Sean Hannity is a cyborg September 17, 2010
Posted by Summerspeaker in Technocracy, Technology, The Singularity, Transhumanism.trackback
Echoing Dale Carrico in content, American Studies professor David Correia has just published a worthwhile critique of the Singularity movement. Correia argues that leftists should actively oppose Singularitarians because of they present a dangerously pro-corporate, pro-military ideology with disturbing parallels to the eugenics movement. While Correia downplays the odds of transformative technological change and overgeneralizes about the community, that’s not terribly important. His focus on the military and corporate foundation for Singularitarianism should catch our attention. The response from R.U. Sirius accurately points out the diverse political views found within the movement and asks Correia to enter the internal debate rather than attacking from the outside. I support the suggested course forward, but Correia’s criticism can’t be waved away merely by pointing out the presence of leftists in the movement. Anyone concerned with social justice should grasp the implausibility of tycoons like Bill Gates, Peter Thiel, and Ray Kurzweil undermining the very hierarchies they benefit from. If radical and progressive Singularitarians want a future that’s not controlled by money and guns for the pleasure of the bosses, we’re going to have to struggle.
Queering the Singularity 
*sigh*
Does money play a part in the creation of technology? It sure does. It takes a lot of resources to develop technology.
Does corruption and greed go hand in hand with lots of money? Sure does. Humans are self serving greedy bastards who’s instincts force them to behave this way.
Does that corruption and greed tend to seek to create authoritarian systems to ensure it can keep self benefiting? You betcha.
The point that you and EVERYONE ELSE WHO TALKS ABOUT HOW MUCH WE HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT A “AUTHORITARIAN DICTATORSHIP” OVERLOOKS IS THAT IT IS NOT A STABLE STATE.
Period.
You can ignore history all you like, it does not change the historical facts.
Tyranny is an UNSTABLE STATE. It’s a pyramid balanced on it’s apex instead of it’s base. It cannot cope with continuing change, and requires stagnation to survive long term. As stagnation CANNOT be maintained, inevitably the instability cannot be maintained and it collapses.
EVERY TYRANNY IN HISTORY HAS COLLAPSED. The more accelerated the advance of technological progress, and the larger the human population participating in the creation of technological progress, the faster the instability has reached collapse.
Fine, you want to live in fear of a POSSIBLE TYRANNY, go ahead. Refuse to look beyond the moment that a tyranny gains some small victory, and ignore the facts history has proven are FACTS time and again.
Can the corporations take over America? THEY ALREADY HAVE. They did it 30 years ago, and we HAVE NOW REACHED THE POINT OF COLLAPSE. They are trying every trick in the book to KEEP CONTROL, and IT IS STILL COLLAPSING. EVEN IF they succeed in packing the congress with puppets, rewrite the laws to favor themselves, and win every single battle to “increase the wealth divide” ALL THAT WILL HAPPEN IS AN INCREASE IN THE SPEED IN WHICH THE COLLAPSE IS OCCURRING.
Now, if you want to actually DO SOMETHING CONSTRUCTIVE, rather than “warning people about the dangers of big money” AFTER THE DANGER HAS ALREADY OCCURRED, focus on directing the ongoing collapse into constructive end results by working FOR positive end results instead of wasting your efforts to try and prevent something that took place 30 years ago.
Money ALWAYS WINS IN THE SHORT TERM. And the more it wins, the faster it causes the next collapse, and the cycle starts over. It’s like a tree with a too heavy canopy. Either a storm breaks off most of the canopy, or the branches rot and collapse, and the tree loses most of it’s top, then simply regrows it.
But you have to understand history and humanity to not only see how this cycle has come about, but exactly how close to being permanently broken it is. There is no way to stop the collapse, the branches are far too rotten again. but there’s never going to be a chance for them to regrow before the cycle itself is eliminated by technological advance.