Swamp Castle - The Architect of Cool

A mysterious human disrupts daily life in an alien marketplace to benefit all of humanity and the local Warden is determined to find out why.

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[Script] The Sins of Silicon Valley - Act 2, Scene 1 - Continued

 [Images of the Nuremberg trials]

VO: Historians unfamiliar with the topic are often astonished at the sheer breadth of the records kept by the Nazi party.  Part of the records kept included punch cards used for every single concentration camp that helped them track their prisoners.  But the contribution by IBM was more insidious than this; because the legitimate census by the Weimar Republic was used by the Nazi party to help determine who was qualified to be rounded up, put on a rail car and sent to the industrial death camps of the holocost.  Other efforts in history have resulted in as much or more death, but nothing compares to the cold industrial slaughter of non combattants than the efforts of the Nazis during WWII..and IBM helped them.

[Images of German IBM]

VO: Note, that this is not a case of IBM having their corporate offices and equipment nationalized by the Nazis.  Nor was it a case of mere questionable sympathizes like many rich wealthy Americans such as Ford who later whole heartedly helped the Allies in America.   No, IBM had a corporate branch in Germany and that company completely helped the regime in every way possible.  One can argue that the American company had no power to stop their German branch except…there are no records of them even trying.  Indeed, the official company line is that there are not enough records or details at the time to know one way or another.  Note, that this is a company that helped keep records in an industrial and mechanical fashion.  The exact amount of money that IBM earned working with the Nazi government is not entirely clear, but the company has paid over seven billion in settlements without admitting guilt.

[Images of the 1950’s and 1960’s IBM]

VO: After the war, IBM went on to become the go to word for industrial computers.  Before Microsoft, the very image of a cutting edge technology company was IBM.  They grew in wealth, power, prestige and stability with important contracts with major companies and governments all over the world.  While their efforts in WW2 with the germans didnt become widespread to the public until more than 50 years later; the company knew and the government knew and felt no need to reign the company in.  How much then, must we wonder about what the modern day technology behemoths are actually up to? Despite the internet, despite lessons learned about watching these companies, is what we know of their sins only the tip of the iceberg?

Emmit's Corner - Turtlyng Glymer

The Muse is Dying, Silencing Dissenters, Avoid Tongs Discord Server, Zucker Suckers, Useful Idiots, One Big Happy Beiging Games, Lover's Kiss, The Turtling Glymer

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[Script] The Sins of Silicon Valley - Act 2, Scene 1

 [Images of More White Lab Coats, Clip Boards, Turn of the Century Science Marches On]

VO: The image we have of science was deliberately manufactured by the progressive movement to get people to have faith in the new ways of doing things.  This was the first step into a philosophy and viewpoint of how we think about science and technology which is generally positive.  As it should be, technology is after all, a benefit to our society.  Indeed, life would be impossible without it.

[Images of WWI]

VO: But the horrors of the first world war turned people on to the dark side of technology.  As the wonders meant to make our lives easier became mustard gas, tanks, machine guns and germ warfare.   The trenches changed the innocence of science forever.  But the world moved on.

[Images of the Five Horsemen]

VO: There are five companies known as ‘the Five Horsemen of Technology’ because they impact our world so much.  Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook.  Each is worth billions of dollars and in some cases has more financial and even soft power to out match a medium sized country.

[Images of IBM]

VO: But before these, there was another company.  One that was the horseman of its time and considered an American giant of industry, innovation and computing power.  Before the PC, when someone thought of a PC, they thought of giant room sized computers, most of which were based on ENIAC and the diligent work of Alan Turning breaking codes of the Enigma machine in WWII.  But there is another machine that had a major impact on the war, one that you dont hear about as much.

[More Imaes of IBM]

VO: The International Business Machines Corporation, IBM, was founded in 1911 in upper state New York.  IBM was actually the beating heart of the new progressive moment and developed business practices and technologies that allowed these modern new wonders to be built to scale and for factories to keep track of all the information required to run the giant engines of industry.  Before they became known for room sized computers, they built calculators and tabulation machines.  These machines were invaluable to businesses and governments around the world for making clean and efficient record keeping possible.  But just like the modern horsemen, IBM had a dark side…a cost of their technology.

Micronation - Chapter 17 - Meeting with the Council

The Meme Wars start to get ridiculous as nations begin adding surgically altered Nacroleptics to their executive retinues to protect them from Hler's increasingly agressive memetic tactics.  Desperate to stop it all once and for all, Chester manages to work his way into their inner council hoping to get access to their machine to execute his plan.

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[Script] The Sins of Silicon Valley - Act 1, Scene 9

 Scene 9

[Images of Mobs with Pitch Forks, French Revolution]

VO: It is inevitable that when technology is used to oppress and harm, that there will be a counter reaction, and unless stopped, fiction has shown us the consequences of this.  Fiction is a mirror of the real world and science fiction is a mirror of a world that could be if we choose to go down that path.

[Images of Dune]

VO: Frank Herberts Dune shows a future in which humans were enslaved by the robots they had as servants and created a holy crusade to overthrow them.  There are no computers or smart machines in Dune, since the one rule that is instant death for anyone who tries to enact it is to make a smart machine.  This is the source of conflict since without machines to perform impossible equations, they need Spice to navigate the stars, though in the end humanity is trading one problem for another.

[Images of Fading Suns]

VO: Fading Suns is a setting created by Andrew Greenberg, Bill Bridges, Ken Lightner, and Chris Weis in the future about a vast utopian republic that has seemingly magic technology, but the corruptness of the government and its indifference to the sufferings of its citizens allows a religion and dormant noble houses to bring it to its knees and seize power.  And the main way the church does this is playing on the fears of the common man for power until the most advanced technology is only in the hands of the church, the nobles and powerful guilds.  Just like the occult in the dark ages, Technology more advanced than a windmill is feared by the average peasant who look to the church for guidance and protection.

[Images of Shades of Gray]

VO: It doesn't have to be like this, but dystopias are a warning that we would do well to listen to.  With no thoughts on the proper use of this technology, how it affects lives and how much it can cost us, the more of a risk we take of a backlash that grows for its own sake.  A smart phone is a tool, and you can use it to film a cop beating someone to death or an animal being tortured by a gang of little psychopaths.  But with no thought to the culture of how that technology is built and applied, we are like dust in the wind allowing ourselves to be blown hither and yon at a whim.

[Images of Universities, Fire and the Stars]

VO: Humans are intelligent creatures.  We can shape our environment and we can and have shaped culture.  So if we know the problem, why dont we fix it? Well part of it is that the very people who are the problem know what's coming and have seized the levers of power for themselves; buying politicians and regulators and even media in some cases to make sure that their voice is the main voice that gets heard.

[Images of Democracy, Gandhi, MLK, BLM]

VO: But it doesnt have to be that way.  People are speaking up.  People are having an issue with what is going on.  And they are working together to find new ways of doing things.  There is hope, but we have to work together and we have to work for it.  One way to understand where we need to go is to understand where we have been.  To do that, let’s look to the past…. 

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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