OK Computer, God, and Going Forward

Saturday, 04 April 2009 00:14 Kommentator
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Luddites we are not

Technology is a means.  Never, under any circumstance, can we permit technology to become an end.  Whether personal existential emergency or public cataclysmic panic, no moment grants to technology the right to triumph over thinking.  This is an axiom steeped in the day to day final rehearsal that is real life.  Because so very many of our friends and family have been infected with the confusion, your own stand against “Technology as a God,” is demanded.  The scope of the disease is extensive because the number of voyeurs has grown like some recursive virus expanding exponentially.  In this sense, the voyeurs themselves have “gone viral.”  Please, do not misread what we are saying.  Let us pause a bit here, in the name of understanding, and get technology right.

It is essentially pointless, wasteful, and dangerous to rail against technology per se for two simple reasons. 

1. Technology can not fight back.
2. Technology is only a mirror image of us.

To take up arms against the defenseless is pure cowardice with a touch of sadism.  In fact, technology needs THOUGHTFUL care and attention.  As a reflection of us, raging against the machines is suicidal.  We are neither cowards nor suicidal.  So let it be understood, Luddites we are not.

Technology as a God

For the voyeur technology has become the absolute end.  The voyeur salvation is INFORMATION NIRVANA.  This obliteration of self and consequent relinquishing of control is obtained by voyeur adherents of varying sects. 

The Pontiffs who have blind faith and serve as leaders in the voyeur temple.
The Nihilists who have hatred for both independent thought and themselves.
The Cynics who have contempt for Truth and Knowledge.
The Confused who have devoted no time to thinking about thinking.
The Total Voyeurs who actually have undergone a Great Becoming, a fusion of man with machine, a metamorphosis (the technological devices are part and parcel of their being, at all times, excepting, we hope, when attending to fundamental matters of hygiene).

These sects are, of course, constructs which, when put into operation reveal that any given voyeur can be a bit of each to differing extents.

The voyeurs inability or unwillingness to seize control over their own thinking, the very thing which produces the SELF ITSELF, constitutes the critical existential dilemma.  Please, voyeurs, hear me.  If you truly desire to be controlled from without, we have the society and culture for you already, independent of your information nirvana.  Your abdication of self merely makes the herding that much easier for the regime of banality which seeks to pacify society.

ReduxMatters Reason for Being

The creation of ReduxMatters is a self conscious act of reclaiming the once great high ground of independent thinking.  This reclaiming is a twofold process.  In the first movement, we must identify, coalesce, and empower those who care deeply about independent thinking.  In the second movement, a battle must be waged against the voyeurs.  No violence.  Machines will not be set ablaze.  The battle is for the liberation of the voyeurs from their perverse Messiah’s pleasure. 

You are invited to enter the fray.


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Last Updated ( Saturday, 04 April 2009 04:20 )  

Comments  

 
#17 New Infinitesimal Time 2009-04-07 15:16 Lastly, we have always lacked security in our ability to act rational – as I referenced before, emotions function quite irrationally and because we are human it is only our nature. But let me leave you with this as I posted before, why learn? What is the importance? Personal interest, because then knowledge and information is trivial. If it is progress…why invest any time in anything but pure sciences (i.e. biology, astrophysics, chemisty, etc.)?
 
 
#16 New Infinitesimal Time 2009-04-07 15:16 As far as acting rationally, the irrational state (mind you – haha!) is just as important to humans. Breaking down responses and rationally retorting is quite common sense in my opinion, though complexities of each topic vary. The issue is that nowadays we have so many specialists that arguing about a specific topic may not “compute” with the other person’s accumulated knowledge. Therefore, the basis of analyzing that area of information is moot. Also, rationality is completely subjective (just to add), when viewing from society’s perspective even geniuses appear irrational. This is because they conceptualize higher levels of knowledge in their “specified” field. The source of the problem is interest swollen into the minds of the “common man”. It is misplaced. Everyone has the ability to learn just as much as someone else, but not everyone is meant to learn the same thing perhaps, or for that matter even wants to.
 
 
#15 New Infinitesimal Time 2009-04-07 15:15 Clarifying myself haha…I have no problem with emotions. Merely, its distraction with human progress is devastating. I love my emotions, but in the age of “screens” they serve relatively little purpose, which, in regards to technology, helps present logical points and arguments easier so that people can dispute said points and arguments, just as we are now. Oral tradition was an analog period of communication as opposed to the digital technology existing in today’s new generation. This transitional time period and its inhabitants have trouble separating facts from fiction now because of the recent change. However, I believe eventually pupils will discern necessary and valuable meaning from accredited sources digitally as they do with books in curriculums now.
 
 
#14 New Infinitesimal Time 2009-04-07 15:15 I understand your point with the whole European reference, but again the emotional factor must be taken into account. Your right that technology is not the problem because human emotion is. The human brain never was meant to accept inferiority on a broad scale; modest individuals may be a counter, because of its addictive nature to stimulate certain chemicals in the brain. These chemicals acting off the reward-system compose our emotions and personalities, which function quite irrationally. Exploring the past, when humans are pushed into a situation where they must bow down to a [technologicall y] supreme culture, they rebel. Presumably, AI bots would not operate under such a primitive nature as it would constitute the very nature they were created not to become.
 
 
#13 New Infinitesimal Time 2009-04-07 15:14 :) Tierra, I will clarify certain points I made previously, but as a whole I do agree with many of what you had to say. Tragically we do not live in a creator-supporter system, the flaws and complexity cannot cope with such a utopian concept. Here we go. Firstly, I do not wish to solve the problem of emotions in any way as a fundamental human error, haha! Rather, I wish to reflect on its significant inconvenience (progressively) in our brains as a means to understand the creation and superiority of AI.
 
 
#12 tierra 2009-04-07 08:11 Its the way we use our screens (our dependence on them) that makes this civilization different. We've lost a sense of community and now we exist in a web of quid-pro-quo networks, connected by cyberspace & telephone poles & satellites so we never have to have an oral tradition, so we never have to look our neighbors in the eye and solve problems together according to local nuances. We've separated ourselves from our own emotions, we're too afraid to disagree with facts and figures if an official name is attached to the title page. We're afraid of articulating individualized responses to issues and we've lost security in our own ability to act rationally.
 
 
#11 tierra 2009-04-07 08:10 Referring back to your first post, and your assessment of technology's role in the collapse of civilizations, this technology may not be different but the way we use it is. Technology itself isn't the problem, it is after all, only a reflection of the culture: the Cree Indians used European guns - technology - in the bush of Canada without annihilating the animals and the ecosystem they depended on, whereas European hunters used the same guns to precipitate the extinction of countless species across North America.
 
 
#10 tierra 2009-04-07 08:09 You identify emotions as a limiting variable in the linear function of some general idea of "progress" but our attempts (as a society) to remove emotion from thinking, indeed, our attempts to remove the visceral realities of our reactions from our daily lives or from our concept of knowledge is dangerous. I agree with you that humanity is not the culmination of an evolutionary trajectory that reached its climax with our appearance, but this culture (the culture that produces the screens & the voyeurs who depend on them) seeks to isolate humanity from a greater living community because we perceive ourselves to be *more* something. But the creator/supporter model exists in a broader frame as well & evolution is not linear when we look at the scope of our home, here.
 
 
#9 tierra 2009-04-07 08:08 The create/support system can exist when we recognize the diversity of contributions that can be made, when we start acknowledging the true impact of some of these creations and when we stop valuing them for some conceived convenience defined in capitalistic "short terms" and "growth rates", "efficiencies" and dollar values. We impose destructive hierarchies on creations that preclude communities of potential creators and supporters from developing their own responses or their own creations or their own support systems. Information is not the same as knowledge, as you insinuate in your third post, and knowledge isn't the same for everyone & thinking occurs on many different levels with many different emotional inputs.
 
 
#8 tierra 2009-04-07 08:07 to new infinitesimal time - regarding your point about maintaining a "supporter/creator" system: That is a linear construct for a society. It seems to me that you're defending a society wherein the masses are supporters and the few are creators, where an equality of exchange does not exist. For we are interdependent beings and the create/support model must exist; but what we have now, with a consumer culture & the comatose consumption of facts & figures from the troughs of our screens is not knowledge nor is that organization (spiritually/physically/morally/ecologically) sustainable.
 

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