ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, MY CONSPIRACY THEORY
Saturday Feb. 23, 2019
Right thinking and wrong doing.
How do we keep them clear, or separate?
And, oh my, look at the time …
I was reading some editorials last weekend – discussing pros and cons of impeachment of Donald Trump. While I find him off-putting and freakishly scary in many ways, I think he might also answer to the term ‘devil we know’. I don’t know Pence, but I know is ‘smooth, slippery and scary’, so my inclination in these times which make Watergate once again look like a third-rate burglary, my hope is that Mueller finds a way to indict or impeach both Trump and Pence/
Trump exemplifies the sad state of what is OK in the world. Seems OK and normal for villains (pick ‘em – Venezuela, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, Philippines, China and Russia) to capture headlines much like royalty and rock stars used to. Nobody seems to mind. Pick your news, real or fake, there is nobody in charge at the top of everything in any country – let alone someone you can trust to be both wise, clever, strong and humane all at the same moment …
Which begs this question: was there ever?
History is ‘incomplete and kind’ to most past rulers and despots. Hitler is still reviled, but that’s still recent history. Americans are re-thinking civil war bad guys, Mao is revered and Ho Chi Minh will soon be as revered as Che Guevera. Were Romans, Greeks and Egyptians wise or benevolent? Was Alexander the Great really great, was Catherine the Great actually great, or were they cut from similar cloth as Genghis Khan … etc. etc.
We are in modern times – tip toeing into future times. 5G technology is here and the world can’t decide whether or not to buy technology from China for fear they’ll steal all our data. What makes you think they haven’t already? Or the Russians, the Americans, the Brits …?
Or Google, or Microsoft …
Wittingly or not, our world is being run by data. So it seems to me, whoever is the king of data is king of the world. Long before we know it as everyday fact it will have happened. Meanwhile, politicians and thugs continue to make it about blue states vs. red ones, territorial and ethnic, race and rights – all of it an incredible conspiratorial distraction from everything because data Kings are practicing up-close magic like some Vegas illusionists while we 7.5 billion suckers feed our money and data into the massive machine. And about all of this, our belief in intelligence is purely artificial …
Reader feedback:
HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT
Mark, I know you’re not a millennial nor am I, but I heard on the radio (John Tesh reporting) that more millennials than any other generation enjoy spending time alone. I wondered if it may be some influence of our phones where we can do things alone we never could before, LH, Lethbridge, AB
FORMS OF CONVERSATION
Thanks Mark, that note was pathetically true to life. Many times I've been at a restaurant and kids and parents are glued to their mobile devices, and are not sharing anything together. Sad, but let's rebell and have great face to face conversations again! Best, YH, Calgary, AB
