I have found that as I have become almost completely paralyzed, and a computer is the only way for my very active brain to reach out to the world beyond my skull, the machine slowly grows into my brain. I have largely forgotten that things such as my hands and feet exist, unless I see or feel them.

 

The Terminator movies, which I love, pit smart machines physically waring against man. While there are likely no worries of that in any foreseeable future, there is a problem unveiling itself now. Everyone knows of it; this is my opinion.

How are humans going to be able to keep track of, to know, what is true and what is not? Of course, this has always been a problem, but in the past, if one was sufficiently interested, the volume of information was manageable and sussing out the chain of custody of that information was usually quite possible. One could be diligent in finding those who were trustworthy; the ones who paid their family bills with the money coming more directly from the people seeking the information.  In this old-fashioned way, reporters were usually compelled to protect their reputation for being trustworthy. The chain of information custody was trusted because those passing it along were humans, who were known, with track records.

In our quest for the entertaining, free, immediate, lazy, highly dispersed and thus automated, has led to a deluge of information, with less and less idea where it came from, or where it has been.

‘Highly dispersed’, has been a rallying cry for many; don’t trust ‘the man, I can decide for myself what is real, and what is not’. But with any passed along story, however, there is always ‘the man’, whether it’s governed by an institution or by going ‘viral’ with a company who doesn’t get paid by the information consumers, but by the businesses who pay to have the information consumers delivered to them.

Something that is not new; how compelling a story sounds, or how well a story’s internal logic works and how well it’s filled in with fine details, is rather independent of whether it is accurate or true.

Of course, there is the more serious story about smart machines being used as a tool for selfish reasons, but I’m done for now.