The feverish chatter in the dorm rooms at Harvard had to involve women, applied mathematics, world domination, and beer pong not necessarily in that order, as the Mark Zuckerberg of formative years and fellow brainiac peers were intent on manufacturing their own noxious brand of cyclical Orwellian paradox.
In doing so, the group, benefited by the unwritten rules dictated by the precarious technocratic and student-athlete coexistence of the college campus environment, anointed the eggheads a certain prestige and protection reflecting the pecking order of social dynamics. A chillingly prophetic portrait of an attempted new world order of societal engineering predicated by haunting memories of awkwardness and social ineptitude, ferociously branded into the frequent play list of recurring damaging memories.
Has it really been that long, the fortitude and patience of online cowboys and cowgirls wearing squeamish thin in the presence of decorated exploitation? And it can’t even legally drive a car yet, unless the vehicle is of sentient and self-driving capabilities.
A decade and a half, 15 candles, and the largest social network in this obscure parsec of the galaxy celebrates a monumental birthday, reports the Verge, and the shear size and magnitude of the digital community continues to defy reality and morality in treating the privacy of account holders with the grace and decency of a dime street dealer working with customer relation strategies in servicing the immediate needs of a hopeless and aggressive band of car camping tweakers. Where does one send the presents to validate the birthday milestone?
The resolve of the corporate entity has been nothing short of miraculous as congressional hearings, plausible presidential election disruption involvement, the evolution of fake news and of course the presence of a deliberate directive to bury right leaning content with both human and AI induced bot algorithm methods, emanates from the Silicon Valley headquarters of the tech behemoth. Throw in the lucrative market for end user data and third party statistical analysis vendors perfecting advertising tactics, and how the company still attracts a loyal following is reflective of the willful ignorance of consumers, and a disturbing addiction to online interaction, and instant gratification, rather than experiencing the ebb and flow of real life.
With the omnipresent epidemic of cognitive dissonance, the complete absence of productive dialogue between the political factions of the US, eerily follows the F***book development timeline, first as an innovative interactive tool, and since morphing into a cultural force of destruction stewing in a nefarious cauldron of intrigue and unhindered and unimaginable borders, there is no limit to the impending social carnage. Thanks to the ingrained role of social networks viewed as forums for conversation and interaction, folks are under the delusion that snarky responses to posts are somehow akin to real dialogue and the amount of time spent wasted on electronic conversation streams exclusively benefits one side of the ideological ledger. As the ulterior motive of the platform is to disrupt, distract and to ultimately serve as a tool for the atonement of a regrettable past, the fracturing of the nation is simply a microcosm in the quest for ultimate power in shaping the modern world. However, this bold and strategic attempt at winning an epic King of the Mountain tournament in the survival of the fittest, is obscured by the glitz and glamour gallery of shimmering memes, images of babies, puppies, and beautiful people killing the collective short term memory, as logic, tolerance, and decency surrender to the snapshot of the last few seconds captured on the screen of a smartphone.
This FB Thread Captures The Intellectual Intrigue Of Productive Debate
The irony in the rigid oligarch world of online communities, is that the electricity requirements demanded by the bandwidth of digital photos, videos and music, is a challenging and daunting puzzle piece of the current energy grid in creating potentially serious issues that actually could evoke climate change, a subject not readily or enthusiastically discussed among the leading brass of the tech industry. Inclinations towards the Green Movement aside, the hypocrisy is both apparent and decadent in the stewardship of the digitally perfected modern iterations of cold and devious advertising agencies and political action committees posing as open forums for dialogue and interaction.
While Zuckerberg and cronies merely share the blame for a generation with their heads stuck in the sand of pixels and gaming, the concept of the smartphone rightly earns some harsh words for the regression of critical thinking skills and the decay of real life social decorum. The combination of the two technological marvels are horrifically adept at listening and learning, and while not yet targeting individuals, the campaign by the Chinese in perfecting surveillance technologies to maintain an iron clad Communist rule over a population should not be overlooked.
A Twitter Golden Nugget For Good Measure
Science fiction legendary author Arthur C. Clarke crafted a short story warning humanity of the pratfalls of technology developing faster than perspective and understanding in his eye opening plot of Dial F for Frankenstein. In Clarke’s work, the expansive hardware framework of the Ma Bell era phone system achieves consciousness and decides to destroy humankind. As the social network leaders have shown a strong aversion to managing their platforms, it is not a stretch that the incompetence and lack of comprehension could have detrimental effects that far exceed the mere Cambridge Analytica scandal and the scope of foreign rogue governments in playing digital politics. While the Left and the tech world continue the assault on free will, wouldn’t that be a shame if the F***book universe developed a personality of its own and decided the fate of the world based on data input from security preferences, friend requests, relentless selfies, and foreign nationalist duplicate accounts displaying the image of a fit goddess in a micro-bikini. No, nothing can go wrong here.
It is a painful endeavor to imagine just how communication between family and friends, and political dissidents will devolve over the next 15 years, as the existence of the internet morphs completely into a realm dominated by consumerism and social networks, while virtually all utility is erased from the repertoire. Laughing all the way to the bank and the cryptocurrency mill, the majority of the tech culture, haunted by repressed teenage memories, is content on shaping an ominous future as rulers of men.
Read the Verge story here.