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Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Robot Cultist Goes Full Wingnut Over Steve Mann Assault

One of the Very Serious Futurologists over at the stealth Robot Cult outfit IEET, the Institute for Ethics (where the ethics are rarely really discussed) and Emerging Technologies (where the technologies are rarely really emerging) responds to the assault on performance artist and souveillance activist Steve Mann by demanding that France apologize -- yes, France -- and, just like that doofus I ridiculed yesterday over at Techcrunch, that a general boycott of McDonalds be called by, well, who knows, all the world's gizmo fetishists who think their consumer purchases make them a cyborg minority vulnerable to a "brand new" kind of hate crime, I suppose. A much larger constituency of idiots than I had anticipated, apparently, and it's not like my expectations are very high on this score. Scroll down the blog for my own comments on the assault and on all the absurd responses it has occasioned.

Lest you think I am lampooning this Robot Cultist in declaring him fully caught up in a paranoid fantasy of cyborg genocide, let me quote from his article (follow the link, I'm not shitting you):
As soon as I saw the headline my mind raced to a short film I came across recently entitled “No Robots.” Very reminiscent of the Nazi round up of Jews, it is a wonderful depiction of how easy it is to get swept along in the storm of fear and hatred. We should all be familiar with this quote: “First they came for the communists…"
Yeah, he quotes the whole thing. Given the history and ongoing reality of genocide, of hate-crimes, of bigotry the only thing more laugh out funny about this sort of futurological fantasy is how frankly disgusting and disrespectful it really is when it is exposed to any scrutiny at all. Sorry Robot Cultists, you're all going to die because you're mortal like all human beings are, not because there is a "deathist luddite" conspiracy out to get you, and chances are very good nobody is going to bash you because you were stupid enough by waste your money on some "bleeding edge" crap gizmo at the Apple Store.

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