The most extensive social media conglomeration within a parsec sphere of earth and determined by the obsolete and two decade scrap heap of the internal workings of the Hubble telescope decadently funded by tax payers, is on the brink of oblivion. At least until a corporatized team somewhere amid the vapid and stagnant Silicon Valley catacombs invents a ridiculous legend to throw the feds and motivated dissenters off the billion dollar trail by manufacturing subversive incredulity and unsustainable mistruths. Not even a mind meld with Kim Philby could echo such a meticulous performance of devious espionage and disinformation established using the resources of a group think brainstorming conference room swarming with idealistic and overqualified millennials conjuring elements of Turing and Feynman, an ample supply of energy drink ambrosia, and a dart board mentality scrapping probability theory.
Within the nano attention span characteristics of a virtually non-existent news cycle, the surreal nature of the overlord phase of the information completely wipes the human memory slate clean on a relentless cycle feeding deceptively fresh content to the masses, only to be replaced by the next latest and greatest structured entity of text or multimedia defining the industrial mechanism of instant gratification. An almost pristine ledger of digital past does exist within the electricity hoarding servers forming the entire background of what can be conceived as a massive conscience, however one actually has to care about accessing what happened 15 seconds or 2 years ago to achieve at least a basic level of accountability. It is within this crazy environment that F***book and the other massive tech consortiums can flourish by ignoring all the basic tenets which apply to business ethics and customer relations, that and of course the virtually limitless funds available when battling the legal systems and governments attempting regulations or vying for the monopoly route. With the raspy screams and junk information introduced into the digital political sphere influenced by rogue organizations, or the campaign by Hollywood to divide the country, the insufferable pontification headlined by Bette Midler among others, transforms the optimistic future musical of the electronic age, into a mawkish production of nasally whining virtual signals and identity politics brainwashing the collective device user base under the age of 35.
The tech giants simply get away with it, because they can, and the inability to induce any sense of accountability through reasonable measures is met with staunch resistance. Mark Zuckerberg and cronies keep changing the rules and the rules that dictate the rules, a notion that does not make the billionaire very popular as a neighbor, or as a plus one party guest. In recent weeks, certain individuals close to the social network emperor have come forward with biting criticism as to the handling of sensitive data and privacy concerns, only to be rebuked by the pathway of brilliance and resiliency proliferation from the room full of prized scholarly pigs and with cultural domination on their minds. An original nemesis of Zuckerberg chose to air his wariness for the F***book empire straight to politicians in the UK, reports the BBC, as a sub-committee of parliament members listened with vested interest by executing a productive distraction from the cluster flub hysteria of the Trump visit to London and effectively dodging the group think protest sign deluge of pure unjustifiable 5 minutes of hate in the relative comfort of the government chambers. (Why don’t the demonstrators let the tech industry have it for products based on lies and hypocrisy?) Ironically, many of the concerns shared by Aaron Greenspan were based on the unmanageable galactic size of the platform leading directly to the spread of propaganda and fake news, data breaches and other critical issues, as a result of ineffectual or listless moderation efforts.
The complete lack of institutional control in failing to competently manage the impossible magnitude of the network also led to crossing the line in the practicing shady business tactics according to Greenspan, who is not related to the famous Alan of economic dogma authority, as the results tracking the success of advertising buys were calculated with junk data. But in scenario beyond the comprehension of the individual, he who holds the keys to the servers can augment perception and thus perpetuate a derivative of truth in spinning the narrative customized to fit the budget of any business.
Disturbingly, Greenspan believes that Zuckerberg heedlessly ignored initial warning signs after the inception of the network pointing to potential security threats and holes the firewall, underlying and fundamental flaws in the programming infrastructure that still exist and plague the integrity of the network. The metaphor of allowing a child to go biking virtually unsupervised on a $1500 mountain bike with unreliable breaks is a completely fair parallel for the apparent actions of the social media Czar in blatantly sweeping known issues under the Turing engine rug.
With the bot infusion and viral of explosion of unverifiable accounts linked to a wall of servers in a North Korean bunker abutting the DMZ zone, how many human account holders other than “real” family members and friends are still actually quantitatively interacting through a vast array of devices and laptops? Hopefully, the number of subscribers is dwindling fast thanks to the public testimony of Greenspan and others, as the company faces antitrust sanctions and financial penalties, but at a sustainable cost. The putrid, yet ridiculously lucrative reputation Zuckerberg alone should be enough to cause spontaneous eye vomiting and a piercing jolt of envy, in driving away users.
As the techie words embedded in an obscure San Jose overgrown lot read, “A self-driving Tesla vehicle is still worthy of a crash test dummy level city and suburban performance of carnage, even with a moderate dent on the passenger side door.”
At least there is comfort to knowing that really smart and geeky people share a distaste for Zuckerberg’s legendary passive snarkiness and aversion to ingenuitive professionalism and stewardship, a burgeoning hate that can be enjoyed as a fine Scotch.
Read the BBC story here.
Within the interesting thought experiment of degrees of separation, economist Alan Greenspan contributed to the great Ayn Rand and her series of essays in the compilation Capitalism: The Unknown Truth, a title that it is fair to say, is not on the contemporary recommended readings list at higher institutions of learning. Unfortunately, this supports the insanity that the younger generations engage in when falling to the trap of believing everything they see and read as it comes down their electronic news feed with heads buried in the screen.
Accountable and innovative search engine Duckduckgo.com helped power this editorial.