I found the post very interesting, and there are those with a somewhat Luddite mentality when it comes to technology, but it really doesn’t matter if people like what’s going to happen, or if they don’t. Technology, for good or ill, will advance without anyone’s expressed approval.
I think the important thing is that society needs to focus on the fact that people should not be forced against their will to embrace tech they are opposed to. E.g., the Amish and Mennonite communities still shun certain conveniences, and although it might make their lives hard, it is not impossible.
However, I see this getting increasingly difficult as time moves forward and I think this is why it’s important that there good actors in the marketplace who are also creating competing tech which counters Orwellian tech. As far as artificially tapping into a state of transcendental meditation, that sounds like a blast to me.
Equally as fun, might be a machine that induces lucid dreaming. If someone like Mark Zuckerberg creates or owns these devices though, things could jump the shark very quickly. Currently, his ownership of oculus is giving him oodles and oodles of feedback from the cameras (sensors), microphones, and whatnot.
The internet of things will have microphones and cameras all over the place. They will watch our every move and feed it back to the tech companies to give to the government and sell to the highest bidder. As I type this, cable companies are coming out with remote controls that you can talk to now, which means they are listening and most likely sending this data back up the coaxial and to the cable company.
Perhaps Zuckerberg and silicon valley are doing us a favor in tipping their hand and getting creepy fast. They could have tried to slow boil us, but now the jig is up. So they either thought they won the game, or are desperate enough to win the next election that they showed their intentions early on.
I think part of the problem is that they don't seem worried about tipping their hands. They clearly feel that they've cemented themselves firmly enough into the lives of all of their users to the point that they don't think we can go backwards or make do without them. If they succeed in getting legislation to regulate them, they are basically forcing the government to empower them to the point of securing their monopolies and then we really will get fucked. It starts off by offering something cutting edge and new that people will pursue out of their perpetual need to one-up each other, but eventually it always evolves into making it so inconvenient not to adopt their technology that it feels like a hindrance to anyone that doesn't want to do so. Imagine not being to being able to use your credit card without a chip in your brain verifying and authorizing the transaction under the guise of theft prevention. Sure, maybe it's optional, but if they charge you 5x the interest rate to have their card in the first place then it certainly makes things difficult. Even if we don't want to go the credit route, that could easily apply to monthly fees on a bank account or transaction fees for using a debit card. Crypto is certainly going to be important to combat centralized tech giants dominating and controlling the economy of the future.
Great points, when it comes to tipping their hand Facebook's Fatwa on those they consider dangerous individuals is about as Orwellian as it gets. It's like the two minutes of hate from 1984, but also encouraging that physical action is taken against Goldstein. Only, instead of being some shadowy bogey man, the people they are inciting against are very real and tangible people. What they've resorted to is so colossally stupid it's like they haven't even done the math as to what type of blowback might come their way if they are to succeed in getting one of these so-called "dangerous individuals" culled.