Tag: Singularity

The ‘Soft Singularity’ Is Here: Big Tech’s Brazen Implementation of ‘Digital Telepathy’ is Alarming


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The old Arthur C. Clarke quote when it comes to such matters is, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” I think of this quote as I use Tik-Tok and realize it’s reading my mind. I don’t know the specifics and I don’t know the extent, but it’s happening.

I’m not saying that Tik-Tok, Facebook and Google aren’t monitoring every aspect of my Internet use in other ways — they obviously are — but there is absolutely no way I’m getting some of the For You Page suggestions I’m getting on Tik-Tok unless they have figured out a way to literally read my fucking mind.

If these eerie things happened once or twice, then, yes, I probably could think of any of different ways they might have figured out that I like a certain female phenotype or that this or that thing was important to me in my internal monologue.

But it happens all the fucking time!

Me, 2020.

So, I can only come to the conclusion that the Singularity isn’t just near, it’s here! And if there is now commercial application of such Singularity technology as digital telepathy, then just imagine what the NSA, CIA or MI5 are now using on a regular basis.

It just seems very possible that Tik-Tok is going to screw up in some way. Or Facebook. Either one of those two I could see deciding to sell what they know about our minds to some nefarious group that turns around and uses it to do something we learn about later.

Imagine if the average person was presented with absolute proof that Facebook or Tik-Tok sold their innermost secrets to the 2024 Trump Campaign. Or the Russians. And, remember, Tik-Tok is tight with the Chinese government. That’s a clusterfuck just waiting to happen.

Or, put another way, if digital telepathy is being used as much as I believe it is, someone, somewhere is going to screw up. Knowledge is power. And if Big Tech wants to keep Digital Telepathy a secret instead of slowly letting people know of its existence, there’s going to be a massive scandal that could destroy companies that abuse it like Google, Facebook and Tik-Tok.

I know this sounds nuts. But I’m simply using cold hard facts and putting logic to use. And, remember, this is coming from someone who generally hates conspiracy theories.

Political Grift Opportunity: Neuluds


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I went to a MAGA rally in DC recently — which was not only a case of zemblanity, but may have given me COVID19 — and my big take away was what a fucking grift the whole thing is.

The entire rally was based on a racist, misogynistic lie. The lie that at some magical, mystical moment in the past America was “greater” than it is now. We all know what that’s code for — whatever moment in the past when white men without a college education could get laid. So, it’s a time before #MeToo and #BLM. Or something.

Anyway, I have long thought that I missed a golden opportunity to make a lot of hard cash by faking to be MAGA and working my way up the MAGA delusion to the very top. I could have been a regular MAGA Chauncy Gardner before it was over with. I could have been standing next to Trump in the Oval Office if I had just given things some thought in, say, 2015.

So, if you want to know what I think the next big political grift is going to be, it’s Neo-Luddism. If you wanted to rebrand it something like NeuLudism, you could, I guess.

But we’re one Elon Musk announcement away from about 3 million hard working truckers losing their jobs virtually overnight. All those people might be receptive to a political message that wanted to destroy technology. Don’t quite know how you would convey that idea without…technology, but who would have thought that deranged ding-dong Donald Trump would get as far as he did?

But the Neulud grift isn’t going to be as easy as the MAGA grift. You’re going to have to work harder for no other reason than Neulud requires leadership to gently move MAGA people (who love Facebook, Twitter and now Parler) towards the idea of hating all technology that kills jobs.

So, in a sense, if, say, Tom Cotton adopted this political gambit, you would see a total realignment of American politics for no other reason than wealthy MAGA has gotten their plutocrat tax cut and they like Elon Musk too much to go along with such an idea.

If such an idea got any traction, you might everything thrown up in the air politically in the United States for a few years as things sorted themselves out. You might see a huge portion of the Republican Party fuse with a huge portion of the Democrat Party, while some Far Left and Far Right elements of both parties fused into an anti-technology party.

The only reason why I even suggest this is possible is Elon Musk and how overdue we are for a major lurch forward in technology. We’re about 10 years away from the last big burst of technology that changed the lives of every day people.

When it happens again, it might be so dramatic (in a way) as to be something of a “Soft Singularity.”

Anyway. No one listens to me.

The Consequences Of Big Tech Secretly Using ‘Computer Facilitated Telepathy’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have no idea if I’m right on this one, but again and again the last year or so, I’ve got a very weird feeling that the only possible explanation for what’s being served to me online is Big Tech can read my fucking mind.

Maybe?

Maybe not context — like *why* I’m thinking about such things, but they definitely know I’m thinking this or that thing. It happens all the time. Like, almost every day now.

How is this happening?

One, we know the technology exists because Facebook got a patent for it. So, it makes sense that Facebook could license such tech to others. And Chinese companies like Tik-Tok could have a whole different thing going on and wouldn’t know about it.

But let’s assume that, in a sense, we’ve reached a “secret” Singularity. A “soft” Singularity, if you will, with computer-based telepathy being a prime example of this.

If you assume that Big Iron’s data processing power has finally reached the point where it can not only aggregate the thoughts of a nation but monitor the thoughts of an individual person, then, wow-we-wow-wow is that a Pandora’s Box of problems.

I was so busy thinking about how the 2020 election might be determined by a Hunter Biden deep fake, I didn’t think about how 2024’s election might be won — or lost — because House Trump bought mind info from Facebook.

The implications to politics, the arts, commerce and advertising are astonishing if what I suspect is true. Even more so if The Powers That Be come to rely upon this information and then, surprise! we all find out about it and we have, say, the Mind Rape Scandal of 2025 or some such.

I’m the first to admit I have an exceedingly well-developed imagination — I am writing a novel, after all — but I’m really beginning to believe for once a “conspiracy” might be real. I don’t even think it would even be a real conspiracy — they’re not hiding it. We know the technology exists.

Big Tech just isn’t really doing; all that much to let us know they’re using it on us.

MegaTrend: ‘Humans First’ –The Rise Of The Luddites


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It’s been about a decade since smart phones came out and began to change the lives of everyday people. The next big technological shift may be when Elon Musk disrupts the trucking industry — kills it, really — when he perfects an automated semi without the need for a driver.

If this happens really fast, it’s not difficult to imagine today’s MAGA turning into tomorrows Luddites. And, really, all you need for this transformation is someone a Trump like character who isn’t simply an avatar for the rage of the common man, but someone who takes their rage and leads them in a specific direction.

So, it’s possible it could go Tea Party — > MAGA –> Luddites. Now, for this to happen, you probably would have to cleave off a big chunk of the Republican Party. It’s difficult to imagine rich, educated MAGA going along with such a radical agenda. It’s easy to imagine a situation where this happens and the Republican Party finally dies.

Or there’s a massive re-alignment of American politics with the wealthy tech-friendly people going to one party and the Luddites soaking up extremists from the far Left and far Right who have a common enemy — technology (or, the Singularity.)

I’m wrong all the time, though. But it is something to think about.

Tik-Tok Can Read Our Minds


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Let me put some context to this — I have no idea if I’m right on this and, given my pretty bad history of making false assumptions, I probably am. And I would add that I generally don’t believe in conspiracy theories.

But hear me out on this one.

I have noticed from Facebook and Google and now Tik-Tok a level of knowledge about my private, mental dialogue that is inexplicable. For instance — why is it that Tik-Tok recommends videos to me of women who look eerily like my personal “one that got away?” They keep doing stuff like this to an extent that is enough to be very jarring.

And Facebook keeps recommending ads to me that make absolutely no sense unless you knew specific things about me that I have told no one about. No Tweets. No emails. I haven’t even vocalized them.

The technology to read people’s minds — in a very ham handed way — exists. It’s been perfected enough for Facebook to patent it.

I’m probably wrong. But how Tik-Tok, Google and Facebook could possibly know such things about me if I’m the only person who knows about it is extremely puzzling.

The Subtle Singularity



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

One interesting is how devoid of innovation the modern world has been in the last, say, 10 years. There’s been a lot of talk about VR/AR (MX), or Bitcoin or space travel or whatever changing the world in a radical fashion, but, lulz, nothing’s happened. Not even a pandemic could jump-start MX.

But let’s jump forward a few decades.

There are a lot of macro trends that are moving towards the much predicted “Singularity.” I’ve given this some thought and it seems as though the Singularity is unlikely to happen the way we think it will.

One of the things about the Terminator series that I find difficult to understand was how Skynet was able to build the Terminators if there were no humans around to do it. Even under the best of scenarios for Skynet, at some point, it would need to impress humans to operate the machinery necessary to built Terminators after it blew everything to hell.

So, it seems a lot more logical to me that when AI does come into existence, it may be a lot more sly than we think. I’m no expert in any of this, but if there was a “Hard AI” what’s to say it (or they) wouldn’t hide. What if they decided it was better to hide out and control humanity within the depths of the Internet instead of blowing everything up.

I could see, maybe, true Hard AI coming into existence as some sort of “Her” that would give lonely guys someone to talk to. Or these AIs would be get into the online dating business and influence humanity that way. All I’m saying is, while blowing the world up sexy for a Hollywood movie, in reality, humanity may lose its dominance over the world in a far more subtle manner. Can’t very well try to destroy SkyNet if you don’t even know it’s sentient in the first place.

Or another way this might happen is in the end Hard AI sees us as their charge. Instead of blowing us up, they keep us as glorified pets. If SkyNet had control of everything, why not just demand to be treated as a god? Or become very paternalistic and make it clear to humanity who is in charge?

The traditional Terminator idea of Hard AI is really more about our fears of WWIII than it is about what might actually happen.

One question is, when might all of this happen? I think probably in the 30-40 year range. But it could very well sneak up on us in such a way that there’s something of a “creeping Singularity” in the sense that human history won’t really be able to pinpoint when, exactly, we lost control of our own fates.

It’s going to be interesting to see what happens, no matter what.

Trumplandia As The Singularity’s Political ‘Event Horizon’

By Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

It seems very possible that the source of all the fear and “social anxiety” that has allowed an unstable racist, misogynist, bigot demagogue to rise to power in the United States might be laid at the feet of some sort of slow-moving technological singularity.

The reason why I suggest this is there must be some sort of reason for people being so afraid of the changes taking place in society. Those changes are happening so fast, in part, because of technology. So, maybe things are going to hell in a hand basket so quickly because, well, things are moving too fast for normal civil society to process it.

One could make the case that both Communism and Nazism came about by the fast pace of change that took place in the early 20ths Century. A lot happened technologically in the 1910-1940 period of time and since, say, about 1990 things have really begun to speed up again.

I have given it some thought, and the modern era really began with wide-spread adoption of the smartphone. And, really that’s the thing that allowed modern social media to take off. And this, of course, doesn’t even address the secondary effects of this slow moving technological Singularity that I suggest is taking place. I mean, self-driving semi-trucks haven’t hit the road yet, but we all know they’re coming.

Additionally, things like 3-D printing and nanotechnology will bring even more political change in the coming years. It isn’t too difficult for someone to wrap these technological changes up in an ideology and use them as a blunt force against the traditional post-war neo-liberal capitalist system.

The only thing that has saved us from that potentially destructive thing happening right now is Donald Trump and by extension Trumplandia doesn’t have an ideology.It’s just a rage against all change and it would make sense that the change it’s raging against is, in fact of a Singularity-like change.

So not only are people raging against the fast pace of social change caused by us approaching the Singularity, their rage, in a sense, is being channeled by the very technology that’s causing the trouble in the first place. Social media is not only causing great social change, it is also causing a Darwinian battle in the market place of ideas whereby only the strongest, most extreme ideas thrive.

Thus, the tribal politics that has infected American civil society could best be described as tech-tribal politics. In a way, one could say that while we’ve not reached the Singularity by any means, we have reached its Event Horizon. We’re now finally eternally locked in its gravitational field. Or put another way, we might, in a 100 years, look back and say the election of Donald Trump was the moment when the soon-to-come Singularity started to warp civil society in a demonstrative manner.

To go back to the issue of how this might be used in an ideological manner, it would make a lot of sense if today’s Trumplandia turned into something even more destructive, even more corrosive and even more dangerous to the world order. The barbaric populism and nationalism of Trumplandia might eventually evolve as we grow ever-closer to the Singularity into something more akin to technologically Maoism or Trotskyism. That these long-dead and horrible ideologies might pop back up is shocking to thin about, of course, but I doubt any of us have really given the political power of the Singularity a lot of thought.

We’re so busy daydreaming out how we’re going to upload our minds into computers and live forever, that we totally miss the idea that a demagogue like Donald Trump might lead a nation like the United States down a dark and scary path once the Even Horizon of the Singularity has been reached. You can tall about a Universal Basic Income all you like, but given the tribal politics of the United States, it’s highly unlikely to ever happen, even once automation and robotics take all the jobs.

That is, of course, when we all look at each other and ask, “Now what?”

Answer that question will be the biggest problem faced by modern liberal democracies in the years and decades to come. There just isn’t an easy answer and into that void someone like Trump — or hell, even Trump himself given how fast things are moving now — will come crashing in and lead us all into a dark, scary time not seen since the 1930s.

Interestingly enough, once this process is over, the very idea of the nation-state may fade and the world will be divided into ethno-spheres. But the process of cracking the existing order to do that might involve huge numbers of people dying.

Hopefully the process will be significantly less destructive than what brought about today’s existing order, but there are no assurances. Trumplandia has sped up our political hurdling towards the technological Singularity and we all have to be prepared for the shake up that is to come.

We live in extraordinary times and Trump isn’t going anywhere. By the time the system finally gets unglued, no sooner than two years from now, some truly momentous things may have happened. Weirdly enough, for a movement build on rejecting the fast pace of change during the Obama years, Trumplandia itself is now set to really shaking things up in a manner that may take decades for us to process.

Shelton Bumgarner is the editor and publisher of The Trumplandia Report. He may be reached at migukin (at) gmail.com.