Matte white walls and the dark reflection

The basement of our house is in pretty bad shape, but it is dry, though will remain cold for some time to come. To brighten it up a little, we have been painting the very rough walls in a base white. It makes a big difference. We will also paint the floors when the time comes, which will clean it up enough to remove 60 years of grime and dust and make it a little more comfortable. The sauna and laundry are in the basement, so we use it often. Eventually, we will heat the floor, but that requires digging out the concrete floor completely and we do not have the funds for this at this time - and probably for a while.

While painting this evening, I was listening to a podcast on various aspects of the ongoing information war, including the growing issue and future threat of deep fakes. The technology to create synthesized versions of all kinds of things has been advancing rapidly, and the market potential is so large that there will be no turning back - the cat is out of the bag. Whenever there are profits to be made, corporations will supply.

When it comes to deep fakes, I believe that blockchain is going to play a part in the verification process. While it will not be able to stop the production, what it could do is be able to apply a verification of originals and potentially apply a web of trust where there can be crowd-sourced verification of some kind.

But, where I think that the tech that provides cheap and easy fakes of human action will be used the most will be in the entertainment industry. Firstly, it essentially makes actors obsolete, as anyone can play the part of anyone - but more than that, it play on our biggest weakness, ourselves.

There are already apps that are able to insert the face of our choosing into movie scenes, but it will go far beyond that, as we will be able to "selfie" ourselves absolutely anywhere - which is probably going to be a boon for the porn industry, if it isn't already. It seems that the test of any new technology seems to be "Can we fuck it", with pretty much every app and platform being used in some way for sexual activity and the commercial viability of a technology seems to hinge on whether the porn industry can adopt it in some way - and now that everyone has a camera and computer in their hand at all time, it has become a testing ground.

While people seem to doubt that AI will overpower our strengths, they forget to recognize that it is our weaknesses that are the gateway in, and the social platforms have shown just how compelling the weakness of "me" can be. The platforms are filled with images of ourselves, selfies and the products we buy and brag about, the places we visit and the lunches we eat. The we is a collective of individuals - a whole lot of "I" who want to be seen, want attention.

With the social disconnection combined with the drive of consumption, I figure that we are going to demand more of ourselves in the future, and with the granularity the data allows, our egos will be targeted ever more heavily, as well as our desires. All that data telling where we go, which images we search, movies we watch and precisely how long our eyes linger and the secret searches we think no one tracks. How long until the objects of our desire become the tools of our entrapment in a world that we will never want to escape?

We are creating digital whitespaces, that will be able to be colored in the perfect shade to attract us, to compel us, to enslave us. All they need to do is give us a narrative of ourselves in the way we want to see ourselves, to make us feel attractive, important, relevant. The technology will increasingly play on our lack of disconnection, while isolating us into a box filled with mirror walls and our favorite subject reflected.

Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]