Tag: Big Tech Can Read Our Minds

No Good Will Come From Big Tech Hiding A ‘Soft Singularity’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It seems as though there are three possibilities before us if what I fear is happening — a soft Singularity — is happening. One, somehow we find out and there’s a regular Luddite revolt against Big Tech, or we don’t find out. If we don’t find out, then either Big Tech subtly controls us or an autocratic government does.

So, it’s very easy to imagine President Mike Pompeo in 2025 using the power of a secret soft Singularity to track not only me down, but everyone I’ve spoken to about what a big piece of shit he is. It would be very easy for piece-of-shit President Pompeo to make me “vanish” using the information he’s gathered via the Soft Singularity.

Now, again, this is the point where I point out that for the time being the Deep State or “steady state” is probably the Good Guys in such a scenario. They’re not perfect — they’ve done plenty, PLENTY of shady shit — but if I had to make a choice between piece of shit Pompeo and the Steady State, I’m throwing my lot with the NSA.

Anyway, the point is, because of this secret soft Singularity, some crazy shit might happen without us realizing it. If the Chinese Government (Tik-Tok) and Big Tech (Google, Facebook) are rooting around in my mind right now there is going to come a point where they’re going to reach out and give people like me a “love tap” in the real world. Now, that sounds REALLY PARANOID.

And it is. It’s really fucking paranoid.

And I don’t even know what I mean in real terms.

But the longer soft singularity technology is being hidden, the more it’s worth to Big Tech to keep it that way. Thankfully, absolutely no one listens to me or respects me. So I could be literally telling you something that actually exists in the real world right now….and….absolutely nothing would happen.

I simply don’t have any proof. I have a bunch of hunches.

And I’m wrong a lot. Like all the fucking time.

The Future With No Shock: The ‘Strange Days’ Of The Soft Singularity


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It seems as though the Soft Singularity is here. Advances in AI, automation and what I call “digital telepathy” have reached a critical juncture. And, yet, it seems as though Big Tech is fucking with us — they’re using a lot of new advances in the darkness because, what, they don’t want to spook us?

I find this very annoying because I really want my fucking $1,200 mindcap that allows us to skip the MX (VR – AR) phase of things and go directly to Strange Days shit.

And I’m not talking about a fucking Neural Link where you have to drill into someone’s head — I’m talking about something like what you find in Strange Days or Odyssey 3: Final Odyssey that happens by simply laying the device on your head. No drilling necessary. It’s unintrusive mind reading. In fact, imagine if you could harness the processing power of your own mind as part of mindcap. That’s some next level Singularity shit right there. If you could ride off your own wetware for processing power, wow!

And if you assume like I do that Big Tech (Tik-Tok) can already read our fucking minds, then what I’m proposing isn’t really that big a deal. If they can read our minds without touching our skulls, imagine what they can do if they have something that actually touches your skull?

But, again, no one listens to me.

Yet, I do think we’re probably within the Event Horizon of some sort of Singularity. It’s as if Netscape was only an enterprise company and only people in the bowels of the Big Tech knew about the World Wide Web. I feel as though for crass power and monetary reasons that there’s a chance a lot of Singularity-ish advancements have been made and…we’re supposed to be stuck wanting to get into Clubhouse of all things?

Or, put another way, I just feel something’s up. I don’t know what it is, but for some reason The Powers That Be have decided to hide some pretty big technological advancements from us for the time being. There’s bound to be a reckoning at some point. You can’t keep being able to read people’s minds via their cellphones a secret forever, you know.

I guess they’re going to try.

But, let me be clear — I have no absolute proof that Tik-Tok is rummaging through my mind. But I do feel as though it’s something we should think about being possible.

The National Security Implications Of Tik-Tok (Potentially) Reading The Minds Of America’s Youth


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Let me state for the record that I have no idea if Tik-Tok (or Big Tech for that matter) can read our minds. But if it’s happening, Tik-Tok abuses the technology the worst, given how of all the “Hey, are they reading my mind” abuses I find these days seem to be the most egregious on Tik-Tok.

The issue is — the connection between Tik-Tok and the Chinese government is probably pretty nebulous and difficult to pin down. And, obviously, I don’t know the nature of any putative mind reading technology that may be being used. Is it point-to-point? Is the information gleaned being stored somewhere that can be analyzed? Is this all part of a broader “Soft Singularity” that no one is telling us about? What gives?

What’s more, if private companies can rummage around in private citizens minds using electronics connected to the Internet, just imagine what the CIA, NSA and MI6 can do at this very moment.

But, again — I have no idea if my fears about any of this are real. All I have is a low-grade hunch that maybe, just maybe a Soft Singularity has happened within the bowels of Big Tech and they haven’t told us about it.

Yet, let’s assume that if not now, at some point in the future, “digital telepathy” might be weaponized by both sides as China grows in power and the United States is put on something of a back foot. (Remember, it’s very likely that the United States will become a MAGA autocracy in the 2024-2025 time frame so a lot of my fears will become a lulz.)

But maybe one might find the governments of each country breaking it to their respective populations that they should stop using electronics if it seems like a war is about to break out between China and the United States? If it is, in fact, possible for Big Tech to read our minds and it’s completely unregulated there are so very many moral, ethical and political consequences to deal with if that particular cat is ever let out of the bag.

Having a New Cold War enemy being able to read the minds of your youth is a severe national security issue that might be seen as something close to the dropping of the first a-bomb in historical implications.

Or not.

No one listens to me.

And this doesn’t even begin to address what happens when the a MAGA autocrat uses “digital telepathy” to read the minds of the American populace on the the DL. Talk about a Black Mirror episode! They could have almost absolute control over the population without even anyone realizing.

Everyone uses a phone or a computer. If someone just vanishes one day because of technology no one believes even exists, well, oh boy.

How I Quit Worrying & Came To Love Big Tech’s ‘Digital Telepathy’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Whenever I think of how I’ve come to believe Big Tech is reading our minds (in some way) I think of that dude who figured out the Bernie Madoff scheme really never got any credit. In interviews he comes off as an acerbic, somewhat deranged guy. Just the type of guy that MSM wouldn’t give credit for breaking a huge story.

I feel for that guy.

I have no New York Times-level proof that Big Tech can read our minds, but there’s one specific thing that Big Tech (specifically Tik-Tok) is doing that is so specific that it definitely seems as though there’s some mind reading going on: they know shit about my body.

Now, as I keep saying, I hate conspiracy theories, so, yes, it’s very possible that through AI or algorithms they’ve somehow magically narrowed down specific issues with my body that I’ve told no one about. And if that’s the case I have two responses — then THAT needs to be regulated. And two, if that’s the case, they’ve managed to come up with an AI that has figured out very specific health issues for my specifically that make one think we’ve reached a Soft Singularity somewhere in the shadows.

But Big Tech (Tik-Tok) keeps pushing me very specific content for very specific health issues — down to virtually the same wording in my own Goddamn mind! — that something has got to be up. What’s going on right now, of course, is, I think, a Soft Singularity has happened and our poor old rummaged through minds can’t process that we’ve reach a point in technological development where Big Tech can actually READ OUR FUCKING MINDS.

We just can’t grok it. It just isn’t something we can process, so we dismiss it. And if only freaky weirdos like me are claiming this, then it’s very easy to dismiss it. There’s no proof. All I have is a direct link between my personal, internal monologue and the content I’m being pushed by Big Tech. I can’t PROVE THAT, now can I?

It’s Tik-Tok that seems to abuse their ability the most. They don’t just push me content for, say, “bathmat” without any obvious context, they push me content with some abstract analyzation to it. Now THAT is fucking spooky.

But let me be clear — I bounce back and forth between believing I’ve figured this out and saying this is just another one of my kooky ideas I’ve had since I’ve left South Korea.

The only reason why I keep bringing it up is…Big Tech keeps trying to pull a Soft Singularity fast one on me and it’s beginning to bug the shit out of me.

The Future Is Wetware


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Before I begin, let’s mull something Trump said once. As I remember it, Trump rambled something about how “the Deep State” could “read our minds” via our microwaves or some shit. Is it possible it wasn’t what we thought — his addled brain coming up with bullshit — but something he actually knew about once he became president?

I doubt it, but it makes you think.

I mean, here I am thinking Big Tech can read my mind — just imagine what the NSA or MI6 can do. And it starts to get a little spooky when you think how much of our lives are rigged up to the Internet. The first thing we may have to worry about when the Singularity turns hard isn’t the Terminator, but our fucking government controlling us to an unprecedented level.

Anyway, back to the issue at hand: the future is wetware.

What I mean by this is, if you assume that the technology to read our minds already exists, what if you took it to the next level and figured out a way to use our own wetware as our next Internet. Using a device found in Arthur C. Clarke’s 3001: Final Odyssey, you could totally re-imagine human interaction with the digital realm.

You could send “m-mail” from mind to mind. Watch video in your mind’s eye. Listen to music in your mind. In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that it might even be possible to use your own mind’s processing power to help things along. That may be pushing it, but it seems something to think about.

The point of all of this is — why the fuck are we talking about Clubhouse — which is nothing more than a re-imagined rural partyline –instead of jawdropping changes in the human experience like the Internet became over about 20 years.

What is wrong with us? Where are our Snowdens of yesterday?

Anyway, seems like about $1 trillion is being left on the table because of the shortsightedness of the nerds of Silicon Valley.

Tik-Tok’s ‘Soft Singularity’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Something’s up. I don’t know what it is, but Tik-Tok (and possibly the Chinese government) is up to something. When you start to seriously consider that Tik-Tok (and as such the Chinese government) can read your mind via your cellphone, you got a problem.

Now, the experiment I suggested people do with Tik-Tok apparently doesn’t work — someone I know via Twitter handed their phone to their boyfriend and what I thought would happen, didn’t happen.

So, this makes one wonder how it is that the “spooky” shit that Tik-Tok is up to can possibly happen.

If you want to imagine still that Tik-Tok is reading our minds, one possibility that they have their digital telepathy somehow “imprint” with your specific mind after a certain point so my experiment doesn’t work. They know your specific brain signals well enough that simply having someone else use the phone doesn’t right away change what you’re pushed.

Now, let me be clear — the only reason why I even propose this bonkers conspiracy is the repeated times that Tik-Tok (and to be fair, other Big Tech companies) have pushed me content (read: ads) that seems to brazenly reference my internal monologue. Tik-Tok is just the absolute brazen at it. When it starts to push videos that reference the abstract of “women who looks like the woman that is often in my mind” then, well, something fucked up is going on.

But I’m prepared to admit defeat. I just don’t have any New York Times-level evidence to support my claim. This is a very rarely viewed Website, so it’s not like anyone cares what I think.

Think Big: Silicon Valley & The Soft Singularity of ‘Digital Telepathy’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

A long time ago, when dinosaurs still walked the earth, I was in college and obsessed with this thing called the Internet. This was before the World Wide Web. This was back when having an email address was, in itself, something of a future shock.

Flash forward to the present day and, meh, we’ve been in a technological holding pattern for about a decade now. Sure, a lot of apps have been designed, but the basic thing that powers it all hasn’t changed in over a decade: the smartphone.

Now, here’s where things get tricky.

I think Big Tech has figured out a way to read our minds. And, what’s more, they’re getting kind of brazen about it because, I mean, who’s going to believe that our phones are reading our minds? And, let me be clear, I absolutely hate conspiracy theories. I think they’re the last refuge of the intellectually dishonest. So, I’m very reluctant to think what I’m saying I think: that Big Tech can read or minds and they’re using that ability on the DL to sell us ads.

And, really, this would not be that big a deal real terms — at least not now — but for one thing: Tik-Tok. It’s at least possible that the Chinese government, through Tik-Tok is rummaging around in the minds of American’s youth via Tik-Tok. I say this because of all the services I suspect can read our minds, Tik-Tok is the absolute most brazen.

They really push it. I think about something once without telling anyone else and lo and behold, I get a pushed a video or ad about that subject the next time I log on to the service. This is not to say there aren’t plenty of other ways they’re figuring me out. They’re probably listening to me via my phone. They’re probably monitoring every way I use my phone and using algorithms to figure me out. I get all that. THAT makes sense.

It’s when I get pushed something on Tik-Tok that seems to not only reference something from within my internal monologue, but takes it to the next level of referencing, say, the appetence of a lost love that is floating around in my mind all the time. How does an algorithm figure THAT out?

And, if you want to got that route, if “algorithms” have gotten that advanced, then that, in itself, is a serious issue. That’s not an algorithm, that’s AI and that needs to be discussed and, if necessary, regulated.

Or, put another way, I’m beginning to think we’ve already reached a “Soft Singularity.” A combination of oligarchy, greed and fear of the public’s reaction is causing Big Tech to keep this fact away from the average person. But it seems that if they keep fucking leaning into their ability to Black Mirror shit that there will, at some point, come a moment of reckoning.

But I’m a nobody. No one listens to me.

The Implications Of Big Tech Concealing A ‘Soft Singularity’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Let me qualify what I’m proposing — I’m simply looking at what appears to be happening (Big Tech can read our minds via our phones) and then playing out the implications of such a theory.

I could be totally wrong. It’s very possible. But some of Tik-Tok’s apparent abuses of digital telepathy have made it seem so obvious to me that some sort of Soft Singularity has happened without anyone telling us that I have to talk about it.

Let’s review the evidence as to why I think a Soft Singularity has happened. First, Facebook some time ago patented mind-reading technology. Second, repeatedly over the last year or so, I’ve noticed being pushed ads that are so specific to what I’ve been THINKING about that no possible algorithmic explanation makes any sense.

What’s more, especially with Tik-Tok, there is an abstract nature to some of the things I’ve been pushed that is alarming. If you work on the assumption that my mind is being read by my phone, it’s not like they know the word “GIRL” is at the forefront of my mind, it’s as if they actually are rooting around my mind to the extent that they can push videos of “GIRL WHO LOOKS LIKE ANNIE SHAPIRO.”

The prospect of that going on with millions of Tik-Tok users, not just me, is extremely dark and surreal. It starts to make you think about the moral implications of Big Tech (especially a Big Tech company so close to the Chinese government) knowing that much about a big chunk of the American population.

Not, at this point, let me be absolutely clear — if I’m missing some way that they can simply figure out that I like girls who look like a specific woman that I think about a lot via algorithmic assumptions, then, so be it. I will feel a lot better. But, even then, the algorithms would be so good at their job, that that, in itself, would be cause for alarm.

So, I guess what I’m suggesting is it’s at least possible that technology has advanced a lot further than we think.

Eyes Wide Shut: Big Tech’s Digital Telepathy


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Let’s think about this. Why, specifically, have I come to the conclusion that Digital Telepathy is being used rather widely right now. Given that they’re using the Internet to do this, I guess maybe you might call it Internet Digital ESP? I feel like Big Tech has some sort of buzzy cooperate speak that they use when they’re talking about this technology in a meeting.

Tik-Tok can read our minds.

Anyway, back to the point.

I’m know for not only being wrong all the time, but occasionally thinking up some pretty weird ideas. And, I guess this could be another instance of that. I mean, just because Facebook has a patent for Digital Telepathy, doesn’t mean that Tik-Tok has it and is using it.

So, what has me so convinced?

I would have to say Tik-Tok’s abuse of its For You Page is what did it. When they have narrowed down the specific phenotypes of women who have been important to me over the years to the point that I find myself saying, “Hey, that girl looks like Annie Shapiro!” something is going on.

I’m on to you Big Tech.

Let’s talk about that.

There are two female phenotypes that have made a big impression on me over the years. One of them is that of the late Annie Shapiro. That they would find a young lady that looks soooooooo much like Annie Shapiro Means Something. Our choices are that they’re using AI along with some significant rooting around on my phone so make some pretty astonishing inferences about the type of women I like, or, more directly, they are rooting around in my wetware, if you will.

I feel ya, Martha.

When you start to think that it’s not even Google or Facebook, but fucking Tik-Tok that is rooting around in my mind, the implications can make you sick to your stomach. You definitely get a sense of mental rape. Is Annie Shapiro still so important to my mind that they are able to figure out that for emotional and sentimental reasons I like girls who look like Annie Shapiro? Or even more ominous — to what extent have they hacked into my subconscious!

The implications of that alone would be staggering.

Because if Tik-Tok can peer into the subconscious minds of its uses, what’s to stop them (the Chinese government) from at some point using that information and / or selling it to the highest bidder?

I have no idea if my suspicious are in any way based in reality. I’m sure someone at Vox has it all figured out and I’m just pulling this out of my butt like usual. But….it definitely seems as though something…odd is going on.

The Implications Of ‘Digital Telepathy’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Talk about future shock.

If Big Tech is secretly using the Internet to read our minds, the implications are massive. One question I have is are they storing what they know about us somewhere, or is it some sort of ephemeral point-to-point thing? I think if my fears are real, then what’s happening is there’s a massive amount of processing power being used that is being hidden from us.

Or, to put it another way, while we were all being “entertained” by the Trump Show, some pretty massive technological changes were being slipped past us without us realizing it.

We can read your mind…

If Facebook, Google and Tik-Tok aren’t storing what they know about our minds, they probably are working towards it. Even more interesting is who knows this stuff? What if someone goes rouge and starts to use what they know about our most personal thoughts to make money? I guess if you had the information of enough minds in aggregate at your disposal, you could predictively play the stock market quite effectively.

I guess what I’m trying to say is — what if the Singularity happened an The Powers That Be didn’t tell us? If they’re hiding Digital Telepathy from us, would they even tell us if hard AI came into existence? What the fuck is Silcom Valley up to? What’s their vision?

Now, let me be clear — it’s not like I think they’re out to get ME. I’m a random no body that no one listens to me. I’m just a crank. They have absolutely nothing to worry about — no one is listening to me, no one cares what I have to say and I can pretty much just rant about this obvious scandal and nothing will happen other than people will just roll their eyes and think I’m crazy.

My only response is the Martha Mitchell Syndrome — I know the truth and everyone thinks I’m crazy just like how she knew about Watergate just about when it happened.

To me, it’s not so much that they can read my mind it’s that they’re hiding it from us. If they were to slowly let the cat out of the bag, to let our minds get used to the idea that they can be read…then, lulz. But Big Tech is setting itself up for it’s own “disruption” if they start to use Digital Telepathy not only as a crutch, but as a secret money making opportunity.

Not cool, guys, not cool.