Morlock Elloi on Sun, 26 Nov 2017 00:14:03 +0100 (CET)


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<nettime> data is new oil, you are the field


Desperate times need heavy analogies.

What empowers the big entities (AMZN, APPL, FB, MSFT, GOOG) and their state-like partners, are the bits that they squeeze out of you. Bits of you, so to speak. Without these their power goes down to zero.

This was elaborated some time ago by the sisters that made Matrix (they assumed that the energy is the key, the same thing, 1 bit = 9e-52 J.) The proposed solution was lots of self-esteem.

While every single sci-fi dystopian premise becomes reality sooner or later, the solutions almost never work.

Back to the reality, the effort one needs to make to starve appears simple and does not involve gunfights. Just stop feeding them, stop outsourcing your human-ness to the corporate machines (and avoid Agents.)

This is easier said than done, as one stops having effortless acquisition of likes, followers, boxes with things, search 'results', music, films, sex, all the things that humans wanted in the first place but had to work on.

Here is the proposition: if one wants to do something about the Matrix, one must stop being human (in the sense of the last few centuries).

Any takers?

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