A Bargain or a Trap

 Here's the last one for today. At Alt-Market.us Brandon Smith has an article entitled Is Global Technocracy Inevitable or Dangerously Delusional. The so-called tech geniuses and gurus believe that computers will eventually take over the world. Through Artificial Intelligence, the machines will be in charge. But Smith notes that it is entirely in our hands, as it has always been. We can choose to cut the cord, to leave our devises at home. We don't have to live as slaves to this iteration of "world domination."

The bewildering truth behind human technological enslavement is that it is impossible without the voluntary participation of the intended slaves. People must welcome technocracy into their lives in order for it to succeed. The populace has to believe, blindly, that they cannot live without it, or that authoritarianism by algorithmic consensus is “inevitable.”

For example, the average person living in a first world economy voluntarily carries a cell phone everywhere they go at all times without fail. To be without it, in their minds, is to be naked, at risk, unprepared and disconnected from civilization. I grew up in the 1980s and we did just fine without having a phone on our hip every moment of the day. Even now, I refuse to carry one.

Why? First, as most people should be aware of by now (the Edward Snowden revelations left no doubt), a cell phone is a perfect technocratic device. It has multilayered tracking, using GPS, WiFi routers, and cell tower triangulation to track your every step. Not only that, but it can be used to record your daily patterns, your habits, who your friends are, where you were on any given day many months or years ago.

Then there’s the backdoor functions hidden in app software that allows governments and corporations to to access your cell’s microphone and camera, even when you think the device is shut off. The private details of your life could be recorded and collated. In a world where privacy is being declared “dead” by boasting technocrats, why help them out by carrying something that listens to everything you say and chronicles everything you do?

Like Mr. Smith, I grew up at a time when there were no computers. We all got along just fine. We used paper maps to get around. We went to the library for information. We employed slide rules to perform calculations.  We actually wrote down things on paper with ink delivery devises called "pens." Young people are fascinated with fountain pens and often ask me to demonstrate one. My point is that we can live without a lot of this stuff. Indeed, in many ways our lives were better, if less convenient, then. Convenience is only worth so much. It is certainly not worth your freedom and your soul.  They are offering you a bargain, but it is also a trap.

Grab a cup of coffee and read the whole article. it is well worth thinking about it.