and control node, in near-real time to employ joint and mission partner effects.

https://www.army.mil/article/234900/jad ... imentation

New techniques improve quantum communication, entangle phonons

Quantum communication—where information is sent through particles, typically entangled photons—has the potential to become the ultimate secure communication channel. Not only is it nearly impossible to eavesdrop on quantum communication, those who try will also leave evidence of their indiscretions.

...

Entangled photons and phonons defy intuition: these particles can be quantum-mechanically entangled, an entanglement that can survive over large distances. A change in one particle then spookily elicits a change in the other. Quantum communication takes advantage of this phenomenon by encoding information in the particles.

https://phys.org/news/2020-06-technique ... onons.html

5G is coming to robots and drones with Qualcomm's new RB5 system
The technology, which combines hardware and software, will make it possible for places like factories to roll out super responsive machines.

For "any kind of robot, be it a $200 [personal] robot to a $2 million industrial robot, the critical things that robot needs to do is sensing, thinking, acting and communicating," Dev Singh, head of Qualcomm's robotics, drones and intelligent machines business, said in an interview with CNET ahead of his company's announcement. "Qualcomm's processor packs all of this together."

https://www.cnet.com/news/5g-is-coming- ... b5-system/

Nanomaterial gives robots chameleon skin

A new film made of gold nanoparticles changes color in response to any type of movement. Its unprecedented qualities could allow robots to mimic chameleons and octopi—among other futuristic applications.

https://phys.org/news/2020-06-nanomater ... -skin.html

Boston Dynamics now sells a robot dog to the public, starting at $74,500
After 28 years of R&D, Boston Dynamics launches an online robot store.

If you can't tell from the price, Spot is an industrial robot for industrial applications. Boston Dynamics' site calls Spot "a stable, dynamically balanced quadruped robot that can navigate through unstructured, unknown, or antagonistic terrain with ease." Spot is a platform, Boston Dynamics handles the locomotion, and it's your job to develop programs and attach extra equipment to make Spot useful. Out of the box, the robot is basically a highly mobile camera that can go up steps, tromp through the mud, and generally handle terrain better than nearly any other robot on Earth.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/06 ... -of-74500/

Covid-19 could accelerate the robot takeover of human jobs

https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/0 ... uman-jobs/

7.4 million in UK living an almost cashless life, data shows
Changing payment habits left Britons better prepared for life in lockdown, says UK Finance

The number of people in the UK who are living “an almost cashless life” has more than doubled in two years, to 7.4 million, official data shows.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... s-lockdown

US casinos push for cashless gambling payments, citing virus

Health officials say the coronavirus can survive on paper currency, but that risk is low compared to person-to-person spread, which is the main way people get infected. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says using touchless payment methods is a good idea where possible.

https://apnews.com/8ac29ac00fffac33b3e865bec8b39b78

Electrode Tattoo Can Record Your Brain Waves, Make You Feel Like a Cyborg

Electroencephalograms (EEGs) are a staple in the modern-day doctor's office—and they may be getting a serious makeover.

Physicians traditionally use EEGs to monitor brain activity to diagnose conditions like epilepsy, seizures, and head trauma. But some EEG tests require days' worth of data, so patients must wear the peculiar-looking headgear like an inconvenient hat, with a bunch of tiny electrodes attached to the surface and wires hanging down like noodles to connect to a battery and recording device.

But researchers at Graz University of Technology in Styria, Austria have come up with a more subtle, user-friendly device for measuring brain activity: wafer-thin "tattoo" electrodes that are barely detectable on the skin.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/scienc ... ain-waves/

Ultra-sensitive protein activates neurons in response to external light

Optogenetics experiments generally involve surgically implanting an optical fiber into an animal’s brain to shine light on neurons. But that procedure can damage tissue and alter neuronal activity; in young mice, it can lead to abnormal brain development. An implanted fiber also usually stimulates only about 10 cubic millimeters of brain tissue, because light does not easily pass through the tissue3.

The new method uses a new type of highly sensitive opsin called ‘step-function opsin with ultra-high light sensitivity,’ or SOUL, to activate neurons without implanting optical fibers. Using SOUL, scientists can manipulate circuits in any part of the mouse brain and in large swaths of a macaque’s cerebral cortex by shining light onto the surface of the brain or skull.

https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/toolb ... nal-light/

Monkey mind control? Ultrasound pulses influence decision making

A team of scientists was pulsing imperceptible ultrasound waves through his skull into frontal parts of his brain, and tacitly controlling which object he looked at. The monkey no longer had a choice.

https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2020 ... on-making/

[RhetoricThug]

We are on the cusp of the fastest, deepest, most consequential transformation of human civilization in history.

During the 2020s, key technologies will converge to completely disrupt the five foundational sectors that underpin the global economy, and with them every major industry in the world today. The knock-on effects for society will be as profound as the extraordinary possibilities that emerge.

In information, energy, food, transportation, and materials, costs will fall by 10x or more, while production processes an order of magnitude (10x) more efficient will use 90% fewer natural resources with 10x-100x less waste. The prevailing production system will shift away from a model of centralized extraction and the breakdown of scarce resources that requires vast physical scale and reach, to a model of localized creation from limitless, ubiquitous building blocks – a world built not on coal, oil, steel, livestock, and concrete but on photons, electrons, DNA, molecules and (q)bits. Product design and development will be performed collaboratively over information networks while physical production and distribution will be fulfilled locally. As a result, geographic advantage will be eliminated as every city or region becomes self-sufficient. This new creation-based production system, which will be built on technologies we are already using today, will be far more equitable, robust, and resilient than any we have ever seen. We have the opportunity to move from a world of extraction to one of creation, a world of scarcity to one of plenitude, a world of inequity and predatory competition to one of shared prosperity and collaboration.

This is not, then, another Industrial Revolution, but a far more fundamental shift. This is the beginning of the third age of humankind – the Age of Freedom.

The possibilities that open up in this new age are truly extraordinary. Within 10-15 years, everyone on the planet could have access to the ‘American Dream’ for a few hundred dollars a month. For the first time in history, poverty could be overcome easily. Access to all our basic needs – food, energy, transportation, information, and shelter – could become a fundamental human right. Armed conflict, often driven by the need to access and control scarce resources, could become largely unnecessary. Climate change and environmental degradation, caused by production processes that take no account of the destruction they wreak on the natural world, could be overcome by a new production system delivering zero-carbon energy, transportation, and food with marginal waste. This could allow us to restore the integrity of the planet’s natural systems and help mitigate the impact of our unsustainable actions on human health. We may, ultimately, be able to escape toil and drudgery entirely and, for the first time in history, achieve real freedom – the freedom to spend our time creatively, unburdened by financial precariousness and the need to provide for ourselves and our families. Never before has humanity seen such an astonishing array of possibilities opened up in such a short period of time.

But this future is by no means predetermined. Indeed it cannot be achieved by technological progress alone. History indicates that leading civilizations have evolved ever-greater organizational capabilities in tandem with increased technological capabilities. While the technological capabilities dictate the potential of any civilization, the Organizing System determines how close to this potential a society can get. The Organizing System encompasses both the fundamental beliefs, institutions, and reward systems that enable optimal decisions to be taken across a society, and the structures that manage, control, govern, and influence its population. The best combination of technology and Organizing System that is available dictates the winners – for example a city of 10,000 people, such as Sumer, requires very different Organizing System from one of a million people, such as Rome.

Throughout history, 10x advancements in the five foundational sectors have driven the emergence of a new and vastly more capable civilization than any which has come before. But this has only been possible when combined with vastly improved organizational capabilities. This has always represented a formidable challenge for incumbents, and the lessons of history are sobering – every leading civilization, from Catalhoyuk and Sumer to Babylonia and Rome, has fallen as it reached the limits of its ability to organize society and solve the problems created by its production system. When these civilizations were threatened with collapse, they looked backwards and attempted to recapture the glory days by patching up their production system and doubling down on their Organizing System rather than adapting. The result was descent into a dark age.

Today, our incumbent leadership in government and industry are making the same mistake. The patterns of history are clear. The five foundational sectors, which gave rise to Western dominance starting with Europe in the 1500s and America in the 1900s, will all collapse during the 2020s. These sector disruptions are bookends to a civilization that birthed the Industrial Order, which both built the modern world and destroyed the rest. Furthermore, we are experiencing rising inequality, extremism, and populism, the deterioration of decision-making processes and the undermining of representative democracy, the accumulation of financial instability as we mortgage the future to pay for the present, ecological degradation, and climate change – all signs that our civilization has reached and breached its limits. The response from today’s incumbents to these challenges – more centralization, more extraction, more exploitation, more compromise of public health and environmental integrity in the name of competitive advantage and growth – is no less desperate than the response from those of prior civilizations who called for more walls, more priests, and more blood sacrifices as they faced collapse.

And this is just the beginning – as new technologies develop apace, their disruptive power will only grow stronger. Ironically, the same technologies that hold the promise of solving our most pressing problems are also accelerating collapse, challenging the ability of our outdated and increasingly incompatible Organizing System to function.

Indeed we are already seeing the impact of the new, creation-based production system butting up against our increasingly antiquated Organizing System. The information sector, for example, has already been disrupted. Centralized content production with high costs, high barriers to entry, and narrow distribution channels has given way to billions of producer-consumers generating content at near-zero cost with minimal barriers to entry across a globally-connected network. Alongside the extraordinary benefits it has brought, this emerging production system has also created novel problems which our Organizing System is incapable of understanding or managing. A few computer hackers in an apartment in one country can hijack another’s governance processes, spread false narratives, polarize public opinion, paralyze decision-making processes, and help enable regime change home and abroad. Individual nations are no longer able to manage the narrative or control the flow of information. The upcoming disruptions that will unfold simultaneously in the energy, food, transportation, and materials sectors during the 2020s will present further unprecedented new challenges at the same time as solving old problems.

The choice, therefore, is stark – collapse into a new dark age or move to a new Organizing System that allows us to flourish in a new Age of Freedom. Such a move will not be easy – we will need to rethink not just the structures and institutions that manage society, but the very concepts they are built on. Representative democracy, capitalism, and nation states may seem like fundamental truths but they are, in fact, merely human constructs that emerged and evolved in an industrial Organizing System. In the new age, they may well become redundant.

For the first time in history, we have not just the technological tools to make an incredible leap in societal capabilities, but the understanding and foresight to see what is coming. We have the choice, therefore, to avert disaster or not. We can choose to elevate humanity to new heights and use the upcoming convergence of technology disruptions to end poverty, inequality, resource conflict, and environmental destruction, all for a fraction of the cost we incur dealing with them today. Or we can choose to preserve the failing status quo and descend into another dark age like every leading civilization before us.

Dark ages do not occur for lack of sunshine, but for lack of leadership. The established centers of power, the U.S., Europe, or China, handicapped by incumbent mindsets, beliefs, interests, and institutions, are unlikely to lead. In a globally competitive world, smaller, hungrier, more adaptable communities, cities, or states such as Israel, Mumbai, Dubai, Singapore, Lagos, Shanghai, California, or Seattle are more likely to develop a winning Organizing System. They will appear, just like their predecessors, as if from nowhere, with capabilities far beyond those of incumbent leaders. Everyone else could get trampled before they have time to understand what is happening.

The intervening decade will be turbulent, destabilized both by technology disruptions that upend the foundations of the global economy and by system shocks from pandemics, geopolitical conflict, natural disasters, financial crises, and social unrest that could lead to dramatic tipping points for humanity including mass migrations and even war. In the face of each new crisis we will be tempted to look backward rather than forward, to mistake ideology and dogma for reason and wisdom, to turn on each other instead of trusting one another.

If we hold strong, we can emerge together to create the wealthiest, healthiest, most extraordinary civilization in history. If we do not, we will join the ranks of every other failed civilization for future historians to puzzle over. Our children will either thank us for bringing them an Age of Freedom, or curse us for condemning them to another dark age. The choice is ours.

https://www.rethinkx.com/humanity

The Atmosphere as Global Sensor

Sensors are usually thought of in terms of physical devices that receive and respond to electromagnetic signals – from everyday sensors in our smartphones and connected home appliances to more advanced sensors in buildings, cars, airplanes and spacecraft. No physical sensor or aggregation of electronic sensors, however, can continuously and globally detect disturbances that take place on or above the earth’s surface. But the physical atmosphere itself may offer such a sensing capability, if it can be understood and tapped into.

To that end, DARPA recently announced its Atmosphere as a Sensor (AtmoSense) program, whose goal is to understand the fundamentals of energy propagation from the ground to the ionosphere to determine if the atmosphere can be used as a sensor. A Proposers Day is scheduled for February 14, 2020, in Arlington, Virginia.

It’s well known that energy propagates from the Earth’s surface to the ionosphere, but the specifics of how that happens is not currently known enough to use the atmosphere as a sensor. Scientific literature has clearly documented that events like thunderstorms, tornadoes, volcanos, and tsunamis make big “three-dimensional wakes” that propagate to the upper reaches of the ionosphere and leave a mark there. Since that energy traverses several other layers of atmosphere – the troposphere, stratosphere, and mesosphere – on its way up to the ionosphere, the idea is to try and identify the disturbances the “wake” is making along its way to see if researchers can capture information to indicate what type of event caused it.

https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2020-02-13

DARPA is using gamers’ brain waves to train robot swarms

Information gleaned from the gamers will be used to build an advanced AI that can coordinate the actions of fleets of autonomous military robots. The research, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), is led by Souma Chowdhury, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering.

https://www.buffalo.edu/ai/news-events/ ... etail.html

Looking Forward to the End of Humanity

Covid-19 has spotlighted the promise and peril of ‘transhumanism,’ the idea of using technology to overcome sickness, aging and death.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/looking-fo ... 1592625661

U.N. Predicts Rise In Diseases That Jump From Animals To Humans Due To Habitat Loss

"We have intensified agriculture, expanded infrastructure and extracted resources at the expense of our wild spaces," UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen said. "The science is clear that if we keep exploiting wildlife and destroying our ecosystems, then we can expect to see a steady stream of these diseases jumping from animals to humans in the years ahead."

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronaviru ... -to-humans

Trump Sets Date To End WHO Membership Over Its Handling Of Virus

In an email to reporters, a U.N. spokesman confirmed that it received the notification: "On 6 July 2020, the United States of America notified the Secretary-General ... of its withdrawal from the World Health Organization, effective on 6 July 2021," wrote Stéphane Dujarric, a spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, adding that the U.N. is checking with WHO to see if all the conditions for withdrawal have been met.

To leave the organization, the U.S. is supposed to give a one-year notice and pay outstanding dues, according to language that the U.S. added to the WHO constitution when it joined the treaty in 1948. As of June 30, the U.S. owed $198 million in unpaid membership dues

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandso ... g-of-virus

How Earth’s Climate Changes Naturally (and Why Things Are Different Now)

Earth has been a snowball and a hothouse at different times in its past. So if the climate changed before humans, how can we be sure we’re responsible for the dramatic warming that’s happening today?

In part it’s because we can clearly show the causal link between carbon dioxide emissions from human activity and the 1.28 degree Celsius (and rising) global temperature increase since preindustrial times. Carbon dioxide molecules absorb infrared radiation, so with more of them in the atmosphere, they trap more of the heat radiating off the planet’s surface below.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-eart ... -20200721/

Determining the natural length of the current interglacial

No glacial inception is projected to occur at the current atmospheric CO2 concentrations of 390 ppmv (ref. 1). Indeed, model experiments suggest that in the current orbital configuration—which is characterized by a weak minimum in summer insolation—glacial inception would require CO2 concentrations below preindustrial levels of 280 ppmv (refs 2, 3, 4). However, the precise CO2 threshold4,5,6 as well as the timing of the hypothetical next glaciation7 remain unclear. Past interglacials can be used to draw analogies with the present, provided their duration is known. Here we propose that the minimum age of a glacial inception is constrained by the onset of bipolar-seesaw climate variability, which requires ice-sheets large enough to produce iceberg discharges that disrupt the ocean circulation. We identify the bipolar seesaw in ice-core and North Atlantic marine records by the appearance of a distinct phasing of interhemispheric climate and hydrographic changes and ice-rafted debris. The glacial inception during Marine Isotope sub-Stage 19c, a close analogue for the present interglacial, occurred near the summer insolation minimum, suggesting that the interglacial was not prolonged by subdued radiative forcing7. Assuming that ice growth mainly responds to insolation and CO2 forcing, this analogy suggests that the end of the current interglacial would occur within the next 1500 years, if atmospheric CO2 concentrations did not exceed 240±5 ppmv.

https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo1358

No Longer in Shadows, Pentagon’s U.F.O. Unit Will Make Some Findings Public


“It no longer has to hide in the shadows,” Mr. Elizondo said. “It will have a new transparency.”

Mr. Elizondo is among a small group of former government officials and scientists with security clearances who, without presenting physical proof, say they are convinced that objects of undetermined origin have crashed on earth with materials retrieved for study.

For more than a decade, the Pentagon program has been conducting classified briefings for congressional committees, aerospace company executives and other government officials, according to interviews with program participants and unclassified briefing documents.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/us/p ... -navy.html

AI-Controlled Fighters Will Face an Air Force Pilot in Online DARPA AlphaDogfight Event

The event will be held on August 18 and it is bound to be exhilarating.

https://interestingengineering.com/ai-c ... ight-event

As E-Commerce Booms, Robots Pick Up Human Slack
The Covid-19 pandemic and the explosion in demand for home-delivered goods means FedEx and other shippers are pushing the limits of what robotic arms can do

https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-e-comme ... 1596859205

In San Diego, ‘Smart’ Streetlights Spark Surveillance Reform
Camera-equipped street lamps were supposed to gather traffic data; instead, their video footage went to police. Now lawmakers are pushing back.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... reetlights

Directed Energy Weapons: Defense and Technology Trends

Directed energy weapons (DEWs) could provide a number of capabilities and advantages over traditional weapons due to their speed-of-light delivery, precision engagement, controlled/scalable effects, logistical benefits, and low cost per shot. Furthermore, DEWs are silent, offer plausible deniability, can travel immense distances relative to conventional weapons, and engage multiple targets. Consequently, these advantages will support the development of a wide spectrum of military equipment and capabilities.

https://www.army-technology.com/comment ... pons-dews/

Directed Energy Weapons: Macroeconomic Trends

https://www.army-technology.com/comment ... apons-dew/

Pentagon AI Gains ‘Overwhelming Support’ From Tech Firms – Even Google

Despite past battles over Project Maven and other military uses of AI, “Google and many others” are now working with the Pentagon’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, its new acting director says.

Wait, one reporter asked, didn’t Shanahan say shortly before his retirement that the military was about to field-test its first “lethal” AI?

“Many of the products we work on will go into weapons systems,” Mulchandani said. “None of them right now are going to be autonomous weapons systems.”

“Now, we do have products going on under joint warfighting which are actually going into testing,” he went on. “As we pivot [to] joint warfighting, that is probably the flagship product … but it will involve operators, human in the loop, human control.”

For example, JAIC is working with the Army’s PEO-C3T (Command, Control, & Communications – Tactical) and the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab (MCWL) on a Fire Support Cognitive Assistant, software to sort through incoming communications such as calls for artillery or air support. It’s part of a much wider push, led by the Air Force, to create a Joint All-Domain Command & Control (JADC2) mega-network that can coordinate operations by all five armed services across land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace.

https://breakingdefense.com/2020/07/pen ... en-google/

[RhetoricThug]

Optogenetic Neuronal Silencing Gets an Upgrade

Having a highly controllable, long-lasting neural silencing technique is invaluable in all fields of neuroscience, both from basic research and applied science viewpoints. In this regard, Dr Kojima adds: “In humans, neural inhibition plays essential roles in many physiological phenomena, such as sleep, awaking, circadian rhythms and hormone secretion. We expect that our understanding of the above phenomena at the molecular level will be accelerated by optogenetic neural silencing using our engineered proteins, and that this will lead to development of new treatments for sleep disorder, jet lag and lifestyle-related diseases.” The tool unveiled in this study will hopefully lead to many advances in medicine and neuroscience, as scientists continue the quest to answer one of the hardest questions ever known: how exactly do neurons and the brain work?
https://www.technologynetworks.com/geno ... ade-338776

Optogenetics for Plants

Optogenetics involves genetic modification of laboratory animals, such as mice, to express light-sensitive proteins in certain cells; those proteins then become switches that allow control of cellular activity with light pulses, piped in wirelessly or via fiber optics. The classic example is channelrhodopsin, a photosensitive protein derived from algae. When introduced into nerve cells using the techniques of gene therapy, the protein can be used to open neuronal ion channels, and thus cause individual neurons to fire, with the application of blue light.

Studies with channelrhodopsin and other light-sensitive proteins have, in the past two decades, opened vast new capabilities for mapping brain activity (see “Optogenetics,” OPN, April 2018). Optogenetics has even recently been extended to studies and control of other tissues, such as the cardiovascular system.
https://www.osa-opn.org/home/newsroom/2 ... or_plants/

DARPA Progress With ‘Ocean Of Things’ All-Seeing Eye On The High Seas

DARPA has awarded a contract for the next phase of development of its Ocean of Things (OoT), a project to seed the seas with thousands of floating sensors, monitoring everything that passes from aircraft to submarines.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambl ... 4162ccf270

Climate TRACE to track real-time global carbon emissions

A new high-tech effort will detect the location of carbon dioxide as it's released, making it easier for the public and policymakers to hold polluters accountable.

https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2020 ... emissions/

AI Slays Top F-16 Pilot In DARPA Dogfight Simulation

"It's a giant leap," said DARPA's Justin (call sign "Glock") Mock.

Heron Systems’ AI was extremely aggressive in the games, with its AI pilot consistently able to turn and score killing hits on the simulated F-16 piloted by an unnamed Air Force pilot, with the call sign “Banger,” a graduate of the Air Force’s highly selective Weapons School at Nellis AFB. The AI exhibited “superhuman aiming ability” during the simulation, Mock said.

https://breakingdefense.com/2020/08/ai- ... imulation/

How special relativity can help AI predict the future

The world progresses step by step, every instant emerging from those that precede it. We can make good guesses about what happens next because we have strong intuitions about cause and effect, honed by observing how the world works from the moment we are born and processing those observations with brains hardwired by millions of years of evolution.

Computers, however, find causal reasoning hard. Machine-learning models excel at spotting correlations but are hard pressed to explain why one event should follow another. That’s a problem, because without a sense of cause and effect, predictions can be wildly off. Why shouldn’t a football reverse in flight?

https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/0 ... -medicine/

Deepfake reality check: AI avatars set to transform business and education outreach

AI avatars and synthetic video production could provide organizations with entirely new capabilities for training and multilingual global communication in the years ahead.

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/de ... -outreach/

Microscopic robots 'walk' thanks to laser tech

A Cornell University-led collaboration has created the first microscopic robots that incorporate semiconductor components, allowing them to be controlled -- and made to walk -- with standard electronic signals.

These robots, roughly the size of paramecium, provide a template for building even more complex versions that utilize silicon-based intelligence, can be mass produced, and may someday travel through human tissue and blood.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 113715.htm

Elon Musk shows Neuralink brain implant working in a pig

"It's like a Fitbit in your skull," the SpaceX and Tesla leader says of Neuralink's brain-computer link technology.

But Musk's vision is far more radical, including ideas like "conceptual telepathy," where two people can communicate electronically by thinking at each other instead of writing or speaking. The long-term goal is to head off a future where artificial intelligence vastly smarter than humans exterminates us.

Musk envisions people using Neuralink to connect to their own digital AI incarnations so "the future is controlled by the combined will of the people of Earth," Musk said. "It's going to be important from an existential threat perspective to achieve a good AI symbiosis."

https://www.cnet.com/news/elon-musk-sho ... -in-a-pig/

"The real effect comes from the hidden ground not from the content."

Technological infrastructure, not politics, reorganize society. Technological service environments become the hidden ground of social engineering.

We're sleepwalking into slavery and extinction.

[RhetoricThug]

'If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed.'
- Mark Twain

Nevertheless, if you're able to keep up with the headlines in hyperspace, what you retain is instantly obsolesced by the ongoing evolution of the total sphere of human knowledge. Why write a book when the information contained within is out of date after print? When I posted this thread, I had no idea 2020 would bring forth a tempestuous epoch. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, so I'll continue to post fragments of futures past.


“The release of atomic power new technology has changed everything except our way of thinking ... the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker." -Albert Einstein




Although the deployment of 5G (mmWave tech) hasn't been nearly as quick to bolster the (I)Internet (O)f (T)hings infrastructure, new technologies seek to use bioengineered spores to track and trace items in the supply chain.

Crops sprayed with 'barcoded' spores could help trace food poisoning

Spraying crops with bacterial or yeast spores that have unique DNA “barcodes” would make food safer by allowing the source of food poisoning to be rapidly identified, says a team at Harvard University. The group has genetically engineered the organisms, developed a rapid test for them and shown that the spores – which are inert and harmless – persist and remain detectable, even on cooked food.

Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/22 ... z6z2jfzLT8




Long time readers know about my blathering on telepathy replacing human language, now it's coming to a head. Elon Musk, a man with Asperger syndrome, a neurodevelopmental disorder, is trying to unleash Neuralink on the world.

Elon Musk’s Big Neuralink Paper

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexzhavor ... 60b497554d

According to the company’s CEO, Neuralink put a computer chip into the monkey’s skull and used “tiny wires” to connect it to its brain.

He said: “It’s not an unhappy monkey. You can’t even see where the neural implant was put in, except that he’s got a slight like dark mohawk.”

He also said during the interview people are in effect already “cyborgs” because they have a tertiary “digital layer” thanks to phones, computers and applications.

Mr Musk added: “With a direct neural interface, we can improve the bandwidth between your cortex and your digital tertiary layer by many orders of magnitude.”




Humans further the usurpation of natural ecological systems by implementing technocratic biological modifiers.

First Genetically Modified Mosquitoes Released in U.S. Are Hatching Now

The experiment relies on a genetic alteration that will be lethal to a large number of future offspring. In this case, male mosquitoes have been modified to carry a gene that makes their female progeny dependent on the antibiotic tetracycline—and thus fated to die in the wild. As the mating cycle repeats over generations, female numbers are depleted, and the population is suppressed. The modified insects eventually die off, making this approach self-limiting.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... ching-now/




Hush-hush, don't talk about the silent weapons being quietly developed. We just need you to surrender your ballistics to keep the public safe.

Directed-energy attacks: The invisible threat Congress wants answers on

Going back to 2017, POLITICO has been reporting on government agency officials, spies and diplomats affected by a series of mysterious illnesses. The victims say they suffered from tinnitus, blurry vision, loss of balance and headaches. First documented in employees at the U.S. Embassy in Cuba, symptoms related to these incidents have come to be known as "Havana Syndrome."

US space force confirms working on space-based directed-energy weapons

The US Space Force (USSF) has let slip that it is developing space-based directed-energy weapons, a direct violation of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which prohibits the militarization of space.

“Yes sir, we are,” Chief of Space Operations Gen. Jay Raymond told Rep. Jim Langevin (D-RI) during a Wednesday hearing after being asked if the USSF was developing directed-energy systems for US satellites.

https://nation.com.pk/18-Jun-2021/us-sp ... gy-weapons

US investigating possible mysterious directed energy attack near White House

Federal agencies are investigating at least two possible incidents on US soil, including one near the White House in November of last year, that appear similar to mysterious, invisible attacks that have led to debilitating symptoms for dozens of US personnel abroad.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/29/politics ... index.html




Yet, no wonder why we don't have answers. Compartmentalization of information has led to the classification of patents and technology. If the Pentagon doesn't think Aliens pilot UFOs, is it willing to discuss above top secret research?

Why the Pentagon’s latest UFO report is a turning point on the issue

The U.S. intelligence released a preliminary --and watershed -- report on unidentified aerial phenomena or UFOs. The report is the government’s most concerted and serious attempt to understand an issue without the fear of being ridiculed. The report found no evidence of aliens but acknowledged at least 143 unexplained sightings since 2004.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-t ... -the-issue




Don't worry, The Great Reset is gearing up! Robots continue to casually proliferate.

Honolulu Police Department Used $150,000 in CARES Funds on Robot Dog
The department spent relief funds on a Boston Dynamics dog.

It’s also unclear why they need the robot at all, given that one of the major perks mentioned was that it carries a temperature screening device that can be used from several feet away and logically might be altered as a handheld gadget.

“Spot carries a camera that is so advanced it can scan someone from 8 feet away,” O’Neal boasted. “Now this is not a scan of general temperature. This camera...scans a three-pixel area in the corner of your eye. So the most accurate body temperature you can possibly get in that site and probably almost anywhere—this is the same camera that’s been used at the Pentagon.” This supposedly helps solve the problem of “accuracy problems” in measuring body temperature from heat exposure. And Spot can disinfect areas with UVCs and atomizers, they added.


'Creepy' Robot Dog Loses Job With New York Police Department

After a public outcry, a robotic dog once hailed by the New York Police Department a high-tech crime-fighting sidekick is getting sent back to its owner.

The police canceled a $94,000 contract with the robot's maker Boston Dynamics following a backlash tied to calls to cut the police budget and concerns of police militarization and abuses of force.

The department introduced the public to the "Digidog" in December after acquiring the device in a test program.

"This dog is going to save lives, protect people, and protect officers and that's our goal," NYPD Technical Assistance Response Unit Inspector Frank Digiacomo said in an interview with the local ABC station.

https://www.npr.org/2021/04/30/99255157 ... department

Hyundai Acquires Boston Dynamics, Company Most Famous for Robot Police Dogs

https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvz7bm/ ... olice-dogs

A Military Drone With A Mind Of Its Own Was Used In Combat, U.N. Says

"If anyone was killed in an autonomous attack, it would likely represent an historic first known case of artificial intelligence-based autonomous weapons being used to kill," Zachary Kallenborn wrote in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

https://www.npr.org/2021/06/01/10021962 ... tonomous-d

Israel is Using Robots with Machine Guns to Patrol Gaza Border

The Jaguar's role in a border patrol and possibly anti-riot capacity will likely continue to receive scrutiny as public security services across the world explore deploying unmanned systems with offensive capabilities.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/ ... der-188602

Austin Cyclists Split On Sharing Bike Lanes With Pizza Delivery Robots

Some Austin cyclists are not happy about the robots using bike lanes, while others are optimistic that sharing their path will lead to good things down the road.

https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/arti ... ry-robots/

Bezos says Amazon workers aren’t treated like robots, unveils robotic plan to keep them working
He didn’t specifically mention the peeing in bottles, however

Bezos pushed back on the idea that, according to news reports, Amazon doesn’t care for its employees. “In those reports, our employees are sometimes accused of being desperate souls and treated as robots. That’s not accurate,” he wrote.

To address concerns about working conditions, Bezos said the company will develop new staffing schedules “that use sophisticated algorithms to rotate employees among jobs that use different muscle-tendon groups to decrease repetitive motion and help protect employees from MSD risks.” The technology will roll out throughout 2021, he said.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/15/2238 ... -workplace




After we scientifically isolate the working parts we'll try to reorganize the whole thing.

Scientists Say They’ve Finally Sequenced the Entire Human Genome. Yes, All of It.

If their work holds up to peer review and it turns out they really did sequence and assemble the human genome in its entirety, gaps and all, it could change the future of medicine.




For better or worse, they're nothing but hacks.

Security News This Week: Hackers Are Erasing Western Digital Hard Drives Remotely

https://www.wired.com/story/western-dig ... rity-news/

Crackonosh: How hackers are using gamers to become crypto-rich

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57601631

Edward Snowden says Julian Assange 'could be next' after John McAfee dies by suicide in jail

https://www.businessinsider.com/edward- ... ide-2021-6

Former Black Hat hacker warns cyberattacks against US will get ‘exponentially worse and worse'

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/black- ... -and-worse

Ethical hacking: saving society with computer code
As a form of civil disobedience, hacking can help make the world a better place.

https://bigthink.com/politics-current-a ... ciety-code




Climate lockdown anyone?


Covid-19 pandemic forced a 'wake up' to climate crisis

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-suffolk-57359951

Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Reaches New High Despite Pandemic Emissions Reduction

Global carbon emissions in 2020 were lower than they were in 2019, but those reductions would need to be sustained for years to slow the climate crisis

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-ne ... 180977945/




Let's admit it's highly manipulated

Red-Hot U.S. Economy Drives Global Inflation, Forcing Foreign Banks to Act

Central banks are raising rates to fend off a rise in inflation as policy makers respond to the booming U.S. economy

https://www.wsj.com/articles/red-hot-u- ... 1623933343

During Covid-19, Most Americans Got Richer—Especially the Rich

The coronavirus pandemic plunged Americans into recession. Instead of emerging poorer, many came out ahead.

U.S. households added $13.5 trillion in wealth last year, according to the Federal Reserve, the biggest increase in records going back three decades. Many Americans of all stripes paid off credit-card debt, saved more and refinanced into cheaper mortgages. That challenged the conventions of previous economic downturns. In 2008, for example, U.S. households lost $8 trillion.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/during-cov ... 1624791602




-RT

[Unthinking Majority]

People have been migrating into virtual reality for many decades now. We all know this is because capitalist materialism has demolished any sense of agency or purpose in people's lives. It is now considered more enjoyable to create alternative personas (such as on this web forum) where people can reproduce their fantasies of importance when compared with the dismal reality that wealth and power are controlled by a tiny elite and there is nothing left but meaningless spectacle.

I think people are retreating into fantasy and VR because their lives have become so materialistically easy. It's become easy and common for a 27 year old to live with their parents, devoid of meaningful life direction, and sit in front of a TV and play video games or post on Instagram much of the day so they can fulfill fantasies, which are essentially just meaningful goals. 150 years ago if you didn't work you starved to death. Now we have 30 year old adult children. Fewer women are having children, they're raising dog-babies etc.

[RhetoricThug]

I think people are retreating into fantasy and VR because their lives have become so materialistically easy. It's become easy and common for a 27 year old to live with their parents, devoid of meaningful life direction, and sit in front of a TV and play video games or post on Instagram much of the day so they can fulfill fantasies, which are essentially just meaningful goals. 150 years ago if you didn't work you starved to death. Now we have 30 year old adult children. Fewer women are having children, they're raising dog-babies etc.

It's not that simple. Although you diligently tap into an account for some wayfarer consumers or demographics, we mustn't forget about the others; namely the developers or modifiers of new products. It's more complex than we deduce here, because modernity and unbridled progress come from the depths of human ingenuity and give rise to complex extensions of our nervous system. I cannot speak for or outline the definitive psychological attributes of attainment, but we make things easy for ourselves because we pathologically desire material gratification to appease biological impulses.

The gravity of this situation brought about modern complexity and stole the attention of lesser trained minds, minds that are content with being content for the next advent. And so we have a hierarchy of physiological interfacing and mental aguish at play. There's pain in discovering the next distraction, equal pain in being distracted. The suffering is real. Culture is against us. Its essence transfers the energy of singletons to the mass of ideation, therefore we're bound by socialization. An amalgamation of information crosses paths with genetic expression and coerces the latter. Most individuals conform to benevolent and malignant elements of societal influence. A cost benefit analysis illustrates why "adults" choose to not "adult" or grow up and fully mature as a human being. If you see a problem statistically, then there's an issue with the societal socioeconomic system that has developed over the course of human history. All artists have retrieved this message for you, but none have listened. What will you do about it?

Technology is an extension of us, and when a human born with a neurodevelopmental disorder develops a computer software program, it'll reflect their neurological disposition. Hence why we've social media platforms, Neuralink, etc. All products of those not concerned with distracting themselves (as a means to ignore current conditions or a cure all serum), rather achieving a level of personal attainment, find pleasure. Once attained, outgrowths ecologically influence future decisions of such entrepreneurs (given we're talking about countries with economic policies friendly for entrepreneurs.). Which in turn perpetuates an on-going stream of human evolution.

Wise men & women thought of the answer before the next question. We need respect for the wise, wether they promote status-quo or nostalgia, they communicate timeless adages and warn of brave or wondrous contrivances . I'm currently under the assumption that wise-men safeguard us from contemporary whims. If not, there's need for divergence, and I hope there'll be enough divergence to stop the extinction of humanity. Mythology once safeguarded us, but we've become negligent and self-righteous. It's obvious to me that all of civilization is birthed by human intellect in accordance with biological circumstance, leaving consciousness or the noosphere as the final frontier of humanity.

Had this system been born out of simplicity, I wouldn't need to share this.

[Unthinking Majority]

It's not that simple. Although you diligently tap into an account for some wayfarer consumers or demographics, we mustn't forget about the others; namely the developers or modifiers of new products. It's more complex than we deduce here, because modernity and unbridled progress come from the depths of human ingenuity and give rise to complex extensions of our nervous system. I cannot speak for or outline the definitive psychological attributes of attainment, but we make things easy for ourselves because we pathologically desire material gratification to appease biological impulses.

Yes, there's certain biological pathways that feel good when we sit around lazy and do nothing, or eat a lot of food and get fat. A major problem is that we have over-production in our society. Many of our needs have been met now very easily and far beyond anything we could have experienced even 200 years ago, to the point where needs of subsistence that were normal problems of every day life 200 years ago are now always met without much if any struggle. But then other needs fall by the wayside as technology fundamentally changes our lives.

The big question is how do we properly adapt to new technology in order for us to maintain a healthy balance of all human needs. One of these major human need is purpose in life. A reason to get up in the morning and find our struggle to try to solve every day. 200 years ago we could rarely choose our own struggle, it was given to us: ie: you need to farm your land or you and your family will starve.

Now we have the pleasure of doing or being anything we set our minds too, the food will always be on the table as long as we get a paycheck, especially if we can convince another person (or government) to financially take care of us when we are adults (parents, spouse, partner, government benefits) to that we can sit around and do nothing at all.

There is no government law that can force parents to kick out their unemployed 30 year old child out of the house. The problem is the system of overabundance itself, so we have to manage ourselves. It requires self-discipline. And given how many people are fat and don't eat well or exercise much, self-discipline is a very hard thing to ask from people and they often fail and fall back into their comforts and fantasies in order to avoid solving the problems that need to be solved.

Maybe the answer is to destroy everything and go back to hunting elk to survive:

“In the world I see you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Towers. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying stripes of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighways.”

― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

[Potemkin]

Maybe the answer is to destroy everything and go back to hunting elk to survive:

“In the world I see you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Towers. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying stripes of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighways.”

― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

But that's just another way of opting out of solving the real and current problems which face us right now - retreating into a pre-lapsarian (read: pre-Neolithic Revolution) paradise is the intellectual equivalent of sitting on our fat asses and doing nothing. That pre-lapsarian paradise is now forever inaccessible to us, and is little more than a reactionary fantasy, as the writings of a certain well-known PoFoite testify.

[Unthinking Majority]

But that's just another way of opting out of solving the real and current problems which face us right now - retreating into a pre-lapsarian (read: pre-Neolithic Revolution) paradise is the intellectual equivalent of sitting on our fat asses and doing nothing. That pre-lapsarian paradise is now forever inaccessible to us, and is little more than a reactionary fantasy, as the writings of a certain well-known PoFoite testify.

Well the Amish did it. But yes it certainly is unrealistic. The problem is new technology is invented at such a pace where we've been unable to adapt it to ourselves and society properly. We seem to just launch right into it enthusiastically without thinking about the negatives, let alone managing these negatives.

Being in front of a laptop or smartphone means we're not interacting with people in the real world right in front of us. The same with watching TV or whatnot. Just 100 years ago the world was a very, very different place. My parents got all of their meat and vegetables from their own hunting/fishing, livestock, or what they grew on their property and had to store them in order to survive the winter. This wasn't the 3rd world, they lived in a western developed country.

if we need to learn to adapt in healthy ways we'd better actually make an effort to figure it out and then communicate it to the masses. All we have are self-help books. But children need to be raised with these adaptations, and then keep adapting throughout life, and teach their kids.

[RhetoricThug]

We live by the light of harvest, rarely sowing sanctuary for symbiosis.

Yes, there's certain biological pathways that feel good when we sit around lazy and do nothing, or eat a lot of food and get fat. A major problem is that we have over-production in our society. Many of our needs have been met now very easily and far beyond anything we could have experienced even 200 years ago, to the point where needs of subsistence that were normal problems of every day life 200 years ago are now always met without much if any struggle. But then other needs fall by the wayside as technology fundamentally changes our lives.

Biological pathways evolve slowly, while technological extensions of the body proliferate and diffuse culturally. The noosphere cybernetically interrelates by how we interface with material reality. The mind decides what to do with its information loop. Incentivize laziness and an unthinking majority might fall victim to a sensory onslaught of perceptive satisfaction which confuses wants and needs. However, there's more to life, and the feedback loop, than sitting around and doing nothing. After-all, someone's doing something, because humans reimagined purpose and repurposed imaginative interpretations of material reality. The struggle of existence pathologically abstracts problems from an experience of time and dialectically synthesizes solutions, and therefore future conditions of humanity.

Biological necessity is a sub-domain of the noosphere and a mathematical or material expression of consciousness. We're aggregating and projecting a developmental evolutionary facet of one elusive entity that knows itself only through fragmentation of whole happenings. Its working parts, like workers in a factory, give rise to a replaceable expression of a super entity. An entity that doesn't fully realize its identity, because permanency is in the mind of the creator. And whose to say we're not ecologically redistributed to birth the next phase in an ongoing sequencing of universal dimensional expansion?

The issue is clear here, your mind tells a different story. It shifts shapes and stands in static stasis. Only to witness manic-dynamic habits of planetary panic.

The big question is how do we properly adapt to new technology in order for us to maintain a healthy balance of all human needs. One of these major human need is purpose in life. A reason to get up in the morning and find our struggle to try to solve every day. 200 years ago we could rarely choose our own struggle, it was given to us: ie: you need to farm your land or you and your family will starve.

Surrogate activities give rise to learned helplessness. In turn, anthropogenic pattern recognition cognitively afflicts people who take part in post-industrial society. They adapt by contextualizing their struggle to make sure it's permissible in a hyper-technological society. Eventually, herd adaptation breeds a generation of human needs. The average persons' conceptualization of goals is influenced by the shock of rapid acceleration in technological discovery. And redefines cultural gestalts, which in time challange the balance of all human needs.

Now we have the pleasure of doing or being anything we set our minds too, the food will always be on the table as long as we get a paycheck, especially if we can convince another person (or government) to financially take care of us when we are adults (parents, spouse, partner, government benefits) to that we can sit around and do nothing at all.

Let's cast hyperbole aside, and be honest. We can't be or do anything we set our minds to, because we're bound by the parameters of our own myth or dream. The wondrous spell of economics has blessed society with the joy of illusive delusion. You're correct in hinting at our power as a fully sentient healthy individual, but a social contract nudges us in the right and wrong direction together.

There is no government law that can force parents to kick out their unemployed 30 year old child out of the house. The problem is the system of overabundance itself, so we have to manage ourselves. It requires self-discipline. And given how many people are fat and don't eat well or exercise much, self-discipline is a very hard thing to ask from people and they often fail and fall back into their comforts and fantasies in order to avoid solving the problems that need to be solved.

Self realization's a complex subject and we'd have to touch on several factors that enforce personality traits. Perhaps we're completely culpable for everything we're supposed to do. Monks from various areas of the world demonstrate how powerful attention and intention are. Public education should emphasize training in perception and how we interpret reality. If enough people devolve and neglect to realize what they're capable of, good intentions or not, society will undergo a lull of creativity and decline into a revolting pile of degeneracy. There's possibility of non-engagement. The post-industrial system is in trouble if we stop participating. And since the system is reflective of our doing, hopefully we're ready to deal with the consequences.

Maybe the answer is to destroy everything and go back to hunting elk to survive:

“In the world I see you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Towers. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying stripes of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighways.”

― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

Romantic. Nevertheless, information nomadism established an additional form of the hunt and gather. A parasitic technological overlay wrapped around the biosphere and ecologically redistributed its figure-ground interplay by way of the presence of an interconnected web of human activity. Electric circuitry and modern communication tools, like the internet, have extended our physical vessels and artificially automated consciousness outside its vanishing point and laid the foundation for the continuing emergence of a noosphere. Unbound by biological restraint, time and space, a noosphere is an ever-expanding inter-dimensional projection of the human species. Portals to the noosphere allow singletons of consciousness to interact with information at a distance. This kind of simultaneous anthropogenic entanglement retrieved old instincts and obsolesced past modes of biological organization. As a suitor via technological marriage, humanity should seek a commensalistic relationship with Earth, its host. Currently, we live by the light of harvest, rarely sowing sanctuary for symbiosis.

Well the Amish did it. But yes it certainly is unrealistic. The problem is new technology is invented at such a pace where we've been unable to adapt it to ourselves and society properly. We seem to just launch right into it enthusiastically without thinking about the negatives, let alone managing these negatives.

Being in front of a laptop or smartphone means we're not interacting with people in the real world right in front of us. The same with watching TV or whatnot. Just 100 years ago the world was a very, very different place. My parents got all of their meat and vegetables from their own hunting/fishing, livestock, or what they grew on their property and had to store them in order to survive the winter. This wasn't the 3rd world, they lived in a western developed country.

if we need to learn to adapt in healthy ways we'd better actually make an effort to figure it out and then communicate it to the masses. All we have are self-help books. But children need to be raised with these adaptations, and then keep adapting throughout life, and teach their kids.

“We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us.”

We should shape our tools cautiously.

viewtopic.php?f=45&t=179197

[RhetoricThug]

(Soundtrack)

OR

An age of social privilege commandeered by communal scientific consensus and driven by economic plight will rewrite legislative liberties and supersede individual autonomy or psychosocial freedoms. The Covid-19 pandemic has authoritatively rewritten societal contracts and accelerated the integration of technocratic techniques & principles. Principles that favor the automation and digitization of energy and information, techniques that balkanize sub-cultures (exacerbation of political dialectics), deepen class stratification, and further the full-spectrum dominance of quantitative and qualitative analysis of data streams.

The global histrionic right-left dichotomy has unknowingly synthesized a dubious form of unregulated consumption and technological narcissism. Despite cautionary evidence from the reactionary Covid-19 lockdowns, anthropogenically induced climate change has pressed upon Earth harder than ever without any collaborative rational discourse or change of course. The United States panicked when the pandemic hit, so much so they decided to issue stimulus checks which temporarily bolstered and bloated low-income peoples, and encouraged regular spending habits. A temporary eviction memorandum protected those paying already inflated rent prices, while myopic economic stimulus made sure monthly payments to corporate entities continued to flow. Government aid came promptly only to ensure payments were made to those that truly matter in the eyes of corporate technocracy.

In America, statistically average unemployed people affected by the pandemic abused the aid system to use wage inflation substantiated by an out of touch fiscal rescue policy amended for unemployment benefits. When benefits ended, average people, cushioned by extraordinary income (outside of their generally earned income) reprioritized their lives. Once the economy resumed operations as normal or pre-pandemic status, employers found a barren landscape. People no longer wish to be employed by bullshit jobs and do not wish to be exploited by a carrot on a stick. Abnormally long commutes fueled by combustion pollutants no longer appeal to office workers.They've realized how precious and fleeting their time and attention actually is, while new patterns of remote engagement restructure professionalism. Tech companies knowingly seize new forms of exchange as innovative opportunities to fundamentally transform the work place. It's no secret we're being herded into information fusion centers, given a name and number, and let loose to redistribute ecological resources. After-all, it's the conditions of employment for professionals seeking upward mobility to be unconditionally fervorous in the pursuit of planetary destruction.

Employers turn increasingly to automation to make up for their lack of employees. Job benefits which should've been available to employees all along, miraculously appeared to entice potential candidates for employment. Money printing contributes to the flow of commerce but is ultimately offset by the conditions of employment and consequently supply chain issues. Had the average American citizen earned a robust savings account instead of credit or usury systems, the lockdown would've been less severe. Instead, Americans project an uncanny level of uncharted self-indulgent and deceptive privilege. And the manipulation of interest rates is ultimately taxation without representation. Socioeconomics defined by parliamentary pain trying to reign in geopolitical repercussions, curtailed by globalism, lawmakers felt as if they had to give the poor recourse.

An arms race of medical proportions gifted pharmaceutical companies an opportunity to offer designer immune systems to citizens of the brave neuron world. All of which veer us toward a future where private corporate entities dictate how we interrelate with one another and to a governmentally mandated culture of coercive couth brought to us in the name of peace and safety. Social developments and complaint legalistic activities born in an age of intense interconnectivity coupled with censorship will hybridize a sense of sovereign identity and ecological community, but not for the empowerment of the former.

Around the world we observe a core disconnect between the haves and have nots. Devolution of empathy surely gives rise to a meta-verse of noospheric technological overlay that justifies any mechanistic classification of participatory divisions in this globally augmented system of sociopolitical economic regulatory compliance. Most of us do not wish to compete with cold-calculated modes of consumption based upon abominable and unfathomable mathematical models of greed bartered by bullish braindead bankers. Until we recognize our technology as extensions of ourselves, we'll enslave ourselves. Constantly conspiring to conscript corky comrade logic cancels crass cancel culture. Homogenization of the communal cyber-sensitive citizens has afflicted great administrative grease upon the lubricated but unmoving mass of politically paranoid peoples of America. Lest hope & freedom detain dignity, we've lost all reputable persona in the face of popular perception. Norms and customs compromised by the numerology of society have transformed our values.

Amen,

American Dream