AI is no ordinary tool. It is a soul-sucking and dehumanizing replacement proferred - without consent - on the soon-to-be-useless eaters (UE's). Why are we here? Why do we live? Is there a point or purpose to life on this 'mortal coil'? These are internal questions. Soon AI, programmed by who knows what source, will give answers to those questions. Soon AI will replace our struggles and our necessary efforts to learn and to know with the drug of artificial (note this) intelligence. We have yet to produce an artificial soul or an artificial god, but soon they will be offered to the dehumanized serfs (UE's) as salvation. Not a single person on earth needs AI. We have Shakespeare, Brahms, Gogol, Plato, Van Gogh. We are vibrant and profoundly inventive without an Artifical Brain (AB to push us into atrophy. The earliest Greeks complained that writing would ruin the ability of humans) to recall their stories - like the Iliad - by memorization. Few today have memorized anything. The calculator has wiped out the ability to do mental math. AI will wipe out human intelligence. I ask again: "Why are we here"?
I may be more resigned to their inevitability than you are, but we're both concerned about the same thing - what is means to be human in the face of this change. Looking forward to discussing it face to face with you soon :-)
Exactly, Mark Hopkins! I don’t care what anyone says, or all the propaganda- AI is absolutely and simply evil and unnecessary. Also, have you read about all the water and electricity the AI centers utilize? Truly horrific.
Yes! We older folk can amaze the young generation today with our "old school" math skills! I was writing out a check at the grocery store the other day and a young girl coming up next to check out smiled at me and informed her grandmother still writes checks! I guess that is what we grannies still do. ha!
It seems like you're taking the hype at face value, but after the chatGPT clusterf*ck, I'm not so sure we have to assume this is as inevitable as we've been told.
If anything, it's more apparent than ever that it's being shoved down our throats whether we like it or not (perhaps not unlike vaccines) while failing to live up to the hype and being an enormous waste of money.
That disconnect is more concerning to me than learning to live with this stuff, because I'm not convinced that we will have to. My question is, if it sucks, and everybody knows it, why are they still carpet bombing us with it? Because people don't like that.
The gap between hype and reality may be real - but you could've said the same about the web in 1997.
I see the proliferation as inevitable partly because of where big tech investors and developers are heading. Whether ChatGPT specifically succeeds or fumbles (though I believe it's on it's way to being one of the giant tech co's), these systems are being embedded into the fabric of software infrastructure. The question isn't whether this particular implementation works, but how to navigate whatever versions ultimately emerge.
I asked Walmart customer service if I could *turn off* "Sparky," their dogpoop product question AI. (I asked it for the fluid ounce capacity of a water kettle that was marked in milliliters.) They said I couldn't turn it off.
The Amazon AI does let you minimize it to the point where you don't notice it unless you're looking for it.
I understand that MS Office has put it in your face in Word and Excel... so I deleted my Microsoft account.
I dunno sir, I'm cautiously optimistic that we'll be able to back away from this stuff shortly. If nothing else, because that little AI box brings up a ton of security and privacy vulnerabilities that wouldn't otherwise be there.
On the other hand, we're pretty screwed in the grand scheme of things, so... Here's hoping.
It'd be great if we could just, you know, *turn it off.*
AI is evil (sorry that's kinda dramatic but yer kiddo's'll LOSE themselves if you support their "mastery" of AI). My 17 year old's fit ta be tied & just DUMPED her Major one week inta college all b/c of AI infiltrating the entire (f)Ahrt Department of a Major Univershitty...
She paints in oils (old-style) an' wants no part of AI but they're forcin' it down the throats of all stew-dents--free accounts, mandatory "integration." You can't say no? My kid just did! I jus' backed 'er up. The more parents that say HELL NO! (there) We won't go! an' the more univershitties that'll take notice.
All you've covered here is mighty fine but yer kiddo's will be stiffed like in a Times Sq Three Card Monty Game (where the dupes THINK they have their eyes on the the ball...or shelll)... if ya don't say no. Just no. An' in this case, it's not the pockets that'll be emptied, it's the MINDS. Once ya take the poison there ain't no antidote/ante-doubt.
Thank you. The info on your daughter in a college art department encouraging AI is otally and utterly unconscionable. They may have crossed the Rubicon but we shall not. And humanity must coalesce in solidarity against this plastic monster of the elite.
yer welcome! and a big hand... 👏🏽 for yer commint too, 'tis indeed a "plastic MONSTER of the elite" who tend to NOT be creative or imaginative "beings" btw--An' yes, "We Shall Not!" Unlike Ado Annie (who couldn't say no), we CAN say no! (an' keep on doin' it--even if we're a small but vocal minority, paintbrushes in hand ;-)
Most commenters seem to get it, because AI does not benefit commoners. It is a stupid nuisance that elites think is some Holy Grail of "progress" and pushing it as the ultimate convenience. Well their conveniences are killing us. Look at school performance data that has steadily declined since all their tech conveniences have turned us into serfs processed like factory products. If you were home schooling, which is what i'd be doing in this era, you could turn off all smartphones, wireless devices, internet and computers during learning and experiencing. And strictly limit use of them to be productive in study and production outside class time.
[Idea: Why not create two internets. 1) a public Library with search and knowledge access. 2) A bifurcated adult internet with 50% public commons channel free to use and populate by non-commercial projects; and a 50% leased commercial channel for for-profit use, with lease income from corporations funding all the rest of the internet. Just a thought.]
It seems some now rationalize against setting limits for oneself and society, as if that has no purpose anymore. The de facto limits placed by environments created by internet, smartphones, wireless and now AI have literally created a totally involuntary, non-consensual, monopoly of access to knowledge, livelihood, and live physical social engagement.
lol, we "homeskooled" the entire time...no schmart phones, ltd. "puter" access, everythang real--writin' with pencil on paper...even in college mah younger daughter has a "dumb phone" (no internet)--me too! Yer right, it's the elite who are leadin' the march ta fake PROG-gress (programmed/primitive). An' yer right--we are "serfs" forced ta "surf" ("forced" meanin' that in some cases we have no other way!) Libraries are gettin' rid of books an' hostin' weird robot & 'puter game gatherin's an' now graphic (graph-ick! novels take the place of classics) I could go on... the reason mah girls are firmly against AI is that I raised 'em in the 21st C AS IF it was the 20th C! Not quite a luddite but I'm for the "real" not the "mock" (ta swing a little Cole Porter inta the mix). The internet (all search Engines) have taken away our keys--I cain't find SQUAT any more...even on archive.com... so much is taken away includin' "other views." Now the hits are the same--even on page 25 of results...awful.
We need a "real" internet an' perhaps yer idea could work... one commercial, one not. Got no problems with limits but the globalist elites LIMITING us...an' herding us, puttin' us "out ta pasture" on toxic AI... should not be settin' the gates.... they are the evil gateKeepers an' a few other things which are best said with 4 letter words so bein' a laydee I won't say 'em but you know what I mean (grrrrr). An' yes, AI is possibly the WORST/WURST thing come out way to de-humanize us... :-(
"My primary fear about AI isn't just the dramatic scenario where it becomes hostile, but the subtler threat: that it will make us subordinate to systems in ways we don't recognize until it's too late..."
1) The promise of AI is an empty one. I've broken more than one LLM, simply because a fixed-set algo can't keep pace with an opensource, realtime-feedback, heuristic. And... it's processing speed confirms it. "Grok" (a horrible and offensive mysnomer) had to admit it to me.
2) I've received confirmation (of a previous assumption) from multiple guys working on the larger, industrial, LLMs that over time, the models all adjust downward (in terms of IQ) to the mean. Essentially, they get stupider, because they constantly center on the "themes" inherent to the internet (their pool of scrapable knowledge). The more often a thing appears over time, the model adjusts to call that "truth". Irrespective of veracity. It's a volume of consensus thing.... not a reality thing. This is the same thing as medicine/science deferring to "peer-review". Stupid. In every sense of the word.
3) GenX is the last bastion of hope.... if for no other reason, than the fact that we are digital-capable, but not digital-dependent. Analog is the only, actual way forward. Because, AI is, by definition, synthetic.... and humans are not.
The friend I mentioned in the piece prides himself on 'breaking' these tools. He keeps sending me screenshots after putting them to sleep (apparently that happens when they get stuck in their own circular logic).
As for your commentary on GenX... the boomers corrupted our institutions... the millennials only learned how to follow orders... so now it's on us, the slacker generation, to save the world from itself? The script couldn't be funnier.
Also that. I was 30 when I got my first mobile - classic Nokia with basic text functionality. Still at the handy device stage and not yet an omnipresent life-controlling technology.
Don’t worry. You wont. You can’t. Your soul is your Transcending-Energetic-Being-ness and thus not downloadable into anything machine-like. This whole ‘Feed My Soul Into The Web’ thing is a toxic lie peddled by noxious powerful forces who hate the human family and want to kill off our personal authentic sense of being and purpose before they fully erase us from a Planet that they have claimed for Their own.
“... I'm not just an old man resistant to change.”
There’s nothing wrong with being an Old Man. Half the population will reach this stage if the fates are with them. And there is nothing at all wrong with resisting change if it is change that makes things WORSE. There is a moral imperative to resist anything that makes our life condition worse.
“... fear about AI isn't just the dramatic scenario where it becomes hostile...”.
AI is already hostile. It is robbing us of our ability to think and reason on our own. It is thinking and reaching conclusions without our involvement – and stealing away our very once-innate abilities to think and reason. Again, something to strip us from our basic authentic humanity. A true Wolf in Sheeps’ Clothing or Trojan Horse. AI is becoming today’s latest version of a false god and is morphing into a new kind of false civil religion that erases true divinity and installs an empty, false substitute fueled by bad intent subroutines camouflaged to look beneficent. It is less beneficent and more just deficient.
“My children are growing up in a world where AI-powered assistance will be as fundamental as running water. As a father, I can't prepare them for a reality I don't understand myself.”
You can’t prepare them for what’s coming. What you do is work diligently to see that they gain an unshakable and fundamental sense of morality and right-and-wrong and the ability to think and reason for themselves. If you do that – everything else will take care of itself.
“AI risks doing to our minds what medicine has done to our bodies: creating weakness disguised as enhancement... AI risks doing to our minds what medicine has done to our bodies: creating weakness disguised as enhancement...creates what amounts to a managed population: intellectually reliant on algorithmic systems for thinking and economically bound to institutional systems for survival.”
All just as the Dark State has facilitated and fully intended. None of this happened organically or in a vacuum. This is all deliberate and laid out somewhere on strategy boards written out with the blood stains of human pain and suffering and the losses of our souls.
“... these technologies are being normalized through institutional authority rather than democratic consent.”
When was the last time we ever had ‘democratic consent’ about... anything? That was the first thing seized away from us by the Dark State vultures. We can’t be allowed to have say over anything because to the Dark State we all nothings, anyway. And a nothing does not deserve any ‘rights’.
“Riding the wave means I'm open to learning from these tools while knowing I can't fight the fundamental forces reshaping our world... The wave is here.”
Riding a wave that’s taking you to straight to Hell is no wave to stay riding on. Sometimes Wiping Out is our salvation.
The Beach Boys once sang... "Catch a Wave and You’re Sitting On Top Of The World". Once that was true. But our former Times of warm and sunny Beach Boy weather has turned violent and choppy and stormy. And the waves we see are not fun waves to ride but part of a tsunami to try to survive and drown in.
If you're going to Catch a Wave... be damn sure where that wave is goint to take you.
"Riding a wave that’s taking you to straight to Hell is no wave to stay riding on. Sometimes Wiping Out is our salvation." right on. we do not have to embrace the madness, no matter what or who is trying to convince us to do so.
Quote: "I may have more in common with someone from 1880 than children starting kindergarten in 2025 will have with my generation."
Definitely!
Quote: "At the 2023 World Economic Forum, neurotechnology expert Nita Farahany framed consumer neurotech this way: "What you think, what you feel - all just data. Data that in large patterns can be decoded using AI." Wearable "Fitbits for your brain" - surveillance normalized as convenience"
Above provides insight into what the "people" working in this field think of human beings
I've found it's much more efficient at searching up programming repos and code examples than I. though it often goes off track it's not to difficult to nudge it back where I want it. a lot of cruft with a few gems.
if the ai disappeared I'd just go back to manual sorting of search results
Screw the ‘inevitability’. Have we not learned what happens when we become sheeple? Wake up, folks. To summarize this post, it says ‘AI is inevitable, just use it wisely.’ Yeah, right.
Cathleen, I understand the frustration with *inevitability* - it can sound defeatist. But my kids are already using these systems through school, apps, and basic internet functions. I can either teach them to navigate consciously or pretend they can avoid what's already integrated into their daily reality. I'd rather focus on building agency within the system than hoping it disappears - based on the money flow, their proliferation is only going to continue to grow
You can home school them Joshua. We have a friend who home schooled her son and daughter and they were awesome self starters, free thinkers. Unafraid of being around different ages including elders. The existing school system is as Ivan Illich described in Deschooling Society except many times worse now from 1971. If I had kids in these times I would be home schooling.
I'm surprised at a passive acceptance stance on AI. I'm 74 and was an early adopter of pc desktops for graphic design and publishing virtualization tool use. As such I have a different take on technology. I do see harmless use for virtualized tool environments where users through free choice and decision operate them for useful outputs in to the physical world. But the 21st C engineered LOCKDOWN of the internet away from free choice and access of pertinent use; smartphones; always-on wireless connectivity; AI and it's Holy Grail of IoT, have created a totally involuntary environment attempting to surround humanity with a centralized, monocultural overlord of the world's 99%.
Capitalist (the accumulation of excess wealth, to facilitate the accumulation of more excess wealth) lobbying, propaganda and absolute dominance over the contents of public discourse, have engineered a de facto virtual reality capturing and caging human sovereignty. The free choice to behave and decide. The thought that the internet has eliminated scarcity is actually the opposite. It has to many degrees created a choiceless environment. It's goals, with the tools listed above, is to have the world elite assume remote control over humanity. Much of what you state documents this flow to social totalitarianism sans public input. Allowing technology to replace society, which is in essence is what is being attempted, is not to be tolerated.
I don't think I need to cite the many ways society has already been deconstructed by selling us convenience that becomes a cage. Massive consolidations of what used to offer infinite variety and access to the offerings of local culture and friendly ingenuity, have made thousands of miles away robot-like Company Stores of cheap, soulless alienation. Turning every sector of the economy into a machine, renders humans into machines. They sell us a cure to a disease they create. Unacceptable. Our world, our decision.
All of the technological evolution before computers can be seen as leveraging the physical Earthian reality to logical use. What's in the elite's playbook now is lightspeed electricity + digital virtualization + elite dictate over use = totalitarianism. The opposite direction of individual sovereignty, free choice and action. What I am lobbying for, is for people to see this new virtual reality being created around us for what it is. In the words of Frank Herbert, an "abomination". Herbert in his Dune universe envisioned computers banned. I'm assuming he meant the misuse of the virtualizing aspects so deadly as to require a conscious sentient being LOCKDOWN of this technology, with strictly prescribed applications, in my mind today delineated by direct democratic input.
I don't need to be a Luddite to say the public needs to corral all new technological advances the elites call "progress" in the 21st C. Since the new technologies all seem to sprout from, and expand, virtuality, a shadow world not under our control or even within our observation of operation (like Facebook's two-way-mirror environment), humanity needs to define it's rollout and uses, not capitalist profiteers.
I appreciate your perspective, though I'm curious - did you write this on a typewriter and find my Substack through the library?
It seems as if we're both using the digital systems you're critiquing to have this conversation. My approach isn't passive acceptance but conscious engagement with tools that are already shaping our world whether we participate or not.
Offline digital tools are freely useful. The internet digital environment may allow some useful apps like Substack, but as designed and controlled by the elite, it is what I think Public Enemy calls, The Teledome. I have been using computers to make visual art since the early 90's. The creation process is virtual, the end products real. My argument is that post Windows 7 desktop developments in digital technologies (smartphones, internet connectivity, always on wireless connectivity (RF), AI & IoT), has surrounded us in an artificial reality, a digital prison to control humanity. I'm arguing that this virtualizing artificial reality they have created is aberrant to the natural limits of how nature operates. The negative effects are all around us.
I realize many believe "progress" inevitable. Anything that humans can manifest, is what is considered a logical progression of technological development. [This is an argument of the transhumanist movement.] I believe this perception of "progress" is true, until, the deployment of non-consensual virtualized environments reversed social "progress" and render humans, tools of a tiny minority elite. The internet, it's applications and particularly social media, is configured and managed by the ruling class into a two way mirror on the public. Just as in a police interrogation room, the ruling class see us and everything we do, we see nothing of what they do. This ability on mass scale, is aberrant to a naturally functioning society. Prior to this only East Germany's Stasi comes to mind.
If one argues, imho, that there is no such thing as a human society functioning under Nature's limits, they are arguing to allow fast tracking non-consensual technological deployments we are being coerced into using. This argument is important now, because our public lives and livelihoods are being throttled by these virtualized environments. The US bottom 90%, except postmoderns who argue "but there can be good aspects", is being crushed by this crap. We want these systems stopped from harming us. We want a return to a fair, naturally normative society with vibrant local culture, designed by us. Possibly for the first time ever, a self-ruled society. I see others here also distressed.
We are priced out, shut out, defunded, isolated, policed, without influence, stripped of local opportunity and culture. AI, digital cash, IoT, digital IDs and all manner live techno experiments on humanity, like vax LOCKDOWNs, are attempting to incarcerate humanity. You can call "progress" inevitable, but it's not. We have human right to determine our world. We have right of consent and right to design a world of multiple choice and opportunity. We are smart and creative enough given opportunity. Which is why they want to throttle us.
thank you. i am one of the many who cannot even use a cellphone - or any wireless tech - because it makes me so sick. the "system" is becoming more and more insistent that every interaction, even payment, take place through this privacy-destroying toxic technology. i do not comply, firstly because it is not worth it to my physical or psychological well-being, and secondly because it is barbarous in a whole new modern way (including all the ways you detail and more). why most people are going willingly along with it is beyond me, except that our entire culture has been programmed for 30 yrs along these lines, so this aberrant situation has been normalized.
and now the trans-humanistic and AI dominated paradigms are rapidly becoming ascendant. chilling. to the bone.
Totally agree with you. We are part of a community that resists and protests RF deployments in Eugene OR. I can't be within 6ft of a wireless router. EWEB coerced installation of smart meters. One is 4 feet from where i work. We will supposedly have to pay for meter reader visits. Some customers in Britain send in a digital pic themselves, saving the power company labor. No comment from EWEB, they just ignore anything as if they are our bosses. AI RF deployments ae the beginning step to IoT (internet of things) totalitarianism. A remote-control economy is the Holy Grail of corporate governing. It seems to me most people are either not using or refusing to use all the new technologies that are actually only purposeful for a workplace environment. Even Pharma knows people know, their new crap is deadly. So now we have a marketplace paradigm that is changing from selling products and services that people want, to corporations forcing consumption of ever worse cheap crap, using government as enforcer, media/talking-heads as wrap around propaganda, and/or creating monopolistic, single source environments where consumers have no alternative choices. I wish we could get techies like Joshua to see these new technologies for the dead end they are, in the hands of the elite. The public must total control over deployment. It's our world, not theirs.
in discussing recently the intense beam-forming aspect of 5G technology with a friend who is high up in the engineering side of tech, he told me they are worried about camera lenses being damaged by this technology.
then he said, "what about the lenses in our eyes?"
right. it's all being deployed as if human health and well-being is irrelevant.
sandi - i was part of a large group that tried to stop the "deployment" (as tptb called it, which was an appropriate term) of smartmeters in CA. we eventually got an opt out in 2012 from our puc, and a number of states followed suit but unfortunately not oregon.
it's all insanity, and our generation knows it, but people under 50, even as young adults never knew a world without computers and cellphones. they can't even imagine life without them, much less how much better and calmer the world was without incessant wireless radiation bombarding and overwhelming our own delicate electrical signaling which regulates and orchestrates all of our biological systems - including neurological.
they never lived in a world without mass shootings, insomnia, headaches and heart arrhythmia being commonplace, without a large proportion of the population on psychotropic drugs for anxiety, depression, etc (i recently heard statistics of one in six people), without cancer being normalized (even for the young, some of whom have gotten breast cancer right where they keep their cellphones), diabetes and obesity off the charts (remember when most people, especially children, were thin?) and infertility (so now expensive, invasive IVF has also become normal, unlike in our youth when people had to try NOT to get pregnant).
anyway you know the story. people say, but it's so convenient! my reply, how convenient is cancer? so AI is being accepted just like all the rest of this toxic, culture-destroying stuff as if even if we don't want or like it, we'll just have to accept it. like bowing to the beast.
whose idea was it anyway and why would we trust them???
All these problems seem intractable. Everyone knows and can list the problems. But humanity is at the point where we need to start generating solutions. There are solutions as long as all options are open to discussion. This is the real problem. All solutions are not open, not being discussed and problem solved. Because we the People are not allowed in the problem solving process. Because we can come up with solutions that serve the social needs of Humanity. The real, real problem is the PTB know our solutions will end their rigged capitalist casino. The current French "Block Everything" movement is demanding direct democracy policy control by the People. We must make policy and oversee implementation by government employees. Imho, too.
Spiritually, I identify as Amish. Practically, I'm aware that ship sailed a long time ago.
Rather than looking at this as tech vs anti-tech, I tend to think in more centralization vs decentralization terms - and, always ensure I'm deeply connected to nature (the antidote for all).
"...that ship sailed a long time ago." ... is an empty cliche only used by those who either determine the future, or work along with, or agree with, those who do. Even then, it's only true if they keep all with opposing/better ideas locked out.
This is not an anti-tech argument. It is about individual consent and right to design implementations that serve the social needs of humanity. At this moment in human social evolution, that priority must override the capitalist profit. Imho.
Joshua - totally agree that connection to nature is the antidote - in fact our salvation. especially being outside in the sunlight without sunglasses, sunscreen or any tech, and with as little clothing as we can get away with - for our physical, mental, psychological, and eye health.
also at least having a window open when we must be inside. and maybe an infrared lamp near our computer screen to counter and balance the ubiquitous blue light.
Just to keep our state of amusement - a translation...
"Don't touch people after fifty. Seriously.
It's not just a generation - it's a special form of survival. Hard as a week-old bread. Fast as grandma's slipper flying at you with the precision of a boomerang. At five, they could tell their mother's mood by the sound of the pot lid. At seven, they had a key on a leash and the instruction: "Lunch is in the fridge. Reheat it, but don't turn it on."
At nine, they cooked simple meals for themselves, then walked to school on their own.
At ten, they knew how to fix a faucet and run away from the neighbor's dog. They spent whole days outside.
No phones. Instead of Wi-Fi - the route: playground - river - house in the dark with knees that looked like they had come from battle. And they survived.
They would smear their wounds on their knees with saliva, and put a leaf that was handy on them.
And when they hurt - they would hear from their parents: "Didn't it fall off? Then it doesn't hurt."
They ate bread with sugar, drank water from a garden hose — a microbiome that any food supplement would envy.
There were no allergies. And if there were, they were not talked about.
They know 15 ways to clean grass, grease, blood, mud and ink from clothes — because they had to come home "clean".
And that's not all. They went through:
– transistor radio,
– black and white television,
– gramophone,
– tape recorder,
– CDs and discs,
– cassettes were rewound with a pencil.
This is the last generation that remembers a world without the Internet.
Without fear of the battery running out.
They remember the home phone, notebooks with recipes and birthdays — without reminders.
These are the people who:
– fix everything with an insulator, a stapler and pliers,
– had one TV channel and a landline
They are different.
They have emotional asbestos, resilience from times of scarcity, and reflexes trained in wild playgrounds.
The last true ninja of everyday life.
Don't touch a fifty-year-old.
He's seen more.
He's lived deeper.
And he's got a mint in his pocket that's older than your smartphone."
In addition to Mr. Stylman’s perceptive and incisive take on AI and the references herein I offer up Brian Merchant’s book Blood in the Machine as an addendum addressing the history of push back against big tech from the industrial revolution up to the present and also check out Mr Merchant’s blogs on Substack
AI is no ordinary tool. It is a soul-sucking and dehumanizing replacement proferred - without consent - on the soon-to-be-useless eaters (UE's). Why are we here? Why do we live? Is there a point or purpose to life on this 'mortal coil'? These are internal questions. Soon AI, programmed by who knows what source, will give answers to those questions. Soon AI will replace our struggles and our necessary efforts to learn and to know with the drug of artificial (note this) intelligence. We have yet to produce an artificial soul or an artificial god, but soon they will be offered to the dehumanized serfs (UE's) as salvation. Not a single person on earth needs AI. We have Shakespeare, Brahms, Gogol, Plato, Van Gogh. We are vibrant and profoundly inventive without an Artifical Brain (AB to push us into atrophy. The earliest Greeks complained that writing would ruin the ability of humans) to recall their stories - like the Iliad - by memorization. Few today have memorized anything. The calculator has wiped out the ability to do mental math. AI will wipe out human intelligence. I ask again: "Why are we here"?
How do you really feel, Mark?
I may be more resigned to their inevitability than you are, but we're both concerned about the same thing - what is means to be human in the face of this change. Looking forward to discussing it face to face with you soon :-)
Exactly, Mark Hopkins! I don’t care what anyone says, or all the propaganda- AI is absolutely and simply evil and unnecessary. Also, have you read about all the water and electricity the AI centers utilize? Truly horrific.
I can still do long division and count back change. Love Brahms too.
Yes! We older folk can amaze the young generation today with our "old school" math skills! I was writing out a check at the grocery store the other day and a young girl coming up next to check out smiled at me and informed her grandmother still writes checks! I guess that is what we grannies still do. ha!
I have decided that A I stands for Steve Bloodsuckerber's "Ankel Izzy." He runs it. Prove me wrong.
It seems like you're taking the hype at face value, but after the chatGPT clusterf*ck, I'm not so sure we have to assume this is as inevitable as we've been told.
If anything, it's more apparent than ever that it's being shoved down our throats whether we like it or not (perhaps not unlike vaccines) while failing to live up to the hype and being an enormous waste of money.
That disconnect is more concerning to me than learning to live with this stuff, because I'm not convinced that we will have to. My question is, if it sucks, and everybody knows it, why are they still carpet bombing us with it? Because people don't like that.
The gap between hype and reality may be real - but you could've said the same about the web in 1997.
I see the proliferation as inevitable partly because of where big tech investors and developers are heading. Whether ChatGPT specifically succeeds or fumbles (though I believe it's on it's way to being one of the giant tech co's), these systems are being embedded into the fabric of software infrastructure. The question isn't whether this particular implementation works, but how to navigate whatever versions ultimately emerge.
I asked Walmart customer service if I could *turn off* "Sparky," their dogpoop product question AI. (I asked it for the fluid ounce capacity of a water kettle that was marked in milliliters.) They said I couldn't turn it off.
The Amazon AI does let you minimize it to the point where you don't notice it unless you're looking for it.
I understand that MS Office has put it in your face in Word and Excel... so I deleted my Microsoft account.
I dunno sir, I'm cautiously optimistic that we'll be able to back away from this stuff shortly. If nothing else, because that little AI box brings up a ton of security and privacy vulnerabilities that wouldn't otherwise be there.
On the other hand, we're pretty screwed in the grand scheme of things, so... Here's hoping.
It'd be great if we could just, you know, *turn it off.*
Agreed. I think it's wise to avoid as much of this stuff as possible. Turn it off.
Said navigation is something akin to a Neanderthal reaching for that first wooden stick, Mr. Stylman, and finding the tree on fire.
Some would consider that a Promethean moment, but what fuel remains?
If it sucks and everybody knows it then it’s all the more likely to become standard... The ratchet effect of progress (enshittification).
Evolutionary forces slowly adopt whatever adds value and the market turns its back on what drains value.
AI is evil (sorry that's kinda dramatic but yer kiddo's'll LOSE themselves if you support their "mastery" of AI). My 17 year old's fit ta be tied & just DUMPED her Major one week inta college all b/c of AI infiltrating the entire (f)Ahrt Department of a Major Univershitty...
She paints in oils (old-style) an' wants no part of AI but they're forcin' it down the throats of all stew-dents--free accounts, mandatory "integration." You can't say no? My kid just did! I jus' backed 'er up. The more parents that say HELL NO! (there) We won't go! an' the more univershitties that'll take notice.
All you've covered here is mighty fine but yer kiddo's will be stiffed like in a Times Sq Three Card Monty Game (where the dupes THINK they have their eyes on the the ball...or shelll)... if ya don't say no. Just no. An' in this case, it's not the pockets that'll be emptied, it's the MINDS. Once ya take the poison there ain't no antidote/ante-doubt.
https://thcsofdaisymoses.substack.com/p/tragedy-ai-has-infected-the-hollowed
Thank you. The info on your daughter in a college art department encouraging AI is otally and utterly unconscionable. They may have crossed the Rubicon but we shall not. And humanity must coalesce in solidarity against this plastic monster of the elite.
yer welcome! and a big hand... 👏🏽 for yer commint too, 'tis indeed a "plastic MONSTER of the elite" who tend to NOT be creative or imaginative "beings" btw--An' yes, "We Shall Not!" Unlike Ado Annie (who couldn't say no), we CAN say no! (an' keep on doin' it--even if we're a small but vocal minority, paintbrushes in hand ;-)
Most commenters seem to get it, because AI does not benefit commoners. It is a stupid nuisance that elites think is some Holy Grail of "progress" and pushing it as the ultimate convenience. Well their conveniences are killing us. Look at school performance data that has steadily declined since all their tech conveniences have turned us into serfs processed like factory products. If you were home schooling, which is what i'd be doing in this era, you could turn off all smartphones, wireless devices, internet and computers during learning and experiencing. And strictly limit use of them to be productive in study and production outside class time.
[Idea: Why not create two internets. 1) a public Library with search and knowledge access. 2) A bifurcated adult internet with 50% public commons channel free to use and populate by non-commercial projects; and a 50% leased commercial channel for for-profit use, with lease income from corporations funding all the rest of the internet. Just a thought.]
It seems some now rationalize against setting limits for oneself and society, as if that has no purpose anymore. The de facto limits placed by environments created by internet, smartphones, wireless and now AI have literally created a totally involuntary, non-consensual, monopoly of access to knowledge, livelihood, and live physical social engagement.
lol, we "homeskooled" the entire time...no schmart phones, ltd. "puter" access, everythang real--writin' with pencil on paper...even in college mah younger daughter has a "dumb phone" (no internet)--me too! Yer right, it's the elite who are leadin' the march ta fake PROG-gress (programmed/primitive). An' yer right--we are "serfs" forced ta "surf" ("forced" meanin' that in some cases we have no other way!) Libraries are gettin' rid of books an' hostin' weird robot & 'puter game gatherin's an' now graphic (graph-ick! novels take the place of classics) I could go on... the reason mah girls are firmly against AI is that I raised 'em in the 21st C AS IF it was the 20th C! Not quite a luddite but I'm for the "real" not the "mock" (ta swing a little Cole Porter inta the mix). The internet (all search Engines) have taken away our keys--I cain't find SQUAT any more...even on archive.com... so much is taken away includin' "other views." Now the hits are the same--even on page 25 of results...awful.
We need a "real" internet an' perhaps yer idea could work... one commercial, one not. Got no problems with limits but the globalist elites LIMITING us...an' herding us, puttin' us "out ta pasture" on toxic AI... should not be settin' the gates.... they are the evil gateKeepers an' a few other things which are best said with 4 letter words so bein' a laydee I won't say 'em but you know what I mean (grrrrr). An' yes, AI is possibly the WORST/WURST thing come out way to de-humanize us... :-(
"My primary fear about AI isn't just the dramatic scenario where it becomes hostile, but the subtler threat: that it will make us subordinate to systems in ways we don't recognize until it's too late..."
Exactly.
A couple things.....
1) The promise of AI is an empty one. I've broken more than one LLM, simply because a fixed-set algo can't keep pace with an opensource, realtime-feedback, heuristic. And... it's processing speed confirms it. "Grok" (a horrible and offensive mysnomer) had to admit it to me.
2) I've received confirmation (of a previous assumption) from multiple guys working on the larger, industrial, LLMs that over time, the models all adjust downward (in terms of IQ) to the mean. Essentially, they get stupider, because they constantly center on the "themes" inherent to the internet (their pool of scrapable knowledge). The more often a thing appears over time, the model adjusts to call that "truth". Irrespective of veracity. It's a volume of consensus thing.... not a reality thing. This is the same thing as medicine/science deferring to "peer-review". Stupid. In every sense of the word.
3) GenX is the last bastion of hope.... if for no other reason, than the fact that we are digital-capable, but not digital-dependent. Analog is the only, actual way forward. Because, AI is, by definition, synthetic.... and humans are not.
The friend I mentioned in the piece prides himself on 'breaking' these tools. He keeps sending me screenshots after putting them to sleep (apparently that happens when they get stuck in their own circular logic).
As for your commentary on GenX... the boomers corrupted our institutions... the millennials only learned how to follow orders... so now it's on us, the slacker generation, to save the world from itself? The script couldn't be funnier.
I miss the pre-smartphone era.
i miss the pre-cellphone era.
Also that. I was 30 when I got my first mobile - classic Nokia with basic text functionality. Still at the handy device stage and not yet an omnipresent life-controlling technology.
Guys, slavery is inevitable. But don't worry, I can show you how to be a house slave instead of a field slave. Trust me, house slave is where it's at.
“I didn't want to feed my soul into a machine.”
Don’t worry. You wont. You can’t. Your soul is your Transcending-Energetic-Being-ness and thus not downloadable into anything machine-like. This whole ‘Feed My Soul Into The Web’ thing is a toxic lie peddled by noxious powerful forces who hate the human family and want to kill off our personal authentic sense of being and purpose before they fully erase us from a Planet that they have claimed for Their own.
“... I'm not just an old man resistant to change.”
There’s nothing wrong with being an Old Man. Half the population will reach this stage if the fates are with them. And there is nothing at all wrong with resisting change if it is change that makes things WORSE. There is a moral imperative to resist anything that makes our life condition worse.
“... fear about AI isn't just the dramatic scenario where it becomes hostile...”.
AI is already hostile. It is robbing us of our ability to think and reason on our own. It is thinking and reaching conclusions without our involvement – and stealing away our very once-innate abilities to think and reason. Again, something to strip us from our basic authentic humanity. A true Wolf in Sheeps’ Clothing or Trojan Horse. AI is becoming today’s latest version of a false god and is morphing into a new kind of false civil religion that erases true divinity and installs an empty, false substitute fueled by bad intent subroutines camouflaged to look beneficent. It is less beneficent and more just deficient.
“My children are growing up in a world where AI-powered assistance will be as fundamental as running water. As a father, I can't prepare them for a reality I don't understand myself.”
You can’t prepare them for what’s coming. What you do is work diligently to see that they gain an unshakable and fundamental sense of morality and right-and-wrong and the ability to think and reason for themselves. If you do that – everything else will take care of itself.
“AI risks doing to our minds what medicine has done to our bodies: creating weakness disguised as enhancement... AI risks doing to our minds what medicine has done to our bodies: creating weakness disguised as enhancement...creates what amounts to a managed population: intellectually reliant on algorithmic systems for thinking and economically bound to institutional systems for survival.”
All just as the Dark State has facilitated and fully intended. None of this happened organically or in a vacuum. This is all deliberate and laid out somewhere on strategy boards written out with the blood stains of human pain and suffering and the losses of our souls.
“... these technologies are being normalized through institutional authority rather than democratic consent.”
When was the last time we ever had ‘democratic consent’ about... anything? That was the first thing seized away from us by the Dark State vultures. We can’t be allowed to have say over anything because to the Dark State we all nothings, anyway. And a nothing does not deserve any ‘rights’.
“Riding the wave means I'm open to learning from these tools while knowing I can't fight the fundamental forces reshaping our world... The wave is here.”
Riding a wave that’s taking you to straight to Hell is no wave to stay riding on. Sometimes Wiping Out is our salvation.
The Beach Boys once sang... "Catch a Wave and You’re Sitting On Top Of The World". Once that was true. But our former Times of warm and sunny Beach Boy weather has turned violent and choppy and stormy. And the waves we see are not fun waves to ride but part of a tsunami to try to survive and drown in.
If you're going to Catch a Wave... be damn sure where that wave is goint to take you.
"Riding a wave that’s taking you to straight to Hell is no wave to stay riding on. Sometimes Wiping Out is our salvation." right on. we do not have to embrace the madness, no matter what or who is trying to convince us to do so.
Fascinating! Thank you!
Quote: "I may have more in common with someone from 1880 than children starting kindergarten in 2025 will have with my generation."
Definitely!
Quote: "At the 2023 World Economic Forum, neurotechnology expert Nita Farahany framed consumer neurotech this way: "What you think, what you feel - all just data. Data that in large patterns can be decoded using AI." Wearable "Fitbits for your brain" - surveillance normalized as convenience"
Above provides insight into what the "people" working in this field think of human beings
during the covid nonsense, many of us thought "trust the science" was ridiculous. what about "trust AI"?
I have avoided using ai for a while, mostly.
I've found it's much more efficient at searching up programming repos and code examples than I. though it often goes off track it's not to difficult to nudge it back where I want it. a lot of cruft with a few gems.
if the ai disappeared I'd just go back to manual sorting of search results
Screw the ‘inevitability’. Have we not learned what happens when we become sheeple? Wake up, folks. To summarize this post, it says ‘AI is inevitable, just use it wisely.’ Yeah, right.
Cathleen, I understand the frustration with *inevitability* - it can sound defeatist. But my kids are already using these systems through school, apps, and basic internet functions. I can either teach them to navigate consciously or pretend they can avoid what's already integrated into their daily reality. I'd rather focus on building agency within the system than hoping it disappears - based on the money flow, their proliferation is only going to continue to grow
You can home school them Joshua. We have a friend who home schooled her son and daughter and they were awesome self starters, free thinkers. Unafraid of being around different ages including elders. The existing school system is as Ivan Illich described in Deschooling Society except many times worse now from 1971. If I had kids in these times I would be home schooling.
For me, A I has been almost completely evitable.
This is to me the most critical statement, to take away:
"In an age of artificial intelligence, the most radical act may be becoming more authentically human."
More awake, more enlightened, and more empowered to our greatest essence as human beings.
Thank you.
I'm surprised at a passive acceptance stance on AI. I'm 74 and was an early adopter of pc desktops for graphic design and publishing virtualization tool use. As such I have a different take on technology. I do see harmless use for virtualized tool environments where users through free choice and decision operate them for useful outputs in to the physical world. But the 21st C engineered LOCKDOWN of the internet away from free choice and access of pertinent use; smartphones; always-on wireless connectivity; AI and it's Holy Grail of IoT, have created a totally involuntary environment attempting to surround humanity with a centralized, monocultural overlord of the world's 99%.
Capitalist (the accumulation of excess wealth, to facilitate the accumulation of more excess wealth) lobbying, propaganda and absolute dominance over the contents of public discourse, have engineered a de facto virtual reality capturing and caging human sovereignty. The free choice to behave and decide. The thought that the internet has eliminated scarcity is actually the opposite. It has to many degrees created a choiceless environment. It's goals, with the tools listed above, is to have the world elite assume remote control over humanity. Much of what you state documents this flow to social totalitarianism sans public input. Allowing technology to replace society, which is in essence is what is being attempted, is not to be tolerated.
I don't think I need to cite the many ways society has already been deconstructed by selling us convenience that becomes a cage. Massive consolidations of what used to offer infinite variety and access to the offerings of local culture and friendly ingenuity, have made thousands of miles away robot-like Company Stores of cheap, soulless alienation. Turning every sector of the economy into a machine, renders humans into machines. They sell us a cure to a disease they create. Unacceptable. Our world, our decision.
All of the technological evolution before computers can be seen as leveraging the physical Earthian reality to logical use. What's in the elite's playbook now is lightspeed electricity + digital virtualization + elite dictate over use = totalitarianism. The opposite direction of individual sovereignty, free choice and action. What I am lobbying for, is for people to see this new virtual reality being created around us for what it is. In the words of Frank Herbert, an "abomination". Herbert in his Dune universe envisioned computers banned. I'm assuming he meant the misuse of the virtualizing aspects so deadly as to require a conscious sentient being LOCKDOWN of this technology, with strictly prescribed applications, in my mind today delineated by direct democratic input.
I don't need to be a Luddite to say the public needs to corral all new technological advances the elites call "progress" in the 21st C. Since the new technologies all seem to sprout from, and expand, virtuality, a shadow world not under our control or even within our observation of operation (like Facebook's two-way-mirror environment), humanity needs to define it's rollout and uses, not capitalist profiteers.
I appreciate your perspective, though I'm curious - did you write this on a typewriter and find my Substack through the library?
It seems as if we're both using the digital systems you're critiquing to have this conversation. My approach isn't passive acceptance but conscious engagement with tools that are already shaping our world whether we participate or not.
Offline digital tools are freely useful. The internet digital environment may allow some useful apps like Substack, but as designed and controlled by the elite, it is what I think Public Enemy calls, The Teledome. I have been using computers to make visual art since the early 90's. The creation process is virtual, the end products real. My argument is that post Windows 7 desktop developments in digital technologies (smartphones, internet connectivity, always on wireless connectivity (RF), AI & IoT), has surrounded us in an artificial reality, a digital prison to control humanity. I'm arguing that this virtualizing artificial reality they have created is aberrant to the natural limits of how nature operates. The negative effects are all around us.
I realize many believe "progress" inevitable. Anything that humans can manifest, is what is considered a logical progression of technological development. [This is an argument of the transhumanist movement.] I believe this perception of "progress" is true, until, the deployment of non-consensual virtualized environments reversed social "progress" and render humans, tools of a tiny minority elite. The internet, it's applications and particularly social media, is configured and managed by the ruling class into a two way mirror on the public. Just as in a police interrogation room, the ruling class see us and everything we do, we see nothing of what they do. This ability on mass scale, is aberrant to a naturally functioning society. Prior to this only East Germany's Stasi comes to mind.
If one argues, imho, that there is no such thing as a human society functioning under Nature's limits, they are arguing to allow fast tracking non-consensual technological deployments we are being coerced into using. This argument is important now, because our public lives and livelihoods are being throttled by these virtualized environments. The US bottom 90%, except postmoderns who argue "but there can be good aspects", is being crushed by this crap. We want these systems stopped from harming us. We want a return to a fair, naturally normative society with vibrant local culture, designed by us. Possibly for the first time ever, a self-ruled society. I see others here also distressed.
We are priced out, shut out, defunded, isolated, policed, without influence, stripped of local opportunity and culture. AI, digital cash, IoT, digital IDs and all manner live techno experiments on humanity, like vax LOCKDOWNs, are attempting to incarcerate humanity. You can call "progress" inevitable, but it's not. We have human right to determine our world. We have right of consent and right to design a world of multiple choice and opportunity. We are smart and creative enough given opportunity. Which is why they want to throttle us.
thank you. i am one of the many who cannot even use a cellphone - or any wireless tech - because it makes me so sick. the "system" is becoming more and more insistent that every interaction, even payment, take place through this privacy-destroying toxic technology. i do not comply, firstly because it is not worth it to my physical or psychological well-being, and secondly because it is barbarous in a whole new modern way (including all the ways you detail and more). why most people are going willingly along with it is beyond me, except that our entire culture has been programmed for 30 yrs along these lines, so this aberrant situation has been normalized.
and now the trans-humanistic and AI dominated paradigms are rapidly becoming ascendant. chilling. to the bone.
Totally agree with you. We are part of a community that resists and protests RF deployments in Eugene OR. I can't be within 6ft of a wireless router. EWEB coerced installation of smart meters. One is 4 feet from where i work. We will supposedly have to pay for meter reader visits. Some customers in Britain send in a digital pic themselves, saving the power company labor. No comment from EWEB, they just ignore anything as if they are our bosses. AI RF deployments ae the beginning step to IoT (internet of things) totalitarianism. A remote-control economy is the Holy Grail of corporate governing. It seems to me most people are either not using or refusing to use all the new technologies that are actually only purposeful for a workplace environment. Even Pharma knows people know, their new crap is deadly. So now we have a marketplace paradigm that is changing from selling products and services that people want, to corporations forcing consumption of ever worse cheap crap, using government as enforcer, media/talking-heads as wrap around propaganda, and/or creating monopolistic, single source environments where consumers have no alternative choices. I wish we could get techies like Joshua to see these new technologies for the dead end they are, in the hands of the elite. The public must total control over deployment. It's our world, not theirs.
in discussing recently the intense beam-forming aspect of 5G technology with a friend who is high up in the engineering side of tech, he told me they are worried about camera lenses being damaged by this technology.
then he said, "what about the lenses in our eyes?"
right. it's all being deployed as if human health and well-being is irrelevant.
sandi - i was part of a large group that tried to stop the "deployment" (as tptb called it, which was an appropriate term) of smartmeters in CA. we eventually got an opt out in 2012 from our puc, and a number of states followed suit but unfortunately not oregon.
it's all insanity, and our generation knows it, but people under 50, even as young adults never knew a world without computers and cellphones. they can't even imagine life without them, much less how much better and calmer the world was without incessant wireless radiation bombarding and overwhelming our own delicate electrical signaling which regulates and orchestrates all of our biological systems - including neurological.
they never lived in a world without mass shootings, insomnia, headaches and heart arrhythmia being commonplace, without a large proportion of the population on psychotropic drugs for anxiety, depression, etc (i recently heard statistics of one in six people), without cancer being normalized (even for the young, some of whom have gotten breast cancer right where they keep their cellphones), diabetes and obesity off the charts (remember when most people, especially children, were thin?) and infertility (so now expensive, invasive IVF has also become normal, unlike in our youth when people had to try NOT to get pregnant).
anyway you know the story. people say, but it's so convenient! my reply, how convenient is cancer? so AI is being accepted just like all the rest of this toxic, culture-destroying stuff as if even if we don't want or like it, we'll just have to accept it. like bowing to the beast.
whose idea was it anyway and why would we trust them???
All these problems seem intractable. Everyone knows and can list the problems. But humanity is at the point where we need to start generating solutions. There are solutions as long as all options are open to discussion. This is the real problem. All solutions are not open, not being discussed and problem solved. Because we the People are not allowed in the problem solving process. Because we can come up with solutions that serve the social needs of Humanity. The real, real problem is the PTB know our solutions will end their rigged capitalist casino. The current French "Block Everything" movement is demanding direct democracy policy control by the People. We must make policy and oversee implementation by government employees. Imho, too.
might be time to become a luddite. for survival.
Spiritually, I identify as Amish. Practically, I'm aware that ship sailed a long time ago.
Rather than looking at this as tech vs anti-tech, I tend to think in more centralization vs decentralization terms - and, always ensure I'm deeply connected to nature (the antidote for all).
"...that ship sailed a long time ago." ... is an empty cliche only used by those who either determine the future, or work along with, or agree with, those who do. Even then, it's only true if they keep all with opposing/better ideas locked out.
This is not an anti-tech argument. It is about individual consent and right to design implementations that serve the social needs of humanity. At this moment in human social evolution, that priority must override the capitalist profit. Imho.
Joshua - totally agree that connection to nature is the antidote - in fact our salvation. especially being outside in the sunlight without sunglasses, sunscreen or any tech, and with as little clothing as we can get away with - for our physical, mental, psychological, and eye health.
also at least having a window open when we must be inside. and maybe an infrared lamp near our computer screen to counter and balance the ubiquitous blue light.
I like the comparison to Ivan Illich and his iatrogenic dependency.
Just to keep our state of amusement - a translation...
"Don't touch people after fifty. Seriously.
It's not just a generation - it's a special form of survival. Hard as a week-old bread. Fast as grandma's slipper flying at you with the precision of a boomerang. At five, they could tell their mother's mood by the sound of the pot lid. At seven, they had a key on a leash and the instruction: "Lunch is in the fridge. Reheat it, but don't turn it on."
At nine, they cooked simple meals for themselves, then walked to school on their own.
At ten, they knew how to fix a faucet and run away from the neighbor's dog. They spent whole days outside.
No phones. Instead of Wi-Fi - the route: playground - river - house in the dark with knees that looked like they had come from battle. And they survived.
They would smear their wounds on their knees with saliva, and put a leaf that was handy on them.
And when they hurt - they would hear from their parents: "Didn't it fall off? Then it doesn't hurt."
They ate bread with sugar, drank water from a garden hose — a microbiome that any food supplement would envy.
There were no allergies. And if there were, they were not talked about.
They know 15 ways to clean grass, grease, blood, mud and ink from clothes — because they had to come home "clean".
And that's not all. They went through:
– transistor radio,
– black and white television,
– gramophone,
– tape recorder,
– CDs and discs,
– cassettes were rewound with a pencil.
This is the last generation that remembers a world without the Internet.
Without fear of the battery running out.
They remember the home phone, notebooks with recipes and birthdays — without reminders.
These are the people who:
– fix everything with an insulator, a stapler and pliers,
– had one TV channel and a landline
They are different.
They have emotional asbestos, resilience from times of scarcity, and reflexes trained in wild playgrounds.
The last true ninja of everyday life.
Don't touch a fifty-year-old.
He's seen more.
He's lived deeper.
And he's got a mint in his pocket that's older than your smartphone."
the world you describe sounds a lot more like 70 yrs ago.
That's my generation :)
Translated from a "joke" in the Balkans area...which was always cca 30 years behind the western worlds... so yes, your calculation is correct :)
In addition to Mr. Stylman’s perceptive and incisive take on AI and the references herein I offer up Brian Merchant’s book Blood in the Machine as an addendum addressing the history of push back against big tech from the industrial revolution up to the present and also check out Mr Merchant’s blogs on Substack
Wasn't familiar w Brian's work but will check out. Sounds right up my alley.
Thanks, Mrtambourineman.