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Saturday, November 8, 2014


TECHNOCRACY

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TECHNOCRACY

Can there be any doubt that education matters not just in how we view the world, but in what kind of world we create — or simply accept? And can there be any doubt that, despite a massive educational infrastructure that is crumbling, Americans remain remarkably poorly informed about the world?
It can be witnessed from the day to day perusing of the social network and how the trash talks and bullying becomes part of the daily routine. The political forum has been reduced to various tweets and small bites of information. Anything that is posted in the social network with a link to a referenced article or essay is seldom read, but armchair critics have much to say about the headline, how it is written and whether it is misspelled or misleading.
The political cavalcade of commentary is all but glanced at and forgotten in the social net. There is no 24 hour repetition or commentary that sways the audience. The fickle opinions the low voter turnout and the disenfranchised anarchists all have things to say about the system and it can be concluded that system has changed and that we are being dragged kicking and screaming into the new technocratic era.
It is arguably enlightening to realize that there is inspiration and a learning experience we gain from various failures. At least sane people learn from their various failings.
The American system and its various tried and true institutions like selecting leadership through the act of voting are failing.
Facebook manipulated the news feeds of almost 2 million American users during the 2012 presidential election without telling them. The manipulation led to a 3 percent increase in voter turnout, according to the company’s own data scientist.
In a stunning revelation, the three months prior to Election Day in 2012 saw Facebook “tweak” the feeds of 1.9 million Americans by sharing their friends’ hard news posts rather than the usual personal posts. The effect was felt most by occasional Facebook users who reported in a survey they paid more attention to the government because of their friends’ hard news feeds. Facebook didn’t tell users about this psychology experiment, but it boosted voter turnout by 3 percent.
Americans seem to be easily manipulated by technology and so it won’t be too hard to figure out what will win out in the future, if there is a future to be had.
Americans will eventually have to realize that their system has evolved into a technocracy and the more they think they are informed about an issue the more they realize that the opinion was part of a digital illusion. Something as disposable as an idea that has been excised from their mental network with the pushing of delete button.
In the technocratic era and through social networking we discuss the important issues that decide the vote; Obama’s golf games, the legalization of pot, the birth certificate, the belief that Obama is a Muslim, The first lady’s obsession with fat kids, the apocalypse, Vladimir Putin 2016, Kim Kardashian. The police state, false flag fears, chemtrails, Ebola, climate change, ISIS, Obama the antichrist, Hillary 2016 and the list of the trivial can go on forever.
The internet with all of its convenience and communication capabilities has not been able to teach the average American how to sniff out propaganda. In the media madness that passes for our “information age” It’s uncomfortable to swallow that bitter pill and consider the possibility that we get the society we deserve.
Education cannot keep up with whims and theories that when published become facts in the minds of those too lazy to read and are ready to comment on the headline or hyperlink.
We have always been told that higher learning is an imperative. We are taught that if one wishes for a better job, higher salary, more marketable skills, and more impressive credentials they must go to college, or think about higher learning and education.
If you view education in purely instrumental terms as a way to a higher-paying job –think again. There is no program that is preparing students for life, especially life in a transhumanist bound technocracy.
Institutions of higher learning are going to have to get ready to teach skills and information needed for jobs that don’t exist yet, and also they must prepare their students for the possibility that their training in certain fields may not even be worth anything because in the future they may all be replaced by machines that can do the work for them.
If your education or the education you want your children to have is merely a mechanism for mass programming within the marketplace then perhaps it is time to realize that you are effectively giving the technocracy a free pass to do whatever they want in the future.
Many people that are still convinced that higher learning in all fields will prevail are not thinking about the prevailing machinery of power and those who run it.
Robots are poised to eliminate millions of jobs over the coming decades. We have to address the coming epidemic of “technological unemployment” if we’re to avoid crippling levels of poverty and societal collapse.
There is a solution that is gaining traction in many parts of the world both in developed and developing nations. It’s actually a very simple idea: Everyone in society receives a single basic income to provide for a comfortable living whether they choose to work or not.
The idea of a guaranteed basic income, also referred to as unconditional or universal basic income, is a very simple idea: Everyone in society receives a single basic income to provide for a comfortable living whether they choose to work or not. Needless to say it’s only intended to be enough for a person to survive on.
This of course is a social welfare plan that may have to be provided by the government or some other public institution, in addition to funds or income received from other sources. It could be taxable, or non-taxable, and divided up on a continual basis, monthly, or annually.
Advocates argue that a basic income is essential to a comprehensive strategy for reducing poverty because it offers extra income with no strings attached.
But looking ahead to the future, we may have little choice but to implement it. Given the ever-increasing concentration of wealth and the frightening prospect of technological unemployment, it will be required to prevent complete social and economic collapse. It’s not a question of if, but how soon.
As early as 1795, American revolutionary Thomas Paine called for a “citizen’s dividend” to all U.S. citizens for “loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property.”
In his 1967 speech, “Where Do We Go From Here,” Martin Luther King Jr. said: “I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective — the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income.”
Conservatives have called it a wage floor, and have discussed how in the future the wage floor would be an effective way to fight poverty and to reduce government spending and intrusion.
Technologically-induced unemployment is a problem that’s only set to get worse with coming of the new transhumanist age.
For example we have been seeing breakthroughs in transportation with the driverless cars. Driverless cars could mean driverless taxis, driverless public transportation, and remote control trains.
Tablets and kiosks are soon to replace waiters and waitresses. As McDonalds employees protest and demand an increase in minimum wage, newer franchises are now using electronic kiosks for patrons to make orders.
Colleges and schools are now offering online learning and many people are now getting their degrees online as opposed to attending a bricks and mortar school.
Eventually things like 3D printing and desktop manufacturing will cut out most of the work between inventors and consumers.
Now think of all of these trends and then think of the trends in high tech being used in the medical industry and in manufacturing. Millions of jobs being lost, and millions of people on food stamps and unemployment.
Technology has started to destroy employment faster than it creates it.
This is the future for the transhumanist technocracy.
So with potentially billions of people out of work, and with the world’s wealth concentrated into the hands of a few, a simple question emerges: How are people supposed to live?
A basic income guarantee would be a good start by combining existing social welfare payments, reducing the size of the bureaucracies needed to maintain each of them separately. So the burden of the state would shrink. Various public resources can be monetized. Various proposals to help with basic income guarantees would include tax revenues, shortening the workweek, and the reduction or elimination of other social security programs such as unemployment insurance. Also if the basic income guarantee existed there would be no need for minimum wage.
Looking further ahead to the future, the prospect of a jobless economy certainly seems daunting. But if we can successfully manage it and put our machines to work, we could enter into an unprecedented era of material abundance while dramatically extending our leisure time. Rather than be tied to menial and demeaning work, we’d be free to engage in activities that truly interest us.
This would mean that people would be motivated to work on projects that interest them. So the idea that the required basic income would promote laziness would be hard to prove.
Providing a wage for a person to live off of does not impact other people in any way. Couple this with affordable housing and maybe morale would improve in the country. The only fear is how this impacts, and possible further divides, the haves and have-nots, on a more “social” level.
The United States is currently in the middle of the longest period of job losses since the Great Depression of the 1930s. In fact, the U.S. economy today has 2.6 million fewer jobs that it did two years ago. Meanwhile, over two million people have lost health insurance coverage and personal bankruptcies hit a record of over 1.5 million households and growing.
In short, economic crises–recessions and depressions–are inevitable and Karl Marx along with his and his collaborator Frederick Engels described these crises that would eventually beset capitalism.
Is the establishment of a new technocracy contributing to the crisis that would eventually bring down capitalism in favor of a hybrid transhumanist Marxism?
Karl Marx believed that science and democracy were the right and left hands of what he called the move from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom. He argued that advances in science helped delegitimize the rule of kings and the power of the Christian church.
Technological utopianism refers to any ideology based on the premise that advances in science and technology will eventually bring about a utopia, or at least help to fulfill one or another utopian ideal. A techno-utopia is therefore a hypothetical ideal society, in which laws, government, and social conditions are solely operating for the benefit and well-being of all its citizens.
In a future world, like worlds provided by science fiction writers like Gene Roddenberry there was no need for money in the “Star Trek” universe. In the movie Star Trek: First Contact, Captain Jean Luc Picard explains that economics of the future are somewhat different. Picard explains that ether is no money in the 24th century. The acquisition of wealth was no longer a driving force in the future. In the civilizations of the future humans worked to better themselves and the rest of humanity.
As we await the arrival of what is called the singularity and as we are told that our relationships with machines will change our lives we are beginning to understands that the elite pulls the levers of power while sheep-like humans graze passively.
Perhaps our perceptions will change drastically as we better educated ourselves on how to improve our lives and the lives of others. This might mean embracing changes that will seem new and sudden.
As you probably know already most of these ideas are not new and have already been planned and thought out as we move towards a more mechanized day.

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