Now that the pervasive invasion of your privacy is complete, it is now time to conduct a full frontal assault on your minds, . . . and this battering will also not hurt. The secret is in the subtlety of the assault.
The invasion of your privacy, yes your privacy, you know that thing you treasure so much, that space you think is your private domain, is complete and it’s not private anymore. The invasion didn’t hurt so much did it? You accepted and swallowed the fear-of-terrorism wafer, which justified all invasions of private space.
Were you offended? Were you self consciously ambivalent? No matter. All your conversations, written or otherwise are now fair game for an out-of-control and oppressive bureaucracy your tax dollars pay for.
The invasion in now about to be stepped-up so that “listening” to what you say and write will be the least of your problems — you are about to be submitted to an incursion that will influence our percepts. Google is testing the rollout of a system that will control the “truth,” exactly as its narcissistic masters deem it to be. The very same wisdom which converted the Internet into a gigantic advertising billboard, in now going to dictate what is factual and what is not, through its Knowledge Vault.
Google’s “Sell” is simple, “We’re developing incredibly complex, but intelligent, algorithms, which you’ll never understand, but which will discern what is most factually correct, . . . for you,” (paraphrasing). That outrageous representation is being accepted even by those who should know better. It is impossible to build algorithms that can discern truth. Algorithms can discern data points, however, algorithms cannot independently detect, recognize, or determine, the relevant nature of multiple facts and their hierarchy in truth. Pretending that the Internet can deliver “relevant” truthfulness and that algorithms can detect that difference, is just that, a pretense. Only with human input can processors establish hierarchical structures of facts to deliver factualness or truthfulness, and this means that when the human factor penetrates the equation, well, . . . humans will be humans. They will not be able to help themselves, and will adjust, or interpret, our facts and their factuality quotients.
Delivering rankings on use, or visits, or hits, is useful, and no doubt much of what will be available to us on Knowledge Vault will be factual, however, much will also NOT be factual, but will be opined to be factual, not by algorithms, but by corporeal processors.
Google for example, pretends that it will tell algorithms to accept as fact, what the “Internet” has accepted unanimously, or almost unanimously, across its vast store of information. Where in the universe is it possible for an algorithm to perceive information, then determine that the Internet concurs with it, and then establish it as fact? In Google’s universe? Even theoretically, the notion of consensus on objective facts, or scientific facts, borders on the impossible, so how can we expect that things such as human experience, possibly fit nicely into an algorithm’s crunching, spitting out perfectly delineated truths?
Google is trying to float that algorithms will process the Internet and provide us “truth”? Can’t wait to read what the Knowledge Vault oracle submits to us on climate change. Of course, a monster like the Knowledge Vault will not only deal with scientific facts, or human knowledge facts, or hard numbers that are incontrovertible, but it will be a purveyor of knowledge about everything — everything that is written about and available on the Internet. There will be positive, useful, elements of these new engines analyzing information, however, there is no chance that human input will not be involved in influencing the input and the output of such a system.
There is no question that people, yes humans, will decide the veracity of truthfulness dispensed to the seven billion users hungry for knowledge, or seeking at least a few facts, if not just a little truth. Standing atop the pillar of indisputable, factual knowledge, this not-so-subtle machinery will be used by all-knowing-self-righteous humans to manipulate perceptions and opinions.
Reactions to this and similar ventures, by the few in media paying attention, even those feigning superior intelligence, is timid and without much insight. Why, are we so numbed to intrusion that we are prepared to surrender independence of thought? This is not just another plan for intrusion, this is a strategy for a legal violation of minds, young and old. Why is that obvious? Just consider how it is being presented.
Where is the inquisitive Fourth Estate on this? Not inquiring? Not interested in truth? Or has it heard lies repeated for so many years that it now appears to be the truth and our media accepts it as such? Is anyone concerned that government organizations won’t abstain from making use of such engines shaping their own truths for mass consumption? The Internet already contains ideologically stained “accepted” lies from the MSM, so do we really need Google’s algorithms to further convince us that this fiction is fact?
Google can deploy any system that suits its fancy to increase revenues, however, let’s keep their toes to the fire on this “Knowledge Vault,” with truth as to what it is, what it is capable of, what it represents, and what its objectives are. Just the facts, please, not what Google deems to be “facts.”
A constituent of the vast baby boomer generation with a career which has been fortunate to know the ponderous corporate worlds, as well as the intimately pressurized, and invigorating entrepreneurial domains of high tech and venture capital, I have harvested my share of mistakes meandering through corridors of enterprise from Silicon Valley, to London and endless, colourful, sometimes praetorian points in between. The voyage has provided an abundance of fodder for a pen yielding to an inquisitive keyboard, a foraging mind, and a passionate spirit.
Whether political or business or social or economic or personal, is it not all political? It is a privilege to write, and an even greater privilege to be read by anyone, and sometimes with the wind at my back the writing may occasionally be legible. I do not write to invite scorn, nor to invite respect, but if I get really lucky the writing can stimulate thinking. I also write for the very selfish purpose of animating my own processes, and engaging the best of what life offers. Above all, whether biting fire or swatting shadows, I am grateful to be gifted the freedom to write and publish whatever flows down to the keyboard. To all those who enabled this freedom, and to all those standing guard to preserve it, I am indebted.