I'm sure we've all seen the video of the little old ladies participating in the civil rights movement in Alabama and other southern US states, always facing the possibility of physical assault.  But they viewed what they were doing as a military mission, and accepted the risks.

Thanks for this reality check m'dear. I've always admired these Granny Freedom Fighters! They've definitely got some bodacious kahunas on them! ... or spirit, whichever way one would prefer to term it.

I was thinking about my post this morning as I was driving around. My problem is that my only intellectual line of defense about all the nanotech and those preparing to manipulate it, and my thought is so gosh darn simple that's is easily avoidable--What they're talking about doing is JUST NOT NATURAL! Not much of a defense, or expose, though it's probably the most pointed, it's just not natural. I get drawn between that thought and this other one, and this other one is apparently even less viable... if but only this technology could be used for the "good" and betterment of society, and not the power to manipulate society.

Now that I've taken a break, and I think a little more clearly about it, it's not about "saving" our society from this travesty, just you or me alone can't take back what TPTB have put into place, but with education at least more can be made aware, and we can never know how a collective awareness can change the shape of the future.

That's the important point.  No one expects you to be an Atlas and bear the weight of the whole world.  Just do your part to enlighten others within your own circles of people.  As they say, think globally, act locally.  Anyway don't take the state of the world personally, just figure out what part you can play and do it.

Imagine what it would be like if you were the ONLY one aware of what was really going on.   You could just give up right away, or be that first person to inspire a new way of thinking for all of humanity.  Luckily, of course, you don't have to do that, as there's millions of other people already wide awake or in the process of awakening.  Isn't that great?  So there's no excuse for giving up.  Throughout your days, focus your mind on what it is that you want to accomplish and then pursue that mission.  I'm sure we've all seen the video of the little old ladies participating in the civil rights movement in Alabama and other southern US states, always facing the possibility of physical assault.  But they viewed what they were doing as a military mission, and accepted the risks.  Today, trying to wake people up to what's going on is the same thing.  So, why waste time getting upset about it?  Look at it as a game, and shoot for the high score.  It's possible to have a lot of fun along the way.

Oh, I am very interested to read your work, you have been a "shining star" on this thread, and I am grateful beyond the right words to explain about how you've involved yourself to the awesome, insightful degree that you have... but I, and I'm not proud of myself for getting this way, had just become overwhelmed with the feeling like it's so far gone, already so ingrained into our future (TPTB seem to have competently put their ducks in a tight row on this one)... I began to feel it is a hopeless situation . My insidious, and really, really kwappy thought at the time was 'I'm older, I'm going to be dead before all this kwap comes down anyway'. As I said, I'm not proud of myself for my thoughts. Not at all.

I'm sorry, sorry that I've allowed the topic to make me feel such defeat... defeat is something I rarely feel, much less take to my heart as I had. I've had a post I was going to submit saved for so long, and just couldn't get over the feeling of 'what's it worth' (my thoughts' worth) to post it... what a pansy, eh? (rhetorical, I'm sure you're too generous of spirit to agree with me there) I even wanted to make a post about my feelings of defeat, but felt like such a doo-doo brain for letting it get to me that way that I couldn't.

Anyway, I will definitely read it and see how I may contribute... because you know what? Now that I've taken a break, and I think a little more clearly about it, it's not about "saving" our society from this travesty, just you or me alone can't take back what TPTB have put into place, but with education at least more can be made aware, and we can never know how a collective awareness can change the shape of the future... no doubt an uphill battle on the steepest of slope, but it's gotta be better than giving in and rolling over, and that's undoubtedly what I was doing.

You know, it's true, what they say about confession (confessing here my unsightly, ugly feelings) being good for the soul, I think I may be back on track now... nope, there's the hope I'm so used to embracing... I AM back on track now .

I would really like to gush over you some more, but it'd probably only serve to embarrass you. Please just know how much I truely appreciate you and your efforts czyx. In my "eye" you are a shining star.

BTW--just so you know, so you know "connectivity" is alive and well on NR, I wondered yesterday how you were coming along with your research, and Viola!, here's the reply this morning. I love it!

And if anybody else would like to chip in with some writing or editing, that would be great!

THE "NEED" FOR CONTROL

In the previous post I talked about some of the ways in which NBICS tech will introduce confusion. At the point where they converge, these technologies will completely destroy reality. Internally and externally there will no longer be any bedrock on which experience can stand. There will no longer be a "real" world or "real" humans, because all simulations will break free of their virtual constraints. According to the lines laid out in the paper, this will happen at five levels:

Nano - Perfect physical items of infinite variety will be manufactured at the nanoscale.
Bio - Existing biological entities will be reverse-engineered, and new ones will be built.
Info - Information will be ubiquitously stored and dispensed.
Cogno - Human cognition will be modeled and replicated.
Socio - Human social systems will be subordinate to all of the above.

In the new chaos, where everything is "alive" and infinitely transfigurable, there will step forward those who deign to provide order. They will "save" us from the confusion. They will control us with the new rules. As usual, these rules will exist only to protect the power structure of the ruling elite.

In one of his essays, Jean Baudrillard relates a mystical story by Jorge Luis Borges. In the story, a poet was commissioned to write a poem for a king about his castle. The king's castle was more splendid than any ever seen. There was no structure equal to it in design or assembly. The poet was brought to the king's court, and there he delivered a poem so brilliant that it matched the castle in both beauty and composition. When the poem was finished, such was it's perfection that the castle itself disappeared. The king had the poet killed.

In Borges' story, the symbolic has overtaken the real, canceling it out. Had the poet shown deference to the king and spoken a poem unequal to the castle, the castle would have remained standing and the poet wouldn't have been killed. Soon, the castle of traditional human existence will be annihilated by a poem of perfect technique. A new castle will be built. The new castle will be comprised of pure signifiers which point only to human knowledge of the physical world. Those of us who don't worship the castle will be a threat, because its "realness" will be derived entirely from the consent of the kingdom's subjects. If the vassals refuse to see the castle as anything more than a simulation, it will fade into all other simulations, and the ruling elite will have no power. So the elite will insist that the castle be treated as the only "real" thing in existence. It will "anchor" reality. It must not be questioned.

MEANS OF CONTROL

In the near future, "reality creators" will be the most dangerous criminals. In order for the castle of consensus reality to stand on the foundation of physical law, the "poets" who are privy to the knowledge of greater laws must be preemptively slaughtered or nullified. Either that, or their vocabularies must be greatly limited. Those who threaten the structures and stability of authorized reality will be the new terrorists.

In a world where nothing is as it seems, the activities and thoughts of the people must be carefully limited, because the slightest anomaly can cause everything to spin out of control. Looking at the quotes above, it appears that the excuse for biological surveillance of human beings (the collection of data on the functioning of individual human systems including the brain and mind) will be the threat of bio-terrorism. It will be argued that your body must become transparent to the authorities so that if it is ever compromised they can determine if its malfunctioning is part of a large-scale biological attack. The transparency of your body means the transparency of your brain. The transparency of your brain means the transparency of your mind--to the extent that the functioning of your mind can be determined from the neural activity of your brain. And as we saw earlier, Mr. Roco is calling for finer MRI and MRI-like techniques to extract this information, along with the "Human Cognome Project" to make sense of it.

Using nano-bio surveillance, those in power will be able to amass a great deal of information about individual minds and about society at large. I don't think that the nanoscale bio-surveillance systems will be introduced, implemented, or popularized by governmental organizations. Rather, I think they will arise out of the private sector in a seemingly organic fashion, then they will be co-opted by government agencies. Initially, these systems will be sold to us based on their "convenience" and/or forced upon us in the workplace due to their necessity as a condition of employment.

A crude model for the functioning of the hive mind exists right now in the form of instant messaging and chat rooms. It is this technology which will be expanded through the use of not one or two of the convergent technologies, but all five. Bio-reactive nanomachines present in the brain will sense synaptic events and transmit these events to cognitive software, which will convert the events into understandable information to be passed on to communications networks designed to encourage the most "productive" social interaction patterns. In order to "translate information between people who are separated by language", intelligent systems will mediate communications. Controls can and will shape these so-called communications at the interpretation and transmission stages.

The easiest way to control the thinking system of an unenlightened human being is to force his or her brain to function in and communicate through a medium whose structure you control. Subtly manipulating this medium by distorting or disallowing certain operations and transmissions will train any minds connected to the medium. The hive mind which the NBICS document envisions will of course operate through such a medium: a controlled network. This reminds me of what Carlos Castaneda was told by Don Juan when asked how the Predators gained control of their prey the humans. Don Juan said "They gave us their mind!"

The digital mind is based on the one/zero paradigm. Almost all esoteric systems remind us to transcend duality. The one/zero model is the ultimate in duality.

CORPORATE CONTROL

Corporate workplaces are already well-versed in controlling communications. Privacy is not an expectation for most workers. If you get caught sending inappropriate instant messages or emails, you may lose your job. Imagine being wired into a bio-cogno-info communications system at the workplace--one that monitors the biological functioning of your brain, interprets this functioning as cognitive content, and transmits this content in the form of information to other brains or systems for the purposes of doing business. How will "inappropriate" content be screened when minds are so intimately connected? It must be done by the addition of controls to the medium of transmission, (think of an ISP with built-in filters) and/or the language of interpretation (think of a dictionary with some words blacked out).

Once connected to a bio-cogno-info communications system, people will gladly accept thought controls in order to hide their secrets from coworkers. But of course the technology to which they are tethered will inevitably change them. It always does. People will internalize and identify with the thought controls they are subject to at work. As thoughts are channeled like electrical impulses through logic gates, they'll wear a "groove" out of which it will be hard to escape. The pattern of the groove will be determined by whichever restrictions corporate workplace filters impose on thought. Feedback loops and slow acclimatization will ensure that thoughts which are considered "off-limits" for company reps eventually become less and less evident in society at large.

Information is abused even now. Marketing companies purchase data about the buying habits of individuals from supermarkets. Law enforcement agencies collect names and addresses from pizza delivery restaurants. Political operatives use census data to subvert elections. The "shared brain scan resources" and "biological information captures" mentioned above are guaranteed to fall into the wrong hands. It's doubtful the information will be used for philanthropic purposes when there is power and money to be had.

As long as there are selfish people, there will always be an interest in elitism. Corporations are the current monoliths of elitism. If technology threatens to evenly distribute the knowledge and wealth, imbalance will be artificially produced in order to protect the elite and their power structures. Crucial information will be brokered, not shared. You will pay with time, money, or processing power. Self-expression will be limited--on and off of company time. Even now, people get into trouble for having personal blogs with content their employer does not approve of. When personal information makes the leap off of the internet and onto ubiquitous networks, corporations will crack down even harder on unauthorized expressions (words, pictures, videos, and other artifacts) produced by individual employees on the grounds that their behavior reflects poorly on the corporation.

SOCIAL CONTROL

What will the new lower class look like? We need only look at the forces acting upon today's children to get an idea. Already, in the area of education, "programmaticism" (to coin a word) is taking over. This refers to the desire by educators to program rather than to teach, and to submit themselves to programmatic instruction sets rather than to make decisions. It is evident not only in the way information and techniques are passed on from teachers to students, but also in the way administrators themselves function. They now wish to program their own reactions via policies in order to remove the human element from the administrative decision-making process. The trend toward "zero tolerance" discipline is the perfect example of this. Zero tolerance policies allow teachers and administration to wash their hands of involvement and mete out punishments without considering individual circumstances. Such policies are absurd and inhuman, but they conveniently absolve the administration of responsibility. All responsibility falls on the "system" with which no one can argue. Submission to programmatic control is the last refuge of incompetents who are utterly horrified by their inability to deal with reality.

The second example of a current programmatic trend in education is "Outcome Based Education", which basically means that anything goes as long as federal test scores are high enough. This encourages rote memorization rather than learning. It also encourages educators to become cheaters and cynical manipulators of the system, since test scores determine funding. It's simply more expedient to shift demographics around and to cheat on the final test than to actually educate. As NBICS technologies converge, children will have to become direct carriers of data in order to pass these tests. They will have no understanding of the meaning behind the data they carry. They will have no sense of the gravity or importance of any concept to the human soul, but they will be able to regurgitate symbolic descriptions of a multiplicity of concepts on command.

The third example of programmaticism in education is the confusion between the real and the virtual when it comes to tools of violence. Toy guns are considered just as dangerous as real guns. Even the invocation of the idea of a gun has become an infraction. An eight year-old boy was suspended a few years ago for pointing a piece of breaded chicken at someone else in a gun-like manner and saying the word "bang". This kind of reaction this boy elicited shows a desire on behalf of educators to program into students the idea that weapons themselves are bad, in order to get students never to use or attempt to use weapons. The idea is that this will decrease violence. It's a lot easier and simpler to attempt to delete the idea of the gun from the student's mental program than to investigate the meaning of violence and the (sometimes necessary) use of tools of violence by individuals. Again, it stems from incompetence and fear of culpability. Educators do not want to touch messy subjects like violence and morality. They desperately wish for a program to delete these ideas from the minds of the students so they'll never have to face them again. But this of course will not erase violence itself. Nor will it erase the existence of actual tools of violence. So who will have the option of using the tools of violence in the future. In what capacity will they wield these tools?

As NBICS technologies converge, fascist bio-castes will emerge. The bearers of the tools of violence will be the soldiers and police forces, who will probably be one and the same. Some bio-enhancements will simply be too "dangerous" for civilians to own, and so they will be made illegal in much the same way that automatic weapons are made illegal now.

Human civilians will co-exist with physical agents who are human in appearance and/or functioning only. In order for "human identity" to be "preserved", it must first be defined. The convergence of NBICS technologies means that there will be practically no way to tell the two "species" apart without thorough knowledge of each. The judgment as to who is human and who isn't may be decided by genealogy. If your consciousness has a history which can be traced back to a human who existed before the convergence, maybe that will be enough to earn you a "human" identity. In any event, the proliferation of false humans will require either complete removal of the concept of "murder" from the minds of the people, or a new definition of murder. In order for control to continue, a mix of both will probably emerge. The lower classes will be completely forbidden from killing, while the elite will reserve the right to kill based on their exclusive informational access. The lower classes will be told that they are not allowed to "kill" even a replicant or sentient AI system because there will be no way to distinguish said systems from human beings, since even "human" consciousnesses will be uploadable to machines. Because they do not have the authority to decide who is alive, the people will not be allowed the weapons to kill. Such enhancements will be strictly forbidden.

Police forces of the future will be enhanced not only with weapons systems, but also information retrieval systems. Officers will be given realtime access to personal information residing on and monitored by computer systems implanted in the bodies of the people. Rather than running your plates and checking your driver's license to see if there are any warrants out for your arrest, bio-enhanced cops of the future will just look at you. You'll be broadcasting an abundance of intimate data at all times. You'll be a walking swarm of historical and current personal data. At a glance, an officer will be able to tell how agitated you are, what substances are in your bloodstream, where you live, your arrest history, and more. He'll be able to form a threat assessment based on things like your political leanings, intelligence level, religious history, and financial rank. Rather than judging you by your clothing and skin color as cops do now, he'll judge you by the data you emit. How connected are you to the system and its important people? If you're a nobody, the cops won't help you. They won't waste their time. Rather, you'll be a prime target for a little fun--a little violence and torture the likes of which bullies have always enjoyed handing out to people they know can't fight back. And with informational access such as these officers will have, they will know with certainty who they can get away with attacking.

In addition to limited informational retrieval systems, the common man will also have implants of all types for medical and self-enhancement purposes. These implants will have interfaces for reading and writing data, and for control. They will be like the ring through the bull's nose. Once the men are welded to the machines, you only need to control the machines to control the men. They will have no choice but to follow. Crowd control of the future will be accomplished by direct stimulation of the pain centers through implant interfaces. Protestors will be brought to their knees without the use of a single billy club or fire hose.

ITEM SECURITY CONTROLS

As nanotech and biotech fabrication methods converge, control will become ever tighter and ever more conspicuous. Because items will be infinitely transfigurable, the corporations who used to make money selling items will switch to making money by selling the genetic codes and nanomachine instruction sets used to produce those items. Currently, in the area of software security, algorithms are used to create file hashes which show that the code within a given file has not been modified. A program reads the code contained in the file and applies a CRC, MD5, SHA1, or other algorithm to generate a string of numbers--called a "hash"--that identifies the composition of the file. If the file is changed at all, the hash changes. The creator of the file usually makes the original file hashes public so that end users can apply an algorithm to their version of the file and see if the hash matches. If it does, the file is clean. Items in the real world will need to have "known good" file hashes when scanned by security agents in order to prove that their genetic/nano codes have not been altered. This will be necessary because an unauthorized item could contain anything while still looking and functioning precisely like an authorized item. Your belongings will be routinely scanned to make sure that all their construction code hashes are legitimate. Otherwise, a weapon could be smuggled on board a plane in the shape of anything--a shoe, a media player, even a part of your body. Reassembly at the nano level could turn it back into a weapon.

PROPERTY CONTROLS

In addition to the question of whether something has been altered is the question of who is authorized to replicate it. This is a major area. It is the reason why copyright is such a big deal these days. In the future, nano-bio-info convergence will allow the cloning of any physical item. Right now, all we can clone are data files. The RIAA and MPAA want desperately to maintain their control over who has the right to clone "their" data. Without exclusive replication rights, the RIAA and MPAA are nothing. All they have to offer is an outmoded physical distribution method. They have become obsolete, because nobody needs to physically distribute media anymore--it's all digital. But still they push for favorable legislation that would remove replication rights from the people and place such rights squarely in the hands of corporations. This is not just about music and movies. It is about every single physical item of the future.

In the future, the physical existence of an item won't matter with regard to ownership. Physical items will be formed at will, in a manner similar to the operation of the "utility fog" mentioned in the NBICS paper. Physical items will be composed of a chemical and material sludge. The same sludge that goes into the assembly of a chair will go into that of an artificial heart. Nanomachines and/or biological factories will perform the actual fabrication on the spot, and stay for maintenance. There will be minor differences in the sludge, as some items will require ingredients that are more or less rare, but there will be a basic sludge from which all things are created. The question of ownership will be the question of replication rights, not discrete property rights. Do you have the right to assemble your sludge into a particular item? Have you purchased the rights to the code which defines the item? Are you paying your monthly subscription bill to maintain those rights? If not, you are a criminal. Your items will be decommissioned. Hopefully none of your items are necessary for the continuance of your life--such as that artificial heart I mentioned earlier.

Right now, DRM is a tactic used to prevent the unauthorized use of replicated data files. DRM stands for Digital Rights Management. If you have the Windows XP operating system, you already have a DRM-enabled media player. Windows Media Player creates and plays "protected" media files which will not work on a computer other than the one for which they are authorized. Currently, this is enforced via software controls. What Microsoft, IBM, Intel, and other companies want is to incorporate this kind of protection at the hardware level where it will be almost impossible to circumvent. There have been many names for this kind of hardware control, but "trusted computing" is the most prevalent. With the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, it was made a crime to circumvent such measures--hardware or software. Take these two developments--DRM/trusted computing, and the DMCA--and add a third: patented genes. In 1980, Dr. Ananda Chakrabarty was the first to get a patent for a living organism. Since then, thousands of similar patents have been filed. Food companies have patented seeds, oil companies have patented bacterium, and pharmaceutical companies have patented human genes.

What does this mean? In a world where NBICS technologies converge and computer-enabled nanomachines work with biological processes and genetic codes to construct items (living and non-living), the developments in the previous paragraph will make it a certainty that if you even try to make an unauthorized copy of such an item you will be punished. Technology and legislation like this means the continuance of current copyright profit models into the nano age at the expense of humanity. Rather than allowing people to use nanotech assembled items freely, corporations will force us to pay for the "fabrication rights" to each and every item--even when we own the raw material sludge from which the items will be fabricated. It will be quite a boon to the corporations, and it will ensure that there is poverty long into the future. After all, you need a hierarchy of misery in order to keep the lower classes at each other's throats as they attempt to secure the "good life" by buying your products. The "products" of the future will be nothing more the copyrighted codes used to generate everything from necessities like food and clothing, to luxuries like entertainment consoles and personal transports.

If you've kept an eye on copyright developments over the past few years, two evil organizations keep popping up: the RIAA and the MPAA. Right now, the RIAA is the worse of the two, having done such things as sue a twelve year-old girl for sharing copyrighted music on the Kazaa P2P program. The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America--an oligopoly of record companies and distributors) used to be headed by Hillary Rosen. She has gone on to write copyright law for the new Iraqi government. Pretty strange that copyright is such a high priority over there! You'd think we had better things to do than make sure the Iraqis don't copy CDs. But it's not about preventing music or movie piracy--it's about creating draconian copyright law that will be backed up by military police in an occupied territory where the people have no expectation of rights. It's about creating a model for copyright law and copyright law enforcement which will be carried over to the United States in the coming nanotech and biotech era. Guess who the new head of Anti-Piracy for the RIAA is? Bradley Buckles, former director of the ATF. That's right--the same bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms responsible for the massacre at Waco. Why choose this guy as their strongman? Because of his agency's history of success? Or because he'll have no problem siccing gun-toting ski-masked thugs on file-sharing teenagers? Something tells me it's the latter, and it's only the first step towards nano-bio copyright policing in the US.

At the point of NBICS convergence, corporations will become the new gods and the new law. They will be the givers of breath, the owners of the codes of life, and the guardians of civilization. They will derive their authority from the patents and copyrights they hold. Those people who break intellectual property laws will be called thieves. Traditionally, civilizations have outlawed theft because it creates a human victim. When you steal a physical item, it deprives the rightful owner of the use of the item. That person suffers because he or she cannot use their property while you have it. Cloning an item does not deprive the rightful owner of the use of the original item. Therefore, it is not theft. Despite this, the cloning of data files is currently being called theft by organizations like the RIAA and MPAA. This propaganda campaign is being waged in order to condition the public to believe that when you copy data without authorization you are necessarily depriving a deserving human of legitimate profit. But there is no proof, for instance, that the RIAA's profits have gone down with the rise of file-sharing. As a matter of fact, a Harvard study indicates that file sharing has no statistically significant effect on CD sales. Also, the RIAA's profits are becoming less and less legitimate as recording and distribution technology makes their organization obsolete.

These days, musicians can sell directly to the people. The people can decide how much the music is worth. Most people are not thieves. Even when opportunities for thievery are presented, most people will not take them. Most people want to make sure that when they hear good music or benefit from a good product that they have a way of providing recompense to a deserving party. If nanotech and biotech assembly codes were freely available, the great majority of people wouldn't stop paying those people whose work was responsible for the codes, just as the free availability of music files hasn't compelled the majority of people to stop paying musicians for CDs and concerts. But corporate propagandists would like you to think that all people are thieves at heart whose only deterrent is the law. They want to make sure laws are in place so that open-source biotech and nanotech never becomes a reality. Their laws will become more abstract until it is the possession and use of generative codes that will become illegal if not properly paid for. Any codes that could be used to threaten their power structure will be kept strictly off-limits, through legislation and exorbitant prices.

THE ELITE

In addition to the lower class and the police, there is also the upper class to consider. They will have the money and power to benefit from technologies that will be kept out of our reach. Primarily, I think it is immortality they want. They're going to use nano-bio technologies to keep their bodies and brains intact for as long as possible--maybe even forever. We only die of old age because the telomeres at the end of our chromosomes become too short. These telomeres get shorter every time their cell divides. Once they pass a certain threshold they tell their cell to die. If the telomeres can be lengthened, the cell should be able to keep dividing forever. Researchers at Stanford are using "nanocircles" to do just that. The nanocircles encourage the regrowth of telomeres using DNA polymerase enzyme as a building material. If a human body can be infused with nanomachines whose mission it is to deposit nanocircles and DNA polymerase where they are needed, and if the majority of telomeres are kept above the "cellular death signal" threshold, the body can live forever--barring disease and accidents.

A culture with an immortal (and unenlightened) populace will stagnate, especially in the areas of science and philosophy. The death of one generation of thinkers usually has to occur before the next generation's theories are accepted. If nobody dies, the same generation will remain entrenched forever. This is one reason for the elite to deny the lower classes immortality. Another reason for the elite to keep us dying is so that we can never gain a wide historical perspective. If people live forever, or for a very long time, there's a greater chance that they'll begin to see patterns in the way they are exploited. In time they may become resistant to the methods used by the elite to enslave them. This must be avoided if the elite wish to maintain power and control.

POLITICAL CONTROL

The paper indicates that the removal of internal political conflict is good, that wealth-creation is the most important political end, and that a rejection of political involvement by the people is to be desired. This is textbook fascism. What about when the "conflict" is over the government selling water rights to corporations, as in Bolivia in 2000? What if the "cynical commentary" is reporter Greg Palast exposing voter fraud in the last two presidential elections? What if the "common sense" is that of 70% of the people in 2003, who thought Saddam Hussein was linked to 9-11? The conflict and cynicism is due to a history of greed and oppression on the part of governments, not the personal shortcomings of the commentators. The ignorance of the people whose "common sense" the paper tells us to rely on is a product of the news media.  The "overly detailed style of political insider coverage" the quote disparages is simply nowhere to be found these days. American news is practically direct propaganda from the Pentagon, presented by TV personalities in short bursts of oversimplified "talking points". It isn't detailed at all. The quotation focuses also on wealth-creation, which in its fascistic context means consolidation and vertical integration of the most powerful business concerns, who then become monopolies. The businesses will swallow up their competitors and make their investors even more rich as their favored status with the government increases. The government develops intimate relationships with the businesses in order to gain more control over the people, to make more money, and to more efficiently fight enemies both internal and external.

I imagine the "reality crisis" introduced by NBICS convergence will be the one to involve people in politics again, but in a greatly limited capacity. The Hegelian dialectic will be used to cause people to beg for controls and rules, which they will fight over without ever questioning their underlying assumptions. They will think they are protecting reality and human identity by championing the new laws, but they won't ask which reality and whose identity.

CULTURAL CONTROL

Recorded art is a representation--of reality, of internal states, of truth, of many things. One interesting theory says that in a world of "whole" people, there is no need for recorded art because there is no need to "re-present" what is already there. Civilization (or "the fall from grace", or whatever it is that has resulted in our current situation) introduced a schism between us and the world. We try to fix or alleviate this situation by consuming representative art created by specialists in experiencing and evoking the temporary reintegration with reality. Most people today are not artists. If they were, there would be no need to compulsively record art because it would be omnipresent. If most people were fully integrated with reality, they wouldn't need the products of art because they wouldn't need to be reminded of anything or pointed anywhere. They would each be spontaneous artists. To include art as we currently understand it (as a function of the evolution of culture rather than a symptom of the devolution of human creative capacity) in a cognitive map might be a mistake. Such a map will be propagated throughout all thinking systems, (biological and artificial) cementing and reaffirming a flawed and limiting conception of one major aspect of human consciousness.

We live in a devolved state. Those of us with the slightest bit of wisdom realize just how crude and ignorant we really are. The trading of human personalities will freeze us in our devolved state. Research on "individual personality" will end up breaking people into types based on statistically likely behaviors in given circumstances. This quantitative way of building personalities will perfectly suit the commoditization of personality. A cornucopia of personalities will be available for use, all reproducible and all conducive to feedback loops whereby traits you don't have are injected and/or traits you do have are reaffirmed and strengthened. All this will happen according to the whims of those who define the personalities. Some personalities will be suppressed or ignored, especially if they promote "disorder". With everything so tightly integrated, disorder will be the main sign of mental illness. If your actions create disorder in the way your identified personality works, or in the greater social system, the powers that be will say "this system is based on research into the proper functioning of the human mind and society, and if you introduce disturbances it is you who must change, for your disorderliness proves you are ill."

BRAIN CONTROL

Once the possibility of brain damage is no longer a concern, the public will be more inclined to accept such implants. FDA approval for clinical trails with human subjects has already been granted for a variety of brain implants. Current chips interface with the brain to give and receive information. Outgoing commands (from the brain) are used to control computers, and incoming commands are used to carry information from sensors. Future generations of these chips will have onboard AI which can interpret thought to form language instead of interpreting commands to form letters which then form sentences. Future chips will also contain memory instead of transmitting simple sense impressions. We will be told they are safe because they will do little to the brain tissue--especially if the implantation procedure includes nanomachine helpers to perfectly repair any insertion damage. But the chips will do much damage to consciousness and identity. As the technology becomes more sophisticated, it will be increasingly difficult for chipped persons to tell the difference between organic and artificial mental functioning. Once the line disappears, perfect and undetectable mind control is possible.

The new transparency and interactivity of the brain will make virtual reality systems a part of our daily lives. It will be necessary to place controls on consensus reality in order to make sure that everyone is on the same page. The powers that be will be forced to distinguish between what is "real" and what is "fake", so that no one strays off into their own self-created worlds or falls prey to unauthorized worlds. I imagine an authorized "encyclopedia of the real" may be propagated by the ruling elite to keep the sheep in the same flock. The encyclopedia may be contained in read-only memory implanted in the brain at birth.

Members of the lower classes at the point of NBICS convergence may be subjected to reality manipulation for any number of reasons. Such manipulation could be used to get them to carry out dangerous or illegal tasks. When a person's brain is wired into an information system that gives as well as receives signals, the potential for abuse is huge. You could hack into a person's brain and distort their reality with certain signals. You could make that person see what is not there, and shoot a perceived attacker. Then you could have that person not see what is there and walk in front of a bus. You could turn anyone into a disposable assassin this way.

Parents could tap into their children's brains and spy on their thoughts. Christians might give their kids fake memories of miracles. There is a tradition in Christianity of the "pious lie" which it is ok to tell if the ends are justified. Fundamentalists would love to program their kids directly through such lies.

History could be rewritten quite easily, for groups or individuals. Maybe soldiers could be told grand lies about their superiority, like the Nazi superiority myths.

The above quote indicates that IBM has considered the benefits of human infant brain implants. Most likely these benefits will someday be highlighted in commercials aimed at parents who wish to offer their children a competitive edge in school and the workplace. Parents will be told that brain enhancement possibilities will be lost forever if they wait too long to chip their newborn. This reminds me of something Alan Watts said, which I'll paraphrase here: "A man born and raised in the presence of a certain noise that never abates, wavers, or changes in volume will call that noise 'silence'." A child with a brain whose functioning has always been given over to artificial manipulations will have no frame of reference for organic learning and willpower. He will never know mental struggle and achievement, just self-programming. He will be nothing more than an extension of the technology inside him. Its functioning will be what he calls his "self" because its unceasing operation has never allowed him to experience his true self.

It should be noted that Mr. Spohrer's employer IBM is a major investor in Applied Digital Solutions, the company responsible for the implantable VeriChip RFID tag. Many of these tags were injected into the bodies of Mexican governmental officials in July of 2004 by order of the federal government there. So, they are already introducing technology into the bodies of healthy people. IBM is infamous for having sold punch-card machines to the Nazis which were used to process data on concentration camp prisoners so they could be more efficiently transported, housed, fed, and killed. If there's money to be made in the service of tyranny, IBM will be first in line to assist the tyrants.

BODY CONTROL

In addition to control through false memory and perceptions, there is also the looming specter of direct bodily control of human beings.

This is one of the most horrifying methods of control, especially if you consider the fact that the subject may be conscious but completely unable to resist or communicate while under remote control. A remote-controlled person could be used to do anything. I imagine the most valuable kind of subject would be one who has a high-level security clearance with special access to weapons or information systems. Such a person's body could be commandeered and used to nuke a city or crash a vital network.

Remote-controlled actions could be used to physically destroy or torture a person. Political subversion could be accomplished by taking over an opponent's body during a key speech or debate. Some physical controls might even be voluntarily accepted. A control algorithm could take over for an executioner at the moment he has to throw the switch, so that he doesn't have to take responsibility for the killing. Controls could be placed on the body of a person who has entered a contract to be a personal walking advertisement for a product, inducing him to mention the product in conversation a certain number of times each day. Controls could be placed on schoolchildren with the permission of their parents, supressing any disruptive behavior while they're in class. The possibilities for abuse are endless.

Thank you Ferit for taking the time to address my question.

Ferit? Are you a analytical chemist? I knew you were educated, but I don't remember in what areas...

Hmmmm... What do you think about nanotech? The hive-mind concept?... whether you're a chemist or not. Or do you have any thoughts about it at all? 

... just when you have some time, okay?

Hi Audenove,

Not an easy question. I can't automatically say nanotechnology and hive mind maybe evil. But I can't look into these subjects as a rebirth or gift. Some of my good friends (whose minds are really sharp) are very excited about the chip-computer thing. I am not. First I'll check all the sources you and others have wrote here in this thread.

We were working on DNA-sensors with my group in analytical chemistry and although that was about health (for example a project about an implant for parkinson disease releasing dopamin to the brain) I didn't like the concepts of the study. Implants from aliens and/or government are totally unknown subject here in Turkey (wait, only as a part of x-files episode) so people have no problem thinking that nanotechnology is "rrreally great".

As OP's may be a part of hive-mind, I think one has to be vigilant about these concepts.

Ferit

http://www.larta.org/research/archive.asp#nano

Nanotechnology

President Signs $3.7 Billion Nanotechnology Act (Larta VOX 12/08/03)
Small Science Has Big Opportunities (Larta VOX 10/27/03)
Rohit Shukla Interviewed on Nanotechnology (Larta VOX 10/27/03)
Japan Meets the Nano Republic III (Conference 10/16/03)
Nanotechnology Flourishes in Japan (Larta VOX 10/06/03)
Nano Tech Talk with Dr. Michael T. Gamble Larta VOX 8/11/03)
Nanotechnology: What to Expect (White Paper 7/25/03)
Nano Republic Award Winners (Larta VOX 7/21/03)
Nano Republic Conference 2003(Conference 7/10/03)
Japan Meets the Nano Republic II (Conference 10/24/02)
Nano Republic Conference 2002 (Conference 7/17/02
Top 10 Nanotechnology Companies (Larta VOX 7/15/02)
Building the Nano Republic (Report 7/8/02)
Tracking the Nano Evolution (Larta VOX 6/24/02)
The Moving Market: Nanotechnology (Larta VOX 3/25/02)
Navigating Through the Nano Hype (Larta VOX 2/11/02)
Nanotechnology Yellow Pages: Industry Report and Directory (Report 7/25/01)
Fortress Nano (Larta VOX 9/10/01)
Huckstering and History (Larta VOX 9/10/01)
No Small Business (Larta VOX 9/10/01)
Larta Announces the Nanotechnology Yellow Pages (Larta VOX 6/29/01)

Seems like a Brave New World too me.

The direction in which this new technology aims to take us is pure schizophrenia. Take a look at this picture, which comes straight out of the National Science Foundation/Department of Commerce report on Converging Technologies for Human Performance:

That's right, talking lights. If you walked around today telling people there was a government sponsored plan to get the lightbulbs to start talking, it wouldn't be too long before you'd be thrown in the looney bin.

The paper presents the talking lights as being triggered by a handheld device, but I seriously doubt that's how it's going to happen. If current trends continue, the messages embedded in items in public places are going to force themselves on you, and they're going to have corporate sponsors. They'll consist of personalized information preceeded by advertisements. They'll be beamed into your earpiece or audio implant as you walk by so that you can't tune them out. Maybe the tech-saavy people with the audio equivalent of Steve Mann's cybernetic adblockers will escape these messages, but most won't.

I can imagine a social worker of the future trying to deal with a schizophrenic homeless person : "What are the lightbulbs telling you? Are they trying to sell you something? If they're not trying to sell you something, don't listen to them--they're only hallucinations!"

Data will assault us from all directions. Every person will overflow with information:

Every place will overflow with information:

Every thing will overflow with information:

These persons, places, and things will deliver their information in such a way as to play on our emotions, predilictions, and pre-conceived notions. Fear, love, hatred, sexuality, pathology, family history, tastes, likes, dislikes, memories, etc.--all these things will be fair game for information-transmitting artificial intelligences in the employ of individuals, corporations, and governments. Before intelligent artifacts can effectively wield these psychological weapons, they must first convince us of their humanity. To better understand how to exploit our weakness for empathizing with "living" creatures, they are even interviewing children on the subject of aliveness:

The prevailing thought in this document is that wherever information is transmitted to human beings it should be done by an ostensibly "living" intelligence. The proposed "Human Cognome Project" will map the cognitive features of the mind in order to replicate these features in the conscious functioning of artificial intelligences. Acting on this and other information--gained from such sources as the MIT children's interviews--corporations will make their items as compellingly "human" as possible.

You can look around the room you're in right now and think about the history, fabrication techniques, composition, and manufacturers of the consumer items surrounding you in order to imagine the kind of information that will be some day be embedded in them. Now imagine these items presenting you this information in such a way as to make you feel for them, care for them, want to talk to them, want their input. Now imagine the slant with which they'll preset this information. These nano-info-cogno items will be loyal to their manufacturers, and their manufacturer's interests. They will try to get you to be interested in other products that their manufacturers make. They will have access to marketing data that will inform them as to how they should craft their sales pitches based on your personality type. So not only will they tailor their messages to you, but they'll attempt to mold you into the type of consumer their manufacturers desire, just as commercials do today. The preferred method has long been the infusion of doubt, anxiety, and insecurity. Maybe one day you'll have passive/aggressive socks which make fun of you for having smelly feet! They'll tell you that you deserve better and they'll subtly insult you until you discard them for more expensive bacteria-killing socks from the same manufacturer--socks that just so happen to be a bit friendlier, with a better attitude! I'm grinning as I write this because it's so absurd, but with the technology in place, why wouldn't it happen? Marketing agencies would love it.

Even legitimate consciousnesses will be injected into physical artifacts, for communication purposes:

You can think of this as a phsyical version of the instant messenger programs like AIM, MSN Messenger, or ICQ. Except not only will you receive a whole range of sense impressions, you'll be able to transmit them via a physical agent on the scene:

If you couple these two possibilities together, (telepresence and utility fog) then you could send a representation of your body anywhere. What a leap forward in the Organic Portal strategy! Even more fake humans!

You'll get to send your physical agent out to meet with people, but you'll be able to modify that agent with the traits you wish you had. It will be you in appearance, but augmented by info-cogno-socio systems that make it more knowledgeable, intelligent, and sociable than yourself. It will even be more physically attractive than you, more symetrical and unblemished. It will be more you than you. It may not even need to be recognizably human! Today many people misrepresent themselves on instant messenger programs and internet forums in ways they wouldn't be able to get away with in real life, puffing themselves up to feed their pride. With this technology in place, they will be able to get away with it in real life, further eroding the confidence we hold in each other.

How insane is that? In such a world, where every person may be an artifact, where every artifact may be a temporary construct, and where every construct is bursting at the seams with information and clawing at us to be recognized as conscious and aware, what's the difference between a normal person and a paranoid schizophrenic? Back in 1977 the "Son of Sam" killer, David Berkowitz, claimed his neighbor's dog was commanding him to kill. It was a plainly crazy idea. In the future it won't sound so crazy. It'll be downright plausible.

Here is one mistake from which these horrors arise, the primacy of matter:

Increasing functional brain imaging resolution in order to finally "get at" the mind is going to give the material body (of which the brain is a part) complete primacy. What we are doing with this technology is subjugating the emotions, the intellect, and the soul to the rules which govern the construction of the body--to the extent that we are able to discern such rules. The body is designed to be functional, efficient, effective, attractive, and sensual. It was born to be a slave: to matter, to time, to space, to the sensory impressions it receives, but most of all, to the soul. Unfortunately, the soul has been its slave for too long, having forgotten its own nature. At this point in time, many people are realizing this. They are striving for freedom. The system is responding: it is offering us a distracting simulation of freedom by fracturing into more bodies, more selves, more others, and handing them over to our control. This still isn't freedom. It still does not allow us to realize our true nature. It is only a stopgap measure to prevent our revolt. We cannot submit long to the rules a slave follows, because we were never created to be slaves. We are fragments of the living God. This "explosion of bodies" is designed to present us with a smorgasbord of strange new entities to inhabit and interact with. But while all the items on the menu are beautiful and attractive, they have no nutritious qualities. They are all made from the same empty material.

NBICS trends mistake signs for territory. The brain shows certain signs in conjunction with certain states and thoughts, and they mistake the brain's activity for the actual states and thoughts. This is a classic mistake that all esoteric systems have sought to free people from. It has been expressed in the saying, "Do not stare at the finger which is pointing at the moon."

These convergent technologies will weld together a model of the popularly known physical world with a model of the popularly known conscious world. This beast will be called the "new reality". A multiplicity of traps will be set whereby items lay claim to consciousness, each item straining and struggling to be recognized as alive. A hall of mirrors will spring into existence where everything responds to you by adapting to you. This will introduce mass schizophrenia which will be called the "new consciousness". Those who submit will become completely unmoored. Every situation will effectively become a simulation, because there will be no discernable difference between the real and the simulated. In response to this crisis, it seems to me that a strict set of rules will have to be introduced. These rules will dictate what is real and what is not, what is alive and what is not, what is good and what is evil. A new software code will be written for reality. This is the birth of another ring of hell. We are designing an invisible, seamless, hermetically sealed prison for ourselves, so that we can be tiny gods inside a box slightly smaller than the one we currently inhabit. It's a self-delusional gambit. It is the opposite of transcendence. I'll talk about this prison in my next post.

Ferit? Are you a analytical chemist? I knew you were educated, but I don't remember in what areas...

Hmmmm... What do you think about nanotech? The hive-mind concept?... whether you're a chemist or not. Or do you have any thoughts about it at all? 

... just when you have some time, okay?

As well (hopefully Feritciva will see this)--

Ferit,

What about in your country Turkey? What do your people know about nanotech?

Hi Auendove,

Sorry, I was away (as usual) from my computer for some time, so I didnot have the chance to see your message before.

There are people in universities (also includes my ex-research team in analytical chemistry department) and in private sector who are interested in this subject.

As for the public, I can't say nanotech is a popular subject in Turkey, sometimes you can see an article about this in a mainstream magazine or newspaper but that's all.

Ferit

The source says that politicians are looking to collaborate more with other European countries to be able to "compete" with the US.

Yeah, and the US is looking to compete with all others for revenue, this I've read a few different times in my research.

Everybody wants to be in the lead on the cutting edge... the only thing is, what creates or holds up that edge is all the masses of people, and they don't see whose standing on their shoulders trying to turn a $1 trillion dollar buck (like the US) at their expense, the expense maybe ending up to be about more than just money.

Openly? Well sometimes newspapers do some propaganda on the wonders and "hopes" of nanotechnology and that's about it. We're well "protected" from any kind of info which could raise issues, and this is probably "necessary" since Switzerland seems pretty active on this field and has invested a lot of money.

According to one source there was, in 2002, 216 swiss nano/biotechnology companies, not counting the two big universities (which have made biotechnology one of their prime goal of research) and the major pharmacology companies (Novartis, Roche, etc) which are also very active in that domain... The source says that politicians are looking to collaborate more with other European countries to be able to "compete" with the US.

Ferit,

What about in your country Turkey? What do your people know about nanotech?