internet

Lost in the Twittersphere – Trapped inside a Humanist Echo Chamber with the Global Village Idiot

jimdroberts

“Once, every village had an idiot. It took the internet to bring them all together.”

Colonel Robert Bateman

I’ve come to the conclusion that Twitter is probably the most god forsaken place on the internet. But being an atheist, maybe I should say, truth forsaken. Understanding that I’m an atheist, a libertarian atheist, is essential if anything that follows is to make any sense. Howevever, even if you do happen to remember that I’m a libertarian atheist, there still remains a fairly high chance that what follows still won’t make a whole lot of sense.

There was just a fleeting moment, between the idea of the internet and the manifestation of the internet. It was in this briefest period that, just like the Gutenberg Press, the internet promised to democratize knowledge. When Marshall McLuhan talked of the, global Village, he talked about a world in which physical distance was no longer an obstacle influencing communication and the flow of information. And whilst McLuhan  foresaw the dawn of the internet, what he failed to foresee was the explosion in the volume of communication.

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Even idiots can use the internet. In fact I’m using it right now.

The world is now like a continually sounding tribal drum, where everybody gets the message all the time…

Marshall McLuhan

Instead of one tribal drum communicating one message, giving everyone access to a unified source of knowledge, it’s given everyone a voice, irrespective of their knowledge.  Rather than democratizing knowledge, it’s democratized the right to express ones opinions, no matter how unqualified the person might be expressing it. Essentially it’s armed every village idiot with a megaphone, while forcing everyone else to wear hearing aids, making their uninformed opinions hard to ignore. (The secret to the internet seems to be in substituting the metaphorical hearing aids for metaphorical ear plugs.) Where as historically these idiots were spread evenly geographically, say one in every village, the internet has enabled them to band together. If McLuhan were alive today, I wonder, might he be tempted to amend his title to, The Global Village Idiot. 

village idiot 2
The capabilities of computers might be accelerating exponentially, but human capabilities remain what they were thousands of years ago.

The Twittersphere, the internet as a whole, works as a monolithic soap box, immense in its size and capability of spreading half baked beliefs that can be turned into truths at the blink of an eye, a touch of a button, or just by clicking, ‘like’ (see my previous post, Echo Chambers, Memes and Brain Viruses). The internet has facilitated the spread of bad ideas, and extremist opinions, more than it has benefited mankind with the passing on of knowledge. Bad ideas, and extremism fester, and incubate inside echo chambers, a phenomenon I discussed previously in, Echo Chambers, Memes and Brain Viruses – Weaponizing the Internet.  Because of this, it should be of no surprise that the stupidity of groups like, flat earthers, and the irresponsibility of, anti vaxxers have managed to gain such strong foothold in, what was already an already, a neurotic society. The internet is the perfect device for spreading and magnifying mankind’s neuroses.  And if the internet has proven anything to us it’s that people are only too happy to offer opinions on things they have little, or next to no knowledge about. This has made the internet the universal melting pot for global ignorance.

GIGO

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The internet will only be as good as the information that’s uploaded onto it.

Initially marveled at how the internet would communicate ideas, what we failed to recognise was that humans have far more bad, or meaningless ideas, than good ones. The internet is a perfect example of a GIGO system, Garbage In Garbage Out. GIGO is one of those tech acronyms thought up by a mind that’s been over exposed to programming languages and underexposed to fresh air. GIGO simply means that if you put garbage into a system then it’s only garbage you can get out. The internet itself can’t make us more intelligent. It’s a perfect reflection of the mental-states of the people that put things onto it. Volume wise, the internet is of overwhelmingly poor quality, this blog included, but good information can be found, although as David Mitchell recently described the internet as:

…making truth and lies indistinguishable. It’s like a huge haystack of things that may, or may not be true, and the truth is just a piece of hay just like the others, it’s not even a needle.

 

Recently, whilst floating aimlessly through the Twittersphere, I encountered an unusual advert. It was unusual due to the fact that I read it. I really enjoy deleting adverts on Twitter. I have this this belief that as I’m deleting them one at a time, that one day I will have finally deleted them all and so live in an ad free environment, at heart I’m fantasist. The advert grabbed my attention because it was asking for donations to enable its cause to close schools. Being a teacher seeing an advert that seeked contributions to close my means of employment, cut a little too close to the bone. So rather than deleting the advert, I jumped down the rabbit hole, except it wasn’t really a rabbit hole, it was more of a humanist hole, but the wisdom of our ancestors is in the metaphor and it’s not my place to disturb it. Whatever it was, like most internet misadventures, imagine it as being towards the abstract end of the figurative spectrum.

humanist school shut down

 

 

After reading this advert, I responded with my belief , that people should be afforded the choice between faith schools and secular schools. I pointed out that the aim of Humanist UK is not to get funding to build new secular schools, but to close and replace faith schools. And after they’ve achieved this what do they move on to, the churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques? There followed a flurry of predictably defensive ripostes.

tweetsecular2

The last time somebody quoted chapter and verse at me was when they were quoting from the Bible. There are many parallels between religious faiths and the followers of Humanist UK. Like religions Humanist UK is funded by charitable donations. Both believe they have the definitive answer to the question of what happens after we die. And both have their poster boys, god or some derivative thereof, and Richard Dawkins. Some followers of Humanist UK have merely substituted a belief in god and his book, the Bible, with a belief in Richard Dawkins and his book, The God Delusion.

Inkedunnamed (1)_LIAs a person who actually attended a faith school, I can say from personal experience that there is no greater recruiter to atheism than faith schools. That said at my school I never remember Darwin’s theory of evolution being  denied, creationism was never pushed as being the only explanation for our existence. We studied other faiths Judeo-Christian and Eastern religions. I suspect Humanist UK seem to believe that all faith schools do is teach students how to use AK47s and make explosive vests, they would be so disappointed if they took the time to discover the truth. My faith school also consistently out performed the local secular schools in both the GCSE and A-Level examinations. As well as it being morally dubious to shut down faith schools it might also be counterproductive from an academic perspective.

 

Libertarian Atheist Vs. Secular humanist

"Say your prayers, liturgies, Tefilah, Daily Salat, Sacred Mantra, Ritual Incantation or the secular affirmation of your choice, Varmint!”

Like two blind men challenging one another to a duel, never discovering that we were standing in separate fields. Humanists UK and I commenced battle with all the finesse of a bumblebee with a machine gun.

As a libertarian atheist  my philosophy is simple, I am resolute in my belief that there is no god, I’m equally assured in my belief that all people have the freedom to choose, and make whatever of their lives, under the condition that it doesn’t disable another person from doing likewise. Therefore people have the right to choose a faith.

Humanists UK appear to be fighting out of the secular humanist corner. With a complete intolerance towards anything said to exist beyond the physical realm of nature. Anything claiming to be knowledge that can’t be supported scientifically, isn’t knowledge. As schools are places of knowledge, all supernatural references and explanations should have no place in them. I’m not arguing against this reasoning. To me it’s perfectly logical, where I am circumspect is empowering myself with the mandate to shut down, and thereby removing the option.

For me though, the libertarian and secular humanist opinion are in conflict insofar as the idea: freedom of, and from religion. That’s why I would contribute to the building of new secular schools but not the closing of faith schools, it’s a subtle, but crucial distinction.

The Ultimate Failing Inherent in …isms

The greatest short fall undermining any ism is it’s inflexibility, the absolutism of its nature. Isms have a necessity to be seen as the one true way in which to perceive the world, as the suffix denotes:

used as a productive suffix in the formation of nouns denoting action or practice, state or condition, principles, doctrines, a usage or characteristic, devotion or adherence, etc. (criticism; barbarism; Darwinism; despotism; plagiarism; realism; witticism; intellectualism).

My mix of libertarianism  and atheism, is no different than a blend of secularism and humanism. Both soon become entrenched in the a mindset reflected by many faiths, one that fervently believes that they are the enlightened ones, when if we’re to be honest, none of us really have a clue. So I go back to my libertarian humanism, and I say live and let live. Let’s forego the philosophical word salad, and ask ourselves one final question; what kind of asshat goes around shutting schools anyway?

 

Echo Chambers, Memes, and Brain Viruses – Weaponizing the Internet

jimdroberts2 Comments

This follows on from the post I wrote last month: Contagions of Madness and Evil. It’s taken longer than expected, the research for this follow up piece has required to be far more extensive than I’d originally anticipated; maybe it was worth it..

Why is it that a bad idea often captures the public imagination so much effectively than a good one?  Why does bad news spread faster than good news? Despite most people probably considering themselves to be rational and optimistic, the study of memetics is telling a different story. A story which explains why fads, cults, extremist ideologies, pop culture, fashion trends, conspiracy theories, religions, and genocide, can capture the imagination of a critical mass of society. Ideas that all too  often come at the expense of common sense, and basic decency. Simply, memetics looks to tell the story of what  promulgates the darker side of the human psyche.

It’s all about memes. And because it’s all about memes it’s very important to understand how I’m referring to the term’meme’. I’m not referring to it solely from the perspective of its modern internet usage of a picture with a trite comment attached, although that is a meme, it’s not helpful when trying to understand the idea of memes as a whole. How I’m defining meme does include those, and looks at why they have the power to infect the minds of so many people, so quickly. But the term “meme”  was coined by celebrated British Biologist and celebrity atheist, Richard Dawkins. Dawkins first used

meme meme meme
Dawkins’ proposal of the meme, is itself, a meme. A little like the first person who had the idea to call an idea an idea. Like being self aware in an abstract way. Think of it as being hidden within the folds of meta. Imagine dancing naked behind an opaque fourth wall, on the other side of which is your grandmother. Go on imagine.

the term in his 1976 book, The Selfish Gene, in which he puts forward the idea that genes just use human beings, and all of nature itself, as a vehicle for replication, and that DNA only cares about the passing on of genetic information with no regard outside of this goal for the biological host. Because the gene is selfish, Dawkins re-brands it as a meme, the gene has one goal, survival, a goal best achieved by replication with a high degree of fidelity, but not perfect. A differences in the replication allow for potential improvements to be discovered.

In his 1982 book, The Extended Phenotype, Dawkins had refined the definition of meme:

A meme is a unit of information in a mind whose existence influences events such more copies get created in other minds.

Memes no longer pertain to a selfish gene but units of thought or ideas that persist within a culture, and just like the survival of a gene, a meme also depends largely on replication.

Conditions Necessary for Good Memes

When I say good memes I’m not saying good ideas, or knowledge that will generally benefit a society. A good meme, like a gene, is one that endures, replicates, and infects as many minds as possible, minds willing to incubate and circulate the meme. Memes that are successful at doing this tend will most often appeal to at least one of the four f’s. Memes that can make people angry, scared, help satisfy an appetite for food, and help satisfy an appetite for sex. The four f’s: fighting, fear, food, and f*&#ing, (I’ll leave that to your imagination). Nearly all today’s advertising and television programming appeals to at least one of the four f’s, they’re hard wired and have been the most important factors that have overseen the passing on of our genes, and when an idea appeals to one of the 4 f’s they unduly get our attention.

It helps to look an example of an ineffective meme. This can be observed simply in the children’s game, Chinese whispers. A group of young children sit in a circle and one child whispers a message to the child sitting beside them and the message is passed on until it gets to the initiator, who invariably laughs at the garbled information that has been returned. The meme failed to replicate with enough accuracy. But, this might well be because there weren’t dangerous consequences to getting the meme wrong.  Of course this is only speculation, I haven’t tested it, but I’m confident that being in an environment surrounded by jelly and ice cream provides the appearance of a safe environment. In short none of the four f’s are being stimulated no fear, no threat of starvation, a disinclination for fighting, and let’s leave the last one alone. If the children were not fed for two days and were required to accurately pass a message that allowed them to be fed, with a drug fuelled Nicholas Cage as host of the party, I’m willing to bet different results could be achieved.

*****Never, ever let your children play Chinese ******              *****whispers with Nicholas Cage. Never.******

Inside The Echo Chamber – The Extremism of Memes and Extraordinary Popular Delusions

Radical groups and individuals spreading extreme memes on the internet are gaining credibility by meeting others with the same twisted opinions, and values. Historically such opinions have struggled to gain traction because they’ve failed to achieve the critical mass necessary to influence their environment. Historically this has been because extreme ideas are held by a minority and any like minded people have usually separated by geographical distance, that has prohibited the sharing of the idea . When it comes to communication, the internet is no respecter of spatial dimensions, it facilitates the bringing together of  extreme ideologies, spreading ideas that commonly appeal to the credulous, vulnerable, often younger users.  The internet then provides the means of reinforcing these ideas through chat rooms that house people that share an almost identical point of view This is the phenomena known as the echo chamber.

Echo chambers are to memes, what a Petri dish is to bacteria. Echo chambers are insular spaces on the internet where only people sharing the same, often extreme, ideas meet and agree with one another thus reinforcing their belief and credibility in what can be a morally bankrupt ideology. No conflicting opinions are allowed and people with such opinions are denied access to the platform. Echo chambers have been blamed as the birth place of fake news, and even starting genocide. Islam has been the focus of such allegations, but in truth the internet has acted as a catalyst for extreme ideas everywhere, until now they’ve been contained by the social norms expected with in each geographical location, however, the growth of the internet is likely to strain societal norms to a point where internet thoughts and behaviors, spill out into traditional, face to face, social interaction.  The internet is spreading mind viruses, and very few people are aware of the impact this is having on societies.

Facebook: Friends, Likes, and Genocide

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The UN believe Buddhist monks spreading anti Muslim messages on Facebook influenced the public in the genocide of the Rohingya.

 

To date the most profound example of a meme being spread by the internet, most likely facilitated through echo chambers, and having tragic consequences occurred in Myanmar, with the genocide of the Rohingya.

GENEVA (Reuters) – U.N. human rights experts investigating a possible genocide in Myanmar said on Monday that Facebook had played a role in spreading hate speech there.

Evidence of the role that echo chamber type environments might have played can be seen in the following statement given by U.N Investigator Yanghee Lee:
Such ultra-nationalist websites would have acted as echo chambers, spreading incendiary messages to reinforce the memes of hatred already planted in minds that had long lost any ability to think objectively. Again, it’s the capacity for the internet to remove geographical space, and allow people with really bad ideas to get together and tell one another, how great their ideas are. That’s going to be a problem.

 

lion1
Using religious figures is a desperate, but effective way of reinforcing a meme, inciting the credulous to carry out atrocities.

Facebook’s reaction to this situation is an admission of how their social network contributed to enabling the genocide through the spread of anti Rohingya memes:

Shortly after this U.N. announcement, in an unconventionally prompt response, Facebook announced it took down a total of 18 Facebook accounts, one Instagram account, and 52 pages of Myanmar military officials with over 12 million followers. Specifically, Facebook banned 20 individuals and organizations from using the site, including Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and the military’s Myawaddy television network. Facebook also removed 46 pages and 12 accounts for “engaging in coordinated and inauthentic behavior on Facebook,” which Facebook claims were used to spread hate speech and fuel the growing tension.

In my experience, Facebook, Reddit, Twitter and 4chan aren’t the social networks they promote themselves to be. They’re platforms that enable people with extreme views to isolate themselves from alternative ideas. To be social is to be inclusive, echo chambers are the opposite of social and they are one of the most unfortunate outcomes of the internet. Echo chambers are being mistaken by the credulous as forums valid for debate and proving political opinions and ideologies, in fact most of the people in an echo chamber are unlikely to have any awareness to the fact, and how that invalidates all the discussions that take place in it.

Pre-Internet Memes – Religion and Nazis

The internet is the Petri dish of memes, but Memes rely on a very specific formula in order for them to be effective at appealing to a critical mass in a society.

Nazism was a pathological virus of the mind—a classic case of an epidemic thought-infection producing horrifying atrocities as a result of the behavior of people infected with its memes.

Despite being one of history’s most notorious mass murdering megalomaniacs, Hitler was also one of history’s most charismatic orators. In a time when even radio was in its infancy, Hitler persuaded a nation to effectively declare war on the rest of the world. If there was ever a meme, it was Nazism. Hitler even identified this very fact when he said:

“I feel the heat of the audience, and when the right time comes, I hurl a flaming javelin that sets the crowd on fire” – Adolf Hitler

Despite Dawkins’ term not being introduced for another forty years, it’s clear that through the symbolism of a flaming spear lighting the audience, Hitler is undeniably talking about a meme. Releasing an idea into culture and watching it catch fire, replicate.

As devastatingly successful a meme that Nazism was, Internet memes differ in that they spread fast and mutate wildly, because of this it’s frightening to consider what Joseph Goebbels would have been able to do with the internet at his disposal.

Without a doubt, religions are mankind’s most prolific memes. They have duplicated through generations, and gone on to have huge impacts on society. The Nazis identified the young as being fundamental in creating momentum for the ideology, and as a result formed the highly effective Hitler Youth. In similar fashion, religions are foisted upon the young before they’ve had the chance to develop reason and objectivity. A child will imitate its parents before it will stop and ask itself, what they’re doing. It’s for this reason that the young are particularly vulnerable to memes. Minds that are yet to develop the filters of scepticism and doubt, and are told to believe in things without proof, through a mechanism called faith, become friendly environments to parasitic, self-replicating ideas or information.

So how serious is the spread of memes over the internet being taken?

That’s a question best left answered by the American military.

The meme is the secret code of human behavior, a Rosetta stone, finally giving us the key to understanding religion, politics, psychology, and cultural evolution. That key, though, also unlocks Pandora’s box, opening up such sophisticated new techniques for mass manipulation that we may soon look on today’s manipulative TV commercials, political speeches and televangelists as fond remembrances of the good old days. -Richard Brodie

in Memetic Warfare: The Future of War, First Lieutenant, Brian J. Hancock talks of how the internet was responsible for the spread of memes that encouraged the radicalisation of many Muslims to martyr themselves for the causes of Al Qaeda or Isis. Isis in particular had a very sophisticated internet presence that effectively communicated their bankrupt ideology to the minds of the vulnerable and credulous. The influence of these websites became clear and were later hacked to include pornographic images that should disgust your average over zealous Muslim, encouraging him to close the website .

Lietenant Hancock goes on to talk of how physical conflict with an insurgency might only kill the insurgent, which often strengthens the ideology/meme. Memetic warfare can be used to deprogram those at risk of becoming radicalised. Targeted memes can get our enemies to think more in line with how we might want them to think. Can’t see anything wrong with that, can you?

At Universities, Memetic Algorithms is a relatively new area of academic study looking at how information spreads across networks, simplified it’s an academic look at why things go “viral”. Unsurprisingly it receives a disproportionate amount of funding owing to the interest of marketing and advertising agencies.

The power of the internet to enable the freedom of expression to any user is what makes Memetics an area of study that is certain to receive inordinate amounts of funding over the next ten years. As the internet spreads to more users and becomes even faster, mankind’s ability to disseminate crackpot ideas that will find a receptive audience will increase at a near exponential rate.

The Greatest Trick the Devil Ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist

And the greatest meme of them all, the internet itself. At the turn of the millennium, we worried about viruses and malware infecting our hardware, but despite the exponential growth of the internet computer viruses haven’t grown accordingly. Ten, twenty years ago, bored computer-scientists, mathematicians, even teenagers might find it fun programming viruses, or hacking into computers. Like a virus this malevolence has evolved in its complexity. These people aren’t entertained with the idea of messing around with someones hard drive, through the use of memes, today it’s possible to mess with how people think, influence what they believe, and effect the course of democracy itself. Through data harvested from social networks companies like Cambridge Analytica have attempted to hack minds.

And this isn’t science fiction fear mongering, it’s already happened. Cambridge Analytica, Russian collusion in the 2016 U.S Presidential Election, even Kenya claims to have had an election unfairly influenced by the internet. Nearly every democracy on Earth is influenced by a relatively small minority of swing voters. If you can identify those voters and subject them to a strategy of targeted memes, tied to the topics that interest them in the election, you control democracy. The internet gathers all the information and the algorithms search through all this data to identify swing voters, the chat-bots are coordinated to spam these voters with messages carefully by psychologists, to appeal to the appropriate memes. The ancient Greeks and their philosophy of democracy never stood a chance, how could they’ve ever seen this coming?

Some of the great thinkers of our age, with good reason, have taken the time to warn us of the potential dangers Artificial Intelligence poses humanity. Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk, both warned us of AI turning the tables on mankind, a society in which the people serve the machines. Memetics is the code that programs humans. The internet is the greatest recording of human behaviour ever collected. Need I say more? If you don’t see where this is going by now, for you it’s already too late.

 

 

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The Information, Communication, Technology Paradox or Why the Internet is for Idiots

jimdroberts5 Comments

I’ve written a blog now for maybe a couple of years.

Much of what I choose to write about is irreverent, and never meant to be taken seriously.

This week I was going to continue with my rants on the apparent rise of fascism across Europe and the United States. Then the British Prime Minister, Theresa (I haven’t got a mandate) May – a woman who has only won the right to represent her constituency of 74,000 people, but has found herself leading the 64 million people of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland through the countries most delicate period of time since the end of World War II – announces a “snap” election.

I was going to write about this, this “snap” election. Something that a piece of legislation passed in 2011 called “The Fixed Terms Parliament Act” was supposed to have brought an end to. But no, the woman with no mandate to even lead the U.K in the first place was now defecating over the final shreds of our democratic dignity. I was incensed, and this was to be my theme.

But, it was then I had an epiphany. It was as if the sky was torn asunder and a heavenly light, shone down on me. And the almighty asked me a question “what right do you have to spread your ill informed, personal opinions using technology that can reach almost anyone on the planet,  I mean who the fuck do you think you are, some kind of god or something?”

In less biblical terms what happened was, I lost my internet connection for 12 hours and was hit by the realization that I was free from its limitless bullshit. The seemingly infinite and boundless “reckonings” of half brained people passing on their opinions of the things that they rarely half understand.

What Happens When Advanced Technology for Communication is Supported by Stone Age Reasoning?

An apocalyptic explosion of bullshit. When mankind’s understandable passion to protect their unalienable right to the freedom of expression, is combined with the kind of rapid improvements in the technology of communication that we have seen over the past 20 years, this facilitates, an apocalyptic explosion of  bullshit. Or, what I’m choosing to call the information, communication, technology paradox.

As our capability to communicate has risen to the levels of what only a generation ago the authors of science fiction could only have dreamt about, the information that the masses have to communicate using this technology, is founded upon the same logical principles of thought as those people who lived during the dark ages. And I don’t wish to come across as being rude, but the majority of us have about the same degree of scientific understanding as a person that lived in the dark ages. Yes many of us know the term DNA, I’d even be brave enough to suggest that over half of us can spell DNA, but few of us actually understand it. The gulf between knowledge and understanding has never been greater, as is our lack of awareness of this gulf. I’ll prove through the use of  theoretical anecdote.

Imagine you are transported in space and time to Mainz, Germany and the year 1439. You are standing in a room with Johannes Guttenberg and his workers, who over a great deal of time, have painstakingly developed the concept of, movable type. They have empowered themselves to reproduce the written word at a speed, and in volumes, that were hitherto unthinkable. This was a time when the only book that existed was essentially the Bible, and its reproduction was overseen by being copied out, by hand, by very dull, antisocial men, living in monasteries. But, here was Guttenberg, with the power to spread new ideas, and there’s you standing there, nearly 600 years from the future stood next to him. Aside from adopting the mantle of some type of Nostradamus figure using your knowledge of future events, what knowledge would you encourage Guttenberg to disseminate? Could you contribute to stopping the spread of diseases like the plague? Could you introduce them to, and provide them with electricity? Could you improve on the abacus that was still being used, or Blaise Pascal’s adding machine that wouldn’t be invented for another 150 years? You could describe television and radio, but how many of you could describe the design and engineering necessary in order to make one? You could describe what a far simpler device like a calculator looks like and does, but again few of us could make one. You could describe an electric torch, but again, how many of us understand it well enough to actually tell someone how to make one? In all eventuality few of us would be able to engineer a simple toothbrush that resembles anything similar to what a toothbrush looks like today.

My point is simple; while we are  surrounded today, by what is a wealth of technology that allows us to do things that a person 600 years ago would be more likely to assume came from another planet, than resulting from the processes of rigorous scientific reasoning and refined techniques of engineering, that allowed the development of such technology. While this technology has been made for the use of almost anybody with opposable thumbs, it doesn’t acvtually make us any smarter. We can all use a television, a smartphone, a computer and a calculator, but I would hazard a guess that less than 1% of us have anything more than a very rudimentary understanding of how any of this technology actually works. Just because we have calculators to help us do sums faster doesn’t necessarily make all of us better mathematicians than the man using the abacus. For some of us the calculator is a tool that we learn to master and that allows us to do very advanced mathematical calculations. Calculations that are used in architecture and engineering, these are examples of when a tool like a calculator or a computer can further our understanding, but it is only a very small minority of people that actually utilize modern technology as a means to develop more advanced technology. For the vast majority of us technology is synonymous with communication, and what we communicate are ideas that are scarcely more evolved or complex than were entertained by the minds of the average inhabitant during the dark ages.

Quantum physicist Richard Feynman, considered by most as only second to Albert Einstein, and considered by a few as superior, tells us the difference between knowing the names things and understanding the nature of things. Go on you can do it, it’s only 2 minutes long, and it involves moving pictures and sounds.

The year of the invention of the Guttenberg press,  is probably the invention that draws the most parallels to the internet. In my earlier, theoretical anecdote, I tried to argue the point that very few of us actually understand much that we could have persuaded it was worthwhile for Guttenberg to consider printing. Indeed much of the printing done by Guttenberg’s presses was just to reproduce more and more copies of the Bible. It must be said however that it Guttenberg’s printing press facilitated the Bible to be translated out of Latin, thus replacing it as the Lingua Franca, and enabled the development of the vernacular of the European Languages we know today. And here we see a parallel, hasn’t the Internet done a similar thing for language with its use of emoticons, emojis, netlingo and chat acronyms.

YY4U? LMFAO, ne-wayz this is BBB, LAGNAF instead.

You might wish to refer to the attached:

http://www.netlingo.com/acronyms.php

The Internet can’t Create Knowledge, Communication Leads to the Decay of Knowledge

The internet can’t create information, it can’t create knowledge. Two scientists sharing ideas and data do use the Internet to create new findings and formulate new hypotheses, but this constitutes such an infinitesimally small amount of the actual communication that takes place over the Internet; the majority is half brained idiots treating us to “what they reckon”.

In essence the Internet is being predominantly used as a machine that enables us to play the classic children’s  party game “Chinese Whispers”, on a global level. Does this mean the game should no longer be called Chinese whispers? Or, does it covertly tell us about the Chinese aim for global domination? Why not write to me and tell me what you reckon?

The internet draws us all together so closely, it’s probable that it reduces Milgram’s hypothesis of the 7 degrees of separation down to 4 or 5. In today’s game of Chinese whispers, when the child passes on the half understood, garbled reckoning they received from their friend, who they themselves only half understood the message that they received, a process that we could trace back ad nauseum, but I’m sure you get the point. Inevitably the further down the line you are of this convoluted, twisted chain, of what people reckon means that you’re the recipient of a piece of information, that’s of about as much use as an electric cucumber toothbrush.

But the problem gets compounded further. This misinformation is no longer timidly whispered into the ear of the person next in line. If it’s true, that in space nobody hears you scream, on the internet nobody hears you whisper, instead half understood, distorted reckonings are relayed from one friend/acquaintance to another, constantly being molded to fit the reckonings of the new disseminator, and spread around the globe at nigh on the speed of light, or at the very least to their 5,000 or so Facebook friends. You can’t play Chinese whispers on the internet. On the internet nobody hears your whispers, on the internet there are no whispers, just whirlpools and maelstroms of misinformation and a digital universe comprised nearly 100% pure, bullshit reckonings.

I used to believe that the internet marked the democratization of information. Today I’m left feeling like I must have been somewhat of a naive twat. How completely ignorant I was to have worn the rose tinted spectacles through which I  first viewed the technological marvel of the Internet. you see there’s nothing wrong with the Internet itself. As a tool it retains the enormous potential to educate and inform almost every single person on the planet. So how can I claim there is a paradox and that it is actually contributing to the dumbing down of the majority of us?

Simple, any tool is only as good as the person that operates it, and the majority of mankind are just utter ass hats, that believe, just because we can use hi-tech equipment that we ourselves must be more advanced. Well here’s a clip of monkeys using an iPad, there’s a load more on YouTube, this is by no means a one off:

What should have become quite apparent from this short video is that whilst monkeys are an intelligent primate, the fact that they can use an iPad should confirm that using this advanced technology doesn’t require a highly developed mind. Indeed, the technology of today is designed to be as intuitive to use as possible, hence we see a monkey using it.

There may be no greater evidence that supports the intuitive ease with which we can use this most advanced technology than the fact that a method of schooling called Waldorf Schools, is the education of choice for the children of employees in the Silicon Valley. What makes Waldorf education unique, is that it deprives its students the use of all forms of technology, no tablets, mobile phones, computers or calculators are allowed. They claim “it’s out with technology and in with imagination”. As mantras go I found this to be quite underwhelming, unimaginative, and well, frankly shit. But, there can be no greater endorsement of this anti technological form of education, than the fact that it’s highly endorsed by those who are at the cutting edge of developing such technology.

The very nature of a paradox tends to make them a bitter pill to swallow. Paradoxes tend to have a habit of promising us one thing while in actual fact leaving us with something totally unexpected, and usually unpleasant. The information, communication, technology paradox might just be the paradox that will go onto destroy the hubris of mankind. This is a significant statement that deserves to be thoroughly explained, but if I CBB G2G & FAP @ JAV pron.

To me the damage that the Internet is doing to the knowledge and understanding of the average person is ineffable, so I’ll leave you with my favourite ever video on YouTube, 4 dwarfs racing a camel, which to some extent proves my point better than I ever could:

Some quotes from history that might have foreshadowed our slough of despond:

“He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.” Thomas Jefferson

“I know one thing; that I know nothing” – Sometimes referred to as the Socratic paradox

The sources of my reckonings:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-term_Parliaments_Act_2011

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-may-general-election-fixed-term-parliaments-act-a7688426.html

https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2015/dec/02/schools-that-ban-tablets-traditional-education-silicon-valley-london

http://www.businessinsider.com/waldorf-silicon-valley-school-shuns-technology-2017-3

http://www.gradesaver.com/amusing-ourselves-to-death/study-guide/summary-chapters-3-5

Nude Celebrities inside an Apple Cloud?

jimdroberts1 Comment

1307581545_apple_icloud_logo___icon__psd_by_zandog-d3ie24v This week an American reporter brutally had his head hacked off, but what has garnered even more press coverage has been the brutal hacking of an Apple cloud to see nude celebrities. It sounds like a bizarre challenge from a Japanese game show, but it really happened. A hacker by the name of “originalguy”, hacked into Apple’s cloud storage and accessed nude, sexual, personal photos of a number of female celebrities. 4Chan-Leaked-Photos-Hacker-Revealed-Will-Apple-iCloud-And-Reddit-Be-Held-Accountable-For-Nude-Scandal-665x385When I first heard the story I really did not care, in fact my initial thought was stupid, dumb celebrities. Having looked into it a little more and given it time, I am now left thinking stupid, dumb celebrities, but I have managed to develop some sympathy as well.

I see this situation in the following three ways:

  1. Stupid, dumb celebrities;
  2. An inexcusable violation of privacy;
  3. The hypocrisy of seeking justice through the Federal legal system.

Stupid, Dumb Celebrities

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These were not just celebrities, they were celebrities that almost exclusively owe their careers to how they look. I was quick to notice Rosanne Bar, Oprah Winfrey, Sandra Bernhard and Cher were not among the victims of this attack, and I’m pretty sure that they’re up there in the Apple cloud also. These celebrities should have been a little more savvy, other than their aesthetic beauty they offer very little else to this world, it stands to reason that their nude pictures would be highly coveted. Now I know that probably somewhere in the Bill of Rights it protects an American’s liberty to take photos of themselves naked, it also grants them the liberty to be and do stupid things. And we can’t punish people for being stupid and dumb because we need someone to run our countries. I myself have done a plethora of idiotic things that I would rather the world didn’t know about (so I’ve not put them on cloud storage). These women were stupid, I’m sure most of them realize this, I’m also sure most of their careers will be more prosperous for this. Ultimately you have to be responsible for the pictures you take and how you store them.

An Inexcusable Violation of Privacy

So the women are to blame a little bit. “originalguy” who hacked the pictures is the villain of the piece, even though he was driven by the same forces that drives his victims, fame, notoriety and publicity, and he’s succeeded. What he did was a gross violation of an individuals privacy which is difficult to defend but I will attempt to do so later. What he has done would be considered abhorrent to any civilized society, but the truth is that our society is driven by this perverse, twisted dynamic. At face value the news is reporting the story for its gross violation of privacy, but what it ends up doing is promoting the fact that this material is out there on the net, “see it quick, before it’s deleted”. A fact that I found particularly interesting  is that one of the celebrities had deleted their pictures but they remained stored in the cloud. Apparently once you have sent an image to a remote storage facility you basically lose the right to control what happens to it, and that I find to be damned scary. This leads to my next point.

The hypocrisy of seeking justice through the Federal legal system

Snowdon

Lawyers representing several of the celebrities effected have suggested they intend to pursue criminal cases under federal laws protecting a citizen’s rights to privacy. This does not seem unreasonable, there has to be some legal redress for what has happened. In a similar instance in 2012, Christopher Chaney was sentenced by a federal judge to serve 10 years in federal prison. Chaney’s crimes were a federal offence and so are “originalguy’s” as the FBI has already begun an investigation. That is all well and good until you cast your mind back and remember a certain Mr. Edward Snowdon.  Snowdon leaked documents revealing details of the global surveillance apparatus of the United States, NSA. The fact is that the same Federal government that prosecutes people for violating privacy via the internet is the same Federal government that goes and does this for a job. The government is able to go through any cloud storage facility, with perhaps the exception of SpiderOak who have made efforts to make it more difficult, with complete impunity, no warrants or need of suspicion, nothing. This surely puts the Federal government in a tenuous position when punishing citizens for an activity they use public funds to do everyday.

To conclude, the celebrities were dumb and stupid, but people should not have to suffer for being dumb and stupid, being dumb and stupid thankfully does not constitute being a crime, it’s a god given right for many of us. The act of hacking personal files is wrong, then to publish them to the world without consent is the work of a deranged mind. The greatest problem in all this is that in our society there is a growing lack of respect for people’s privacy, especially where the internet is concerned. And privacy is privacy, it needs to be respected between citizens and especially between governments and their citizens.

A remarkable week in which the internet was headline news twice, ISIS beheading another American and broadcasting it on the internet, and then naked celebrities popped up. When I stand back to try and appreciate the scale of the internet, how this invention has and continues to shape our lives and societies, I am left feeling unsure as to whether it is worth the benefits we believe it bestows upon us.