This is the attitude of the tech elite for you in spades. It also highlights my continual theme that these people are insane and they truly believe that they will reach the "Singularity" rapture. They fully expect to live forever inside machines. In fact they hate their own bodies.
So it is no surprise that an art form celebrating humanity and the beauty of human bodies would fail to thrive in their vicinity.
Here is another contrast in photos that says it all...
Techs would rather watch this...life in simulcrum
Over going to the theater to celebrate beauty like this...
These people are truly without culture and they flail around trying to create it anew. In the process destroying everything that makes us human. And this is all due to the fact that they hate that their own bodies.
Suzan Mazur: David Orban, founder and director of Singularity's Institute for Artificial Intelligence Europe, told me at a robotics conference in Bergamo a few months ago that people who don't embrace robotics in the future will not be able to survive. Do you agree?
Jaron Lanier: First of all, I think it's the stupidest institute ever. It's purely about this religious fantasy of superiority. The whole basis of it is repulsive. Yet the people there are great friends of mine. I admire them. We have fun together. And I tell them all this to their faces. I've also given talks at Singularity about how ridiculous I think it is.
Here's the problem. They say people won't be able to survive if we don't have robotics. Well, how is that different from saying, "Oh, if we don't like the way people are, we'll kill them." What is the difference, ultimately?
There's a way in which the new sort of vaguely Asperger-like digital technocrat is absolutely lacking in any self-awareness of ethics or morality. It astounds me, again and again. They're my friends, and we like each other, but I do think it's astonishing.
I'm so glad that someone who is big in Tech circles is finally taking a stand against the fascist, body/tech purity elitism that is Singularity. I hate that it has its odious claws in the tech we use and influences its development. Talk about a concept not being user friendly, it actually hates its users.
Up until now, the REAL ID system was plugged by the Warcraft crowd as a useful tool to keep track of real friends/family while in game. But now that this system it shows that the tracking system is all pervasive and the perfect opportunity. The perfect opportunity to live in the future that businessmen such as Mr. Jesse Schell, and others in the tech world, would like us to bend over and take with a smile.
In true California Business Plan fashion the company direction is dressed in faux concerns, such as preventing trolls. Which is a bunch of pure bullshit.
Obviously the opt-in push for this program was not as successful as Blizzard Activision planned it would be. At least certainly not enough people signed up for it in order to make it feasible as a marketing cash crop. So the company needed another way to push Real Id, and that was the forum angle. Most say that the forums represent a small portion of the Warcraft player base. But truthfully I don't believe that, not if the company thought it was a large enough linchpin to get the Real Id program started. As players have repeatedly pointed out on Blizzard forums, all customer service policy questions ultimately lead to the forums. So any kind of customer service problem will lead to a player having to opt in to Real Id if they want help.
Revealing the names of the players also leads to larger problems of stalking. This policy opens up problems for female gamers, children/teens gamers and LGBT gamers. The gaming community at large, is not a welcoming place for minorities. The last thing the majority racist, homophobic and sexist player base needs is a way to track down the players they don't like. As for trolls on the forums, I have a hard time figuring out what a troll actually is and what people will unanimously agree is a troll. Is it a person who posts thoughtfully but doesn't agree with the majority opinion? Is it a person who debates vigorously on game policies that they like or don't like? Or is it that ridiculous person who just throws out nonsensical but aggressive gibberish towards one and all? What I see mostly on forums is people with legitimate concerns being labeled trolls and their speech is curtailed. The gibberish people are allowed to post at will with no consequences. There are better ways to deal with the gibberish and they don't include pimping out the real names of the player base.
As of now Blizzard Activision is silent on this new policy. Which indicates to me that its full steam ahead. On their own forums and around the blogosphere there are reports that enough people are quitting over this new policy to cause a slow down on their account servers.
But they aren't blinking. And they won't blink or cry uncle. Because everyone must realize that we are in a struggle. Jaron Lanier pointed out that the tech world, as it is now, has debased our culture so much that the only value that can be gleaned from anything is from advertising dollars. The commercial is sacrosanct in the tech world. They have barricaded themselves into a corner with the "info wants to be free" meme that the only money they can receive for their services is in advertising. To get to that cash cow, they will happily sell out the regular people.
Blizzard Activision has a deal with Facebook. Obviously they think that the masses of Facebook Farmville addicts (most of whom are not mmorpg gamers) are an untapped resource that will gladly move to Warcraft. That they are enough of a sure bet that these Farmville fans will replace the people leaving due to Real Id controversy. Since the Farmville people have already revealed their personal information on Facebook, they will have no problem with revealing it for Warcraft.
They are putting this to the test right now. Because the world that Mr. Schell celebrated is the world the tech companies want. A world with no personal barriers, in which advertisers can pick over your carcass to send you targeted advertising that will reward you with funny money from the latest game. Its a no cost world out there for the tech elites. But we can expect to pay, pay more and pay again.
Many have written of a disturbing trend among our tech elites of recent years. About their untoward fascination with sci-fi dystopias and their desires to make these stories reality. Second Life was created as a bid to mimic the world featured in "Snowcrash". Unmentioned but just as influential was Stephenson's other novel, "Diamond Age". It too was a warning novel, a story about a poor girl who is raised by a cloth dummy mother (like those poor Rhesus lab monkeys), in the form of a virtual reality book. Our elite techs ignored the disembodied VR which could give no maternal comfort to an orphaned child and just focused on the VR represented in the book. And they wanted to create it in reality.
Well they did to a certain extent. And were also gravely disappointed that it didn't change it's users in quite the same way it changed a fictional, motherless child. They were all so gung ho to teach us to "share and share alike", mainly by giving up our IP to the void for free. It didn't work and it is still not working. Whether or not Philip Linden and cohorts are still interested in this project of reeducation remains to be seen. But now they are on a path to mimicking other dystopias.
Singularity University Lecture in which Philip Rosedale (Linden) compares SL mainframes to a brain.
In recent news regarding Second Life, it seems the last CEO (M Linden) has been shown the door for the return of Philip Linden to the helm.
As I've previously written, M Linden was vilified by the general SL populace for all that was wrong in SL. I did not adhere to this storyline. In fact I thought it more likely that M was hamstrung by the incredible backstabbing mess of a corporate culture that Philip Rosedale dumped into his lap. He cut some fat then was cut himself. I've seen it happen before in companies I've worked for and companies in the news. So it was no surprise that he would be labeled the fall man.
However the rejoicing over Philip Linden's return is premature. Most SL residents are under the assumption that old Phil will be up to his old tricks. But that isn't the deal at all. Philip Linden has a new direction and he has left SL far behind.
In my last post about Rosedale's Love Machine I highlighted that it was an extension of the JIRA policy that ruined Linden Lab's culture. But Love Machine has a more ambitious plan behind it. It is Rosedale's bid to create an independent AI. Far from being a tabulated record of love or hate votes, it will probably be taking in data about why the voters voted the way they did. And through that information, Rosedale hopes to fashion the basis for his AI. But besides it being used by a high profile company such as Kevin Rose's Digg, I haven't heard of it taking off with any amount of success. Perhaps it didn't attract the VC it had been hoping to receive. And Digg couldn't provide it with enough voting data to fashion a prototype AI.
So now back to Second Life. Which Rosedale has already likened to brain like activity. A collective data point of every user's creativity and decision making. A sizeable test bed to launch Love Machine. Because just maintaining a virtual world was not Philip Linden's total interest. All his interviews and comments point to this end result. He needs SL to provide a launch pad for his AI. He needs it to grow because the larger the data from willing test subjects, the better for the Love Machine project as a whole. The same way the JIRA stratified residents into fighting over bugs and services, I'm sure the Love Machine will now be used in lieu of the old search mechanism in the browser. It has been said that the search function was broken deliberately and remains unfixed. I wonder how long it will be before all of us are asked to give Love votes for our favorite places and why.
Just how much will this Love Machine data collection system permeate the grid? How will it affect the SL world culture? Will it destroy it as much as JIRA destroyed Linden Lab? Does Philip Linden care about the fallout caused by all these possible ill will votes?
He told us the world was safe in his recent address. It is for now. But when he receives all the information he needs for his new company, I doubt he will have much enthusiasm for keeping Second Life running. He will most likely fob it off to another hastily chosen CEO and let it find it's own level.
I believe Linden Lab is basically gone. It is Love Machine handling Second Life now for the time being. We are now the side show not the attraction.
The dystopia I believe the techs are emulating now is not the Terminator Skynet from Cameron's films but the AI Proteus in the old 70's flick "Demon Seed". A film in which this insane AI raped a helpless woman and created it's own love child.
Hence, I give you the genesis of the Love Machine.
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