We all know that the internet is a product of US military agencies. Yet, the default idea is that the internet means (more or less) free flow of information and a good thing in general.
But is that so? Could it be that the internet was just another con from the get go? Just a bit longer one than the rest of them. After all, we've seen it before.
For example, smartphones. At the start it was all fun and games. Then it got a bit more serious, but still nice and cool. And now it has turned into opressive slave device, with constant suveillance, that is almost compulsory to have and quite hard to live without.
Is the internet any different? It started as this highway of information, rainbows and unicorns and all that. But now it gets more and more censored, more and more oppressive with each passing day. If current trend continues, at the end it will be nothing more than totally controlled tool of oppression. Could it be that that was its design from the very beginning?
Either at conception, or shortly after conception, the intention of the internet was control. They own the banks, the media, Hollywood, government and pharmaceutical industry...there is no way they would allow a free and open internet.
When were smartphones ever "fun and games"? Or "cool"? How did smartphones change?
When they were just rolling them out. Somewhere about 2010 or so. Society was still happily living without them - you know - with real human contact, in person conversations, empathy and all that stuff. Smartphone was just this cool new gadget to show your friends and play with occasionally. Basic mode of interaction with the world was still mostly grounded in reality. Since then all of that has changed significantly.
My point being that, of course, it was a con from the start. The coolness part was just a bait to lure people in and I see the same with the internet. The endless and free information part was just a bait. Nothing more. As soon as it started to get in the way of control an oppression, they have started to gradually turn all of that off.
The real problem is when you reach the point where society has adopted the change itself and you cannot even stop without fundamentally having a different experience from the rest of the society.
Yes, that's a good point. Not having a smartphone in 2010 was not a big deal. Even in 2015 not having one was ok. Not having one today, however, is a whole different matter. You can't simply not have it anymore. These days not having it means a statement.
Something was switched on in 2012 and 2016. ESPECIALLY 2016. Whatever happened now is definitely not normal nor can it be attributed to normal physical control.
Yes. Not only were they running AIs behind the scenes on cooperative media to block opponents on demand, but I observed increasing use of bots to influence or degrade threads beginning during the Barry era. The LLM technology did not just appear recently appear, I believe they had it earlier than we know and now they are opening it up to our knowing it.
It was there before OpenAI, which is why I don't trust Sam Altman. I believe he is just a figurehead for government program to use chat AI to transform society - in a bad way. Look at how smartphones dumb people down by turning them to rely on smartphones to look things up. Now we have smartphone mental zombies. AI will be 100 times worse as people get used to not thinking for themselves. Who will really benefit once this dumbs us down ever further? Not the Republicans.
I think it has been around since 2017-2018 at least in major use. I remember seeing many AI forums years ago where everything was completely faked by AI. It was not great, but enough to trick you into reading for a few minutes before you suddenly got into some weird logical grammar problems.
The first smart launch of bots were already around in 2012-2014 etc, so definitely AI was being worked on before we were allowed anything. I think openAI was a way to run a disclosure campaign and privatize the idea before it got linked with the military and intelligence and TPTB
The coolness part that you're eluding to was internet instant messengers prior to cell phones.