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Wednesday, April 02, 2014

Dvorsky Celebrates Promising Transhuman Future of Corporate-Military Horrors

Robot Cultists pray to DARPA and Google to deliver them eternal life and sooper-powers and treasure piles in "The Future" Heaven, because... science!

As witness Dumb Dvorsky's latest undisguised unapologetic corporate-militarist agitprop in io9. "DARPA's commitment to cutting-edge innovation is unquestioned," Dvorsky hyperventilates like a motivational speaker cum circus barker as he directs his spotlight or his vapid PowerPoint flow-chart.

Among the ugly wish-fulfillment fantasies to which io9s favorite Robot Cultist gives full vent in today's exercise in idiocy is the transhumanism of "enhanced soldiers" to "maintain peak soldier abilities and then restore those abilities as soon as possible after an injury... includ[ing] advanced prosthetics (featuring mind-controlled limbs), neural interfaces, the ability to survive blood loss, and even neurotechnological solutions to treat psychological trauma such as PTSD." Tweak those bad fee fees away future sooper-killers! Yay, Future! Futurological used-car salesman Dvorsky lets us know, "DARPA has already made tremendous strides in this area." To be sure, George, to be sure, tremendous strides.

Shifting sects, our Robot Cultist has good news for the Singularitarians in the house (of worship), too: "DARPA is working on advanced robotics, an artificial human brain, next-gen robotic aircraft... and self-teaching computers." He quips "if anyone's going to build a recursively improving AI it's going to be DARPA," heh heh heh. Get that hack on the salesfloor, there's Big Thinking afoot here! If I've said it once, I've said it a million times, Moore's Law, Manifest Destiny, recursivity, adding more and more blades to your shaver, it doesn't matter, none of these are going to spit out an info-logo-digi-spirit-sooper-brain any more than an accumulating pile of sand grains (or abacuses) would, because intelligence isn't anything like what everybody who keeps saying such things and always being wrong about everything thinks it is. 

Dvorsky's celebration of "incredibly promising research areas" Creating A Transhuman Future (his words, "To Create A Transhuman Future," castigate me for misattribution, ad hominem, straw man caricature, eeevil luddism or deathism or whatever you want, click the link, read em and weep) is introduced by a bleak image of faceless robot soldiers in a landscape of ice and smoke with the Kremlin burning in the background -- how topical! Dvorsky's id would seem to be all over the place -- well, except that it never seems to land on anyplace very nice.

Given all this, I know I should have been well-prepared for the whole obscene lip-smacking contemplation of corporate-military mayhem that followed. And yet, when Dvorsky actually cited Star Trek's "To Seek Out New Life" as the heading of a section indulging dizzy daydreams of clone armies and weaponized plagues, I must admit he surprised me enough to make me want to ralph rather than merely ridicule.

If you follow the link to read this latest atrocity exhibit, do stay for the reader comments. It is impossible to know if the chirpy declarations are in earnest or parodies of reactionary futurological fulminations:
DARPA and Google are probably the two biggest proponents of transhumanizing technology and Digital Intelligence currently operating in the United States. Mainly because they're staffed by folks who understand that the "Singularity" is not an inevitable quasi-kinda/sorta "law" but a self-fulfilling prophecy. Both of them have shit-tonnes of money and want to use it to build a better future by actually putting in the R&D hours to make it happen.
Can do corporate-military techno-elites are coding the Robot God who will end history, because the techbros on staff understand! They're working even now to "build a better future" of remorseless sooper-solders and killing machines, just keep buying the products, consumers, let's "make it happen"!
I feel like capitalism makes the singularity almost inevitable. basically google is working on it now because they have the cash, but if they didn't then somewhere down the line as tech continued to develop via natural unstimulated means someone would eventually think "Hey, we've got all the necessary components for a cybernetic eyeball replacement, I bet people would pay for that."
Yeah, when you really think about it, to expect to upload your brain and live forever in Holodeck Heaven or wallow in a nano-magickal treasure cave in a robot body surrounded by sexy sexbots under the ministrations of a sooper-intelligent post-human post-parental Robot God of loving grace isn't implausible, really, but inevitable! Especially if we get out of the way of capitalism and, you know, let all the libertechbrotarian sooper-innovators and thought-leaders do their Fountainhead thing!
DARPA and Google should join forces and conquer the world.
Past as prologue?
I....wouldn't mind living in that future
So certain are you?

1 comment:

jimf said...

> And yet, when Dvorsky actually cited Star Trek's
> "To Seek Out New Life" as the heading of a section
> indulging dizzy daydreams of clone armies and
> weaponized plagues, I must admit he surprised me
> enough to make me want to ralph rather than merely
> ridicule.

How can he read his own stuff with a straight face,
let alone allow it to be published in full view of
the whole world with his name attached?

Only his psychiatrist knows for sure.