“There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the “wisdom” of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious.”
—From " The Abolition of Man ", by C.S. Lewis, 1943
July 5, 2018 - Smart Appliances Haven’t Found a Home Yet
October 13, 2019 - Week in Review: The ‘smart home’ is still so, so stupid
January 8, 2020 - Kitchens Get Smarter at CES Tech Show, Not Yet in Many Homes
That’s a great C.S. Lewis quote up at the top, isn’t it? As I was writing this article, I learned, only after years of reading it, reprinted on website after website, that all the versions I’d seen had chopped this line off the end: “and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious.”
Removing the heart of the quote like that is called “social engineering” or “spin control”.
He was polite to say “impious”. I’d have gone with “unholy” or “evil”.
Two days ago, I was watching the Golf channel. They showed a patron on the grounds at TPC Sawgrass for the Players Championship, looking down at their so-called “smart” phone. The commentator, Rich Lerner, said something to the effect of “such useful devices. Most of us would grab our phone before we grabbed our wallet if we were heading out the door. Yet Rory McIlroy told the Golf channel that he puts his phone aside during tournaments such as this one…”
Last night, the programme continued, a follow-up deeper dive into the topic. "Rory McIlroy is reading all sorts of wonderful books, to improve himself philosophically, including the New York Times Best seller “Digital Minimalism.” They showed a picture of the covers of two of the five books Rory mentioned…one of the two was “Digital Minimalism”.
I thought it was blatant, and I saw them do it. It’s called “social engineering” or “spin control”.
Now that the scree of the technology collapse’s avalanche has started to slide, the folks who created and sold the shit to us are going to try to tiptoe out of the situation without being strung up from their own smart meter-equipped lamp posts.
They’re trying to keep you from remembering that, just moments ago, they had hoped to get you to voluntarily request a brain implant, so that you wouldn’t have to carry your phone around. Mouthpiece of the State Ellen DeGeneres is still pitching those horrible Virtual Reality goggles in television commercials 20 times a day.
The words " mystery ", " baffled " and " puzzled " are memes, used, among numerous similar variants, whenever anyone in the wholly-controlled-and-coopted Political, Academic, Scientific and Media establishments wants to lie about, well, basically anything. One of those many variants is " astonished ".
That’s why an article I’ve appended below reads “A recently published survey looking at smartphone usage in the Nordic countries contained an astonishing number. In the 18- to 24-year-old age group, only 87 percent said they “own or have ready access to” a smartphone. That was the lowest of all the other adult age groups surveyed — including 65- to 75-year-olds.”
The young people are with the program. So the game is over for the folks in charge. It’s a mop-up operations from here.
The man who wrote the article we’re discussing, the guy wringing his hands and feigning astonishment , is Jakob Moll, who is CEO for Zetland in Denmark.
“Zetland is a young Danish media company dedicated to digital journalism as a force of good .”
" Digital journalism as a force of good ". That which can be spoken is not the true Zen.
You see how the author carefully changed the headline from “digital journalism as a force for for good” to “digital journalism as a force of good.” He’s softened, he’s backed away, he’s taken away the strength. In propaganda terms, he’s ‘walking it back.’
Magic spells, both Black and White, involve words - in all the languages. That little word change speaks volumes.
Do you remember how Google’s motto was “Don’t Be Evil”? And then how they officially dropped it as a motto?
As a practicing Black magician, Mr. Moll lets us know that “Total time spent will show signs of shrinking — at least in countries that were early adopters of ubiquitous mobile internet.”
No, Jakob…it is March 2020, and it is not that mobile internet use " will show signs of shrinking", but rather that mobile internet use " has shown that it is shrinking."
Since no one does research like I do, and only roughly 30 people subscribe to my newsletter, Jakob can appear to a wholly-credulous-rube readership to be foresighted, and, well, a " force of good ". When in fact he’s a two-faced con artist, defensively spinning stuff I surfaced three months ago, or six, or twelve.
As further proof that he’s a force of evil, beyond his feigned astonishment, and his slippery wordsmithing, we have his omission of what the kids in Denmark who don’t have so-called “Smart” phones are doing to communicate. He left the fact that the young people in Denmark went back to flip phones or land lines carefully unmentioned.
Here’s Jakob’s picture:
[image]
I’ve included it so you could get a better idea of what a generational Satanist in a position of marginal influence looks like.
Personally, I think he looks like he just took a big slug of baby blood from a golden goblet.
I regret to say that I am not speaking in jest. If we’re going to get past this situation, we’re going to have to come to terms with the, er, socioreligious world view of the bloodline-linked folks in charge, whose modus operandi has included human sacrifice and cannibalism all the way back to Babylon, and before.
Jakob used Black magic as best he could by headlining his article “A slow-moving tech backlash among young people.”
Self-proclaimed force-of-good Moll called the sudden avalanche of positive change slow-moving to try to keep a hold on the situation that he and his cohorts are losing, nay, have already lost control of.
Another story below, from October 2019, is headlined “Week in Review: The ‘smart home’ is still so, so stupid .”
"I’m dying for this stuff to be useful and fun, and, instead, after a few years of playing with the stuff, I just have a handful of commands that I shout out every so often. All of my digital friends can turn on my lights, turn on my TV, play music, tell me the time and weather and a few other things that probably weren’t worth the thousands of dollars it took to bring them and their accompanying IoT gadgets into my home.
In short, I’m an idiot.
I want to be bullish on these devices and voice interfaces as a platform, but they are so painfully unimpressive after several years, even as natural language processing has made impressive advances. They are great to demo and are fun to play with but I can’t help but wonder whether this is just an endless march toward further marginal utility , not “the future.”
He’s an Illuminist talking-head shill, telling you What To Think in a mainstream publication. And that’s great news, because his platform and mine have become aligned. That’s because they’re going to try to tiptoe out of the situation without being strung up from their own smart meter-equipped lamp posts.
And, actually, we are not aligned. I thought cell phones were hateful from the moment I first saw an asshole whip one out in a restaurant and begin talking loudly on it, to show how important he was. I got one in 2002 then quickly gave it up. I was browbeaten into getting another in 2006, when I still thought they were hateful, and I still think they are hateful at this time.
And I think we’re going back to land lines from here.
Jeff Miller, Brooklyn, New York, March 12, 2020
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February 13, 2017 - How Smart Home Devices Can Undermine Overall Home Security
July 5, 2018 - Smart Appliances Haven’t Found a Home Yet
September 17, 2019 - The tech backlash is real, and it’s accelerating
The signs of changing attitudes are everywhere
Pew Research released some new findings on the subject just over a month ago. Authors Carroll Doherty and Jocelyn Kiley write:
Four years ago, technology companies were widely seen as having a positive impact on the United States. But the share of Americans who hold this view has tumbled 21 percentage points since then, from 71% to 50%.
Negative views of technology companies’ impact on the country have nearly doubled during this period, from 17% to 33%, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.
October 13, 2019 - Week in Review: The ‘smart home’ is still so, so stupid
The big story
One thing I rarely cover these days is the smart home, this, despite my apartment hosting two HomePods, two Echos, three Google Home devices and a Facebook Portal+.
I’m dying for this stuff to be useful and fun, and, instead, after a few years of playing with the stuff, I just have a handful of commands that I shout out every so often. All of my digital friends can turn on my lights, turn on my TV, play music, tell me the time and weather and a few other things that probably weren’t worth the thousands of dollars it took to bring them and their accompanying IoT gadgets into my home.
In short, I’m an idiot.
I want to be bullish on these devices and voice interfaces as a platform, but they are so painfully unimpressive after several years, even as natural language processing has made impressive advances. They are great to demo and are fun to play with but I can’t help but wonder whether this is just an endless march toward further marginal utility, not “the future.”
December 24, 2019 - A slow-moving tech backlash among young people
“Total time spent will show signs of shrinking — at least in countries that were early adopters of ubiquitous mobile internet.”
A recently published survey looking at smartphone usage in the Nordic countries contained an astonishing number. In the 18- to 24-year-old age group, only 87 percent said they “own or have ready access to” a smartphone. That was the lowest of all the other adult age groups surveyed — including 65- to 75-year-olds.
(The data: 87 percent for 18-24, 95 percent for 25-34, 96 percent for 35-44, 94 percent for 45-54, 90 percent for 55-64, and 89 percent for 65-75.)
87 out of 100 is a high proportion, mind you. But it’s still surprising to many of us that a significant proportion of the youngest adults turn their backs on a device most consider an extra limb.
December 26, 2019 - Tech’s Rich and Powerful Are So Over Their Gadgets
OVER IT
Devices are cooling down as tech’s elite moves on to less tangible signifiers of wealth and luxury.
Arek Wylegalski, who invests in technology for a living, doesn’t know what version iPhone he owns. He’s not sure if it has FaceID, but he thinks it might. He’s a partner at the tech investment firm FirstMinute Capital. When we met in August in San Francisco at a startup pitch fest, it looked like an iPhone 7 or 8 to me. Its screen had cracked.
As the majority of the U.S. arrives at a smartphone-saturated future, Silicon Valley is neck-deep in a backlash against it. Perhaps more than anyone else, those who work in technology are doing their best to back off in their personal lives . Jack Dorsey tweeted in March that he uses his phone a bit more than 6 hours a day to simultaneously helm two companies worth nearly $30 billion each.
And yet Dorsey has also chronicled his affection for monastic, low-tech vacations like silent meditation retreats. Blackberry devotees have written long articles about why they’ve switched back to their dumbphones from the more addictive alternatives.
(The author picked the most out-of-fashion device in existence, the Blackberry, as a slur. - ed)
December 30, 2019 - How the Smartphone Became Boring
They’re a lot less impressive when they’re everywhere. Here’s how the smartphone went from innovation icon to standard component.
(They’re ‘walking it back’ - getting you mentally conditioned for the next step, which they hope to architect. They want to walk you back to a flip phone, versus you getting your head together and ditching mobile phones altogether. - ed)
January 8, 2020 - Kitchens Get Smarter at CES Tech Show, Not Yet in Many Homes
January 11, 2020 - ‘ Techlash ’ Hits College Campuses
Facebook, Google and other major tech firms were every student’s dream workplaces. Until they weren’t.
January 4, 2020 - After a backlash, Google changes course on search results redesign
Google LLC said today that it will revisit a controversial recent redesign of its search engine that has been criticized as deceptive.
This month, the desktop version of Google received a new look that has made ads harder to distinguish from regular search results.
Paid and organic results are now presented in an almost identical format except for a tiny icon to the top right of each link. An organic link features the icon of the website to which it belongs, while a paid link features an icon that reads “Ad.”
January 26, 2020 - UCLA decides not to implement facial recognition technology
January 27, 2020 - Tech Giants’ New Appeal to Governments: Please Regulate Us
(The fact that they are arms of the government makes the headline really hilarious. - ed)
February 12, 2020 - Amazon Echo still king among smart speakers despite declining U.S. market share
March 8, 2020 - How to stop your smart home spying on you
Everything in your smart home, from the lightbulbs to the thermostat, could be recording you or collecting data about you. What can you do to curb this intrusion ?
During an interview with the BBC last year, Google’s senior vice-president for devices and services, Rick Osterloh, pondered whether a homeowner should disclose the presence of smart home devices to guests. “I would, and do, when someone enters into my home,” he said.
((Throw the shit in the trash can" is not listed among the options. - ed)
March 9, 2020 - AI rejected by a growing number of marketers, study says
Half of advertisers (50%) have no plans to use artificial intelligence (AI) in their marketing , according to the results of a survey conducted by Advertiser Perceptions that was shared with Marketing Dive. That number is up from 36% in April 2019, when the company conducted a similar survey.
