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| DATE | 2025-08-19 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] techological ethics
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John Whitehead's Commentary
Welcome to the Matrix: Enslaved by Technology and the Internet of Things
By John W. Whitehead
January 07, 2015
John Whitehead
“There will come a time when it isn't ‘They’re spying on me through
my phone’ anymore. Eventually, it will be ‘My phone is spying on me.’” ―
Philip K. Dick
If ever Americans sell their birthright, it will be for the promise of
expediency and comfort delivered by way of blazingly fast Internet, cell
phone signals that never drop a call, thermostats that keep us at the
perfect temperature without our having to raise a finger, and
entertainment that can be simultaneously streamed to our TVs, tablets
and cell phones.
Likewise, if ever we find ourselves in bondage, we will have only
ourselves to blame for having forged the chains through our own
lassitude, laziness and abject reliance on internet-connected gadgets
and gizmos that render us wholly irrelevant.
Indeed, while most of us are consumed with our selfies and trying to
keep up with what our so-called friends are posting on Facebook, the
megacorporation Google has been busily partnering with the National
Security Agency (NSA), the Pentagon, and other governmental agencies to
develop a new “human” species, so to speak.
In other words, Google—a neural network that approximates a global
brain—is fusing with the human mind in a phenomenon that is called
“singularity,” and they’ve hired transhumanist scientist Ray Kurzweil to
do just that. Google will know the answer to your question before you
have asked it, Kurzweil said. “It will have read every email you will
ever have written, every document, every idle thought you’ve ever tapped
into a search-engine box. It will know you better than your intimate
partner does. Better, perhaps, than even yourself.”
But here’s the catch: the NSA and all other government agencies will
also know you better than yourself. As William Binney, one of the
highest-level whistleblowers to ever emerge from the NSA said, “The
ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control.”
Science fiction, thus, has become fact.
We’re fast approaching Philip K. Dick’s vision of the future as depicted
in the film Minority Report. There, police agencies apprehend criminals
before they can commit a crime, driverless cars populate the highways,
and a person’s biometrics are constantly scanned and used to track their
movements, target them for advertising, and keep them under perpetual
surveillance.
Cue the dawning of the Age of the Internet of Things, in which
internet-connected “things” will monitor your home, your health and your
habits in order to keep your pantry stocked, your utilities regulated
and your life under control and relatively worry-free.
The key word here, however, is control.
In the not-too-distant future, “just about every device you have — and
even products like chairs, that you don’t normally expect to see
technology in — will be connected and talking to each other.”
By 2018, it is estimated there will be 112 million wearable devices such
as smartwatches, keeping users connected it real time to their phones,
emails, text messages and the Internet. By 2020, there will be 152
million cars connected to the Internet and 100 million
Internet-connected bulbs and lamps. By 2022, there will be 1.1 billion
smart meters installed in homes, reporting real-time usage to utility
companies and other interested parties.
This “connected” industry—estimated to add more than $14 trillion to the
economy by 2020—is about to be the next big thing in terms of societal
transformations, right up there with the Industrial Revolution, a
watershed moment in technology and culture.
Between driverless cars that completely lacking a steering wheel,
accelerator, or brake pedal, and smart pills embedded with computer
chips, sensors, cameras and robots, we are poised to outpace the
imaginations of science fiction writers such as Philip K. Dick and Isaac
Asimov. By the way, there is no such thing as a driverless car. Someone
or something will be driving, but it won’t be you.
The 2015 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is a glittering showcase
for such Internet-connected techno gadgets as smart light bulbs that
discourage burglars by making your house look occupied, smart
thermostats that regulate the temperature of your home based on your
activities, and smart doorbells that let you see who is at your front
door without leaving the comfort of your couch.
Nest, Google’s $3 billion acquisition, has been at the forefront of the
“connected” industry, with such technologically savvy conveniences as a
smart lock that tells your thermostat who is home, what temperatures
they like, and when your home is unoccupied; a home phone service system
that interacts with your connected devices to “learn when you come and
go” and alert you if your kids don’t come home; and a sleep system that
will monitor when you fall asleep, when you wake up, and keep the house
noises and temperature in a sleep-conducive state.
The aim of these internet-connected devices, as Nest proclaims, is to
make “your house a more thoughtful and conscious home.” For example,
your car can signal ahead that you’re on your way home, while Hue lights
can flash on and off to get your attention if Nest Protect senses
something’s wrong. Your coffeemaker, relying on data from fitness and
sleep sensors, will brew a stronger pot of coffee for you if you’ve had
a restless night.
It’s not just our homes that are being reordered and reimagined in this
connected age: it’s our workplaces, our health systems, our government
and our very bodies that are being plugged into a matrix over which we
have no real control.
Moreover, given the speed and trajectory at which these technologies are
developing, it won’t be long before these devices are operating entirely
independent of their human creators, which poses a whole new set of
worries. As technology expert Nicholas Carr notes, “As soon as you allow
robots, or software programs, to act freely in the world, they’re going
to run up against ethically fraught situations and face hard choices
that can’t be resolved through statistical models. That will be true of
self-driving cars, self-flying drones, and battlefield robots, just as
it’s already true, on a lesser scale, with automated vacuum cleaners and
lawnmowers.”
For instance, just as the robotic vacuum, Roomba, “makes no distinction
between a dust bunny and an insect,” weaponized drones—poised to take to
the skies en masse this year—will be incapable of distinguishing between
a fleeing criminal and someone merely jogging down a street. For that
matter, how do you defend yourself against a robotic cop—such as the
Atlas android being developed by the Pentagon—that has been programmed
to respond to any perceived threat with violence?
Unfortunately, in our race to the future, we have failed to consider
what such dependence on technology might mean for our humanity, not to
mention our freedoms.
Ingestible or implantable chips are a good example of how unprepared we
are, morally and otherwise, to navigate this uncharted terrain. Hailed
as revolutionary for their ability to access, analyze and manipulate
your body from the inside, these smart pills can remind you to take your
medication, search for cancer, and even send an alert to your doctor
warning of an impending heart attack.
Sure, the technology could save lives, but is that all we need to know?
Have we done our due diligence in asking all the questions that need to
be asked before unleashing such awesome technology on an unsuspecting
populace?
For example, asks Washington Post reporter Ariana Eunjung Cha:
What kind of warnings should users receive about the risks of
implanting chip technology inside a body, for instance? How will
patients be assured that the technology won’t be used to compel them to
take medications they don’t really want to take? Could law enforcement
obtain data that would reveal which individuals abuse drugs or sell them
on the black market? Could what started as a voluntary experiment be
turned into a compulsory government identification program that could
erode civil liberties?
Let me put it another way. If you were shocked by Edward Snowden’s
revelations about how NSA agents have used surveillance to spy on
Americans’ phone calls, emails and text messages, can you imagine what
unscrupulous government agents could do with access to your
internet-connected car, home and medications? Imagine what a SWAT team
could do with the ability to access, monitor and control your
internet-connected home—locking you in, turning off the lights,
activating alarms, etc.
Thus far, the public response to concerns about government surveillance
has amounted to a collective shrug. After all, who cares if the
government can track your whereabouts on your GPS-enabled device so long
as it helps you find the fastest route from Point A to Point B? Who
cares if the NSA is listening in on your phone calls and downloading
your emails so long as you can get your phone calls and emails on the go
and get lightning fast Internet on the fly? Who cares if the government
can monitor your activities in your home by tapping into your
internet-connected devices—thermostat, water, lights—so long as you can
control those things with the flick of a finger, whether you’re across
the house or across the country?
As for those still reeling from a year of police shootings of unarmed
citizens, SWAT team raids, and community uprisings, the menace of
government surveillance can’t begin to compare to bullet-riddled bodies,
devastated survivors and traumatized children. However, both approaches
are just as lethal to our freedoms if left unchecked.
Control is the key here. As I make clear in my book A Government of
Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, total control over every
aspect of our lives, right down to our inner thoughts, is the objective
of any totalitarian regime.
George Orwell understood this. His masterpiece, 1984, portrays a global
society of total control in which people are not allowed to have
thoughts that in any way disagree with the corporate state. There is no
personal freedom, and advanced technology has become the driving force
behind a surveillance-driven society. Snitches and cameras are
everywhere. And people are subject to the Thought Police, who deal with
anyone guilty of thought crimes. The government, or “Party,” is headed
by Big Brother, who appears on posters everywhere with the words: “Big
Brother is watching you.”
Make no mistake: the Internet of Things is just Big Brother in a more
appealing disguise.
Even so, I’m not suggesting we all become Luddites. However, we need to
be aware of how quickly a helpful device that makes our lives easier can
become a harmful weapon that enslaves us.
This was the underlying lesson of The Matrix, the Wachowski brothers’
futuristic thriller about human beings enslaved by autonomous
technological beings that call the shots. As Morpheus, one of the
characters in The Matrix, explains:
The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this
very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn
on your television. You can feel it when you go to work… when you go to
church… when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled
over your eyes to blind you from the truth.
“What truth?” asks Neo.
Morpheus leans in closer to Neo: “That you are a slave, Neo. Like
everyone else you were born into bondage. Born into a prison that you
cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison for your mind.”
WC: 1894
ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and
president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the
best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the
award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police
State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries.
Whitehead can be contacted at staff-at-rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is
the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about
The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
Publication Guidelines / Reprint Permission
John W. Whitehead’s weekly commentaries are available for publication to
newspapers and web publications at no charge. Please contact
staff-at-rutherford.org to obtain reprint permission.
--
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town
that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
http://www.mrbrklyn.com
DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
http://www.brooklyn-living.com
Being so tracked is for FARM ANIMALS and extermination camps,
but incompatible with living as a free human being. -RI Safir 2013
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