But what do teenage children, in their most formative years, use all day long, seeding and shaping the views they will have for the rest of their lives? What else is being fed into scrolling adult brains, but algorithm-driven information and viewpoints – many churned out automatically by bots – provided by President Trump’s most influential courtiers?
It’s alarming enough that the young are being inculcated with ideas from often dodgy sources, then immersed in customised silos where the views, entertainment, and content that appeal to them become the sole material to which they are exposed.
But what could be seen as more worrying is the ideological leaning of the tech creators who have built this environment. These tech giants are overwhelmingly ultra-conservative. They might not be gun-toting macho men, but those who are embody much of Silicon Valley’s libertarian elitism, who are overwhelmingly right-wing.
opinionated digital divas with odd-to-extreme traits have since become the norm. I wrote: “Think Steve Jobs (splenetic temper, walking round Palo Alto in bare feet), PayPal founder Thiel (helping bankrupt a website for outing him as gay), and Musk (believing reality could be a computer simulation created by superior beings).”
In an algorithm-controlled environment, misinformation can easily spread and be reinforced by those holding the tech levers. And that is before we consider the world of AI and deepfakes, where it becomes harder to discern what is real in a world where truth is increasingly losing its currency – or simply depends on who is delivering the messaging.
Two words: Dark Enlightenment.
Be very fucking afraid.
Speaking of, what’s ole Curty Curty Yart Yart up to these days?
You can check out his swastistack page I think it’s greymatter
Inoculate people before it gets any worse. Expose them to what’s coming so they recognize bullshit as soon as they see it.
I feel like if even 20-30% of the U.S. read the Technological Society by Jacques Ellul we could easily stop this from happening.
Just to be clear it is not anti-technology. It is opposed to sacrificing human autonomy and control of technological progress in order to allow for technical autonomy. Even though this book was written in 1956, Ellul recognized the danger in the once broadly accepted assumption that technology was unbiased.
The autonomy of technique has become so powerful that it has become the judge of what is moral.
Because of the autonomy of technique, modern man cannot choose his means anymore than his ends.
Independently of the objectives that man pretends to assign to any technical means, that means always conceals in itself a finality which cannot be evaded.
People like Thiel and Musk claim to be removing the brakes that inhibit progress, but what they’re actually removing is the ability of any humans (other than themselves of course) to have any control or say in how that technology is allowed to progress.
A biased algorithm pretends to offer a more efficient means to consume vast amounts of media, but it also conceals the fact that the biased algorithm will be making all decisions for you. You no longer need to be curious and look for other answers, or question the ones being provided because you have sacrificed your own autonomy for efficiency.
Efficiency as a means becomes the ultimate end.