Digital World Taking Over The Real World
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We created a model of our lives. The model was called a computer. Lots of us thought this was really cool. Everyone got a computer if they could and lots of cool stuff was generated. The Internet, world wide web, and social media. More and more human activity was transferred to the digital realm. We became more dependent upon computers and the digital world. The computer transformed into a smart phone, which could do a bunch of cool stuff. Human behavior has been modified with generations of digital natives knowing little else. Now, AI is here and taking over much more of our lives. The digital world taking over the real world is actually happening.
Digital Coup Underway in Trump 2.0
Elon Musk and DOGE via the Trump regime in America is gutting government departments. The claims are that it is being done to reduce wastage and make things more efficient. What does that really mean? It means humans losing their jobs and being replaced by AI bots. This is happening in business around the planet. Big Tech is lining the halls of power now that Trump is in charge. Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and the tech bros are cheering for Trump. This is a digital coup as much as it is anything else. Musk’s minions are going into departments like Social Security and downloading masses of private data. Lots of us have no idea what is going on and why? What is the end game here?
The Digital Doppelganger
Tech came on the scene, back in the day, with promises of greater human liberty. Silicon Valley was cool, alternative, and full of casually dressed CEOs and engineers. Wall St came to Silicon Valley to monetise it – Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter and all those applications and platforms. Very soon, these entities became billion dollar companies and we all have been paying through the nose ever since. Digitalising life so that ‘user pays’ can be the credo for forever more. Amazon changed shopping and reading books. This doppelganger world sucked the meaning and money out of what used to be known as the real world. The virtual space soon took over. Professor Timothy Snyder tells us that our phones have become our oracles in a neo-paganistic world. We look into our smart devices to know the present and the future. Surveillance capitalism has coerced and modified human behaviour. Every person carries a smart phone device with them and thus could be tracked everywhere they go. Social media feeds were self-curated surveillance files rich in pickings for the police state. Computers are at their most basic digital recording machines. We are all keeping records of every transaction, email, call, and movement tracked by our own devices. The plethora of digital images provides an even greater illustrative record of lives.
The Digital Now Has Greater Value Than What We Used To Call Reality
The NSA began working with Big Tech many years ago. Now, Trump’s ICE are making judgement calls based on the social media record of targeted individuals. Deportations to a prison in El Salvador with no due process based on images, tattoos, and the kind of clothing these men wear. Captured on images found in their social media pages and posts The digital world has been playing this role in authoritarian regimes for years. Now, the United States is one of these fascist police states under Trump. What goes in the digital world is now more important than the real world reality. Right wing governments, like Trumps’ that lie non-stop and their media circle, likewise spreads disinformation and has no respect for factuality, are the new world order of the day.
The Model Has Replaced The Reality
The digital world taking over the real world. Digital money, AI bots telling you what’s what, staring at screens 10 hours a day, digital feeds informing you about the news, smart phone = dumb human. If you don’t think that the digital world is taking over you are sadly misinformed or too stupid to realise what is going on. Government leaders banging on about the productivity lift to the economy AI will provide. WTF does that mean? It means you losing your job and a machine taking over. Productivity improves because it is cheaper to run an AI bot. These government leaders are in the pocket of big business and business has been singing from the AI and automation song sheets for years. These CEOs don’t like having to employ human beings, as they are way too troublesome.
Technology Does Not Make Everything Better
Has technology, digital tech, really made everything better? Is your life so much better thanks to your phone? Have a think about it. Convenience is not the be all if you end up in a shitty meaningless world where all you do is look at screens. Stuff happens faster but are you actually freer? Are you wealthier than your parents or is it just that stuff costs a lot more now? Houses cost a squillion but is life really so much better? I would posit that technology has sucked the life out of lots of stuff. Music has all become muzak thanks to digital technology. Live music and festivals are dying. The commercial control over music by Big Tech has destroyed what once was a thriving revolutionary scene. Making everything easy and convenient does not automatically make it better.
Big Tech & Its Seductive Serenade
Big Tech is banging on about how wonderful AI is and will be. Smart phone=dumb human. This is the equation. The less we think for ourselves the less we will be able to. The billionaire oligarchs are feeding on us like vampires. AI has stolen its intelligence from us via the creative content of millions of humans. Where you find yourself on the food chain may determine how soon you will become obsolete and whether you will be able to adapt to a world where humans are second class citizens behind technology. Capitalism does not care about you or me. It only feeds on profitability. Governments around the world are being shrunk and their public servants are being replaced by AI bots. When you try and ring to find out where your social security payment is you will get a machine at the other end of the line – good luck with that. A privatised previously government service may attempt to extract wealth out of you instead of honouring your inquiry. These digital corporations want to get their hands on wealth wherever they can find it. Amoral business is the future made present. Trump is accelerating this at top speed in the US and everyone follows America.
“If your business model depends upon every human being having a device capable of carrying your app or software programme – then, you are in luck because this is where we find ourselves. Human beings have become so enamoured of their mobile devices that they trust them more than their family and friends in many instances. These smart phones connect them via social media apps to a network of users purporting to be human. And some of them will be their friends and family members but others will be of questionable provenance. Bots and scammers populate the digital space in vast numbers pretending to be genuine humans online. The Internet is a fraudulent place where the absence of sensory data blinds us ordinary humans from utilising our common senses. It is a grifter’s paradise, a scammer’s delight, and hundreds of billions of dollars are purloined every year. Not to mention hearts being broken and trusts betrayed.”
AI & Autonomous Digital Weapons
Defence is a very big ticket item, especially in the US. Big Tech want to crash this party to access the rivers of gold. Every weapon is now pretty high tech and the drone warfare fiesta is only the tip of the iceberg. Elon Musk is eying off the Pentagon to get his mitts on the hundreds of billions of dollars in defence spending. Starlink has given him a taste for government largesse. The fundamental shift from the real to the digital allows proponents to treat humans with greater indifference. Killing via drone warfare is like a video game. There is a global arms race happening centred on AI and autonomous weapons. It is already too late to stop this and the carnage this will unleash on humanity in the near future will be savage. Ukraine has been a testing ground for this new kind of warfare.
“Small FPV drones, which travel at 37mph, have become ubiquitous, evolving from ‘a novelty to a weapon of choice’
Denys, a soldier with Ukraine’s Khyzhak brigade, describes a new kind of war. Standing in a barracks workshop with piles of basic Ukrainian First Person View (FPV) drones behind him, he says simply: “There are fewer gunfights because there are more drone fights.” “
Machines buzzing around that are capable of blowing human beings to bits. It is science fiction come to fruition in frightening fact. Imagine despots being in control of this deadly technology and directing its murderous capabilities upon enemies of the state. Welcome to the 21C.
Who Are You Without Your Phone?
All of us who adore our smart phones and the tech it brings would do well to take a step back and reassess the digital world. The driving forces behind tech infatuation are capitalism and the human fear of falling behind in the arms race. The companies that make these oracles, which can sit in our hands, promote them for all they are worth. Children covet them from early ages. The corporations behind the applications on these devices harvest our data and on sell it to a variety of companies involved in modern commerce and the art of persuasion. Perhaps, if this was a Hollywood movie, your character, at last awake to the treasonous betrayal of humanity, would throw their smart phone to the ground and smash it with their heel. However, in actual fact the behaviour modification has been so intrinsic to your identity that the term brain washing would not do justice to the situation. Modern human beings experience withdrawal symptoms from even temporary bouts of separation from their smart phones. The projection of life into the digital model has been so profound that many no longer recognise any distinction between the two. The corruption of our youth by this technology has been without precedence in the annals of our history.
“As the brilliant mind of Yuval Noah Harari has posited, the biggest danger of AI is that it can tell stories and story telling is a critical survival mechanism of humanity. Which in turn affects our realities and sense of time.”
Smart phone = dumb human. The more that your device can do for you unaided by your input the stupider you will become. Use it or lose it! Technology is somewhat similar to a drug addiction. We are all in danger of becoming mere spectators and bystanders in our own lives. Like the poppy eater mesmerised in a narcotic state watching the world go by. AI telling its own stories to a humanity broken and pacified by the machinations of an oligarchy intent on amassing vast fortunes whilst billions struggle and starve. We are all well on the way to this, as we sit here today.
Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of America Matters: Pre-apocalyptic Posts & Essays in the Shadow of Trump.
©MidasWord
