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Social media as television 2.0?

With the creation of the so-called Disinformation Governance Board in the United States, let us recall how social networks betrayed their purpose.

They tried to pry open your eyes and set them back to looking at the old faces that formerly monopolised your television screen, rather than letting you select your own information sources. Those other information sources are to be buried, suppressed, cancelled.

The very appeal of social media from day one was that it contained user-generated content, not approved by the establishment. That very feature, the central appeal of social media, is now berated as some sort of bug. It is "disinformation", now sidelined by the platforms, in deference to the content produced for television networks, as if all of Twitter is meant to be a substitute for the television screen.

The spread of “disinformation”, first and foremost conspiracy theories, was presented as an extraordinary evil that descended upon us like a thunderbolt from a clear blue sky, in 2016 and then during the pandemic when it arguably had the potential to do harm.

In reality, nonsense conspiracy theories were abundant on the internet ever since it began, and possibly even worse prior to 2016, when it only began to upset the wrong people, because it might have slightly affected the results of a US presidential election. They had no care for people believing false realities until it affected their power in some way.

Journalists and politicians have spectacularly managed to fool many users into believing that the very things they were looking for on the internet - those alternative views and products that grew after people became hostile to the mainstream - are actually some new inconvenience to the users. According to them, we must now suppose, the internet was actually just meant to be television 2.0, with the same ugly talking heads of authority speaking via it, telling us what opinions are acceptable. Why ever did we need to listen to normal or random people on the internet, when we could focus solely on the special people with crumpled foreheads and lucrative sponsors to tell us what to think?

Of course, in reality, people fled those rich journalists and talking heads to the internet because they were sick of them, and wanted rid of the mainstream media. They wandered the desert, searching for an oasis where people spoke their mind rather than a paid agenda.

Unfortunately, the journalists followed the audiences that had fled them, until they finally appeared on social networks and began to receive blue tick marks and favourable treatment. They pursued their desire to recapture their captive audience, to firmly strap the television sets back onto the audience’s heads and prevent them from escaping again like runaway beasts.

In short, once upon a time, realising what a parasite and a villain the modern “journalist” was, people fled to the internet. The mocking forms of “alternative media” and lackadaisical memes were born. People created their own news and conspiracy theories, and derided the establishment. However, like monsters, the mainstream media followed, transforming social media into but another television screen, and now they have you back in their clutches again.

Reducing carbon emissions to net zero is partly to be accomplished by swapping diesel and petrol-consuming cars for electric cars by 2030 in the UK. However, this may still cater more to the interests of companies and consumers than the planet.

The moral and political dubiousness of seeking cheap lithium supplies and other essential minerals for producing electric cars is clear in the way it encourages exploitation and meddling in nations such as Bolivia. Moralising about clean energy has potential implications for future conflicts in that it can provide casus belli for such conflicts to be initiated against less fortunate and more polluting countries.

Such excuse-seeking for conflicts would fit with how richer countries maintain their riches at the expense of others, finding all kinds of grievances against their economic underlings that are merely contrived propaganda based on the sensibilities of their privileged population.

Other interests at work

What happens all too often is little more than "greenwashing". Corporations try to tag along with the nobler of government agendas, in hope of getting favour and continuing to accumulate capital. They may buy influence with politicians, who in turn try to square a circle by fitting greedy corporate interests with ecological responsibility.

The goal of continuing to have a transport system dependent on mass personal ownership of cars or something like cars at all may be something deserving of criticism. Cars are inevitably a lucrative industry, so neither governments nor businesses want to lose that industry. The car industry wants more cars out there than people. Given this motive, it cannot be ruled out that the environment will still be damaged by waste and the devastation of mineral-rich nations, and this is because the Western consumer's privileged expectations and preference to have a car at all is still being taken into account.

What is the alternative?

Governments rarely take the initiative to devise great changes to transport as they did in the past (railways only became universal and spread across the territory of a country at the command of the state). They could take the responsibility for actually devising changes to transport again, although only a panel of experts could suggest anything specific.

While it is hard to think of an alternative to a car or something like a car that would satisfy consumers, the government could always enact policies that will decrease the number of cars on the road drastically and perhaps end car ownership, so that cars are only ever at the needed number. This way, the number of electric cars eventually operated would be minuscule, which would have less of an impact. If cars were AI-driven in the future, they would not need to be owned (Great Reset alert!) and could simply be available based on some kind of subscription, being called to pick people up.

Whatever else happens, car manufacturers will always favour there being more cars, not fewer, and that is where there will remain something of a clash between greenwashed greed and eco-friendly policy.

Many decry the informal alliance that exists between governments and technology companies, but is it really necessarily bad? Over time, could high-tech spies actually create a utopia? A kind of good, even if it is born of evil?

If widespread enough, surveillance and transparency could actually create a panopticon of accountability, rearing individuals who respond as if they were under the eye of God. While a world of surveillance can be initially created by a sinister Machiavellian elite, those who grow up in that world of surveillance may become beings of impeccable character, committed to obeying the law.

Being treated harshly as one matures, like being watched, could help to bring about significantly restrained and considerate behaviour. Awareness that we can be caught committing crimes, by small devices we may not be able to see, could encourage a steadfast adherence to the law at all times. It could become so ingrained in us that, even when not being watched, we act as though we are being watched.

Good children of the system

Inevitably, any technology-based totalitarianism would at first experience abuse. Those who establish systems of surveillance aren't always inclined to benevolence, but in fact are more likely to be paranoid and unscrupulous. In such a case, we should expect that they themselves are of dubious moral character, perhaps even of a criminal mindset. They likely did many things in their lives that were dependent upon not being monitored, which perhaps makes their decision to create a monitored society somewhat ironic.

A child who grows up in the monitored world of techno-totalitarianism is the future master of that world, because all men die, including the tyrant. Raised in circumstances that deter or detect all crime and immorality, and establish some punishment for it, the new generation should encounter a filter that ensures only the best of them will qualify to represent authority in that society. Intense background checks, barring those with any criminal history from office, may ensure that only the most morally clean individuals may ascend to power.

By the time the original tyrants who established a system of totalitarian surveillance are gone, and replaced with the children they had raised, those in that new generation may be benevolent to a degree unknown even to current democratic forms of government. They will be those who dissatisfied no-one, were never detected committing any offence, and were at all times loyal.

The unaccountable class

There are many potential pitfalls to a techno-totalitarian system. For one thing, one must at first accept repressive totalitarian rule in the first place, which means enduring a lot of injustice and arbitrary power. Another problem is that such a system is likely to create a kind of static adherence to whatever the last ideology was, which was in a position of influence when the techno-totalitarian system was set up. Any ideology that usurps all power and moral authority will deem the others to be criminal by nature. As such, many of the detained or suppressed in that society may not be criminal at all but simply creative thinkers. Finally, there is also the pitfall of class, wherein the rulers are exempt from all modes of surveillance and accountability for their own crimes while monitoring those of a lower class, and those of the lower class are compelled to goodness because of their lower status, official or unofficial, while those who rule have no such obligation.

Because creating a technological totalitarianism requires somewhat unscrupulous behaviour in the first place, it seems likely that a prospective utopia (the merits of which are actually dubious even if accomplished) will be interrupted by one of the pitfalls above. It is unlikely that bad people take any steps to prevent, in particular, the formation of a class of unaccountable people to govern those who are accountable, when ideally all should be accountable.

Images of a military or security robot resembling a dog with a gun in place of a head have elicited dread online. The machine, created by Ghost Robots and Sword International and named the Special Purpose Unmanned Rifle (SPUR), may offer a glimpse into the future of warfare.

A common reaction is one of horror. We have seen all the Terminator and Matrix movies, featuring the robot takeover and enslavement of humanity. In such movies, a common theme is that robots exceeded humanity in their abilities. They became more agile, resilient, and even more intelligent. Ultimately, their fighting ability grew greater than humanity's and humanity was conquered (subverted in the movies, of course, by messianic heroes who can outclass the machines).

Warfare advances and there is no point in complaining. But is it really a matter of man against machine? Or even a matter of better machines against inferior and dated machines? Such thinking may have more in common with movies than reality.

What does technology mean to war?

The actual relationship between technology and warfare is often misunderstood. Technology has always been more a way for a wealthier power to leverage its wealth to produce military results with greater propaganda effect and at a reduced cost in personnel lives, rather than a silver bullet capable of producing victory. It is just more ordnance put to use against the other side's ordnance, and not ultimately the deciding factor in who will will be victorious. Just take a look. History is filled with examples of wealthier and better-equipped nations being defeated by poorer ones in wars. Technological advantages can be negated a lot more easily than many would think, and humans are a lot harder to kill than their counterparts portrayed in movies and games.

Those times when advanced technology got beaten

Look no further back than the outcome of the War in Afghanistan (2001-2021). Surely, it was a foregone conclusion that the mighty NATO forces would defeat the inferior Taliban forces? It was also a foregone conclusion that the Soviet Union would be defeated by the German military in 1941. What happened?

We might be able to inflict our wrath on people in poor nations as a result of billions spent on advanced weapons, but that act in itself just serves to encourage someone else to pick up an AK-47 and continue the fight. A Taliban fighter is a low-cost means of waging war, driven by faith, willing to sacrifice his life. You only believe killing him is a victory because you mistakenly equate his loss with your own death, when in reality a group like the Taliban has an endless supply of men. You don't have an endless supply of expensive bombs and robots. Worse still, depending on robots means you have absolutely no supply of men willing to sacrifice themselves.

Attrition ultimately can still wear you down, even when you take no human losses. And the unwillingness to take even one casualty just makes that one casualty hit a whole lot harder, when it eventually does happen. The anti-war sentiment ends up being just as strong, nay, worse, than it would be if you were taking thousands of losses in 1940.

Strengths and weaknesses

There is also the fact that a robot soldier may just be forever doomed to be less efficient, less manageable and far less adapted to its environment than the real thing.

Imagine a robot horse. That is a fine thing for fiction, but a real horse operates a lot better in the real world and is better made for it. A normal horse does not come from a manufacturing plant thousands of miles away. It can be replaced very easily using other horses. It can be recharged using grass and water abundant in many normal environments, and does not need expensive and rare power cells that must be transported to it by yet more technology.

Of course, an already good military can be made better by robots, which surely can add to its firepower. These kinds of unmanned rifles are not going to be a replacement for soldiers, but they could certainly be buddies for soldiers and increase the firepower of already effective military units.

An army that still puts a lot of human bodies to use in addition to its mechanical muscle will likely prevail over one that attempts to rely solely on machines. Willing humans will continue to be the more important factor in winning. People and even animals are going to continue to be a more convenient and cost-effective way of getting lots of weapons to the front line, for a long time.

Russia has been accused of hypocrisy by the United States and NATO, after its satellite destruction test reportedly created debris and panic in orbit.

If you have seen the movie Gravity, starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, you are familiar with the problem. In fact, this recent event was exactly the plot of the movie, including such details as which country did the deed of taking down a satellite with a missile.

Some may even have been irked when Gravity came out, because back then the most recent offender in destroying satellites was China, yet the movie chose to cast Russia as the aggressor as is so often done in American media. Now, it seems, Russia has finally stepped up and played its movie role for real.

The blame game

Of course, Russia rejected claims that the debris created in the test endangered any space installation. Moreover, Russia pointed to similar satellite destruction tests by the US, China and India. Both sides accused each other of hypocrisy, with the US saying Russia's actions directly contradict its words.

When it comes to hypocrisy at this moment, Russia may be somewhat guiltier than America, and so too could be the Chinese when it comes to their activity in space. For something to be hypocritical, one's words have to contradict one's actions. Russia and China have steadfastly stated that they oppose the weaponisation of space. They may be using a narrow definition, speaking of the stationing of weapon systems in orbit rather than the temporary course of projectiles through space, but to send weapons into space to blow things up is certainly not conducive to preventing the weaponisation of space.

It is the presence of ICBMs, which move at such high altitude that they enter into space, that motivated the desire of the US to weaponise space in the first place, dating even back to the 1980s. Since the US has openly created the Space Force as a branch of its military, and declared space to be a war-fighting domain, the US is not breaking its word when it carries out military activity in space. It is doing exactly as it promises. The Russians and Chinese, however, are playing a diplomatic stalling game in which they likely intend to shame American advances in military space technology.

Warfare inevitably advances

The Russian and Chinese position is roughly equivalent to the Spartans decrying the Athenian use of arrows. Complaining about the other side's developments as being unsportsmanlike, appealing to arbitrary definitions and rules about what constitutes the right and proper way to kill people and blow things up, is unavailing in the end. It could also be deterring huge strides in technological development that could ultimately save humanity itself if we eventually come to depend on space colonies to escape disasters on Earth.

Russia can blow up whatever it wants to blow up, but there is no point in Russia crying foul about the other side coveting powerful technologies that could accomplish military supremacy. Russia has very capable engineers of its own and has surpassed the United States in some areas, such as hypersonic missiles. So, too, has China. This should teach these countries that the answer is not to complain about American advances, but to make advances of their own.

Every breakthrough in space is good

At the end of the day, enemies or not, we are all human, and it is in the human interest to fully exploit space for every benefit to our security and colonise the other planets of the Solar System. The stumbling block to this has been funding, and if one organisation on Earth is not short of funding, it is the US Department of Defense.

This is not a call for American conquest of the Solar System, but an acknowledgment that someone has to start the process and it would be wrong to simply stall them.

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Social media as television 2.0?

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