By Frank Whalen
While the readily available technology of today, and the sci-fi realities of tomorrow, seems to herald a more capable, productive and intelligent human being, the results seem to point to a future where mankind is more machinelike than human.
The Internet’s popularity and growth has represented an opportunity for many to profit.
Various news organizations once attempted a subscription fee or password to access content but search engines allowed a bypass for those who wanted information freely. News groups began to decry bloggers and “citizen journalists” for their biased and unqualified opinions. Once they realized they couldn’t suppress the movement, they began to embrace it. Using pictures and videos from cell phones, social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, the once despised citizens could now do the work for them.
Now Rupert Murdoch has initiated another attempt to profit from subscription based content, with the arrival of his much-hyped Ipad news application, The Daily. In his own words, “Our ambitions are very big, but our costs are pretty low”. Therefore, if it can be managed properly, revenue should come easily and in great amounts.
Control and profit has always been the motivator for the elites, and The Daily could be the success story they have been waiting for.
All technology is structured and in order to partake of its wonders, one must surrender to the rules of play. To use email, one must have an account. However, to get an account, personal information is required, rationalized that security protocols will keep the personal information you just gave away, safe.
Convenience plays a role in this. The myriad of passwords one needs can be collectively accessed with a Universal Password, or even biometric scans. You can save the environment by paying your bills online and foregoing bank statements by using the Internet. Google Health was launched to digitize your medical records, making them available to both yourself and your doctor.
However, such accessibility requires security. The Obama Administration recently suggested, an “Internet ID”, under a program called the “National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace”. This would create a single profile and leave a digital track for all cyber activity, thereby protecting people from harassment, crime, child exploitation and crafty terrorism recruiting supposedly taking place online. Not highlighted is that such a trail would be a far more comprehensive monitoring system than any fingerprint or social security number, and could very easily be doctored for evidence of criminal behavior.
So the idea of presenting something for entertainment or convenience, structuring it completely by making certain things necessary for security and safety, allows for total control and unimaginable profit.
With each compromise, people seem to relinquish more of themselves to gain a way into the mass entertainment consciousness. In a sort of Pavlovian response, the tech-savvy are taught that they are rewarded for not thinking. The rules and regulations foster learned helplessness; the boundaries of technology are annihilating creative thinking.
Aside from the self-conditioning and rewarded behavior, such instantaneous access to all things at all times changes the brain. Neuroscientist Susan Greenfield wrote recently that, “our brains now under such widespread attack from the modern world, there’s a danger that that cherished sense of self could be diminished or even lost”. And regarding those who have never known a life without the Internet she says, “We could be raising a hedonistic generation who live only in the thrill of the computer-generated moment, and are in distinct danger of detaching themselves from what the rest of us would consider the real world.”
In a recent experiment to alter the brain, MIT researcher Dr. Liane Young discussed the successful findings, saying, “To be able to apply a magnetic field to a specific brain region and change people’s moral judgments is really astonishing”.
The toxic wireless soup of today’s environment also has an impact. Known as “electrosensitivity syndrome”, it affects millions of people worldwide and is thought to cause mood changes, nausea and perhaps even neurological disorders.
Technology is like anything else, it’s how it’s used that matters. When the lines blur between user and machine, when the brain slips away into a cognitive dream state while an artificially intelligent computer directs our lives, that is the day when humanity will see not its decline, but rather its end.
Case in point, Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google, said recently that he wants the search behemoth to become the “third half of your brain”. Controlled, profited from and eagerly desired, this is an insight into the high tech slavery agenda for the 21st century.