Reading this article makes my blood run cold. Let’s hope there’s is an irreplaceable desire and attachment to the organic that keeps humanity grounded.
"Cut out the seed before it grows." - For the most part, this will never happen. That would take a certain quantity of discipline and commitment. New tech is simply too addictive, and is seen and sold as progress. It's actually creative destruction, where the tools become masters, and humans fully sold into slavery as they moan for more.
I sadly have to agree. Humans were given a test in 2020/2021 with the masks and mRNA vaxxies and that test was to simply to think for ourselves. We failed this test miserably as we donned our face diapers to walk to restaurant tables only to take them off once we sat down as if somehow the Covid virus only affects those who are standing. Our overlords must have chuckled as they saw thousands of cars lined up with people eager to get jabbed while sitting in their front seats even after they will told there's the possibly they could go into anaphylactic shock while still behind the wheel.
Today's human is mostly devoid of original thought or the ability think outside of their own XBox. The overlords know this so they march on with their agenda while the majority sleeps.
My feeling is that said overlords haven't accounted for the genuine 'overlords' who descend (by whatever means), in humble utilitarianism to rectify, profoundly and pragmatically, specific distortions within creation. Our human lives are both mysterious and bizarre. Enculturation immerses and distracts us. Things are much stranger, more complex, and almost certainly, more magnificent than our cognitive imprisonment generally allows us to grasp and engage with.
So here's a nod to the beacons of greater truth, to those who've taken on a specific ameliorative mantle... and bless the likes of Joe Allen and all his bright respondents for their roles in all of this.
I apologize Resistance 21, but it's almost impossible to elaborate in a substack response. Suffice it to say, it isn't linked to any specific tradition though I'm sure it's present in some form or another in many of them. All I can say is that I wrote it within a context that is necessarily vast, tortuous and extremely paradoxical and I'm far too world weary to engage in discussions on such things as objectivity and subjectivity, though 'relativity' is very relevant. I'll say this. If there are two words which embody what needs to be mustered up at this point in time, they are 'insight' and 'power'. The one without the other will almost certainly be impotent. Clarity is also needed to bind and activate them. With my kindest wishes to you.
Yes, I sort of suspected a depth there, but the short context you provided was useful.
And I may be a bit weary of a long journey into the esoteric if it demands too many mental gymnastics, but I appreciate your thoughts.
Oh clarity is such a big one. The human condition is difficult enough to navigate if all intentions were well meaning. I'm seeing the absolute treachery that comes from the purposeful corruption of truth.
Respectfully disagree. I predict the 1st world will soon look to the 3rd world as a model to coexist with AI/technology. The 1st world was simply v 1.0.0 - rollout. You would think by now there would be axioms for humans to technology. Let's start now.
axiom 01 - Any new technology should be treated as unproven to coexist with humanity on a broad scale. When such technology is at an iterative state of less than 3 major versions.
Curious is the notion that we are Evolving, that we're currently somewhere along the way to that Future...and it's always framed as a Better Future...The Future is an ideological construct that enables us to tolerate the Present...People who live in the moment, their lives are on 'Hold'...To the very young The Future is the repressing force that inhibits their being...Every frustrating restriction nourishes a time of no Restrictions of their nature, ie The Future...It's delusional to believe becoming cyborg is an evolutionary development...Transhumanism is an ideology expressing hatred of the body...Intellectual Hubris will lead to the extinction event of the species...
Human hack 101: Humans are bad at observing gradual change - as a group, they do not consider their past when considering the future. Humans are good at following axiomatic rules and laws and will change their behaviors even if such laws are not proven.
The exploit: Remove processes of creative storytelling from a given group, thereby removing any creative narrative act that gives the group a future vision, In its place make members of the group actors in their own stories (reality TV, social media). This effectively renders the group perspective captured in a containment site. Now that you have them effectively contained use them as training data to predict with accuracy any probable outcome to any probable scenario.
The patch: Computational machines by definition are finite state machines - human creativity until otherwise proved false is not. Creativity is the differentiator - the solution. Why has the artist class not exploded with music, design and literature over the past 20 years? What happened? Was it a function of copy and past culture? Then the solution is obvious.
Please allow this rapidly aging septuagenarian to reminisce about her youth. I remember the first time I saw Pong at the storied but now defunct West End Bar during my senior year at Columbia way, way back in 1973. The bar, a popular hangout for students, was dark and loud. And there were many small, wooden tables, all packed with young people out for some fun on a Friday night.
My boyfriend and I entered The West End and noticed that some tables looked different, like they were made of shiny black glass. We headed over to one of these shiny new tables and sat down. As I recall, the Pong game was already on in some free, demonstration mode. My boy friend were intrigued by this strange new electronic game, and we decided to play.
Pong seems ridiculously primitive now. But back in the early 1970s, it seemed to be a harbinger of our glorious, limitless future, much like the astronauts landing on the moon or the still rare cash machines that had only recently cropped up in New York City. But fast forward half a century, and our future no longer looks rosy. Instead it grows bleaker with each passing year with people now told they will need to eat bugs, live in tiny houses, and amputate their sex organs.
Yes, the richness of youth. Whereas technological novelty was once cool and exciting, I now always have to question whether it's insincere manipulation.
Yes. It's all manipulation and surveillance capitalism. And we're not the customer. We're the product.
That's why I always use Duck Duck Go instead of Google for searches. That's why I pay for ad free email, use Ad Blocker Plus, and Firefox and their VPN. That's why I don't use Facebook, Instagram or any other social media. That's why I don't own a cell phone, Alexa, Ring, or any other "smart" snooping device. AT&T keeps badgering me about "upgrading" to 5G, but it will be a cold day in Hell before I ever agree to that.
I'm glad you're trying to limit Big Tech, but it can be insidious.
For example, it seems now even Duck Duck Go maybe suspect. I believe they caved to some censoring of the Ukraine debacle.
I use Firefox as well, but Mozilla provides a prominent news feed named Get Pocket within the browser. It clearly serves up subtle globalist propaganda, but knowing that helps me keep abreast of the latest push.
I want to abandon AT&T. Their latest tactic is to soft censor some of your communications by relegating it to the online spam folder. I've corroborated this with many other AT&T users. It affected some of our efforts for involvement in the past mid-term election.
I can switch to Spectrum for my Internet provider. But then I made a disheartening discovery. I stopped to talk to a Spectrum crew doing training in my area. I asked the supervisor what he knew about their deployment of 5G.
Spectrum relies on other providers' tower infrastructure. But get this: (according to the supervisor) your Spectrum modem in your house features an antennae* to service cell phones nearby. They're using our devices to support a mesh network of connectivity to compensate for their lack of capital infrastructure.
Then again, this is probably just another step towards the Internet of Things (and Bodies).
* (I'm uncertain as to the nature of this embedded antennae. It is to service 5G cell phones, but does it broadcast 5G or just provide connectivity using a lesser technology like WiFi?)
Anyway, I don't wish to dwell too much in alarmism. I do believe that all our efforts to expose truth and fight the good fight will pay off. Keep doing small things and reinforce the hope and resilience of the herd. ;-)
Thank you for your dedication and effort to research and share this information. Your writing style and voice help lighten up a dark topic, but without lessening the seriousness of the matter.
Also, the dystopic robot raver video is excellent. Even when into it, the techno/DnB genre felt like a hypnotic dance with darkness.
I got it! What if we ban thinking machines altogether and embark on an epoch spanning interstellar space odyssey whereby through thousands of generations of genetic engineering various bloodlines with specialized genetic mutations navigate the stars with a psychogenic substance refined from the excrement of a giant sand worm. That’ll fix everything!
In all seriousness, how many generations down the road do you predict will survive? What happens when you close off a biological system? What happens when you close off a digital system? What happens when you compress wealth/resources to 1%?
Do those systems evolve new traits? Is that what is expected outcome from what we know to date?
Thank you. I'm a bit diverted right now, but I may be able to get back.
Briefly, I wonder why advancement or evolution has to be MORE in the sense of faster, smarter, and more exotic. Could it really be more in the sense of refinement?
Yes, and why does this advancement threaten our ability to keep up? Why isn't it more about keeping up with us as we are? Maybe it's already backfiring.
Corruption is the name of the game on who knows how many levels. There are so many diagnostic and antidotal voices circulating, but the fundamental issue is, how do we correctly and powerfully negotiate this multi-faceted planetary situation... and on how many levels... because 'the good' needs to be at least one level up.
I'm banking on a combination of energy crisis and unsustainable economics putting an end to all this before reality hits the worst-case sci-fi dystopia.
You may be correct. In that senario there would be a v 2.0.0 of AL/technology. Can you imagine a world where given a second change with the current understaning of technolgy we posses now. A world where we use the technology more wisley?
What the Terminator movies got wrong was that they showed machines trying to wipe out humanity. Instead a few human megalomaniacs are using machines to wipe the rest of us out. This technology would not do this by itself.
I believe the movie we are in currently in, is one in which. Humans copy machine behavior (TickTock, Twitter, ...). That copied behavior favors digital to the organic as a signal/noise parameter. The optimization curve finds equilibrium at the point where the two are merged.
This bleak outcome can not be blamed on 'the machine'. The culprit is in the "artist class" - they are the ones that seed humanity's future vision. The stories and narratives humans share are far more important than we have realized. SCFI has been an accurate predictor of future reality. We have failed to realize this - it's not too late to correct it.
But who decides which art will show up in the galleries and the media?
The thing is, our brains don't seem to be elegantly or appropriately orientated to the timeline of the world, they are mired in the narratives of the past yet filled with astounding capability and creative potential. They're actually teeming with anachronisms... and this is one hell of a cognitive state to negotiate. Talking of art, Bob Moran's satirical art is well worth a glance... this is still my favourite piece: https://www.bobmoran.co.uk/other-work/orwell-surprise-original-artwork
A Wonderful comment! The "who" that have historically decided are critics and collectors. They have historically served the purpose of informing what we would call the 1%ers to cultural changes and transformations. They served as gateways of new information into the closed system of the elite.
Critics were held to a fuzzy standard. If they strayed too far or looked to single out a given artist. They were quickly replaced with another.
In contrast, what appears to be happening now is the 1%ers in their romance with machines have overlooked the critic's gateway role. Perhaps they believe 'influencers' serve this role. This would be a fundamental misunderstanding of the critic's role and importantly, the quantity of critics required to serve the purpose.
I suspect from their perspective the role that culture plays in their worldview is nominal at best. This will be their undoing and is predictable.
I'm totally in line with what you've written. As for 'This will be their undoing and is predictable'... I'm not automatically confident about this, however, yesterday I read the following quote in Gabor Maté's new book 'the Myth of Normal', which succinctly sums up my own innate sense of things: Antonio Gramsci -
'my mind is pessimistic, but my will is optimistic.' My own mind is rooted in, and quite daunted by, what it knows... but another part of me, which involves the will and possibly a relatively unconscious prescience, is quietly pressing on and not pessimistic... at all.
As for art, I say, forget the sharks and bedroom of the likes of second rate 'conceptual' 'artists' like Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, neither of whom even approach anything philosophically worthwhile, which was the sales pitch, and let your sensibilites soar with, say, the sculptures of ... cont'd
(This isn't a reply, it's a continuation!) ... the sculptures of the truly lovely, talented and charismatic Andrew Logan. Here's Pegasus, dynamically reflecting the sky above it on a roundabout in Dudley, UK: https://www.andrewlogan.com/artworks/sculpture_and_public_commissions/pegasus-3/ - no prizes for guessing why Andrew Logan's not a household name like Hirst or Emin.
I've thought long and hard about a definition for art... when the camera appeared, the ability to recreate and replicate things on canvas in a true to life way was made somewhat redundant... so then what? For me, art has to a.) involve greater than average talent, vision or inspired originality and b.) involve transcendence of one sort or another. Apologies for the length of this.
With full respect for the battle, you are fighting, I am behind you. The Pong narrative analog developed in the piece is misplaced. Pong is not in the causal graph that led to the present circumstance. Pong was the demarcation point of something new. A new art form that combines design, engineering, and what we generalize as games or play.
At that point the Western World shared a common narrative, it was positive. People felt connected by narratives. They knew the same books, movies, and sitcoms. Science fiction provided a future window into the near future from Gibson - Clarke; there was a rich variety of future views.
Pong was a solution to a problem. Simply, to make a toy for the new world narrative that was unfolding. Video games and the video game industry it inspired, is a completely separate issue.
Later in the piece, you loop around to Magnavox console games. The box artwork was a letdown to you. However, to some it was a visual narrative that set the emotional backdrop of the game, it was a visual prologue to the game and understood as such. You can fairly criticize the early video game pioneers for not creating something similar to "Understanding Comics" by Scott McCloud as a manifesto, making video games better understood and more accessible.
Both comic and video games are a "pattern language" a term coined oddly in those days and toss around by academics at cocktail parties. If you are looking for a root to the "transhuman" issue "A Pattern Language" by Christopher Alexander pub. 1977 will put you on to a cause-effect path that will lead you to the present.
The "Transhumanism" issue has very specific patterns and easily identified fallacies. Transhuman patterns have more to do with compressing reality into a discrete space. The counter to that has to do with human emotions (presenting a future of possibility). The intersection of those two can go horribly wrong and have. However, only the human side of the equation can be addressed at this point.
But I know what Joe means about some computer graphics. I loved my monochrome Apple II games if they attempted some form of creative rendering. But I remember browsing through a software store in the mall. The cover of the game Crossfire featured cool dueling airbrushed robots. But the screenshot on the back was no better than a simple grid with pinpoint characters shooting dots at each other.
I believe they are separate trajectories. WW1 was a "transhuman" vision of the analog, biology, and bloodline. The current incarnation is that of bits + biology with a heavy emphasis on the bits that emulate biology. I would agree that both come from the same motivation, just different means to an end.
Your comment has one interesting (perhaps) aspect in the framing. This is a cycle, perhaps with different means to the same end. However, objectively it appears that it is having diminishing returns. The jump to biology from bits is ordered upon orders of magnitude more difficult. Bits exist in the pristine world of mathematics. Biology exists in a noisy world layered by dimension orders of environmental effects. You quickly run into an issue of determinism vs predeterminism.
The end of transhumanism will be the acknowledgment that humans have boundaries - they are vast and unexplored but present. What happens when humans get constrained? We get creative.
Mmm... many responses to your perceptive responses, but it's bedtime in the UK. What fascinates me is the exponential nature of things since the 'first' industrial revolution.
You know I always feel like you have been in my head after I read your articles. Love your writing and that video at the end was excellent as well. I am left with two questions. What do I do with those beta tapes and is Biden really a beta borg?
I suspect that DARPA and the 5 Eyes are many decades ahead of what is currently being spun as the latest technology. For example, microchip implants seem far too large when they have already unveiled smart dust which is nanotechnology Artificial Intelligence. Also, synthetic telepathy via satellite and ELF frequencies allegedly already enables remote mind control.
I love your writings. They don't just temper the content, they're testament to the miracle of humanness. I was going to copy and paste a David Berlinski quote from the video discussion 'Mathematical problems with Darwin's Theory of Evolution' but I can't find it in my drafts, so instead, I'll put this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzUdwPqB3hs&list=RDfzUdwPqB3hs&start_radio=1&rv=fzUdwPqB3hs&t=36&ab_channel=VoicesofMusic - and say, "here's to the real magnificence and deep mysteriousness of life on earth."
JA, you may find a video by Charles Simon on AGI extremely interesting. It appeared a couple of months ago on youtube. Here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDTR6w59q9E
Reading this article makes my blood run cold. Let’s hope there’s is an irreplaceable desire and attachment to the organic that keeps humanity grounded.
"Cut out the seed before it grows." - For the most part, this will never happen. That would take a certain quantity of discipline and commitment. New tech is simply too addictive, and is seen and sold as progress. It's actually creative destruction, where the tools become masters, and humans fully sold into slavery as they moan for more.
"For the most part" -- I'm counting on that.
I sadly have to agree. Humans were given a test in 2020/2021 with the masks and mRNA vaxxies and that test was to simply to think for ourselves. We failed this test miserably as we donned our face diapers to walk to restaurant tables only to take them off once we sat down as if somehow the Covid virus only affects those who are standing. Our overlords must have chuckled as they saw thousands of cars lined up with people eager to get jabbed while sitting in their front seats even after they will told there's the possibly they could go into anaphylactic shock while still behind the wheel.
Today's human is mostly devoid of original thought or the ability think outside of their own XBox. The overlords know this so they march on with their agenda while the majority sleeps.
My feeling is that said overlords haven't accounted for the genuine 'overlords' who descend (by whatever means), in humble utilitarianism to rectify, profoundly and pragmatically, specific distortions within creation. Our human lives are both mysterious and bizarre. Enculturation immerses and distracts us. Things are much stranger, more complex, and almost certainly, more magnificent than our cognitive imprisonment generally allows us to grasp and engage with.
So here's a nod to the beacons of greater truth, to those who've taken on a specific ameliorative mantle... and bless the likes of Joe Allen and all his bright respondents for their roles in all of this.
Jane,
I'm curious about your comment:
"to rectify . . . specific distortions within creation."
Is that something you can briefly elaborate on, and is it linked to any specific tradition.
I apologize Resistance 21, but it's almost impossible to elaborate in a substack response. Suffice it to say, it isn't linked to any specific tradition though I'm sure it's present in some form or another in many of them. All I can say is that I wrote it within a context that is necessarily vast, tortuous and extremely paradoxical and I'm far too world weary to engage in discussions on such things as objectivity and subjectivity, though 'relativity' is very relevant. I'll say this. If there are two words which embody what needs to be mustered up at this point in time, they are 'insight' and 'power'. The one without the other will almost certainly be impotent. Clarity is also needed to bind and activate them. With my kindest wishes to you.
Yes, I sort of suspected a depth there, but the short context you provided was useful.
And I may be a bit weary of a long journey into the esoteric if it demands too many mental gymnastics, but I appreciate your thoughts.
Oh clarity is such a big one. The human condition is difficult enough to navigate if all intentions were well meaning. I'm seeing the absolute treachery that comes from the purposeful corruption of truth.
'I'm seeing the absolute treachery that comes from the purposeful corruption of truth.' - so well put.
Respectfully disagree. I predict the 1st world will soon look to the 3rd world as a model to coexist with AI/technology. The 1st world was simply v 1.0.0 - rollout. You would think by now there would be axioms for humans to technology. Let's start now.
axiom 01 - Any new technology should be treated as unproven to coexist with humanity on a broad scale. When such technology is at an iterative state of less than 3 major versions.
Curious is the notion that we are Evolving, that we're currently somewhere along the way to that Future...and it's always framed as a Better Future...The Future is an ideological construct that enables us to tolerate the Present...People who live in the moment, their lives are on 'Hold'...To the very young The Future is the repressing force that inhibits their being...Every frustrating restriction nourishes a time of no Restrictions of their nature, ie The Future...It's delusional to believe becoming cyborg is an evolutionary development...Transhumanism is an ideology expressing hatred of the body...Intellectual Hubris will lead to the extinction event of the species...
Human hack 101: Humans are bad at observing gradual change - as a group, they do not consider their past when considering the future. Humans are good at following axiomatic rules and laws and will change their behaviors even if such laws are not proven.
The exploit: Remove processes of creative storytelling from a given group, thereby removing any creative narrative act that gives the group a future vision, In its place make members of the group actors in their own stories (reality TV, social media). This effectively renders the group perspective captured in a containment site. Now that you have them effectively contained use them as training data to predict with accuracy any probable outcome to any probable scenario.
The patch: Computational machines by definition are finite state machines - human creativity until otherwise proved false is not. Creativity is the differentiator - the solution. Why has the artist class not exploded with music, design and literature over the past 20 years? What happened? Was it a function of copy and past culture? Then the solution is obvious.
Please allow this rapidly aging septuagenarian to reminisce about her youth. I remember the first time I saw Pong at the storied but now defunct West End Bar during my senior year at Columbia way, way back in 1973. The bar, a popular hangout for students, was dark and loud. And there were many small, wooden tables, all packed with young people out for some fun on a Friday night.
My boyfriend and I entered The West End and noticed that some tables looked different, like they were made of shiny black glass. We headed over to one of these shiny new tables and sat down. As I recall, the Pong game was already on in some free, demonstration mode. My boy friend were intrigued by this strange new electronic game, and we decided to play.
Pong seems ridiculously primitive now. But back in the early 1970s, it seemed to be a harbinger of our glorious, limitless future, much like the astronauts landing on the moon or the still rare cash machines that had only recently cropped up in New York City. But fast forward half a century, and our future no longer looks rosy. Instead it grows bleaker with each passing year with people now told they will need to eat bugs, live in tiny houses, and amputate their sex organs.
Yes, the richness of youth. Whereas technological novelty was once cool and exciting, I now always have to question whether it's insincere manipulation.
Yes. It's all manipulation and surveillance capitalism. And we're not the customer. We're the product.
That's why I always use Duck Duck Go instead of Google for searches. That's why I pay for ad free email, use Ad Blocker Plus, and Firefox and their VPN. That's why I don't use Facebook, Instagram or any other social media. That's why I don't own a cell phone, Alexa, Ring, or any other "smart" snooping device. AT&T keeps badgering me about "upgrading" to 5G, but it will be a cold day in Hell before I ever agree to that.
I'm glad you're trying to limit Big Tech, but it can be insidious.
For example, it seems now even Duck Duck Go maybe suspect. I believe they caved to some censoring of the Ukraine debacle.
I use Firefox as well, but Mozilla provides a prominent news feed named Get Pocket within the browser. It clearly serves up subtle globalist propaganda, but knowing that helps me keep abreast of the latest push.
I want to abandon AT&T. Their latest tactic is to soft censor some of your communications by relegating it to the online spam folder. I've corroborated this with many other AT&T users. It affected some of our efforts for involvement in the past mid-term election.
I can switch to Spectrum for my Internet provider. But then I made a disheartening discovery. I stopped to talk to a Spectrum crew doing training in my area. I asked the supervisor what he knew about their deployment of 5G.
Spectrum relies on other providers' tower infrastructure. But get this: (according to the supervisor) your Spectrum modem in your house features an antennae* to service cell phones nearby. They're using our devices to support a mesh network of connectivity to compensate for their lack of capital infrastructure.
Then again, this is probably just another step towards the Internet of Things (and Bodies).
* (I'm uncertain as to the nature of this embedded antennae. It is to service 5G cell phones, but does it broadcast 5G or just provide connectivity using a lesser technology like WiFi?)
Anyway, I don't wish to dwell too much in alarmism. I do believe that all our efforts to expose truth and fight the good fight will pay off. Keep doing small things and reinforce the hope and resilience of the herd. ;-)
Thank you for your dedication and effort to research and share this information. Your writing style and voice help lighten up a dark topic, but without lessening the seriousness of the matter.
Also, the dystopic robot raver video is excellent. Even when into it, the techno/DnB genre felt like a hypnotic dance with darkness.
"...some predatory priesthood..."
Ah, now we come to the nub of the matter. "A predatory priesthood" presupposes a beneficial, true priesthood. That's the one to seek.
I got it! What if we ban thinking machines altogether and embark on an epoch spanning interstellar space odyssey whereby through thousands of generations of genetic engineering various bloodlines with specialized genetic mutations navigate the stars with a psychogenic substance refined from the excrement of a giant sand worm. That’ll fix everything!
In all seriousness, how many generations down the road do you predict will survive? What happens when you close off a biological system? What happens when you close off a digital system? What happens when you compress wealth/resources to 1%?
Do those systems evolve new traits? Is that what is expected outcome from what we know to date?
But first they need to sort out the utterly inept AI on Amazon's returns system.
Maybe these transhuman fascinations are largely vanity.
What if human consciousness is already in the Goldilocks zone?
Between change and stability,
between focus and awareness,
between prediction and manifestation,
between imagination and reality.
What if the speed of AI is too ephemeral to be grounded in resilience?
Maybe you can move the playing field to a degree, but the dynamics may remain analogous to traditional human competition in the physical realm.
Maybe there’s more balance and wisdom in the Design than our egos care to admit. A singularity, by definition, is the antithesis of balance.
Regardless, these musing in no way discount the peril of corrupt stewards.
This is a very intersting notion. I would encourage you to expound upon this! Would love to discuss futher.
@l1m1nal5pac3
Thank you. I'm a bit diverted right now, but I may be able to get back.
Briefly, I wonder why advancement or evolution has to be MORE in the sense of faster, smarter, and more exotic. Could it really be more in the sense of refinement?
Yes, and why does this advancement threaten our ability to keep up? Why isn't it more about keeping up with us as we are? Maybe it's already backfiring.
Corruption is the name of the game on who knows how many levels. There are so many diagnostic and antidotal voices circulating, but the fundamental issue is, how do we correctly and powerfully negotiate this multi-faceted planetary situation... and on how many levels... because 'the good' needs to be at least one level up.
I'm banking on a combination of energy crisis and unsustainable economics putting an end to all this before reality hits the worst-case sci-fi dystopia.
You may be correct. In that senario there would be a v 2.0.0 of AL/technology. Can you imagine a world where given a second change with the current understaning of technolgy we posses now. A world where we use the technology more wisley?
What the Terminator movies got wrong was that they showed machines trying to wipe out humanity. Instead a few human megalomaniacs are using machines to wipe the rest of us out. This technology would not do this by itself.
Not the machines but their human users.
I believe the movie we are in currently in, is one in which. Humans copy machine behavior (TickTock, Twitter, ...). That copied behavior favors digital to the organic as a signal/noise parameter. The optimization curve finds equilibrium at the point where the two are merged.
This bleak outcome can not be blamed on 'the machine'. The culprit is in the "artist class" - they are the ones that seed humanity's future vision. The stories and narratives humans share are far more important than we have realized. SCFI has been an accurate predictor of future reality. We have failed to realize this - it's not too late to correct it.
But who decides which art will show up in the galleries and the media?
The thing is, our brains don't seem to be elegantly or appropriately orientated to the timeline of the world, they are mired in the narratives of the past yet filled with astounding capability and creative potential. They're actually teeming with anachronisms... and this is one hell of a cognitive state to negotiate. Talking of art, Bob Moran's satirical art is well worth a glance... this is still my favourite piece: https://www.bobmoran.co.uk/other-work/orwell-surprise-original-artwork
A Wonderful comment! The "who" that have historically decided are critics and collectors. They have historically served the purpose of informing what we would call the 1%ers to cultural changes and transformations. They served as gateways of new information into the closed system of the elite.
Critics were held to a fuzzy standard. If they strayed too far or looked to single out a given artist. They were quickly replaced with another.
In contrast, what appears to be happening now is the 1%ers in their romance with machines have overlooked the critic's gateway role. Perhaps they believe 'influencers' serve this role. This would be a fundamental misunderstanding of the critic's role and importantly, the quantity of critics required to serve the purpose.
I suspect from their perspective the role that culture plays in their worldview is nominal at best. This will be their undoing and is predictable.
I'm totally in line with what you've written. As for 'This will be their undoing and is predictable'... I'm not automatically confident about this, however, yesterday I read the following quote in Gabor Maté's new book 'the Myth of Normal', which succinctly sums up my own innate sense of things: Antonio Gramsci -
'my mind is pessimistic, but my will is optimistic.' My own mind is rooted in, and quite daunted by, what it knows... but another part of me, which involves the will and possibly a relatively unconscious prescience, is quietly pressing on and not pessimistic... at all.
As for art, I say, forget the sharks and bedroom of the likes of second rate 'conceptual' 'artists' like Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, neither of whom even approach anything philosophically worthwhile, which was the sales pitch, and let your sensibilites soar with, say, the sculptures of ... cont'd
(This isn't a reply, it's a continuation!) ... the sculptures of the truly lovely, talented and charismatic Andrew Logan. Here's Pegasus, dynamically reflecting the sky above it on a roundabout in Dudley, UK: https://www.andrewlogan.com/artworks/sculpture_and_public_commissions/pegasus-3/ - no prizes for guessing why Andrew Logan's not a household name like Hirst or Emin.
I've thought long and hard about a definition for art... when the camera appeared, the ability to recreate and replicate things on canvas in a true to life way was made somewhat redundant... so then what? For me, art has to a.) involve greater than average talent, vision or inspired originality and b.) involve transcendence of one sort or another. Apologies for the length of this.
Absolutely, technology being as good as the hands it's in 'n all that.
Can the users really be separated from their machines?
Only time will tell!
With full respect for the battle, you are fighting, I am behind you. The Pong narrative analog developed in the piece is misplaced. Pong is not in the causal graph that led to the present circumstance. Pong was the demarcation point of something new. A new art form that combines design, engineering, and what we generalize as games or play.
At that point the Western World shared a common narrative, it was positive. People felt connected by narratives. They knew the same books, movies, and sitcoms. Science fiction provided a future window into the near future from Gibson - Clarke; there was a rich variety of future views.
Pong was a solution to a problem. Simply, to make a toy for the new world narrative that was unfolding. Video games and the video game industry it inspired, is a completely separate issue.
Later in the piece, you loop around to Magnavox console games. The box artwork was a letdown to you. However, to some it was a visual narrative that set the emotional backdrop of the game, it was a visual prologue to the game and understood as such. You can fairly criticize the early video game pioneers for not creating something similar to "Understanding Comics" by Scott McCloud as a manifesto, making video games better understood and more accessible.
Both comic and video games are a "pattern language" a term coined oddly in those days and toss around by academics at cocktail parties. If you are looking for a root to the "transhuman" issue "A Pattern Language" by Christopher Alexander pub. 1977 will put you on to a cause-effect path that will lead you to the present.
The "Transhumanism" issue has very specific patterns and easily identified fallacies. Transhuman patterns have more to do with compressing reality into a discrete space. The counter to that has to do with human emotions (presenting a future of possibility). The intersection of those two can go horribly wrong and have. However, only the human side of the equation can be addressed at this point.
Thought provoking perspectives.
But I know what Joe means about some computer graphics. I loved my monochrome Apple II games if they attempted some form of creative rendering. But I remember browsing through a software store in the mall. The cover of the game Crossfire featured cool dueling airbrushed robots. But the screenshot on the back was no better than a simple grid with pinpoint characters shooting dots at each other.
From the WW1 trenches to transhumanism, it's the same trajectory... isn't it?
I believe they are separate trajectories. WW1 was a "transhuman" vision of the analog, biology, and bloodline. The current incarnation is that of bits + biology with a heavy emphasis on the bits that emulate biology. I would agree that both come from the same motivation, just different means to an end.
Your comment has one interesting (perhaps) aspect in the framing. This is a cycle, perhaps with different means to the same end. However, objectively it appears that it is having diminishing returns. The jump to biology from bits is ordered upon orders of magnitude more difficult. Bits exist in the pristine world of mathematics. Biology exists in a noisy world layered by dimension orders of environmental effects. You quickly run into an issue of determinism vs predeterminism.
The end of transhumanism will be the acknowledgment that humans have boundaries - they are vast and unexplored but present. What happens when humans get constrained? We get creative.
Mmm... many responses to your perceptive responses, but it's bedtime in the UK. What fascinates me is the exponential nature of things since the 'first' industrial revolution.
You know I always feel like you have been in my head after I read your articles. Love your writing and that video at the end was excellent as well. I am left with two questions. What do I do with those beta tapes and is Biden really a beta borg?
Thumbs up!
I suspect that DARPA and the 5 Eyes are many decades ahead of what is currently being spun as the latest technology. For example, microchip implants seem far too large when they have already unveiled smart dust which is nanotechnology Artificial Intelligence. Also, synthetic telepathy via satellite and ELF frequencies allegedly already enables remote mind control.
https://docplayer.net/21099359-Synthetic-telepathy-and-the-early-mind
I am being prohibited from sharing this using 2 different links.
Do a search on Synthetic Telepathy and The Early Mind Control Wars by Richard Alan Miller.
I love your writings. They don't just temper the content, they're testament to the miracle of humanness. I was going to copy and paste a David Berlinski quote from the video discussion 'Mathematical problems with Darwin's Theory of Evolution' but I can't find it in my drafts, so instead, I'll put this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzUdwPqB3hs&list=RDfzUdwPqB3hs&start_radio=1&rv=fzUdwPqB3hs&t=36&ab_channel=VoicesofMusic - and say, "here's to the real magnificence and deep mysteriousness of life on earth."
JA, you may find a video by Charles Simon on AGI extremely interesting. It appeared a couple of months ago on youtube. Here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDTR6w59q9E