I started this post with just the first article from Knowable. Wrote a whole thing just for that, and from the viewpoint of how information has come so far in its history (truth has always, in one form or another, been "The First Casualty of War," after all) of being "weaponized." In lock step, of course, with how our advances in instrumentality; our extensions of all of our faculties as Marshall McLuhan used to say; with the emphasis, of course, on how the electrification of experience retrieval, especially on Capitalism, has been of primary importance.

And then these other two pieces from Vox caught my attention, whereupon it struck me, again, just how amazingly interrelated all of these events are when you look at it, not only through the lens of McLuhan media theories, but also through the lens of whether this is the "Pivot Point" faced by all sentient species, as they start making the leap, from the tribalism, that sure seems logical, as away to mark, the challenge, that maybe most such entities have to encounter, so as to see what can allow them to continue, now that they have eaten from the tree of knowledge; Because once you do that you have a very, very large tiger by the tail, precisely because of the power, even a single person can wield now, simply by the easy access to this new instrumentality; and there's no getting off, even assuming you can make it to its back, to ride with purpose, without major catastrophe.

In all of this, however, are several underlying points concerning keeping information as a commodity, as well as money itself, that you should keep in mind here:

1: It will make keeping Democracy virtually impossible, and for at least the reason of how can you have true liberty, or be a Libertarian at all, if you are not allowed truly informed consent?

2: It plays into the old tribalism fears of hording, that are especially expressed with Capitalism's ever more emphasized, zero sum mentality, in these modern times; as we have seen with the amplification of greed, and the feeling that the few must marginalize as many groups as possible so as to keep dominance, and control, and most especially the economics of scarcity for the many.

3: It has allowed the few to keep you from understanding your inherent power in simply not participating in a game that stopped making economic sense, for working people, the moment robots could do the old definition of work better than humans could; at least within the cold confines of economic value, the awful, old definition encompassed.

4: Now that a biological event has forced all working people to go on a "Strike" by other means, do we see just how much the moneyed few are suddenly a great deal more incentivized to listen to the real problems of working folks. Problems, of course, that, in my opinion, can be laid at the feet of this grossly out of date, and mutated, and toxic, economic operating system, itself.

The bottom line for me is as it has always been. We are at war, whether we realize it or not, and it is an information war. We are also in the midst of a planetary systems revolt. A revolt demanded because too many, delicately balanced, and interrelated, systems have been overburdened, way beyond their carrying capacities, for far too long now.

As such we have to mobilize as a nation, just as was done before, when the excesses of Imperialism, Fascism, and Capitalism, came to a head in an all encompassing, global conflict. And in all of this do we have to realize that there is absolutely no way to continue "Business As Usual."

Even more complicated, though, is the fact that we have to mobilize, and have a managed economy, but not a managed Capitalist one. Not indefinitely at least (as we will need to stay with it for a transition period).
No, it will have to be one where we must understand the need to redefine work. To come up with a definition that allows working people to own, as well as belong, to the communities they work to support, and make happen, as a part of that redefinition.

As I have also said before, it is time now for the tech to start working for working people, and not the other way around. We are not going to be able to heal anything until we grasp that very important, new, reality. And the only way we are going to get there, across the divide that separates this nation ideologically, is with a "Grand Compromise" that gets both sides to give up up something very important so that we can all find a way to tolerate each other, and then find common ground to work the further comprises with which something truly meaningful can get done.

In my opinion, it won't happen, successfully, any other way.

[Post Note: This is where the original post began. J.V.]
Information Apocalypse: All About Deepfakes

Would There Be Nearly the Number Of Incentives To Weaponize Information If We Weren't In So Many Dangerous Competitions?

And certainly the question that follows from that would be this:

Would there be nearly so many dangerous competitions if we didn't have an electrified economic operating system; one that not only was never meant to be electrified in the first place, but also one that has taken competition to the same levels of excessive amplification that is accelerating everything off the rails of normalcy? And this, of course, precisely because of its own success in spurring on the competition for cutting edge science. The very thing for very sharp people to wield when desperately trying to undercut the other competitors before they do it to you.

Of course Capitalism spurred us on to do amazing advancements in both general material well being, as well as scientific advancement. We can admit that freely, even as we also admit that a terrible price was paid in the course of achieving this outcome. A price that has come due now, in full, because doing just the minimum payment, as we've been doing, to pretend we're still interested, just isn't going to cut the cord that ties us to the reality of an inevitable outcome:

Burden any complex system beyond it's carrying capacity, for far too long, and you will reap the whirlwind. And aren't we just having bumper crop after bumper crop of those now; in various metaphorical renditions; in every complex system we operate in now, natural and human made.

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