Unprecedented
When the Tainos peoples of the pre-Columbian Caribbean Islands first sighted the Spanish conquerors, they did not have either language or context to place this most unusual scene. Nor could they possibly predict the complete destruction of their lives that ensured. I would imagine it was the same for most of the indigenous peoples.
In our world of technological change, we do not have language or context for so much of what is till now, unprecedented.
Our neuro-biological, psychosocial systems are immature in their capacity to perceive, adapt and respond to so much of what does not have previous existence.
Indeed, there has been an intentional effort to bring in so many of the changes that are enabling massive extraction of behavioural surplus of data from our lives without us even knowing that it is happening.
Suddenly we wake up to the fact that we have been manipulated, controlled, seduced…through a level of machine learning that moves at the speed of light to trap us even more strongly in its web with every single action we take.
While the word is distracted by inept leaders, who are themselves mere puppets of forces they cannot see, it might be wise to seek the Source of the Source.
The Googles, Facebooks and Microsofts of the world sell our behaviour futures to those who buy us without us even knowing we have been for sale.
We are not the product, we are the object of extraction. A form of colonisation and slavery that we agreed to, slowly, slowly, until …too late.
*The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Shoshana Zuboff, one of the most important books of our time.
April 2nd 2019
Photo taken April 2nd, 2019
