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Technology is inseparable from civilization. It has changed the world forever. Thanks to it, we can, for example, send information to the other end of the world in seconds; talk to people from other continents; travel to any place in the world in one day; store thousands of photos on a drive the size of your thumb; create virtual realities, as well as do a bunch of other things that no one would have imagined just 100 years ago.
But technology has its bad side too. In the current world, it is controlled by organizations who do not have our best interests in mind. They will not hesitate to use technology's great power against us. Spying on - and analyzing - our communication; controlling the information we receive; emotional manipulation; modification of behavior - those are just a few things technology is being used for these days. All that with more coverage, accuracy, effectiveness and with less human effort. If this "progress" is not stopped, we will end up in a prison that we wouldn't find in our worst nightmares.
I will attempt to describe the way the most important technologies of today contribute to the creation of a global system of control. I will also mention a few technologies of the future, and try to connect all the information together and predict the fate of this world. Let's start with one of the inventions that affect people the most - The Internet.
Every connection, for example sending a message, or entering a website, goes through your Internet Service Provider, before it reaches the target. In theory this means ISPs can freely spy on and modify everything you do on the Internet; for example - slow down or block the downloading of torrents; inject advertisements to your visited sites http://zmhenkel.blogspot.com/2013/03/isp-advertisement-injection-cma.html (archive) (MozArchive), or even create a massive censorship system, like the so-called "Great Wall" of China.
The most common usage of the Internet is browsing websites, for which we use a web browser such as Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer or Google Chrome. These three "giants" pretty much exist
to collect data on their users. Google at least admits to it - on the other hand, Mozilla pretends to care about your freedom and privacy, but actually spies on you and controls you. It's been
a few years since Mozilla decided they will decide what add-ons you can and cannot install - apparently to "protect the users", but nothing stops them from, for example, disabling AdBlock.
Mozilla has worked with advertisers for a long time - they've even shown them in your New Tab panel:
https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/2015/05/21/providing-a-valuable-platform-for-advertisers-content-publishers-and-users/ (archive) (MozArchive). The myth of Firefox "respecting the user" has died and will not resurrect. Just read a certain reply from their website: Our products do not interrupt the browsing experience; they catch
users when they are most receptive to seeing new information.
So, for them, you are simply prey to be caught for the purpose of having advertisements be shoved into your
brain. Despite that, they still spew slogans about "respect and freedom". I could spend the whole article on pointing out all the ways popular web browsers exploit you. Opera, for example,
literally spies on your whole web history without your knowledge. The three giants mentioned earlier also spy on you, but in some other ways.
Almost every big website works closely with the police / government and will happily share data about you with them - for example, the IP address of the computer you made a forum post from. Exceptions, such as Lavabit (interesting story by the way - you can read it on the Internet) or The Pirate Bay, have their servers raided.
Lately, it became fashionable to store your data "in the cloud", for example Dropbox or Google Drive. This is really helpful to the elites - they can now see and analyze your files, which can give them information about your interests or plans (which could be used against you). One guy from 4chan was storing bomb making instructions on Dropbox, only to find that, one day, they have been deleted. The Internet is full of cases like that, and they're not all about bombs. Thus, we can see that your data isn't safe on these cloud "services" - it ceases being yours. Most likely, in several years, wanting to keep your data on your own drive will be considered "abnormal" - and cloud storage will be the standard - like it is today with cash vs bank accounts, for example. This will open the door to complete control of your stored data, automatically blocking materials about - for example - the aforementioned bombs. Another, maybe more plausible option, would be punishing the people who upload such files - like film producers did with people downloading certain torrents.
How do most people find information on the Internet? Using Google, of course. But Google is something more than just a search engine - it's a corporation whose aim is gathering as much data as possible and creating a profile about you. Their spy scripts (for example, google analytics) exist pretty much on every site - you could even not know what Google is, but still be spied on. That data is then used to, for example, show you targeted advertisements, but also different search results. So a Christian searching for "abortion" will see something else than an atheist.
Google went further and invented a new algorithm for displaying search results. The sites who are, according to them, based on "facts" will be higher up. On the other hand, those who contain untrue information (again, according to them) will be further down. One of the ways Google rates the truth value of sites is comparing them with the articles on Wikipedia. And since we know how Wikipedia treats conspiracy theories, we can assume they will pushed away by official versions of events. Soon, when we search for something like "genetically modified organisms" we will only get "prepared" information. Google's invention could become one of the most effective tools of censorship and opinion control.
Google also controls other common services. One of the most popular is YouTube, which they've been "reforming" since they bought it. I was surprised when a few years ago I couldn't log in to my YouTube account without making a Gmail account. I didn't want their e-mail (which spies on you) so I said goodbye to YouTube. I didn't use it much, but still.
Another YouTube reform is called Content ID. It is supposed to protect copyright. The creator of a movie or song can share their creation with Google, which will then compare it with every other file on YouTube. If it considers one of those files close enough to the submission, it will either delete that file, remove sound from it, or add advertisements.
Before Content ID was invented, someone who thought that a movie violates copyright, had to send YouTube a form, which could be accepted or not. These days though, they have a much easier way called Content ID, which allows them to earn money if it finds some similarities. You can theoretically appeal a Content ID decision, but it is pointless since the appeal will be decided by...the same company that uploaded the file. Many frustrated people are complaining in internet comments, saying that Content ID is terrible, that it made a mistake with their movie, that they're stealing their money, that they have lost their files or their account. There've been debates about copyright and AI in general. Some people have said that movie or music creators should be happy to have their content shared on YouTube. But these discussions can exist only because Content ID happened. Without it, people could freely share their movies without them being possibly modified / deleted by automatic analysis.
A similar program could be used to delete movies about undesirable topics. Even now YouTube is deleting "racist", "nationalist", "insulting" films - even if often that is just an excuse; but they have to do it by hand. If they put together Content ID with the site sorting algorithm, they could create a system that deletes certain content automatically. A more advanced form of that algorithm could even delete certain parts of movies which have undesirable topics (for example, deleting a few second long part with a racist slur). It would work similar to the profanity filters on forums. But it would not be limited only to that - Google has shown, that they're very interested in controlling your beliefs, when they've created the site sorting algorithm I spoke about earlier. A tool that could detect where in your movie an undesirable topic is mentioned, and replace it with their modified version, would be very welcome in their arsenal.
You could write a whole book about Google; I don't want to do it - but I have to briefly mention some other things they've done. Recaptcha is the most popular way to defend forums from spambots. If you wanted to write something on a forum with recaptcha, you had to type a certain word. You didn't always get a word, though - you could get something like a street address, which would then get added to Google StreetView, which allows spying on people. For years, anyone who wrote on 4chan, was filling their database with street addresses, while not necessarily knowing about that. What really is StreetView? Google cars travel the world taking pictures of everything and everyone. Then they put these photos in their database, which can be searched by anyone. Google has access to pictures of the whole Earth, pretty much - and even to the history of places people search for using their maps. What could that information be used for? You can read on Wikipedia that a lot of countries had a problem with StreetView. They thought it intrudes on the citizen's privacy. But after "consultations" they've all agreed to allow it. Isn't this evidence that we're dealing with a worldwide plan to spy on people?
They've changed ReCaptcha since I wrote the above. Now, you get a set of pictures and you have to choose the ones containing a certain item, for example hamburgers. This is used to train
Google's artificial intelligence, which will also probably be used against us in the future. I will finish this section with a quote from Google We don't need you to type at all. We know
where you are. We know where you've been. We can more or less know what you're thinking about.
One of the most popular internet sites these days are social networks, such as Facebook or Twitter. People flock to them like flies, filling their databases with information such as name,
surname, phone number, place of work, interests, and friend lists. They don't have a problem with sharing their political opinions. Facebook makes it really easy, since the Like!
button
appears on most popular websites, and clicking it sends information to Facebook about the article you liked. How could they use that information? For example, for showing targeted
advertisements. A few years ago, Facebook promised that it would never do that - but then changed their mind and it is now a reality. Some of these advertisements can be insulting - for
example, a person suffering from cancer, after searching for information about it on the internet, was shown ads about...burial services! http://www.naturalnews.com/049386_Facebook_privacy_surveillance.html (archive) (MozArchive)
Comments written on these social networks are even more dangerous. They are attached to your real name, and whoever finds your account can read them. What could be the effects of that? You could lose your job or be arrested. Some examples:
We could be focusing on singular situations - was someone punished appropriately or not? You could even blame the victim. But the logical thing to do is to look at the whole issue from afar. If these comments were made in person, and not on the internet, no one could have gotten in trouble. The possibility of punishing someone is the consequence of the technology that attaches the things you post to your name. After years of using social networks, you could find something on anyone, even if he did not think that the message he's writing would have given him problems later.
300 employers were asked whether they've checked the profiles of their would-be recruits, and 91% agreed. 69% dismissed an employee because of something he had in his profile. Some of the offending things were: negative opinions about previous employers, photos of using drugs or drinking alcohol, or "inappropriate" photos.
There are also more direct ways that the social networks can affect you. In 2014 Facebook did a psychological experiment that was supposed to show that you can control human minds
without knowing them personally, and without their knowledge. 689003 people (who weren't aware of being lab rats) were divided into two groups - one of them was shown only content
generating positive emotions, the other - only negative. The more positive content someone saw, the more positively he himself responded. The differences were small, but maybe they could be
increased with more drastic measures. For example, showing someone articles about murders or kidnappings. You could also target the content someone was going to be shown individually - based
upon the things he's written in his profile, or his browsing history (which Facebook collects through the Like!
buttons). If someone reads a lot of anti-government websites, they would be
shown articles about the government doing something bad. Or an anti-GMO person would be shown information about GMOs being legalized somewhere. It is plausible that this experiment
opened the door to just this kind of thing. You can read the whole experiment here: http://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788.full (archive) (MozArchive)
Facebook also uses an algorithm for detecting faces on photos and automatically adding a name to them. http://www.dailydot.com/technology/facebook-deepface-science/ (archive) (MozArchive). If your name is on at least one photo, every other photo with your face could be detected as you.