Sunday, December 13, 2015

The Singularity Is Coming

     Imagine a world where all human beings lived under the control of one overlord.  Humans consult a central overlord for guidance before taking any action.  They consult their overload on what they should wear, what they should buy, where they should go.  Any important decision must go through this overlord before they take any action.  How dreadful this kind of world would be… except we’re already halfway there.

     I recently watched a Game Theory episode in which Matt discussed how humans in real life are similar to the Zerg in the video game Starcraft.  At first it was an interesting video talking about the hive habits of ants and bees and how they have an overlord that essentially orders the underlings everything they have to do, but I couldn’t see how humans would be in any way similar to these kinds of creatures.  Then, he revealed that humans are accidentally creating an overlord of their own, and it’s called the internet.  Thinking back on our tech diary experiment, we spend a large amount of time on some sort of technology.

     This was a frightening revelation, and exploring this train of thought brought no comfort.  This was sounding very similar to the Singularity that we discussed in class.  Then, I started to piece together evidence to this creation.  Facebook is a starting point for the Singularity.  As shown in the video Generation Like, we are compelled by the number of likes we get in an arbitrary website.  Not only do the users feel compelled to enjoy content will a large number of likes, these likes are also signals for companies and it decides for them what they should sell and who to sell it to.  When people want to buy video games, they consult game reviews to see if it is worth their money.  When a new movie comes out, people look up metacritic or rotten tomatoes to see if the movie was gold or garbage.  The latest fashion trend is dictated by what people see on TV.

     This is simply the consumer producer portion of the influence of the media.  What’s even more terrifying is that we consult the internet for life advises.  For example, most people nowadays follow their GPS without thinking.  If there is a car accident or traffic, the GPS will guide us around and we simply follow.  Thinking about what collage you should go to?  Look up the top 10 return on investment schools and pick the closest one.  Don’t know what career you should take?  Take a free online personality survey to figure out what’s best for you.


     This is where it begins, and if we’re not careful, this is where we will start to fall.  As every new wave of technology allows people easier access to the internet via their laptops, tablets or even smartphones, we are slowly coming to the tipping point.  We are already influenced by what we see, hear, and read on the internet.  So in order to prevent the Singularity from occurring, we must spread the warning!  We should post this information on some popular blogging site on the internet so that everyone can read it and be influenced to stop being influenced by the internet… are we too late?

For those who want to see the video in question, follow this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQirYEU2LOo

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