From the time of Nietzsche (1844-1900) onwards, many poets, philosophers, literary figures, dramatists, and writers in the fields of science, medicine, technology and sociology have wholeheartedly embraced every advance in science and technology, arguing that the past is a dead weight that needs destroying to make way for the future. Others, like Nicanor Perlas (see the (Y)EA Booklist) argue that we need to take immediate steps to ensure that digitised technology is aligned to human values and priorities, if Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) is not to transform humanity into its own image.
As Jeremy Naydler has explained in, The Struggle for a Human Future, since the 1890s, increasingly sophisticated electronic technologies have become inexplicably interwoven into the very fabric of modern human culture.
"On smart motorways your car will drive itself while you, wearing your VR (Virtual Reality). headset and haptic vest (a garment that can create an experience of touch by applying forces, vibrations or motions to the user), play interactive computer games in the back seat; and in your smart house your fridge will autonomously order more eggs, milk and cheese for you via a wireless connection with a supplier. When we eventually wake up to the new reality that has been created for us, we shall find that the Internet of Things is itself the precursor to what has been called the 'Internet of Thinking'. In the Internet of Thinking, human beings discover that the conditions of life on our planet have become such that we all have to live in relationship to a global electronic intelligence, which will be active everywhere in our environment, We shall be obliged to interact with it in order to accomplish the simplest of tasks. But what actions will we then be able to perform that are truly free? In the current drive to establish a global electronic intelligence, or Global Brain, it is not hard to see the preconditions of electronically supercharged totalitarian states (or a World Government), with unprecedented control over the minutiae of individuals' lives. To step out of line by enacting a truly free initiative may be to risk economic or social exclusion. ..." (page 85, read on, see details on YEA Booklist).
We are presented with a range of consumer goods that have been designed for us, but not consciously by us, to ends that we but dimly perceive. For want of economic alternatives, young people across the world are drawn into the design, production, distribution, marketing, consumption and use of the products so beautifully described in this book. The world of the machine age monitors the mass production of food and the other necessities of life. The increasing sophistication of electronic hardware and software is sold to us in the name of unstoppable progress from Neanderthal Man to Scientific Man. But, as Elon Musk and the other leading global entrepreneurs set about dismantling the remnants of a sustainable social order based on economic democracy, they recognise that the Earth will 'eventually' become uninhabitable. Hence the global elite steam ahead with plans to leave the planet and become "a multi-planetary species".
Developments of this type have been anticipated for well over a century. In 1909 E.M. Forster wrote the science fiction novella entitled The Machine Stops. according to Will Gompertz:
"The Machine Stops is not simply prescient; it is a jaw-droppingly, gob-smackingly, breath-takingly accurate literary description of lockdown life in 2020. If it had been written today it would be excellent, that it was written over a century ago is astonishing. The short story is set in what must have seemed a futuristic world to Forster but won't to you. People live alone in identikit homes (globalisation) where they choose to isolate (his word), send messages by pneumatic post (a proto email or WhatsApp), and chat online via a video interface uncannily similar to Zoom or Skype.
"The clumsy system of public gatherings had long since been abandoned", along with touching strangers ("the custom had become obsolete"), now considered verboten in this new civilisation in which humans live in underground cells with an Alexa-like computer catering to their every whim."
If it already sounds spookily close for comfort, you won't be reassured to know that members of this detached society know thousands of people via machine-controlled social networks that encourage users to receive and impart second-hand ideas. "In certain directions human intercourse had advanced enormously" writes the visionary author drily, before adding later: "But humanity, in its desire for comfort, had over-reached itself. It had exploited the riches of nature too far. Quietly and complacently, it was sinking into decadence, and progress had come to mean progress of the machine."
For more on this theme (including the Booklist) see ESSAYS\YEA Page of https://www.douglassocialcredit.com/
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