That’s a big claim, given the existence of Google and Microsoft, but the things that they’ve done pretty much prove it.
My blog won’t do a damn thing to change what they do, so I just choose to not to be on their site. My life is much better that way. Zuck is rich, I wish he would just go away, it never works that way though.
I have seen what social media does to others. It’s not pretty. It’s almost an addiction. It also turns people into haters and gossipers.
What people post is usually not who they are, rather what they want to project to others.
If I want to connect with someone, I don’t need fake book to do it. I would rather forget most of the people that it recommends to me anyway.
Recently, fascist book announced that they were copying Google (Alphabet) by rebranding to Meta.
I was taken aback as meta means death in Hebrew and I’m pretty sure Zuckerberg is Jewish. His actions and those at Facebook don’t indicate that he believes in God though, quite the opposite. It is appropriate as it’s death to your mental health to be on one of their platforms.
Censorship
There are many examples of fake book taking down posts that didn’t fit the narrative, especially during the election. Zuckerbucks donated about $400 million to swing the election the way it went. Who says you can’t buy an election? Joseph Kennedy did it in 1960 so this is nothing new.
They admit that their censorship is just someone’s opinion anyway.
The Metaverse
I’ve been around long enough to remember the farce that was Second Life. It’s where you played a sort of real life video game in a virtual world. The head of quantum computing at IBM had his department go to virtual meetings for about 2 months in that space. It was such a pain in the ass that the world gave up on it.
To me, it was like Leisure Suit Larry and the Land of the Lounge Lizards, if you are old enough to remember that funny game.
So now, they want us to believe that we’ll wear an Oculus headset and pretend we are in the Matrix. That trope has a long way to go before it really catches on.
What I Think
There is a growing trend in the Comics to head to the Metaverse. The next Dr. Strange will go there. Avengers Endgame showed how you can do it through the Quantum Realm.
That’s not what it really is though. Something is up with Facebook that needs a re-direct. That is what you do in the PR World when things aren’t going your way and you don’t want to address the issue on the table. You go ahead and change the subject and talk about something else. The MSM and politicians do it daily.
Facebook Inc. knows, in acute detail, that its platforms are riddled with flaws that cause harm, often in ways only the company fully understands. That is the central finding of a Wall Street Journal series, based on a review of internal Facebook documents, including research reports, online employee discussions and drafts of presentations to senior management.
It usually has something to do with money, so ad revenue must have been an investor issue, or the fact that Instagram was causing depression in teenage girls because of their self-image being destroyed by others.
It also could be that there are 2 groups of fake book users. The elite users who can break all the rules, and the rest of the rubes that don’t include celebtards, politicians or their favored group.
Mark Zuckerberg has said Facebook allows its users to speak on equal footing with the elites of politics, culture and journalism, and that its standards apply to everyone. In private, the company has built a system that has exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules. The program, known as “cross check” or “XCheck,” was intended as a quality-control measure for high-profile accounts. Today, it shields millions of VIPs from the company’s normal enforcement, the documents show. Many abuse the privilege, posting material including harassment and incitement to violence that would typically lead to sanctions.
Banning people from the platform for not conforming to their standards. Like a lot of things, that will come back to bite you. Look who he banned and who is building an alternate social media platform now.
AR vs VR
I think there is something to be said for an Augmented Reality world first. That is helpful. I don’t think that a virtual reality world is what anything other than gamers are going to do for now.
If I see someone walking around with an Oculus headset on, I’m going to slap them an then point to someone else when they take it off just to mess with them.
This is something that is way down the road and as soon as the real AR is available, won’t be as attractive. If you want to live in a play world, you can do it via video games right now.
As usual, I distrust Facebook and their motives as should you. I dumped them as a platform. I had to go there a couple of weeks ago to find a workout schedule at my gym that wasn’t anywhere else. I saw the usual tripe there and was almost physically ill for a day. I promptly deleted the account so I wouldn’t have to see it anymore.
I’ve posted recently on Covid, the “vaccines”, Ivermectin and other pieces of evidence that expose what is really going on. I started looking into this when trying to understand the motives, the players and why the push for the vax instead of a cure. It was so that I could make my own decision on how to proceed with my healthcare and to live my life during this shit show.
I’ve discovered that I’m not alone and a lot of people are waking up to the fact that there is a lot of lying going on. None of it has our best interests in mind. They only care about tightening their grasp on our balls (figuratively speaking. Everyone should get this metaphor so cut any sexist crap).
In this video, Senator Roberts pretty well explains a lot of it in a short 2 minutes, it’s in English with sub-titles. Put aside your political bias on any side and think about your future and best interests. TPTB won’t.
I’m going to start the detective work of connecting the dots for you to try and get the facts to make your own decision, something anyone in control doesn’t want us doing. Government relies on us depending on them for their power. Once you think for yourself, no one has any control over you.
I’ve written extensively about this, especially in Internet Road Rage. Go read it to see who these cowards are.
No matter what you do, someone has a beef (vegans will get me here, just another example) with whatever you say.
It used to be don’t talk politics, religion or something else at Thanksgiving or you’ll piss off someone in your family. Now, just like someone and you are one of Hillary’s deplorables (She gave the the best example, why I’m using politics here hoping to draw some ire from a commenter to prove my point. I could care less about her or her opinions other than it works).
Now, you can’t say anything on social media without someone being offended. I think it’s funny if they fall for it though because it just shows how shallow people are. Just go to Quora, hater (twitter) or Fakebook to find a large group of the clueless. That they are trying to censor people who don’t agree with them just shows bias and ignorance.
So, you can either be smart and blow off the idiots looking to be offended or trying to prove their point to the world, or just fall in line with the masses and get into it.
I got my ass beat a lot growing up. It was almost every day one summer. I’m pretty sure I earned and deserved every whack. I turned out just fine and respected my Dad even though he was the administrator of spanking.
When I look at the woke people, the cancel culture and the idiots on Twitter, Fake Book and other social media, I’m thankful for my upbringing. It scares the crap out of me that this group of ‘tards are about to run everything while a bunch of them still live in their parents basement.
The ones that made it out of the basement are bringing down the NBA, NFL, MLB and the rest of sports and entertainment (and life).
I also can get anywhere with only a map, write in cursive and can figure out how to fix just about anything without a search engine.
Only Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity remains unchallenged. It’s the way it should be. If it weren’t, we’d have the science from 100’s of years ago.
Everything going on today should be challenged in thought as to whether it stacks up to actual science or political science.
I’m kind of looking at Fauci, the CDC, WHO and politicians here.
If they don’t agree, just follow the scientific method above and show why it is provable. The tactic now is censorship instead.
Well, this won’t be my most popular post, but if you read about me up top, I see patterns. A lot of what has happened smelled wrong to me. I could still be wrong, but I’ll bet a lot of people think the only accident was it escaping the lab it was created in. I see deceit (well, they are politicians), misdirection (a typical PR trick) and a lot of obfuscation. The MSM covers it like the second coming.
I’ll bet I catch some flack from the censors and from subscribers who disagree, but everyone is entitled to their own opinion. I heard they are stopping articles that say HCQ cures it so read quick as this might not be up long.
Here’s mine, I don’t know the real answer and may never as might not a lot of people. What I do believe is that what actually happened isn’t what we were told and that a lot more will come out about it. I think a lot of eyes are going to be opened about what is going down right now.
Number 6 just gave me another reason to think social media has a dark side and they are one of the faces.
Number 8 looks like it is true based on his emails. Amazon pulled his book so something is up.
I’m seeing guns, beer, cash, hotel stays, joints and a lot of other bribes to get the vaccine. How about letting people make up their own minds before we get to step 4 on the top meme?
I’d never thought of this before. I knew the tech Oligarch’s are weird and crave power, but I didn’t realize that they are trying for immortality (good luck with that one).
This always makes me wonder when they try to create a better human. Didn’t anyone watch the Borg in Star Trek?
Note: this is from Andrew Torba, CEO of Gab and not mine. His view is below. I found it interesting on the theme of creating a master race via gene enhancement (what the Covid vaccine is) that someone else saw what those with unlimited money try to do. Playing God never works. He is more informed than I on this subject and I find it interesting how far we try to push the envelope.
In the end, we all die. All they are doing is prolonging the inevitable.
Last month I appeared on Steve Bannon’s War Room to discuss the topic of transhumanism. In the simplest terms transhumanists believe in using technology to transcend beyond the limitations of human biology into a post-human existence.
This is something we are all familiar with on a surface level thanks to many different movies and TV shows over the years, but it’s time to start taking it seriously as a threat to humanity itself.
The march towards transhumanism isn’t a conspiracy theory or some outlandish science fiction movie, it’s a very real and dire situation unfolding before our eyes.
The oligarchs in the American regime, in particular the ones in Silicon Valley, are obsessed with eternal life and the topic of transhumanism. Peter Thiel wants to inject himself with young people’s blood as a method of “radical life extension.” Elon Musk put a computer chip in a pig’s brain with the hopes of one day soon putting one in yours.
The goal of the Silicon Valley oligarchs, and of the globalists in general, is transhumanism. They aren’t hiding this, in fact they are flaunting it in front of our faces. While we are all too busy bickering about what AOC tweeted this week, the oligarchs are spending billions of dollars to become immortal “gods.”
Their strategy is two-fold.
First, they perfect the transhumanist technology behind closed doors and become among the first human beings to “transcend” beyond the limitations of human biology to become “gods” with eternal life and access to all of the knowledge and information available in the cloud.
Second, they will get the rest of us to adopt a form of this technology that they own and control by selling us on “progress” and convenience. If you doubt they will be successful with this approach, just look at the phone in the palm of your hand as a wildly successful beta test of this strategy.
In many ways the smartphone was the first iteration of this grand vision. We are now witnessing the consequences of giving them the power to control the flow of information and access to basic online services in the form of censorship, deplatforming, and outright unpersoning of individuals, businesses, and any threat to their system of control. What do you think will happen when they build, own, and control the chip they plant in your brain at birth?
In order to fully understand this you need to understand the mindset of the Silicon Valley elite and the American Oligarch Regime. These people believe that they are superior to the rest of us in every way. They went to the “best” schools. They built the “best” companies. They consolidated all of the wealth into their hands. They know what is “best.” This is why they project their supremacy on the rest of us with terms like “white supremacist.” We are but mere cattle to them. Digital serfs.
This may all sound outlandish now, but this technology is being developed as we speak and it is something that people under 50 will witness in their lifetime. We need to be prepared to fight for our humanity and to resist the literal dehumanization of the entire human race itself.
Ultimately, this is a spiritual war. They are targeting our very humanity. This is evidenced by everything that these people promote. Their “values” are inherently anti-human. Abortion. Moral decay. The destruction of sovereign nations and people. The persecution of everything and anything related to God Almighty our Creator.
We need to prepare ourselves for what is coming by exiting their entire system and raising up our children to value and cherish human life. We need to build our own economy. We need to return to tradition and get right with God right now, because the judgement day of singularity is upon us.
Don’t get me wrong, there are some good things, but sooner or later it goes down the crapper when someone “offends” another. It is where you can find more bias and discrimination (against anyone and everyone) since segregation.
Twitter is probably the biggest cesspool. Since Facebook Fake Book started censoring, you can’t trust what is real or not. I also don’t care about my high school or college enough to see what they are doing. If either of us cared, we’d have stayed in contact. The hate generated against the last President just told me the people in charge of these platforms are untrustworthy. They say one thing and do another.
Do what you want. Most are addicted to social media. The truly smart people don’t waste time trying to impress others as to how good their life is or worry about what others have.
My life is better without as much as I do with. I still get what I need to know without it being filtered by a loser in a cubicle with an axe to grind over who voted for whom. The elitist oligarch’s have told them what is allowed, then they prattle on condemning exactly what they are doing.
As usual, I’ll just do my own thing and let other suffer who wish to read this tripe.
“Mediocre men often have the most acquired knowledge.”
I’ve noticed how smart people are when they have a phone to look up the answer to anything, without learning how to do something. I’m not advocating a life of mistakes to learn, but most of us learn more by having to re-do something than breezing through it.
I also noticed that the most insane arguments on the Internet are by those partially informed, yet willing to show their ignorance or lack of IQ in public. As usual, it is most often done in the cesspool that is Twitter or Facebook.
Please stop it so the rest of us can enjoy it again.
Here is a link to the files below. I looked at some and there is a lot of incriminating information. I’m sure if due diligence were actually done, some crimes could be solved.
There is other informational and odd things such as I didn’t know that Steve Jobs was HIV positive according to the records here. He had a tough life that wasn’t worth the fame and money. There are a lot of other people doing a lot of other things if you care.
Someone mentioned that the Las Vegas shooter was an FBI sniper, but I never found that file.
It has the secret rituals of some of the College Greek institutions. I guess if you are a rival fraternity, it would be interesting to look at.
The filenames are descriptive enough to see what’s in it. Have fun.
I hope it was worth it to all of those who got the information together and those who leaked it.
I’m interrupting humor and sarcasm to note a trend. If you read my about, I notice trends and patterns as facts begin to fall into place over time.
As always, the human race seems to come down to power (and other forms like sex and money). Not everyone wants it, but those addicted to it can’t get enough.
In 2020, Big Tech financed a lot of the election, probably on both sides but they seem to favor one side over the other. I’m not going to get into being political but both sides of the spectrum don’t serve us as well as they should. It seems that they serve themselves in terms of granting more power and control. On the other side of power is……
BIG TECH HAS BIG MONEY AND BIG INFLUENCE.
At some point, they tell you to follow the money. No one has more money (ergo influence) than Big Tech right now. I’ll give you that the government has more, they get it from taxpayers and the tech companies. They don’t have to earn it so it is less valuable and more widely wasted.
It’s not just about money though because money buys power and influence. Tech will likely sit their people in positions in the new cabinet, as currently elected but is not the big issue. It is trivial compared to the war.
The war is who controls the message.
GOVERNMENT IS GETTING GENERIC AND TECH RUNS RINGS AROUND THEM
After watching the tech hearings over the last couple of years, Congress is filled with mostly idiots when it comes to tech. They asked Facebook and Google simpleton questions I’d be embarrassed to ask my grandparents. Of course, the CEO’s ran circles around the questioners and frankly made them look like the emperor with no clothes . They didn’t even have to lie (although it looks like they bent the truth pretty heavily) because the questions were so elementary.
The result is that Tech (mostly the FAANGS) control the message that congress had a stranglehold on and the fight is on for said power. On the big tech side is the money and on the government side is regulation.
AMERICANS ARE WAKING UP TO THIS POWER STRUGGLE(AS IS THE REST OF THE WORLD)
I’m not the only one noticing this. This study (linked below) surveyed Americans, but users around the world are the same:
A majority of Americans across the political spectrum believe tech companies have too much power and do more harm than good, and most people have deep concerns about how companies such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google use their personal data, accordingto a new poll released today by Gallup and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
The wide-ranging report, “Techlash? America’s Growing Concern with Major Technology Companies,” provides findings on how Americans view the roles internet and technology companies play in their lives and in society. Major findings include the following:
Americans believe internet and tech companies have a negative impact on American life: People think the companies do more to divide society (60%) than to unite it (11%); misinform the public about the news (47%) rather than make people more informed (19%); and create more problems than they solve (47%), rather than solve more problems than they create (15%).
Misinformation, hate speech and data privacy are top concerns: Americans are overwhelmingly concerned about misinformation on the internet (74%), the privacy of their personal data (68%), and they are very concerned about hate speech and other abusive or threatening language online (56%).
A bipartisan majority believes internet and tech companies have too much power: While 77% of Americans hold this opinion, Americans are equally divided on whether the government should intervene to break up these companies. Republicans tend to be more critical of internet and tech companies than Democrats and independents.
Americans say leaders are not paying enough attention: Fifty-nine percent say elected officials and political candidates are paying too little attention to technology issues, including 67% of young adults (aged 18-34) and 71% of Democrats, versus 43% of Republicans and 57% of independents.
People don’t trust tech companies to police content on their platforms, but they trust the government even less: A majority of Americans don’t trust internet and tech companies much (44%) or at all (40%) to make the right decisions about what content is allowed on online platforms. But 55% of people still prefer that the companies make those decisions, rather than the government (44%).
Self-regulation has failed. One of Silicon Valley’s most valuable assets until now has been the cultural permission to try new things. The public has put up with arrogant rhetoric and a lax attitude toward the law in exchange for innovative ideas that meaningfully improved upon the status quo. But it was a Faustian bargain, with untrammeled innovation raising the specter of uncontrolled growth. When we learn about Airbnb endangering neighbors, Twitter failing to stop rampant harassment, or YouTube radicalizing its viewers with an algorithm that recommends extremist content, we see the destructive harm technology companies can do and their unwillingness to rein in their greed. The narrative has shifted from a question of whether there will be regulation at all to the fight over who should make the rules—and how tough those rules should be.
WHAT ARE THE OUTCOMES?
Usually no one wins or the Government uses it’s tentacles to overwhelm companies with regulations. Tech has the power of the message and as much money. Further, with their hands in the pockets of the politicians and the ineptness of Congress, it let’s me think that Tech will have the early upper hand. Congress can pass laws, but tech is usually steps ahead and there is no telling what has been embedded in the future technology. It takes 5 years or so to bring a new product to market. The 2025 tech is already being tested in labs somewhere.
Sure, they might have to pay fines, but they are rounding errors at the rate tech is making money.
So I’m predicting this. It will be a standoff and both sides will struggle for power. In the meantime, users will suffer from regulation or invasion of privacy from both parties.
Congress will get more money out of the tech companies in the form of lobbying or the people they place in high positions. The relationship becomes incestuous.
Amazon, the trillion-dollar tech company, has hired lobbyist Jeff Ricchetti, whose brother will be the top White House counselor to Joe Biden.
Jeff Ricchetti’s firm, which he founded in 2001 with his brother Steve Ricchetti, the incoming Biden adviser, registered as a lobbyist for Amazon on Nov. 13.
For politics, we need balance. History shows that too much dominance by any side makes for lack of clear vision as leaders. Their goal becomes being re-elected instead of serving the office they were elected to. There are plenty of examples.
In Companies, being the solution to a problem is one business model, until the problem goes away then so do profits.
The better model is innovation. Not that I find it that innovative, but look no further than the iPhone as an example. Conversely, we are still stuck with Windows however and I find no real innovation there. I left that platform as quickly as I could
Then of course there is Facebook, Twitter, Google and host of other platforms that haven’t really offered a solution other than sucking the time out of your day and providing a place to move along anarchy.
Look at the motives of the person trying to offer a solution. Are they selling you a bill of goods, re-election or innovation?
I recently posted how Social Media is probably making your life worse, especially those who have to look anything up to know everything. Even more, those whose lives and feelings are governed by their online image and how many likes they got vs. others are losing out on life to a device.
The other issue is having your face buried in your phone while walking. You are clueless to the world around you. See the video above.
UPDATE: Getting Cosmetic Surgery for Snapchat Dysmorphia
This is by far the most narcissistic thing I’ve read. People (tide pod eaters) are getting surgery to look like the filters they use on their Snapchat because they don’t look good enough in life because it is wreaking havoc on their self-esteem. The report in the journal JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery claims that these filters can sometimes trigger body dysmorphic disorder, a mental illness that can lead to compulsive tendencies and unnecessary beauty procedures, among other negative outcomes.
A study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that people who were regular users of social media were twice as likely to feel lonely than those that were light users.
(Reuters Health) – For young adults, the adverse effect of negative social media experiences on mental health outweigh any potential benefits of positive experiences, a study of university students suggests.
Each 10 percent increase in a student’s negative experiences on social media was associated with a 20 percent increase in the odds of depressive symptoms, researchers found.
But positive experiences on social media were only weakly linked to lower depressive symptoms. Each 10 percent increase in positive social media interaction was associated with only a four percent drop in depressive symptoms – a difference so small that it might have been due to chance.
“This is not inconsistent with the way we see things in the offline world . . . The negative things we encounter in the world count more than positive ones,” said study leader Brian A. Primack, director of the Center for Research on Media, Technology and Health at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania.
“If you have four different classes in college, the fourth class that you did poorly in probably took up all your mental energy,” he told Reuters Health by phone.
Primack said he believes social media lends itself to negativity bias because it is saturated with positive experiences that leave people jaded.
YOU ARE BEING WATCHED
I talked with friends at the gym who are or were in law enforcement In cop terms they are always made by others because they are constantly looking around. They are aware of their environment, potential danger, potentially dangerous people and escape routes. As you can see in the video of fails, these people are vulnerable to all of the above.
Guess how else you are vulnerable with your head buried in a screen? It doesn’t take a genius to know that Facebook, Google, Amazon and every other site is not only tracking your clicks, but are tracking where you go and what you do.
We used to have instructions, a map and intuition to get where we were going and for the most part, we got there. millennial’s can’t get to the 7-11 without Google Maps now. It’s also funny how they can know everything, but have knowledge of very little. Take away their phone and not only would they not run into things, they’d have to actually learn about how things really work and how to navigate (I’m not discriminating here, I know directionally challenged relatives my age who fall into this category). Looking up something on your phone doesn’t make you smart.
YOU ARE GIVING THE PERV’S A FREE TICKET
I’m not in law enforcement, but I put my phone away and watch others, especially those watching girls. It’s almost a sport. It used to be if a guy was looking in the wrong part of a girl, they got busted immediately. It was like watching a tennis match seeing the heads turn when a cute girl walked by. They had to use mirrored sunglasses and just glance when they could and not let their wives/girlfriends catch them. Now, instead of having to glance behind sunglasses, the perv’s just look down or up (or up and down) anyone they want and modesty just goes out the window. It’s truly tasteless, but if you had your head out of the phone, you wouldn’t be getting eyeballed so lasciviously.
GET A LIFE
It’s amazing to watch people now escape to their phone in what used to be a social situation. So stop running into things and get a life.
FACEBOOK IS DESIGNED TO EXPLOIT HUMAN VULNERABILITIES
When Facebook was getting going, I had these people who would come up to me and they would say, ‘I’m not on social media.’ And I would say, ‘OK. You know, you will be. And then they would say, ‘No, no, no. I value my real-life interactions. I value the moment. I value presence. I value intimacy.’ And I would say, … ‘We’ll get you eventually.’
Parker discussed the possible psychological effects of social media and Facebook in particular, especially for children who are now growing up in a digitally connected age:
I don’t know if I really understood the consequences of what I was saying, because [of] the unintended consequences of a network when it grows to a billion or 2 billion people and … it literally changes your relationship with society, with each other … It probably interferes with productivity in weird ways. God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains.
The former Facebook President discussed the company’s initial aim, which was mainly centered around drawing in and building their audience:
The thought process that went into building these applications, Facebook being the first of them, … was all about: ‘How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?’ And that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever. And that’s going to get you to contribute more content, and that’s going to get you … more likes and comments.
Parker described Facebook’s appeal as a “social-validation feedback loop” which exploits human psychology to keep users coming back to the app:
It’s a social-validation feedback loop … exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology. The inventors, creators — it’s me, it’s Mark [Zuckerberg], it’s Kevin Systrom on Instagram, it’s all of these people — understood this consciously. And we did it anyway.
Parker also briefly discussed how his vast wealth is likely to allow him to live longer than the average person due to advances in medical science
The Global Digital Infrastructure (GDI) connects all human life on the planet into a single, giant, metastasizing organism throbbing with incredible potential for advancing human good, expanding knowledge exponentially, invading our lives with unimaginable malice and evil, and transforming unsuspecting users into helpless and obedient cyborgs.
Schaeffer’s Second Law of the Digital Age:
Each breakthrough in utility deriving from advances in the Global Digital Domain is accompanied by equal or greater vulnerabilities and potential detriments to quality of life. Anything that can do amazingly great things for you can almost always do terribly awful things to you as well.
Schaeffer’s Third Law of the Digital Age:
It’s impossible to make or enforce laws to guard the people against the dangers of global digital power and impossible to prevent exponential growth in this power. The Zuckerbergs and Bezoses and Googles of the world may propose to use their power benevolently, but they plan to use it and grow it without limit. They claim they’ll be good masters, but they mean to be masters.
I’m not a conspiracy person, rather an observer of trends and patterns. Haven’t we been down this path before in history where there are classes of people? This time, they start as digital helpers like Alexa, Echo, Google assistant or Siri, but at what point are they re-directing our lives? Aren’t there always people who try to control your lives thus enriching their lives both in money and power.
Since there are hackers constantly attacking the cloud, where your data is stored and accessible, when you lose control over your life? The digital hacks can be found at Krebsonsecurity.com.
It has already begun with your digital footprint being tracked, monitored and being sold off to advertisers, but where does it stop, the Jetson’s?
I advise that you carefully monitor who is monitoring you, even the government.
Now for fun, why is that in the movies that the robots always try to take over the world and kill humans?
The worst news in the above link is that companies like Google can do the the same for far less and that Watson doesn’t even work with other IBM technology.
As we all know, Watson appeared and won on Jeopardy last year. It was the culmination of years of work and manpower to build a machine that could react faster and be programmed to win a game show. It was brilliant, but more for promotion than technology sales (as evidenced so far). There is little doubt that the promotional value was priceless to the IT industry and an easy calculation by IBM to one up the competition.
The two humans were limited to their capacity, whereas Watson was a massive computer with incredible storage and processing capability. It was programmed specifically for the game, so while not a slam dunk, inevitability wasn’t in much doubt.
I don’t know about you, but as I get older, I forget things and computers don’t. You can add memory, processors and build it big enough to recall more than any amount of humans. Jeopardy had two champions, so it wasn’t really a fair fight. You ultimately can overpower any certain situation with billions in technology (which is what it cost to win), but throw something like emotion or nuance into a situation and computers are lost.
It was the perfect set up. Everyone loves to root for the underdog even though the humans really fit that role. It was accomplished by putting the biggest two winners ever on Jeopardy up against poor Watson. The truth was that it never was going to be close given the confines of the rules of the game. In real life, with unforeseen issues, the humans would have a fair chance. That was never the point of Watson though.
IBM got to promote a research facility, executives, technology and almost a free ticket for three days. Jeopardy also was a winner with dominant ratings.
I don’t want to debate the possibilities of Watson’s future contribution to technology other than stating that it is another step (and possibly direction) in data analytics, and it increases the perception of IBM’s lead in this area (thanks to a lot of M&A and some folks that worked without getting enough credit). It hasn’t been the breakthrough that companies have jumped on like an iPhone, yet billions of dollars have been spent on the same hardware used to build Watson since Jeopardy for traditional IT. Time will tell.
ADVERTISING
For now, the real victory was exposure. How much would it cost to purchase 1.5 hours of prime time advertising for a 3 day period where you basically get to change the rules of advertising to where you don’t even have to pretend that an ad agency was involved (also saving millions). Here is the breakdown of advertising to program, but in reality the big IBM Watson Avatar is a commercial by itself every time Alex said the word Watson.
From a Mad Men point of view (advertising show for those who don’t know) this was a stroke of creative genius that began with winning a chess match against Gary Kasparov, then moving to prime time TV when new exposure was needed. I saw people glued to their seats and talking about it the next day at a conference. Nevertheless, it still has all the appearances of a publicity stunt. Unfortunately, it saddled IBM with a 2015 earnings projection claim that Palmisano left Gini Rometty to figure out. With this economy, it has Sham’s chance of beating Secretariat in the Belmont Stakes to make it.
There will be claims that further technology is Watson legacy and success, but it is not what was intended by the efforts which related to making sure it beat the humans on Jeopardy. That is supposed to come later.
CURING THE COMMON COLD
It has been suggested that Watson technology is being used to cure cancer. I like others wish for this as I lost my mother to that disease. Along with AIDS and the common cold, I have my doubts that we’ll really see this in our lifetime. By then, trillions will be spent. Like Global Warming, we could do more by helping to feed the starving and providing help and aid to millions. This is not what Watson is about though last spring, it was the advertising win of 2010.
So the jury is out on whether it will succeed in medical or some other breakthrough. For now, it was the promotional prime time win last year.
Every time a company comes up with a good idea, another company finds a way to one up it. Patents, trademarks, copy-writes or any other legal means don’t stand in the way of a better idea.
This also works when you don’t have a better idea, but your product still dominates the market, mostly due to better marketing. Yes, there is a good percentage of people don’t think Windows is a good product. Most have experienced the Blue screen of death. Booting takes forever, drivers, compatibility, price and any number of factors make it a product that is only doing well because of marketing and the force of Microsoft.
Apple OS, Linux and even OS/2 were or are better operating systems. Now the Chromebook is out. I won’t pontificate as to whether it is better or not, but it will take share away from Windoze as the OS of choice. There are many Google lovers or users out there and for the price of a Chromebook, you could only get Windows 7 from Microsoft.
I’ve often said that Microsoft will have to pull an IBM by re-inventing itself, but their phone OS, gaming, MP3 players and Office haven’t really done the trick. They are are the quintessential one trick pony.
Time will tell what will happen, but the introduction of the Chromebook is just another layer of the onion being peeled away. Good thing they have a lot of cash in the bank, because they will need it to buy a better product. They sure haven’t invented one……ever.
Delusions of Adequacy 