What’s Our Digital Destiny?
January 15, 2023 Leave a comment
A recent trip to a modern eatery has me wondering about our digital destiny.
Last Sunday I visited a “Test Kitchen” in my area. There, under a single roof, three separate kitchens offered three different low-priced menus. I had lots of choices, as shown on the order touch screen.
I poked out my choices and then “Checkout”. The screen told me to swipe or insert my credit card or use a mobile app to pay. I was taken aback. I came prepared to pay cash.
Not only was there no cash drawer, there was no human interface. Humans were scurrying around back in the kitchen filing orders. But I was forced to conduct business with a machine.
I understand the implications of hiring humans to deal with cash registers. There is the search for and interviewing of willing and able prospective employees. There is the decision to hire people who can add and subtract and think on their feet. There is the training of new hires to understand the system and to be customer friendly. There is the constant monitoring of the cash drawer for pilfering, and more. To those time-consuming aspects of hiring, add the cost of incentives, hourly salary, and benefits. Business sense would act to cut out the middle man – the counter person.
Outside forces also work to cut out human engagement. Idiotic COVID mandates created social distancing guidelines. Empathy was sold as hiding faces behind masks and staying away from people including your aged and dying parents.
Minimum wage laws increase the use of robots. (What’s next? Minimum employee laws with DEI hiring requirements? Governments can’t pilfer tax money from robots.)
My recent trip to a modern eatery was a trip to a vending machine. The machine took my order. The machine took my payment and the machine took my phone number so it could text me when my order was ready. How nice of the machine to do this!
The machine later texted me asking about my “recent experience”. The text contained radio button choices but no comment space for actual opinion. I deleted the text. I didn’t want to be part of the machine’s feedback loop.
For me, human interface is enriching, and even when the person behind the counter has purple hair, nose and mouth jewelry, tattoos and an attitude. My attitude comes from following Jesus and reading about his interactions with people that included Samaritans, self-righteous types, and sinners.
A man-man interface is what I look for in a “recent experience” and not a man-machine interface. That is why I prefer eating at diners. There, at least, I’m part of a community and not just a node in a network.
Another “recent experience” left me concerned about our digital destiny. Last fall I received an email from the church I had been attending. The email asked for my opinion. It contained an online poll with, as I recall, over a hundred questions with radio button choices and some comment spaces.
The poll questions ranged from quality of pastoral care to aspects of ministries involving children, youth and adults to questions of homosexual involvement and whether political topics should be addressed from the pulpit.
I didn’t take the poll. My first thought was “Why did the three priests and vestry need to send out a poll to know the status of things in the church?” Apparently, they didn’t know the status and didn’t know the people of the church or the mind of God for that matter.
And like the test kitchen text, I was asked to provide feedback about my “recent experience” into the system. Was this done to hone the church into an efficiently run operation and a satisfactory customer experience?
There was never any reason to keep me at data’s length. If anyone in that church wanted my opinion they could come up and ask me – face to face, just as Jesus did with his disciples: “Who do the crowds say that I am?” And then individually: “What about you? Who do you say that I am?” (Luke 9: 18-20)
And my understanding of the Christian church is a human-to-human engagement with the Living Lord and not a relationship with a business or corporation with bills to be paid and customers and stockholders to be mollified and handled.
Where am I going with all this? Honestly, I’m trying to be vigilant on my watch. I see the benefits of digital technology and I also see how digital technology can be used to condition, control and denigrate humanity. I see how digital technology polarizes just about everything including the user.
I am old enough to remember a time when digital devices were not around. There was no constant pinging and no bits and bytes clamoring for attention like carnival attractions. Vending machines were the man-machine interfaces. In 1964 I could put a dime into the machine for a bottle of pop. It was a simple hassle-free transaction. Buy anything today via digital means and one is constantly hounded to buy more and to provide feedback.
Back then, instead of a tracking device carried on my person that constantly wanted to sell me something there was a phone on the wall with a cord that limited its reach.
There was no need for a usernames and passwords. Friends used nick names.
Instead of logging onto web sites with two-pass authentication using purchased security software on a purchased laptop I walked to the library to check out books.
Instead of online banking I received paper statements that I used to reconcile my accounts.
Instead of social media I had neighborhood, school, and church friends. There was no façade of community that social media offers.
Instead of the internet of things I had books, games, LPs and 45s, a transistor radio, and lots for room for imagination. I can’t say that digital technology has improved my “recent experience” with regard to any of the above interests.
And, if the gov’t wanted to spy on me, they would send a couple of guys in overcoats and have them sit in a parked car across the street. And to monitor my phone calls, a wiretap order from a judge would be needed. In this digital age I’m not sure who is spying on me. Maybe the FBI and CIA are surveilling my every word and association.
Working as an engineer for most of my life, I understand how digital technology and the internet of things (IoT) supports engineering projects and a business’s bottom line. There are benefits galore. But the IoT doesn’t bolster my bottom line. Human connectivity, for me, is more desirable than being on a network with me as one of its nodes. Thankfully, that was my experience at work.
When I announced my retirement, managers and coworkers mentioned that they were grateful for my efforts and the time they spent working with me. Chirag, manager of the comms group I was part of, called me when he heard I was retiring. We had had many conversations on MS Teams regarding projects and some personal topics. We talked about my move to Indiana among other things.
During my call with Chirag, I said that he was the best manager I had worked with during my time with the company. I told him that he was personable and easy to talk to. He had listened to what I said and worked on solutions to issues I raised. I thanked him for my time working with him. I never felt managed. I felt engaged.
Chirag’s’ reply to my comments: “I treat people like humans.”
I’m not a sentimentalist. I don’t want to go back in time. But over time I have sensed a growing loss of the analog human-to-human interface for . . .. digital efficiency’s sake. Organic human connections are being disconnected. This loss is occurring not only in everyday transactions such as self-checkouts at stores but also in a politically determinative sense.
With increasing connectivity, I see digital communications acting to divide, isolate, and condition people “efficiently” for political ends. We saw this with the creation of digital vaccine credentials such as “VaxPass”. We see this with gaslighting bots on Twitter warping reality. We see this with the brainwashing, weaponization, hostilities, and persecutions that have come about as people share their thoughts on social media. More digital destruction is beaming our way.
5G towers are going up everywhere and with them, ways to monitor and manipulate the public. Janet Yellen, the worst Secretary of the Treasury ever, is working to do away with physical cash (and the corresponding human to human transactions). Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) is coming and so is social credit scoring using smartphones and facial recognition software. Working on a digital chain gang will become a reality. Our digital destiny is the Inhumanity of Things.
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You must view this, especially as the 5GW information involves digital matters:
5th Generation Warfare: History, Modern Context, and (Some) Solutions
Steps to fight 5th generation warfare:
Take care of your weapon – your mind.
Take actions to make the tools of 5GW irrelevant
Raise your children to have good values and not the values the state wants them to have
Grow your community. Create networks of friends.
Create white space – terrain and obstacles that slows down enemy advances, including privacy.
Communications – decrease reliance on cellular and internet communication. Get away from using Smartphones – intelligence collection sensors. There is no more effective tool used against the American people than the smartphone.
The internet is nothing more than data going through servers. The “Cloud” is your data on someone else’s computer.
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Feedback loops – Here’s something you should be sensitive to. Your kids might be getting affirmation from all the wrong places:
Social Media May Alter Brains of Children — Study
Habitually checking social media as a young teenager is linked to hypersensitivity to peer feedback and may potentially lead to permanent changes in the brain’s reward and motivation centers, neuroscientists at the University of North Carolina suggested in a recent study published in JAMA Pediatrics.
The study looked at a group of 169 teens as their brains developed between the ages of 12 to 15 and their self-reported use of Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat.
When those with usage the researchers classed as “habitual” – meaning they checked their accounts 15 or more times a day – played a game that modeled feedback in the form of peer approval, they became increasingly sensitive to that feedback.
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“ . . . a terrifying item buried within the Biden-McConnell “infrastructure” legislation, which passed in August 2021. According to [Congressman Bob] Barr, the government will now have the power to shut off your vehicle if they determine you are partaking in any “illegal” activity.
Does anyone really believe the Biden Regime will not abuse this newly obtained power?”
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Informed Dissent:
Kaufman Institute for Coincidence – YouTube
Learn aboutpropaganda and the pejorative “Conspiracy theorist” from Mark Crispin Miller, Ph.D.:
“COVID-19 is unquestionably the largest, most sophisticated propaganda operation in history. Psychological techniques were extensively used during 2020 to incite fear and panic in the population, while other persuasion strategies were used to get people to support and defend COVID measures such as masking, isolation, social distancing, lockdowns and jab mandates.”
Modeling Gone Bad. – by Robert W Malone MD, MS (substack.com)
“CDC’s VAERS safety signal analysis based on reports from Dec. 14, 2020 – July 29, 2022 for mRNA COVID-19 vaccines shows clear safety signals for death and a range of highly concerning thrombo-embolic, cardiac, neurological, hemorrhagic, hematological, immune-system and menstrual adverse events (AEs) among U.S. adults.”
CDC Finally Releases VAERS Safety Monitoring Analyses For COVID Vaccines | ZeroHedge
631 hospitals at risk of closure, state by state (beckershospitalreview.com)
Mainstream gatekeepers have been completely wrong about everything for three years yet they are incapable of learning from their mistakes
The Great Double Down – by Toby Rogers – uTobian (substack.com)
FINALLY!!: PENTAGON CANCELS VACCINE MANDATE… – CITIZEN FREE PRESS
The Censorious Scott Gottlieb Was a Major Influence on Lockdowns ⋆ Brownstone Institute
livestock and companion animals are getting the jab . . .
McCullough: Vaccinated Can Spread mRNA and Spike Protein to Other People (theflstandard.com)
The numerous mandates birthed by the onset of the Covid-19 scenario were all designed to deliberately break the global economy and crush small businesses as well as break people’s minds, will and the social fabric, in order to “build back a better society” that conforms to the dystopian visions of the psychopaths waging this class war. . ..
Put simply, Covid-19 was not a widespread medical emergency, it was a money laundering scheme, a massive psychological operation and a smoke screen for a complete overhaul and restructuring of the current social and economic world order.
COVID-19: A Global Financial Operation (2ndsmartestguyintheworld.com)
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Quantum Dot, digital currency
Dr Stella, Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), 5G technology,
Fundamental Transformation Taking Shape:
Cindy Wity 
Altered States
October 23, 2022 Leave a comment
“Technique has penetrated the deepest recesses of the human being. The machine tends not only to create a new human environment, but also to modify man’s very essence. The milieu in which he lives is no longer his. He must adapt himself, as though the world were new, to a universe for which he was not created. He was made to go six kilometers an hour, and he goes a thousand. He was made to eat when he was hungry and to sleep when he was sleepy; instead, he obeys a clock. He was made to have contact with living things, and he lives in a world of stone. He was created with a certain essential unity, and he is fragmented by all the forces of the modern world.”
― Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society
The term technique, as I use it, does not mean machines, technology, or this or that procedure for attaining an end. In our technological society, technique is the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of development) in every field of human activity. Its characteristics are new; the technique of the present has no common measure with that of the past.
― Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society
In his Substack post What did Jacques Ellul mean by Technique? , Samuel Eastlund adds a fourth foundational element to the three mentioned in Ellul’s “technique” definition above:
“Technique is one of the spiritual powers (Col. 1:16, Eph. 6:12) which controls the modern world, which people give their allegiance to and which keeps them in bondage.”
Eastlund continues . . . “As David Gill puts it in his comparison between Ellul and Francis Schaeffer, ‘What is significant and ominous today is that technique itself (rationality, artificiality, efficiency) has become universal, autonomous, and self-automated’. One of the gods of the modern world is efficiency; it is a presupposition of the way we do things that the more efficient something is, the better it is. This becomes obvious when engaging in a discussion about Technique with those not already opposed to it.”
*David W. Gill, Jacques Ellul and Francis Schaeffer: Two Views of Western Civilisation, p. 11
I’m becoming a neo-Luddite of sorts. I have a particular dislike for the dissociative and diminution effects of the digital age and particularly as technology modifies the means of relating to ourselves, to those around us – to our world.
Born into analog times, I enjoyed a continuous stream of organic information that fostered a holistic perspective. During childhood in the 50s and into the 60s, I received information, or better, life in continuously variable physical quantities. I stayed outdoors until it was dark. I rode my bike everywhere. I played with kids – German, Italian, Mexican, Polish and others – on my block. I walked to the library to look up things. With my allowance in hand, I ran to the Five and Dime to see what I could buy. I read the Sunday comics on the front room floor. I watched Howdy Doody, Captain Kangaroo and Lassie on a B&W rabbit-eared tube-filled box. I played 45s on a turntable in my bedroom. I played table games with friends from school and the neighborhood. I attended church. I listened to AM radio on a transistor radio. I learned to play the trumpet.
In high school I played my horn in the band, orchestra and church. I ran cross country and track. I studied French for four years and got into the NHS my senior year. During the summers I worked and took summer school courses. I wasn’t a spectator.
My analog life was harmonized within the perceived analog universe of light, color, sound, force, wind, rain, and seasons. And like a camera and cassette recorder, my analog brain captured a continuous stream of organic information from the real world. I was my own screen saver . . . and social media and Google search.
Those were times before “technique” “penetrated”, “modified”, and atomized life into efficient bits and bytes. Technology didn’t dominate. Like the phone on the wall and the record player, objects were just another thing among many other things. Objects were there to serve, not dominate. I could dial down interest in a thing, walk away, and move on to the more interesting organic things.
In contrast to 0’s and 1’s trying to emulate analog life and the annoying apps with their prompts, pop-ups, and passwords, analog times seemed natural, unintrusive, and rather hassle-free. Digital technology, as it relates to human interface, comes across as contrived and as pushy as a foot-in-the-door salesman and damn frustrating in its effort to achieve maximum efficiency. Add dismissive of your concerns.
In contrast to the soulless 0’s and 1’s programmed to contain life like the characterless pre-fab concrete industrial buildings that contain employees, my childhood was a multi-dimensional free-range human life. I lived life at the speed of life and not at the speed of sound.
Come to think of it, I never swore until I started dealing with computers, hand-held and otherwise, and software. And, even with growing up with talk of a U.S. and Russia nuclear war, I was never alarmed about my times and my country until the rise of That Hideous Strength the technocratic state. The spirit of the age could be felt in the analog times, but now I sense that the spirit of the age is oppressive through technological means.
Consider that technology may have “penetrated the deepest recesses of the human being”. The signs of spiritual oppression include
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You live as long as I have (70 yrs.) and you see how technology has modified human existence. Human interaction, for instance.
Every morning I work out at the fitness center in the complex where I live. I arrive 5:30 AM. I am usually the only one there at that time.
As is her habit, a young woman comes into the fitness center about an hour later. She walks over to the treadmill looking at her phone the whole time. She has not once looked up and looked over at me to acknowledge me. She’s in a world of her own.
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To be sure, I am not a technophobe. I have worked as an engineer for most of my life. I am currently working on improving substation communications for a large utility. I see good uses of technology every day including the recent NASA test: diverting of an asteroid. Technology has its place as a servant of mankind and not as its master.
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Well, I’ve given my thoughts. What’s your relationship with digital technology? Has it penetrated and modified your life and to what limit?
Does technology – 4K UHD TV, autonomous vehicles, 5G, esc. – deliver organic value to you? Do the bells and whistles of new technology make life more meaningful?
Are you OK spending time on passwords and renewing passwords and renewing passwords and two-step authentication and One-Time Passcodes. Are you OK paying for cyber security and renewing cyber security and VPNs and renewing VPN software and updates and updates and updates?
Are you worried about being hacked?
Are you worried about your livelihood being held for ransom?
As I am writing this, I received a text message alert from my employer: Cyberattack Impacting Critical Infrastructure. IT Security team received numerous ransomware alerts. The system that hosts the virtual servers in our environment was compromised. It was apparent someone had actively taken over the system and changed the credentials to block access. All systems were shut down at headquarters and offices with data centers.
Of course, normal business is affected. Production has slowed to almost a halt. The “fix” will be expensive. Modern technology with its propensity for “technical efficiency and systemization” can also be used for disruption, chaos and loss of income.
How do you find interfacing with machines? Does an App give you a sense of control, of power, when you punch in inputs and the device ‘replies’ with a programmed message to your commands?
Are you OK inputting to an algorithm and receiving a canned response?
Do you get the sense using a digital device that you are being programmed and used by it?
Are you OK giving out your digital ID and having your data mined and surveilled by Big Tech, Big Brother, and China?
Are you OK with software tracking your online patterns and then using the data to manipulate and increase your engagement with a product or service?
Are you OK being monitored online night and day? Have you watched The Lives of Others?
Are you wondering if you said something ‘wrong’ online and the FBI will show up at your door?
Are you OK with digital cops? Researchers experimenting with concept of a ‘digital cop’ (wnd.com)
Are you OK with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. censoring your speech based on a politically-biased algorithm?
Do you find interfacing with machines to be off-putting, alienating, impersonal?
Are you OK spending most of your day interfacing with a device? Looking at a screen?
Do you prefer dealing with devices instead of people?
Are you OK dealing with Chat Bots when you have questions?
Can’t get enough of CGI?
Will you accept becoming an AI product of an algorithm in the post-human world of transhumanism?
Would you be OK with an implanted microchip vaccine passport?
Would you be OK with transhumanists replacing eternal “life in the ages to come” with digital immortality?
Will you be OK with digital currency and the monitoring and control of your finances?
Are you OK with a global technocracy that monitors your behavior and arbitrates your social credit score?
Are you OK with RFR (Radiofrequency Radiation) affecting your body, your brain?
Check this out: Well Being: Dangers of 5G – by Robert W Malone MD, MS (substack.com)
Adverse effects observed at exposures below the assumed threshold SAR include non-thermal induction of reactive oxygen species, DNA damage, cardiomyopathy, carcinogenicity, sperm damage, and neurological effects, including electromagnetic hypersensitivity. Also, multiple human studies have found statistically significant associations between RFR exposure and increased brain and thyroid cancer risk. Yet, in 2020, and in light of the body of evidence reviewed in this article, the FCC and ICNIRP reaffirmed the same limits that were established in the 1990s.
Are you OK with technology reconditioning your children?
Here is one parent commenting on Decade at Bernie’s – by Chris Bray – Tell Me How This Ends (substack.com)
Who is Jacques Ellul?
What do you think of the following quote (a screen capture from the video):
-Willem H. Vanderburg: “The Life and Work of Jacques Ellul” (2012)
“If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Informed dissent:
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: EcoHealth Whistleblower Dr. Andrew Huff: They Created the COVID-19 Virus Using Gain of Function in a Number of Laboratories and They Covered It Up (VIDEO) (thegatewaypundit.com)
The Calm COVID Truth of Dr. Joe Ladapo (substack.com)
EXCLUSIVE: Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano’s Message to Catholic Church Urging Leadership to Revisit Their Stance on COVID-19 Vaccines (thegatewaypundit.com)
Video: Moderna CEO Admits COVID Is Like Seasonal Flu, Only Vulnerable Need Jabs – Summit News
How to Use Ivermectin to Protect Against the Covid Vaccines – Brightwork Research & Analysis
“The Boundary is Children” – by Robert W Malone MD, MS (substack.com)
Safe States for Children: Here’s a List of Republican Governors Who Won’t Comply with CDC Mandates to Force COVID-19 Vaccination on Kids for School (thegatewaypundit.com)
Homeschooling Options and State Exemptions for Childhood Vaccines (substack.com)
Two top cardiologists implicate COVID vax in all unexplained heart attacks since 2021 (substack.com)
Dr. Robert Malone: The CDC Voted Unanimously To Recommend The Covid-19 Vaccine For Children As Young As 5 AND the CDC will provide ‘sneaky’ liability protection for Big Pharma vaccines. The CDV won’t protect you, it will protect itself and its cohorts.
Road map to Control:
In 2016, domains for government vaccine passport websites were registered by the same person. Some of these are in current use now.
Well, isn’t that special:
The CDC will vote Thursday to permanently shield Pfizer and Moderna from COVID vaccine injury liability (substack.com)
Video: Bill Gates Says European Energy Crisis Is “Good” – Summit News
Musk’s Dangerous Vision for Twitter (substack.com)
Uniformed Consent:
An in-depth look into the Covid 19 narrative, who’s controlling it, and how it’s being used to inject an untested, new technology into almost every person on the planet. It’s not about the virus. It’s about the vaccine. Problem reaction solution. Slogans slogans slogans.
Ch-ch-ch Changes Not:
Angelina Jolie’s Daughter Shiloh Once Thought She Was A Boy And Asked To Be Called John, But She Outgrew It | Evie Magazine
The way of the wicked:
Disturbing video from Texas drag show for kids… – CITIZEN FREE PRESS
Take down the WEF:
What is the World Economic Forum? (takedownthewef.com)
REVEALED: The ‘Public Figures’ Attending the 2022 World Economic Forum in Davos. (thenationalpulse.com) Note: A pdf of the full list of attendees is located at this link.
Malthusiasts:
Thomas Malthus believed that so-called “positive checks” (such as plagues and starvation) and “preventive checks” (such as birth control measures and delayed marriage), worked to keep population growth and food growth in balance.
The Left, as prompted by the Davos/WEF elites, are similarly concerned about population growth. That is why they promote the “positive” checks of pandemics and the “preventive checks” of abortion, homosexuality, and mutilating children in the name of affirmation.
In An Essay on the Principle of Population, neo-Malthusians [the authors] tells us what they think is required to make their anti-growth philosophy work:
“organized evasive action: population control, limitation of material consumption, redistribution of wealth, transitions to technologies that are environmentally and socially less disruptive than today’s, and movement toward some kind of world government”
– Paul Ehrlich, Anne Ehrlich, and John Holdren, Ecoscience: Population, Resources, and Environment (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1977), p. 5.
Two-time loser Stacy Abrams is a neo-Malthusian. She holds the view that misery or vice are necessary equalizers between growing population and the means of subsistence:
Childless Stacey Abrams Says Killing Your Baby Is Best Way To Fix Democrat-Created Recession: “Having children is why you’re worried about your price for gas” [VIDEO] (thegatewaypundit.com)
How WEF of her!
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Filed under 2022 current events, social commentary, social engineering, Technocracy, technology Tagged with 5G, CDC, Digitalization, Jacques Ellul, technocratic state, technology