the gas station philosopher | hugo ormo
Like often happens, humanity met the internet in the shape of a horseshoe. Those who first used it were the top good fellows in universities and military and the top bad guys in criminal rings. It went down to the point the most of us started using it in the nineties and at some point well into this century it reached the bottom where crocks and idiots got into it.
If one word is traveling the world today, it is fake-news. A wrap-word that can take many meanings. A word that can express rebellion, doom, frustration, confusion, hopelessness, protest, disagreement.
Discussions will soon lead us to the word truth. And to the premise that there is not such thing as truth or fact, that all is relative to the observer. Further looking for a place where to settle a standpoint in a world that all of a sudden has no ground, we will try to set foot with scientists: they know the truth and facts after all! But then again, history proves they don’t always.
Soon we reach a point where by lack of foothold we cannot help but start to give into those transgressive words about the lack of truth and facts. And here is the point when we fall down the rabbit hole of our days. Here is were populists want to have us: lost, and vulnerable to an attack straight into the deepest convictions of our culture and society.
We fail to identify and comprehend what truth and facts are. And through this breach in our integrity, our hopes and ingenuity get lost. We stop being humans to become fearful crippled creatures under the lash of an overlord. Shadows of what we were born to, of what we can reach.
We fail to see that we are all navigating the world in search of more knowledge. That scientists, do not hold THE truth or THE facts but design models and hypothesis based on limited facts. Models and hypothesis that may later on, in light of new facts, be proven too simple to reflect reality. We fail to see that the world is complex and interrelated. And that we know yet too little to arrogantly demand A TRUTH. We need to return to our natural inborn curiosity and keep trying to understand reality.
We have become intoxicated by the vapors of science and technology, to believe that there is a response already available for all things. That politicians or states know it but hide it from us, and that Google and YouTube can tell us the truth. The liberating truth. And through this act of rebellion, we join the lines of brainless wraths, dancing mindlessly at the tune of the craziest (opportunist) of the time.
Back in the nineties, unchecked by most, Google and Amazon started to be. At the turn of the century, Facebook and Twitter became the place to hang out for a new generation of people. Those were among the first companies who took the potential of internet and rethought the way we researched information, shop, kept in contact with each other and shared news. And this, on its own, became a breakthrough of innovation that changed the way we lived.
Yet a huge social change was about to occur, that no one would have imagined. Despised by most, Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone in 2007. Shortly after, Samsung followed suit with Google’s Android OS. A paradigm change happened that expanded like a wildfire over the US and Europe and fueled those very same Google, Amazon, Facebook and Twitter who moved over their platforms to this new category of personal computers. And the world changed, for ever.
At a point, those internet companies became advertising moguls, the day after they became a political issue. An issue of such size that neither the young and talented Silicon Valley nor the political class in the capitals could even imagine how to tackle. The former because of lack of political knowledge and expertise, the later because of lack of understanding what those platforms were and meant.
Here we are, we people, navigating a world that suddenly blew up in size and complexity. Even if our political class is catching up, we are now living times of wilderness. Millions of people are devoting hours every day working for internet platforms without knowing it. By tagging pictures in Instagram, giving up our business network to LinkedIn, or giving out our most inner thoughts to Google search or our most private conversations to Facebook. We have given so much private information to Google and Facebook that they stopped being interested on harvesting any more of it.
Millions of people are confused with the late affluence of news outlets and lost their judgement about what to read, what is right and what is questionable. And dark agents are operating in social media targeting people one by one to change their perception of the reality.
(Cheers to Julian Barnes)
the world is an arch carrying all lifestock (woodworms) around the oceans. For ages woodworms have fed in the arch, at once source and sustain of life. Science and Technology boosted their numbers to a point were the structural integrity of the arch started to be compromised. Yet this process of accelerated consumption was not seen by most of the maggots.
Here we have two overseer-maggots in the upper deck. They are suntaned and healty with an unapologethic idiotic smile in their faces:
– Boss, I have read in the news that the hull lands under the waterline are drawning. Scientists say that the hull is receding to water faster and faster.
– Have you seen water around here? those are fake news: A conspiracy of scientists and journalists meant to divert our attention from the important matters: namely to keep all maggots fed and happy like in the old good days, and hence myself as boss.
A few miles further, irretrievably, the arch sunk leaving a despondent trail of death. The basin of the ocean bearing evidence that something called woodworms ever existed, evolved, and self-anihilated in an explosion of gluttony.
but I want to share this with you.
I apologize to the author for my blunt attempt to translate his perfect choice of words.
Wörter besitzen Macht. Durch die Wortwahl werden Bilder erzeugt, die Gefühle und Gedanken auslösen. Und schon entstehen Haltungen und Meinungen, mal zufällig und unbedacht, mal gezielt und absichtlich.
Matthias Klaus
Source: DW Deutsche Welle
Words are mighty. By choosing them, we induce impressions in people’s minds that lead to feelings and thoughts. Incidentally opinions and attitudes will follow due. And they words came out of a chance event or were otherwise darted with intent.
This year that ought not be, has been, and will at last come to an end. It is high time to impress these words in our minds and be critical and inquisitive with what we read, or hear. For it is everybody’s duty to search the truth and act accordingly to our principles.
Ten or eight years ago, we heard of twitter and facebook. We already had forums, email, myspace, chatrooms. Twitter and facebook were however sleek, fancy and intuitive. We embraced them and set our social groups; family, friends, even people out of our circles that we admired and now we could read their thoughts in a very direct way. Smartphones became ubiquitous shortly after, and all that internet social connectivity and goodness was now very close to us. At all times.
We learned to appreciate those spaces. They became intimate and we happened to open up to strangers too in those circles, and the world was great, exciting and promising. The promise of connecting people across boundaries, races, ideologies, religions.
Slowly, uninvited “others” started gaining space in our intimate places, whose we did not invite. First an annoyance, yet only a small annoyance. Still we could carry on if only we were ignoring those small interjections that month by month were gaining more social real state in our until now perceptively intimate spaces.
At some point, the sheer amount of information that started finding its way into our now quite crowded social spaces became out of control. We anxiously tried to keep at pace with our timelines, and at last, we became disconnected from our families, friends, and those spread about the world whom we devoted admiration.
There must be a point where our brains are clogged with so much information that reach to us, that we cannot anymore see what we want to look at. Our eyes are not anymore connected to our brains. And we start living in a reality that we do not perceive through our eyes but is being described to us by those uninvited “others”.
Those “others” simply pay to push information to us. And incidentally their agendas do not necessarily keep our best interests, or the best interests of our families and friends at its core. In the best case, they only want to make us believe we need something we didn’t know even existed until now, and it may be a great discovery though! In the worst case they may have more obscure aims.
