Science/Technology

Q: When is a lie not a lie? A: When it’s an excuse.
Charlie Brooker, Dawn of the Dumb (2007), 66.

Part One: Happy Birthday!
I had no idea that anything was even slightly ‘amiss’ other than awareness of a ‘slight anemic condition’ I had to explain to shocked doctors who would do double-takes after glancing at results of routine blood exams, on the few occasions I had them, and begin to stammer ‘nonsense’ about ‘emergency rooms’ and ‘immediate transfusions.’ 

We are incessantly confiscating ourselves into a world of unavoidable, sun-blaring big data. Our landscape, the environment, even outer space — all are inspirations of our very sci-fi existence; here clouds echo first of data centers proliferating far beyond the real clouds’ pouring; here our world wishes to lose touch with indolence, that moving forward and disrupting any inconsistency, is the key. After all, the ultimate fight remains against death; it’s a fight for remembrance through perennial interruption — against an otherwise ephemeral legacy.

This new Stanford video series investigates consciousness as the source of not only the human mind but also of all energy and matter. Consciousness is seen as the essence of the universe, a unified field which gives rise to and pervades all manifest phenomena. Five scientists from different disciplines describe how we can contact this field and use it to improve our lives. The series, designed by Michael Heinrich, is now available free on YouTube.•

“In an age when man has forgotten his origins and is blind even to his most essential needs for survival, water along with other resources has become the victim of his indifference.” Rachel Carson

There should be nothing polite about it, whatever the curious start of the article in Gizmodo (Feb 3) suggests. The “future of privacy on the internet in Australia” is simply but one in a series of skirmishes being waged by a mishmash of authoritarian sentiments against the domain of private citizenry. At its heart is the nervous and nigh ridiculous desire that retaining data – that is to say, the metadata on individuals in the course of using various services – will somehow curb criminality, foil terrorism, and keep deviance at bay.

In his February 18 essay appearing in the Guardian, “How I Became an Erratic Marxist,” Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis cites his intermittent mentor, Karl Marx:

If the whole class of the wage-labourer were to be annihilated by machinery, how terrible that would be for capital, which, without wage-labour, ceases to be capital!

2015’s opening offers an appropriate time to examine high technology and its development of weapons of mass destruction and other threats to the Earth. My own background to write about these issues includes being raised in the Southern military family that gave its name to Ft. Bliss, Texas. I served briefly as an officer in the U.S. Army, resigned my commission to protest the American War on Vietnam, and have engaged in an extensive study of the military.

Note: Alive Inside just came out, about music therapy. My work here is for my regular gig as a writer – Spokane Magazine. It is currently out. Before my piece, a compelling quote from an MD from the documentary, Alive Inside.

Humanity indeed finds itself embedded in a technological world. This is a world where human beings consume technology, and where technology in turn incorporates human identities. It shapes human interaction, and it shapes the future. There have been many unforeseen byproducts from the advancement of technology and technologic science. The nonplussing lack of “miracles,” and astounding strides in progress, for example, reveal the deep-seated complexities that arise from the dynamic relationships inherent to science, technology and human society.