Re: <nettime> social media critique: next steps?

[Morlock Elloi <morlockelloi@gmail.com>]

FB as HIV:



The future of humanity is the struggle between humans that control
machines and machines that control humans.

While the internet has brought about a revolution in our ability to
educate each other, the consequent democratic explosion has shaken
existing establishments to their core. Burgeoning digital super states
such as Google, Facebook and their Chinese equivalents, who are
integrated with the existing order, have moved to reestablish
discourse control. This is not simply a corrective action.
Undetectable mass social influence powered by artificial intelligence
is an existential threat to humanity.

While still in its infancy, the geometric nature of this trend is
clear. The phenomenon differs from traditional attempts to shape
culture and politics by operating at a scale, speed, and increasingly
at a subtlety, that appears highly likely to eclipse human
counter-measures.

Nuclear war, climate change or global pandemics are existential
threats that we can work through with discussion and thought.
Discourse is humanity’s immune system for existential threats.
Diseases that infect the immune system are usually fatal. In this
case, at a planetary scale.

(from https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DTtKh84X4AEkC0j.jpg via 
https://twitter.com/JulianAssange )

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