Emmit's Corner - Ghost Fighters in the Sky

Maybe a Miracle, Burn the World, It Almost Happened Here, Ode to Twitter Support, Here Eyes Are Obsolete, Ghost Fighters in the Sky, Poor Hobo Joe, Fiddling With The Devil

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[Script] The Sins of Silicon Valley - Act 1, Scene 8 (Continued)

 [Images of Bezos, Musk and others brazen displays of wealth including mansions etc]

VO: When computers went mainstream in the 80’s, Wall Street made a lot of money.  When the internet came along in the 90’s, they made a lot more money.  When smart phones and social media came on board in the new millennium, they made obscene amounts of money.  As the valley moves fast and breaks things, old obsolete ways of doing business are set by the wayside but they expect the government (ie us, the public) to clean up the damage.  Sound familiar?

[Images of Cocaine Cowboys and the Wolf of Wallstreet]

VO: When the technology companies exist to exploit people for the 1%, then you end up with massive exploitation where citizens are the product.  The greatest gains with risky short cuts end up causing massive damage with little thought for the consequences.

[Images of Global Warming and Climate Change]

VO: Sound familiar? Oil companies rape the planet for its natural resources, knowing forty years ahead of almost everyone else how much damage they are doing and just like Big Tabaco they deny deny deny and buy congress.  The tech companies love to project an image of slick glass, gleaming consoles and social responsibility with progressive internal policies and carbon neutral data centers.

[Image of Pinocchio]

VO: But…it's kind of a lie.  As said, the tech companies do do a lot of good, make a lot of lives better, but they conspired together to keep the pay of their employees low and prevent them from unioninzing.  And while it is wonderful that their data centers are carbon neutral, there is still a carbon cost for the use they cause and the products they make.  So much good and so much cost.  

[Images of Technoutopia]

VO: One of the worst problems of all is the steady rate of robotization.  These technologies will slowly take more and more people’s jobs, jobs that many thought impossible to automate like managers, financial advisors, artists, writers and many more.  The very definition of human labor is going to change, and what solution do the dark lords of the valley propose?  Universal Basic Income.  But they fight unionization tooth and nail.

[Images of Billionare Boondoggles]

VO: No, the worst problem of all is the obscene wealth these miracles create and how disconnected they are from what people need.  Inflation, unemployment, fascism, depression, addiction, incitement to violence and the breakage of family and friends.  Rockets, planes, trains, drill machine, cave submarines, cars, flying cars, cars in space….nothing is wrong with having a dream and making it happen…

[Images of Ivory Towers]

VO: But like something out of a fantasy novel, they sit in their ivory towers, craftering wonders and dispersing them like cake to the plebians below.  And this disconnect is toxic and the temptation for more and more wealth disconnects them even more; what happens when their wonders lead to even more dangerous technologies like sapient digital intelligence, scalable nanotechnology, or a mind machine interface that can write to and therefore redefine the human mind?

Swamp Castle - Derpgod

A worm is spared by a normal human but the worm turns and helps the human, albiet extremely reluctantly.

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[Script] The Sins of Silicon Valley - Act 1, Scene 8

 [Images of the Two Towers and Lord of the Rings]

VO: A very memorable quote from Lord of the Rings from Gandalf says, “There is only one Lord of the Ring, only one who can bend it to his will and he does not share power.”  The title of the book refers to the fallen wizard Sarumon who is corrupted thanks to the dark palantir which lets him see vast distances but ultimately exposes his mind to Sauron as a play thing.  A small glass object that gives all the secrets you could ever want?

[Images of Cell phones]

VO: Sound familiar?

[Images of Devices]

VO: And like the Palantir, the wonders of the valley seem magic.  And they are tools that can be used for good or ill.  Computers dont inherently make bad code, people do.  So why do so many things that the dark valley does have seemingly good intentions and yet ends up being corrupted?

[Images of Money and Stock Market]

VO: Just like Lord of the Rings, the rings given to men, dwarves and elves had strings attached.  The money that starts so many startups has strings attached.  Startups need venture capitalists, these ‘investment angels’ like literal fallen angels from the bible seem benevolent but bring all of the problems that capitalism has compounded by the hubris of engineers who dont consider the consequences their technology has on real people and refuse to take responsibility for.

[Images of Sauron’s Army and then cocaine cowboys and wealth]

VO: And like an army of corrupted elves twisted to the will of a fallen wizard, this need for short term quarterly investor profits at the expense of all else drives some very questionable behavior.  The corporate charter that legally shields investors and makes large modern companies possible has been stripped so now their only reason for being is to make money for shareholders at the expense of every other stakeholder imaginable.

[Images of Bezos, Musk and others brazen displays of wealth including mansions etc]

VO: When computers went mainstream in the 80’s, Wall Street made a lot of money.  When the internet came along in the 90’s, they made a lot more money.  When smart phones and social media came on board in the new millennium, they made obscene amounts of money.  As the valley moves fast and breaks things, old obsolete ways of doing business are set by the wayside but they expect the government (ie us, the public) to clean up the damage.  Sound familiar?

Emmit's Corner - The Knight of Dreams

Poems: I have a dream, There is a difference, Good vs Evil, Meta Meta Meta, Hierarchy of Values, Knight of Dreams, War Crimes Soufle, Not Leadership

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[Script] The Sins of Silicon Valley - Act 1, Scene 7 (Continued)

  [Images of Kindergarten, The wild west, fences, sheep]

VO: Remember Kindergarten? We all learned some basic rules then, politeness, sharing, quiet time. Well thatisnt the internet.  At all.  The internet was the wild west, and like the wild west they’re building fences for sheep.  Walled gardens are a thing.  And yet, people think its about the first amendment.  Is it?  Is it that black and white and absolute? It’s understandable why the first amendment is written the way it is.  

[Images of Revolutionary War]

VO: The people that founded this country lived under a tyrannical counter enlightenment monarch who had the power to control what they could or couldnt say.  You could be arrested for simply believing something.

[Images of Torture and Inquisition]

VO: Indeed even a century before that, wars of religion meant that just believing in God the wrong way could get you literally killed.

[Images of Trolls, 4 Chan and the like]

VO: But somehow I dont think most of the founding fathers had this in mind when they wrote “Congress shall establish no laws abridging freedom of speech.”  If people can lie with impunity, then how does that serve democracy? How can you make choices based on the marketplace of ideas when literally anything can be said by anyone at any time?

[Image of a crowded theater and fire, lolcats, snake oil]

VO: The classic ‘fire in a crowded theater’ argument says that you can limit speech when it is actually doing harm.  Any yet time and time again the algorithms that these companies use is a mechanism to do massive harm to the wellbeing of this country.  Bad enough you can sell snake oil on television; now you can microtarget it to the people most vulnerable to it right when they’re watching cute images of a dancing cat and their five year old nephew.

[Images of the park again, dictionary, stacks of books, camels, Ariel having her voice stolen]

VO: But people keep saying that a private company can’t be censorship; is that really true? That’s like saying racism is about a philosophy that one race is superior of another.  Words move on from the definition in the dictionary.  Censorship is more than just government suppression; its about taking people’s voices, and how people feel like they’re being stolen.

[Image of Comic Book Guy, Chet from Weird Science, Trolls]

VO: I mean, its one thing if that voice is lying or calling for women to be enslaved to become baby machines.  But the problem is that the valley feels that since they’re big and we’re small and they provide their service for free we dont have a say anymore.  And that simply isnt true.  Nationalism and imminent domain are real and can and have been used for the public good.  And the internet IS the public square. 

Micronation - Chapter 16 - Return to Hler

Chester returns to find out that he has a son, and a very very angry mother and populace as he becomes a celebrity and deals with the consequences thereof.

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