Thursday, 25 January 2018

THE OVERLORDS

“Fifty years is ample time in which to change a world and its people almost beyond recognition. All that is required for the task are a sound knowledge of social engineering, a clear sight of the intended goal – and power. These things the Overlords possessed. Though their goal was hidden, their knowledge was obvious – and so was their power.”

A.C. Clarke, Childhood’s End

          There is no question now who controls your fate. Hanging by the neck, every detail of your vulnerable, recumbent psyche  is revealed for the all-pervasive, incessant inspection. Submitted to the speculum, each part of your private life is subjected to the invasive, groping mind that squirms inside you with intrusive tentacles sucking personal information directly out of the hidden arteries of your fibre-optic underbelly. Retaining every shred of intelligence, every photo uploaded and message posted, Facebook delves more deeply into your private parts than ever did the NSA, using techniques modelled on hunts for money launderers, child pornographers, groomers, stalkers, and - in the name of absolute, unconditional surrender – even offers to freeze its female employees’ eggs. A chillingly futuristic gesture with hints of  symbiotic bondage in which you become trapped in your own procreative designer bubble.
     Which leaves the matter of testing your mobile’s signal strength,  tracking  precisely where you are, who you talk to, deducing what time you go to sleep,  the hour you wake up, the type of news you read, so that you are,  in effect, wearing an electronic tag recording every detail. More ominously, Facebook doesn’t even ask its users what they want, it watches them.[1] It has the phone numbers of everyone on your iPhone. Facebook knows what you said, and to whom, going back for years. Moreover, despite the ostentatious introduction of a new Clear History tool, that would enable Facebook users to delete such data,  Mr Zuckerberg also announced plans to launch a dating service for the “200 million people on Facebook who list themselves as single,” taking the company into even more private areas of your personal life and existence. And never forget that Facebook has a vast database of “shadow profiles” gleaned from the smartphones of people who have never even joined the social media
platform. Combining internal profile material with external tracking in a system called Custom Audiences,  it has the means to know exactly what you want – before you even want it, or why.                                        
        “The Nazi government sought and attained ‘perfect transparency’ into their citizens’ lives. That’s exactly how they knew who was a Jew, where the Jewish families lived, how they could get them and under which number they put them in the gas chamber,” says Google nemesis Mathias Dőpfner[2], who wants the internet giant cut down to size. And even though that doesn’t stop Google keeping precise archival records, we do not know where that data will go or what it will be used for. To wit, Europe’s attitude towards the American tech industry has altered considerably, since the European Court of Justice trashed a transatlantic data pact that invited Google and
other global monopolists to lodge personal info about European nationals with the US. Further penalties loom, including the power to fine companies up to 4% of their global turnover under the General Data Protection Regulation now going through European parliaments. Indeed, the journalist Matt Taibbi has already expressed himself on a similar point in his now famous description of  Goldman Sachs as “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”
                    Front fanged and highly ravenous, Facebook is a textbook case, a perfect metaphor, linking the basic laws of biology to electronic data, or what could
figuratively be described as a virus whose only objective it is to replicate, using human minds as its host. The ultimate freeloaders, viruses (much like social media “memes”) never trouble developing their own reproductive system, contriving  instead to introduce their genetic content into that of other cells  - including bacteria affecting the brain. Or as The Guardian ominously put it, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google sell but one thing – coded messages  sent over the net.[3] Simply put, algorithms designed to control you. So, be ever mindful that the Internet’s default utility is user generated content,  that “if you are not paying for a service then you are the product.” The terms-and-conditions template for the use of this ‘product’ is just another way of disclaiming liability for selling you to advertisers. Make no mistake, Facebook’s business model is grounded on surveillance. As you make your choices the algorithm watches you, “playing chess against your mind, seeing 50m moves ahead, figuring out, ‘What move can I play, that perfectly gets you to engage? the effect magnified by robotics that learn from your behaviour, endosymbiosis being an
integral part of that process. The idea that someone invisible is “telling you what to think and do” may seem preposterous, but far from it. From this point on, the invisible has entered into a visible kind of existence - or biochemical reaction in the brain - creating awareness and a sense of conscious compliance. So the addictive habit of conformity is being acquired. Which is the habit of forming addictions and dependencies on whosoever is controlling you remotely.  In the prophetic language of John 1:14: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”
The next stage of the con is crucial – individually tailored to each user and facilitated by associations made by the algorithms,  we’re beholden to the binary code that directs us!  Nor is daily attendance essential for cerebral mutations to take hold.
Both, Facebook and Google are boosting serotonin levels in your brain. But as your tolerance for ‘the drug’ increases and you start taking larger and larger doses, you develop dependency. Indeed, it is a biological fact that what is known as a bacteriophage will insinuate its DNA into a microorganism and then multiply until it takes over. For once transmitted  to the network, this particular ‘virus’ will survive indefinitely, gradually killing its host. This process was explained, earlier this year,  in a paper submitted to the American journal Epidemiology,[4] where researchers found not only mental and psychic exhaustion, but mounting levels of depression stemming from ‘engrams’ planted in your ‘reactive’ mind. It’s a classic case of infectious growth. A kind of  ‘superspreader,’ in other words, as in Steven Soderbergh’s 2011 medical thriller, Contagion, that can spread between continents like a flu pandemic, polluting those whose psychological immunity is already weakened, or
who are under some measure of psychological stress. A form of ‘social contagion,’ no less, well anticipated in The Host, a sci-fi drama in which a small group of humans try to avoid succumbing to ‘alien power sites’ that take over a host’s personality.
          In fact, a virus can multiply only by invading a host cell and taking over its biochemical functions, which is why ‘data-mining’ is an altogether inadequate expression to describe the designs against an entire society. Exploiting what Sean Parker, the former president of Facebook, called a “vulnerability in human psychology,” all the signs indicate that Facebook reshapes the brains of humans in much the same way, with billions of neurons culled and others building the new connections that turn individuals into subjects. But the sorry thing about all this is that you would never know it from the way brain cells can rewire and change patterns throughout your lifetime as a result of your experiences and how you accommodate them. So your memory  affects the neurology of your brain and the neurology impairs your judgment. Abandon the presumption of innocence for anyone recovering from Facebook. You may continue to function as an ordinary  human being, but nothing you can do or say will get it out of your system. It’ll enter you one way or another. Either by invading certain cells in your
immune system through those ubiquitous little “Like” buttons, or by directing  engrams to move to your brain where they are safe from antibodies and – while suggesting a cognitive ability to understand what benefits them -  even tell the critical faculties to shut down.
          Is there really more to say? Bacteriophages  may be  the “most prevalent biological” entities on the planet, but Google and Facebook, in one of the most contagious displays of neural collaboration, are spreading across the globe like an  invasive, parasitical infestation. Outpacing much of the prevailing legal precedent on cloning technologies, what we are now seeing in Europe, the United States and clearly also in the rest of the world,  is the slow, continuous evolution of random point mutations in the genetic code that may epigenetically alter the human genome, as well as the nature of human perception.





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[1] “Don’t worry about whether or not someone has your date of birth, worry about whether someone is watching you while you’re asleep.” Carl Leeming, convicted internet hacker.
[2] Axel Springer CEO, and Europe’s biggest newspaper publisher by circulation
[3] Fangs: the lightning rise of Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google. 29.04.2017
[4] See Facebook is watching you. The Sunday Times Magazine. 29.10.2017

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