People in my family often ask me why I quit social media. It's a question I often avoid because explaining the reason why is something I find difficult to do. As much as I find language fascinating I also always feel flummoxed by it because I often feel I don't have the proper capacity within it to convey the complex thoughts that seem perfectly reasonable in my head but start to fall apart the moment I try to translate them into verbiage. The only way I've found to counteract this shortcoming is by way of long, winding narratives that seem to go nowhere but I promise if you stick with it until the end, it will come to a very non-satisfying conclusion. So buckle up, we're going to be getting nowhere fast.
This is going to be a very rough draft of something else I'll be writing elsewhere, you guys get to be my guinea pigs. It very well may not make sense.
Luddites
The word luddite today is a derogatory term used to describe someone who is opposed to technology. "A small-minded Luddite resisting progress" is the literal dictionary example used, clearly marking luddite as something that is laughable in today's age; a technophobe. But that's not what the Luddites were. History has since painted them as deserving of mockery, but the Luddite movement was a radical labor union started in England in the early 19th century opposing what they viewed as unfair practices using new technology to skirt the current labor laws. They took their name after Ned Ludd, a skilled weaver who, in the late 1700's found his way of life in jeopardy. He'd spent his life honing his craft, but was forced out of a job when the textile factory started adopting new machinery that could automate the weaving process, allowing them to fire the skilled workers they employed and hire unskilled workers at a fraction of the pay and in much smaller numbers. I know the free market types are going to say this is natural progress, of course a factory should seek to maximize profits and find cheaper ways to make their products, but the factory was already profitable. Is the goal of the factory to serve the community it sustains, or is the goal to maximize profits above all else? Capitalism says it's to maximize profits, because capitalism can't tell the difference between what is valuable and what is profitable, even if what is valuable for a community isn't always profitable. Sure, people may be happy to find that the textiles they buy are now cheaper, but would they really prefer that if they knew in what other ways those textiles were paid for? What the community paid to have them? What was lost in the name of profit?
Ned clearly didn't agree with this, and in the face of his entire way of life being taken away from him, he did the only rational thing he could think of. He broke into the factory and busted up the machine with a hammer.
Ned Ludd became something of a folk hero for this. It's why he became a symbol for the Luddite movement, named after him though he himself wasn't actually involved. There's even an old folk song about him, which the always based band Chumbawumba happened to record a rendition of:
Lyrics:
No more chant your old rhymes about old Robin Hood
His feats I do little admire
I'll sing the achievements of General Ludd
Now the hero of Nottinghamshire.
Brave Ludd was to measures of violence unused
'till his sufferings became so severe
That at last to defend his own interest he rose
And for the great fight did prepare.
The guilty may fear but no vengeance he aims
At the honest man's life or estate
His wrath is entirely confined to wide frames
And to those that would prices abate.
Those engines of mischief were sentenced to die
By unanimous vote of the trade
And Ludd who can all opposition defy
Was the grand executioner made.
And when in the work he destruction employs
Himself to no method confines
By fire and by water he gets them destroyed
For the elements aid his designs.
Whether guarded by soldiers along the highway
Or closely secured in a room
He shivers them up by night and by day
And nothing can soften their doom.
Ye may censure great Ludd's disrespect for the laws
Who ne'er for a moment reflects
That foul imposition alone was the cause
Which produced these unhappy effects.
Let the haughty the humble no longer oppress
Then shall Ludd sheath his conquering sword
His grievances instantly meet with redress
Then peace shall be quickly restored.
Let the wise and the great lend their aid and advice
Nor e'er their assistance withdraw
Till full-fashioned work at the old-fashioned price
Is established by custom and law.
Then the trade when this arduous contest is o'er
Shall raise in full splendor its head
And colting and cutting and swearing no more
Shall deprive all his workers of bread
The Luddites would band together in a secret society and do exactly what he did, breaking into factories and tearing down the machines. These people weren't against progress, or technology, they were against the forces of greed ruining their communities just for more money. They foresaw the coming industrial revolution as a process that would widen the wage gap, make the rich even richer and keep the poor poorer than they'd ever been. They were afraid that, if left unchecked, this kind of progress without conscience would lead to catastrophe.
*fast forward a couple hundred years*
Oh fuck we've got billionaires now.
Ol' Musky and Transhumanism
Elon Musk is one of those billionaires. He's a guy that took the money he got from one good idea and used it to buy a bunch of other shit he could take credit for. The richer he's gotten, the more brain worms he seems to have gotten, it's funny how that seems to work, and while he's deathly afraid that he might one day have to pay taxes, there is one thing he's in favor of regulating: AI. The only thing Musk fears is the belief that one day AI will come to a singularity event and humanity will be face to digital face with another conscious entity, one far more capable and far more durable, that may decide to pull a terminator and wipe us out, possibly with naked Arnolds. I'm talking the football head, not the Austrian guy, things don't always work like in the movies. After rallying for world governments to put restrictions on AI research and failing, he's since decided to pivot into another direction, using one of the companies he bought and took credit for to research neural interfacing between the human brain and computers. He believes the only way humanity can survive the arrival of AI is to merge with it, with all of us becoming cyborgs.
Transhumanism is the belief that humanity will evolve past our current physical limitations through the use of technology. Becoming cyborgs to think faster, be stronger, live longer, and overall become more and more superhuman. In a world where transhumanism comes to exist, those who choose not to enhance themselves are going to be at a severe disadvantage. A cyborg may be able to do thousands of computations more an hour than a mere flesh-brained human could, so why would an employer favor Marty Meatsack when Sandy Cyberdong is so much better at everything? Cyberdong is just a surname, get your head out of the gutter. In this future scenario, you either get chipped and link yourself to the growing hivemind of humanity, or you get left behind.
Honestly, even though I think Elon Musk is a garbage human being, I think he is mostly right in this regard. The only thing I disagree with him is in the timeline. Because this isn't something that will happen in the future, we're already there. We're all already cyborgs, it's just that instead of having the computer chip in our brains, it's in our pockets. I'm never more than a second away from accessing the internet. As a kid using dial-up, the internet was a place I went. Now, it's a place I live, I'm never without it. We as a society have reached a point where we have a constant sensory overload of information flooding us at all times, to the point that we feel its absence if it's gone. Have you ever been somewhere with poor cell service and no wifi? It's almost like being in a low oxygen scenario, you feel something is off. You keep instinctively reaching into your pocket to look up an answer only to remind yourself you can't. Your body is attempting to use a phantom limb that, for the moment, doesn't work. Constant connectivity is changing the very chemistry of our brains, and I'm just as addicted to it as anyone else. I like it, I need it, and I don't want to live without it, so then where does my hesitation come from? Why don't I welcome the merge?
The algorithm
Capitalism can't tell the difference between value and profit. And we've trained our AI systems that run the hivemind we connect to this same fault. From Amazon to Google to Facebook, algorithms collect our data in an attempt to better serve us. Things we want are offered to us faster, and for cheaper, than they've ever been before. Amazon can know the things you want to buy before you even realize you want them and offer them up to you in ads. Facebook will guess your interests and lead you to new communities to engage in faster than ever before, so what's the problem? Everyone's heard of people getting radicalized by the internet, and the reason is that the algorithm can't tell the difference between profit and value. All it knows is engagement. It knows that if it gets your attention, if it gets your views, if it gets your clicks, its succeeding. Any time you try to be a normal fucking person and take a break, it thinks its failing, and will double down to bring you back with whatever it can. It doesn't know -you- but instead knows trends and what gets the most engagement, knowing that the biggest rabbit holes full of the craziest shit is what keeps people engaged the most, and does everything it can to lead you there. And it will continue to get better and better at this, because it doesn't know how to stop. If the Luddites existed today, I'm fairly certain they'd be busting up facebook servers, and fighting against the "metaverse" that every corporation is fondling themselves over, thinking of the profits they can earn by keeping people as engaged, paying customers, not knowing what they're trading away for the process.
There's no stopping the future. It's coming no matter what. My only hope is that when it gets here, maybe we will have found a way to tell the difference between profit and value. But I doubt it.
Having written all this out now, I don't think I've done a good job at all of explaining my feelings. But I had to write something or it would burn my brain up thinking about it.
This is going to be a very rough draft of something else I'll be writing elsewhere, you guys get to be my guinea pigs. It very well may not make sense.
Luddites
The word luddite today is a derogatory term used to describe someone who is opposed to technology. "A small-minded Luddite resisting progress" is the literal dictionary example used, clearly marking luddite as something that is laughable in today's age; a technophobe. But that's not what the Luddites were. History has since painted them as deserving of mockery, but the Luddite movement was a radical labor union started in England in the early 19th century opposing what they viewed as unfair practices using new technology to skirt the current labor laws. They took their name after Ned Ludd, a skilled weaver who, in the late 1700's found his way of life in jeopardy. He'd spent his life honing his craft, but was forced out of a job when the textile factory started adopting new machinery that could automate the weaving process, allowing them to fire the skilled workers they employed and hire unskilled workers at a fraction of the pay and in much smaller numbers. I know the free market types are going to say this is natural progress, of course a factory should seek to maximize profits and find cheaper ways to make their products, but the factory was already profitable. Is the goal of the factory to serve the community it sustains, or is the goal to maximize profits above all else? Capitalism says it's to maximize profits, because capitalism can't tell the difference between what is valuable and what is profitable, even if what is valuable for a community isn't always profitable. Sure, people may be happy to find that the textiles they buy are now cheaper, but would they really prefer that if they knew in what other ways those textiles were paid for? What the community paid to have them? What was lost in the name of profit?
Ned clearly didn't agree with this, and in the face of his entire way of life being taken away from him, he did the only rational thing he could think of. He broke into the factory and busted up the machine with a hammer.
Ned Ludd became something of a folk hero for this. It's why he became a symbol for the Luddite movement, named after him though he himself wasn't actually involved. There's even an old folk song about him, which the always based band Chumbawumba happened to record a rendition of:
Lyrics:
No more chant your old rhymes about old Robin Hood
His feats I do little admire
I'll sing the achievements of General Ludd
Now the hero of Nottinghamshire.
Brave Ludd was to measures of violence unused
'till his sufferings became so severe
That at last to defend his own interest he rose
And for the great fight did prepare.
The guilty may fear but no vengeance he aims
At the honest man's life or estate
His wrath is entirely confined to wide frames
And to those that would prices abate.
Those engines of mischief were sentenced to die
By unanimous vote of the trade
And Ludd who can all opposition defy
Was the grand executioner made.
And when in the work he destruction employs
Himself to no method confines
By fire and by water he gets them destroyed
For the elements aid his designs.
Whether guarded by soldiers along the highway
Or closely secured in a room
He shivers them up by night and by day
And nothing can soften their doom.
Ye may censure great Ludd's disrespect for the laws
Who ne'er for a moment reflects
That foul imposition alone was the cause
Which produced these unhappy effects.
Let the haughty the humble no longer oppress
Then shall Ludd sheath his conquering sword
His grievances instantly meet with redress
Then peace shall be quickly restored.
Let the wise and the great lend their aid and advice
Nor e'er their assistance withdraw
Till full-fashioned work at the old-fashioned price
Is established by custom and law.
Then the trade when this arduous contest is o'er
Shall raise in full splendor its head
And colting and cutting and swearing no more
Shall deprive all his workers of bread
The Luddites would band together in a secret society and do exactly what he did, breaking into factories and tearing down the machines. These people weren't against progress, or technology, they were against the forces of greed ruining their communities just for more money. They foresaw the coming industrial revolution as a process that would widen the wage gap, make the rich even richer and keep the poor poorer than they'd ever been. They were afraid that, if left unchecked, this kind of progress without conscience would lead to catastrophe.
*fast forward a couple hundred years*
Oh fuck we've got billionaires now.
Ol' Musky and Transhumanism
Elon Musk is one of those billionaires. He's a guy that took the money he got from one good idea and used it to buy a bunch of other shit he could take credit for. The richer he's gotten, the more brain worms he seems to have gotten, it's funny how that seems to work, and while he's deathly afraid that he might one day have to pay taxes, there is one thing he's in favor of regulating: AI. The only thing Musk fears is the belief that one day AI will come to a singularity event and humanity will be face to digital face with another conscious entity, one far more capable and far more durable, that may decide to pull a terminator and wipe us out, possibly with naked Arnolds. I'm talking the football head, not the Austrian guy, things don't always work like in the movies. After rallying for world governments to put restrictions on AI research and failing, he's since decided to pivot into another direction, using one of the companies he bought and took credit for to research neural interfacing between the human brain and computers. He believes the only way humanity can survive the arrival of AI is to merge with it, with all of us becoming cyborgs.
Transhumanism is the belief that humanity will evolve past our current physical limitations through the use of technology. Becoming cyborgs to think faster, be stronger, live longer, and overall become more and more superhuman. In a world where transhumanism comes to exist, those who choose not to enhance themselves are going to be at a severe disadvantage. A cyborg may be able to do thousands of computations more an hour than a mere flesh-brained human could, so why would an employer favor Marty Meatsack when Sandy Cyberdong is so much better at everything? Cyberdong is just a surname, get your head out of the gutter. In this future scenario, you either get chipped and link yourself to the growing hivemind of humanity, or you get left behind.
Honestly, even though I think Elon Musk is a garbage human being, I think he is mostly right in this regard. The only thing I disagree with him is in the timeline. Because this isn't something that will happen in the future, we're already there. We're all already cyborgs, it's just that instead of having the computer chip in our brains, it's in our pockets. I'm never more than a second away from accessing the internet. As a kid using dial-up, the internet was a place I went. Now, it's a place I live, I'm never without it. We as a society have reached a point where we have a constant sensory overload of information flooding us at all times, to the point that we feel its absence if it's gone. Have you ever been somewhere with poor cell service and no wifi? It's almost like being in a low oxygen scenario, you feel something is off. You keep instinctively reaching into your pocket to look up an answer only to remind yourself you can't. Your body is attempting to use a phantom limb that, for the moment, doesn't work. Constant connectivity is changing the very chemistry of our brains, and I'm just as addicted to it as anyone else. I like it, I need it, and I don't want to live without it, so then where does my hesitation come from? Why don't I welcome the merge?
The algorithm
Capitalism can't tell the difference between value and profit. And we've trained our AI systems that run the hivemind we connect to this same fault. From Amazon to Google to Facebook, algorithms collect our data in an attempt to better serve us. Things we want are offered to us faster, and for cheaper, than they've ever been before. Amazon can know the things you want to buy before you even realize you want them and offer them up to you in ads. Facebook will guess your interests and lead you to new communities to engage in faster than ever before, so what's the problem? Everyone's heard of people getting radicalized by the internet, and the reason is that the algorithm can't tell the difference between profit and value. All it knows is engagement. It knows that if it gets your attention, if it gets your views, if it gets your clicks, its succeeding. Any time you try to be a normal fucking person and take a break, it thinks its failing, and will double down to bring you back with whatever it can. It doesn't know -you- but instead knows trends and what gets the most engagement, knowing that the biggest rabbit holes full of the craziest shit is what keeps people engaged the most, and does everything it can to lead you there. And it will continue to get better and better at this, because it doesn't know how to stop. If the Luddites existed today, I'm fairly certain they'd be busting up facebook servers, and fighting against the "metaverse" that every corporation is fondling themselves over, thinking of the profits they can earn by keeping people as engaged, paying customers, not knowing what they're trading away for the process.
There's no stopping the future. It's coming no matter what. My only hope is that when it gets here, maybe we will have found a way to tell the difference between profit and value. But I doubt it.
Having written all this out now, I don't think I've done a good job at all of explaining my feelings. But I had to write something or it would burn my brain up thinking about it.
