‘Metropolis’ 1927

In the 1948 George Orwell novel ‘1984’, totalitarianism is the warning.  A lot of people have been comparing what’s happening in our world now to both this book, and another 1931 novel by Aldous Huxley titled ‘Brave New World’.

In 1984, we live in a Godless society.  Life is all for the political party.  It’s always watching, always sending messages.  To achieve it’s total control we are subjected to lives of isolation, solitude and fear of the state.

At one point in the story, the protagonist, Winston, has a pencil and a notepad but has to write so softly as not to alert the sensors that he’s actually having an original thought, or that he even owns a pencil and paper.

This seemed funny to me at the time.  I remember reading it, thinking ‘ok… this is a little farfetched’.

But, just like someone in Italy who once told me back in the 90’s we would soon be doing everything inside our cell phones, with me scratching my head wondering how in the world that could ever come to pass, these out-of-focus notions have a way of un-blurring pixel by pixel with each passing day.  Eventually we have an ‘aha’ moment where we see it.  The problem is, by then it’s too late.

Remember when the internet became a thing you had to have?  AOL and all that…  It took a 14.4 modem, and you had to pay by the minute just like the old-timey phone calls.  I remember in 1996 getting my first AOL bill for 225.00 for the month!  The next month was similar, until I just accepted it as part of life having internet and a new Mac Performa.

But it was the wild west of a digital world.  You were free to say what you wanted, go where you wanted, and with each new week more information was available at our fingertips.  Oh yes, it took some discernment and cross-referencing to find out if what we were reading had any truth to it… but the research was ours to pursue as we chose.

The biggest selling point of the internet- it’s educational and it’s fun!  Look at this hysterical video!  Check out this photo of a guy in Walmart!  Did you know the pyramid of Giza had numbers significant to the universe?  That can’t be a coincidence.  The Incas, Mayans and Egyptians knew something!

The words ‘viral’ and ‘trending’ became part of our culture.  Laughing at others rose to a new level.  Cyber-bullying became a real thing in chat rooms.  Acceptance and humiliation became a carrot & stick of conforming how we thought to the way we publicly shared our views.  ‘Virtue signaling’ became another word for ‘politically correct’.  Translation?  You’re full of shit, but i’m going to ‘like’ this anyway.

Very much like Napster, they use this as a reason they ‘must control’ the environment.

So, ultimately here we are.  We’re afraid to call someone a man or a woman.  We’re afraid to say anything about any government, unless that government has been approved by the totalitarian power as permissible to criticize i.e. Russia, North Korea and Iran.  We don’t want to dress out of step, speak out of step or even think out of step.

We think we’re thinking originally, but in most cases our thoughts align perfectly with the state.  To speak otherwise is a fate most of us could never publicly handle… to be shamed, ridiculed, doxxed, fired and potentially killed for our thought crimes.

So now it’s 2024 and in rolls AI.  Stocks go wild.

And it’s fun!  Look, I can ask it anything and it gives me the answer in milliseconds.  Check out this drawing it created!  Hear this new, never written Beatles song!

And while we’re having fun with AI’s magic tricks, our eyes are not on the ball of what it’s actual mission is. The ubiquitous screen in 1984, sending constant messages to conform and never step out of the state’s groupthink.  Monitoring our keystrokes, our words, or beliefs…

AI is the sensor that will detect a pencil on a notepad suggesting you might be having your own original thought.

AI will hear everything, see everything.  Every apartment or cubicle we’re allowed to live in will have this ‘internet of things’ literally everywhere.  It will meld and sculpt us all into the exact slave it desires, extracting God and spirit from each and every one of us.  All in the name of convenience and fun.

One day we’re having a private conversation in our cars about some conspiracy that’s probably true, and the next minute the car pulls itself over to the side of the road, doors lock, and we wait for a Chinese style government to arrive and take us to a re-education camp for alignment.  3 strikes and we are expunged.

Please think about what you support.  It’s hard.  We have to support our families.  We work for a company that’s owned by a bigger company and so we just can’t go voicing our free opinions.  I get that.  So start with cash.  When a place of business says ‘sorry we don’t accept cash’… let this be the last time you shop there.

Support things that support human life.  Freedom of speech.  Freedom of thought.  We’re literally about to lose it all.  And the irony of it is, so are they. But they don’t care.  I won’t share the “scorpion and frog” joke, but you can look it up if you haven’t heard it before.  Killing themselves doesn’t really figure.  They’re already dead.