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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[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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