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.
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...
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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