[Script] The Sins of Silicon Valley - Act 1, Scene 3

 Scene 3 - Petty Little Frankensteins - Digital Immortality

Images of Upload, USS Mccalister, Caprica

VO: A popular show on Prime shows what would happen if one of the .coms got ahold of the afterlife and mimicked people.   Another popular episode of Black Mirror shows what would happen if a Tech Bro was able to upload the minds of his coworkers.  Caprica shows a digital duplicate made from social media and internet footprints inhabiting the minds of the Cylons.

Images of children, racial abuse, and social media abuse

VO: That sounds like science fiction, right? And yet we know that the algorithms that social media and major tech companies show racist bias, sexist bias, create addiction in children and that self regulation has totally failed with these companies.  If they could create a world where they could upload our minds into their nightmare dystopia would they hesitate?

Images of Neuralink

VO: The barrier between mind and machine are breaking down,  Right now, we have technology that allows mechanical apparatus to be controlled with the mind.  Its true, that to create the human mind in the internet might require technologies that we dont have access to right now including processing speed.

Images of the human brain

VO: Indeed, the human mind is something we don’t entirely understand.  Some physicists believe there might be a quantum element to our decision making.  But

Images of Quantum Computers

VO: Quantum mechanics is a field we make breakthroughs in every day.  We’re constantly learning.   Think about life before smart phones and after smart phones.  Think about the difference between the 70’s and 80s.  Technology grows very fast, and we could find that the technology for digital immortality creeps up on us faster than the abilities of laws and regulators to adapt to it.

Image of Congress and EU investigating the tech companies

VO: Indeed, it has taken 20 years for Europe to finally catch up to the most flagrant market abuses of Silicon Valley.  And it has the constitutional mechanisms permitting it to do so.  Corruption and Regulatory capture have rendered United States responses pitiful by comparison.  If you think Social Media manipulation, disinformation and addiction is bed

Images of the human soul, purgatory, hell, torture

VO: What would happen if the tech companies could control and duplicate your mind in an environment that they could control? What would they do?