My views on Mashable's Nov 2011 "Next 40 years of Technology" comment/essay winner.

I realize it is a bit late, but this popped up on my twitter feed the other day, so I had to read it.  I was dumbfounded, which is not really that hard since I am of mean intelligence at best.  However, the winner's(and I cannot fathom how this was chosen as winner) comment was all tech-kittens and rainbows.  I hate kittens and rainbows.  It's true, I hated my cat for the first 14 months of its life, and I live in New Mexico, where it never rains, so the possibility of a rainbow is dismally, and thankfully, low.


http://mashable.com/2011/11/15/next-40-years-in-tech-winner/


My reply to the whole Mashable thing, and his comment, is as below, just in case they decide not to allow it:

 While Kyle's vision of the future is filled with hope and good will, one cannot deny the unfortunate fact his comment is somewhat... Rose colored.  Yes, to remain on par with what will inevitably become known as the "top line" of humanity, one will need to upgrade one's self both mentally and physically, taking evolution by the hand and gently guiding it.  However, where does he get the idea that this advancement will in any way, shape, or form "enable us to overcome worldwide problems"?  We must first define worldwide problem, and  in order to even begin addressing any definition of the term worldwide problem, one must consider the perspective from which the term is viewed: common human, or the wealthy power-base.  Worldwide problems: (a-common man) hunger, poverty, inequality, violence based on color, creed or ethnicity, abuses at the hands of the powerful; (b-powerful) common man, disturbance of the balance of power, uncontrolled change.

From the perspective of the common human, technology will not help in any way to alleviate worldwide problems.  It may well serve to exacerbate a large number of current issues, ending in even worse living conditions for many.  Unless, of course, the people who control the flow of technology to and among the populace display some previously hidden reservoir of kindness.  How likely do you, the reader of this comment, think that will be?

So, when considering the solving of worldwide problems, in order for emerging technologies to overcome those problems, one is forced to consider the term from the perspective of the powerful.  Let's not mince words or continue under proven false pretenses: the majority of powerful people in the world have shown, in the past decade, the tendency to view the common human as a herd of cattle at worst, chattel property at best.  The advancing technologies will be previewed by those in power first, then more modest versions will be fed to the populace as though these were the creme' de la creme'.  The world will continue much the way it has, with a shrinking middle class, and growing poverty covered in the patina of human advancement.  Those whom wish to remain in the increasingly privileged middle-class will be forced to concede to the regulations of  whichever powerful figure they are working for, be that figure CEO, Imam, Pastor, or Politician, while maintaining proscribed enhancement levels and acquiescing to what I can only imagine will be mandatory monitoring of those who can afford enhancements.  

Solar energy, or any more efficient energy source, will be no less expensive for the common man.  Period.  It will, however, be significantly less expensive for the powerful, leading to increased profit margin per watt produced, making it easier for utilities to control what they charge for their product.  Our ability to pay will only come into consideration when considering the maximum amount they can charge while maintaining the largest number of customers in order to maintain the highest level of income.  Pretty much how they do it now, Wall St. speculators aside.  This same formula will be applied to food production, fresh-water supply, home-building materials, anything considered essential for survival.  Since monetary value is inevitably pegged to these things, and the prices for these needs rise every year, average inflation will remain near the same levels it has seen for the last hundred years or so, not counting wartime or recessions, which tend to create anomalous changes in inflation rates.  Technology will change none of that.

To deny that this is the most probable outcome for the future forty years from now is to deny the last ten, no, two hundred... Let's be realistic, the entirety of human history.  Cynicism aside, human nature will lead the powerful to do anything to remain in power, and the oppressed to suffer under that power until a boiling point is reached, and the newly minted "rebels" achieve a momentary equality that is essentially the foundation for the next ruling class that will inevitably repeat the actions of past powerful people.  From the ashes, beside the newer powers, the powerful families of the past will rise to pretend the climb to their former lofty position, and the cycle will once again repeat.  Technology or not.

Now, to say what I was too polite to say in Mashable's comments:

Where do we, as a society, get our friggin opinions of the future? 

 I can understand the Conservative Right's "The world is flat and a magical white guy with a beard created everything so the left can go suck it.  Oh, the Easter bunny... Well the Easter bunny is fake..." point of view.  What it boils down to is the years of inbreeding and hatred of the written word have led to an irrational fear of even the smallest changes in human understanding.  

Now, those who have an understanding of science, and use, or claim to use, logic and responsibility in living their daily lives, where do we get the gall to "believe" that the future will be beautiful and clean, where people are ageless and our brains are soooooo powerful?  That is almost as irresponsible as being religious.

The best that humanity at large can hope for should technology advance as fast and powerfully as people like Ray Kurzweill, Aubrey DeGrey, and even the people responsible for the gritty Deus Ex video game series, would like is an Adam Jensen who will throw a wrench into the gears of the powerful.  But, sorry, it'll never happen.

SO, I guess I am just miffed that people are so blind to their current reality that they think the future is just as blind to that reality.  Just because someone who actually knows what they are talking about says we will be able to do something does not mean that we will be allowed to do that thing.  Do you honestly think the powers that be will allow us to be as strong, beautiful, and long-lived as we wish unless there is something substantial to be gained?  Forty years aside, it will be at least a century before technologies dealing with the foundations of humanity will be allowed to circulate freely in society, be they centered on age, our intellectual power, or exo-terrestrial colonization.  But that's if the CEO's and religious leaders of the world have their way.  So, let's compromise and say that within seventy years, we will be able to advance ourselves in great ways, because wrenches tend to jam the best protected gears.  Until then, no matter how many future-tech-rainbows some leftist hippy-dreamer feeds you, and despite how many eternities in a swimming pool filled with bullets and burning coals some child-molesting, right-wing, preacher threatens you with, invest in some asstroglyde and get ready for what's coming.  The CEO of your favorite food company is going to sell you more unbelievable bullshit then that hippy can imagine and then fuck you harder than every-single super-natural being dreamed up by some old man with psychological problems who ate some middle-eastern peyote, even if every single "god" is actually standing in line with a number for the universe's most forgiving gang-bang.

Fly Smart.

My Point of View: Women

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3m3t_PxiUI  Lupe Fiasco says it very well.

  So, what is going on with women today?  What about you TG women?  TG women are actually safer, as  many women still see you as men, though are too two-faced and shallow to admit it.  The equality of women in the USA is being eroded in such a profound manner I even find it sickening.  In many states, you don’t even have say over what you can do with your body.  Okay, yeah, sure, this mainly has to do with abortion or contraception, so relatively few women are truly effected, meh-meh-mehhh. 
  For you ladies who espouse this point of view, as you sit in the pews Sunday morning or Wednesday night, open up to 1Corinthians or 1Timothy, check it out, then shut up like a good wife.  Or, better yet, read some Genesis.  Yeahhh!!!  The Beginning!!!  The foundation of your entire belief system!  Howsabout Lot and the two angels?  Ask your husband or your preacher to explain why allowing the town to rape your two daughters is preferable to allowing them to take advantage of two incredibly mighty, supernaturally gifted strangers who have the power to scrape the two largest cities in the world off of the planet?  Oh, yeah, so Lot could save his own ass.  Get ready for a stunned moment of silence, followed by a stutter, then a well rehearsed message, that is, once you think about it, an avalanche of bullshit.  Tell me, would you let a man rape your daughter in order to save the asshole of some guy you don’t even know?  What if he was the President?  

  The rest of you women, pay any attention to politics lately?  Do you realize you are supporting people who believe “People don’t die from cancer anymore”(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/03/chris-collins-cancer_n_1647196.html) to create or approve legislation that dictates the level of healthcare you are allowed to receive? (Remember that word, “allow.”  Say it once or twice, get a feel for it.  It will come in handy when the Church-run GOP takes over the government.)  Do you also realize that you are supporting  people and agreeing to let them have control over a child growing in your womb, people who believe that having a disembodied voice tell them to take their child into the middle of the desert, kill said child, and burn the remains is an acceptable trait in a leader?  

  I sort of blame myself.  Well, my gender, more specifically.  At the risk of exposing myself for what I am, (that is, a terrible person) I love what women have done with the whole “sexual revolution”, and the second-rate kind of equality that men of the fifties, sixties, and seventies gave them.  Predictably, they used those freedoms to… act in a similar fashion to men: they party, drink, and do all the nifty stuff unscrupulous males did, while chauvinists like me bask in the heat of your… freedoms.  And every time a feminist takes charge of women everywhere, and manages to get a crow-bar into the door-jamb of true equality, a Kim K. or Paris H. runs her over with a Bentley. 
  Unfortunately, men do control the world, or it seems that way since every time someone points out how women aren’t getting a fair shake, women in the ‘States seem not to give a damn.  You don’t even stand up for yourselves anymore.  Women have been shoehorned into this image thing by us, and you love it?  Have you become so jaded by how much worse women in the majority of the rest of the world have it that you are willing to let douche bags like me (albeit, tall, dark, and handsome douche bags), limit and control who you can be?
  I think it’s because at least sixty percent of women in the good ole US of A buy into male superiority, if not by thought, than by deed.  They walk through those church/mosque/temple doors every week.  For five thousand years, men have been using  religion to hold you down, keeping you firmly in the place of a second-class citizen, no matter how you perceive yourself or your lot in life, and you still voluntarily give us that power.  
 Fifty years ago, we men allowed you to taste true freedom.  We allowed you to have true equality.  We are allowing you to hold positions in parliament and congress today.  And yet, speaking in business terms, you are still only worth 75% of what a man is.  “Hello, McFly” comes to mind.
  I guess that’s why I am an atheist, as well as a transhumanist.  As an atheist, I don’t have some all-powerful male super-hero that protects me from evil things like equality and a woman on top.  As a transhumanist, I am not interested in restoring equality to everyone as much as I am trying to destroy this concept that inequality is normal, and everyone is unequal to a male WASP.  
 This whole superiority thing men, especially white men, hold in their hearts is eminently dangerous to our advancement as a society.  We are so focused on our imagined superiority as a gender, we are forgetting our superiority as a species.  Yet, to be superior as a species, we need to act as a cohesive unit.
 Women, you need to wake the fuck up.  I am only one man, am not a feminist by any means, and considering the track record of guys in regard to how women are perceived, do you really want us fighting for you?

P.S. Hey, If anyone knows of a random image of a crowd of women or something, hook me up with it.  I need an intro pic for this.

Christians and Anal-Animal SEX!

pic.twitter.com/uZG4HHgt

Hit up the link, I dare ya.  Then, answer me this:  Why do Christians like having sex with animals SO much that they are hoping Liberals legalize it?

The whole argument that gay marriage is the same as say, fucking a duck in the ass, is facile at best.  The two are no where near the same thing, as intraspecific marriage has been going on since men began making it acceptable to enslave and sell women by claiming they are property. Read the Bible, especially the OT.  Women, you are nothing to Christian, Jewish, or Muslim men other than property.  They want to keep it that way, why else would they endorse marriage between two people they consider unequal when two people who are equal in station could marry just as well?  Because they would consider it unethical to enslave a man they were in love with, probably?  Because a man literally cannot be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen?

Sheesh, let the LGBT community experience marriage in all it's glory.  I mean, putting up with the same crap from someone for years on end, that's AWESOME, right?  Divorce, you Christians are pretty experienced with that(even though Jesus Christ specifically said it was wrong, and gave very few, if any, mitigating circumstances) right?  Why deny Gays that?  And what happens when a child raised in a Gay home decides to be straight?  Oh, wait, an LGBT household would be okay with it because they are less prone to be judgmental ass-hats.

Bottom line is this:  Once again Conservatives and Bible-thumpers are attempting to completely stem the social and, vicariously, technological advancement of our species.  Over the last hundred years or so, we have experienced an unprecedented amount of advancement as a species, and the religious powers that be are attempting to quell the flood of people leaning away from their control.  Again.

Can we, the more logical members of society, survive the persecution of the religious?  Even as they attempt to pull the "we are so picked upon" card?

I hope that liberals legalize gay marriage so the Religious Right can start having sex with animals.

P.S. If you Religious assholes would just worry about yourselves and let everyone else live their own lives, maybe the world would give a shit about the tens-of-thousands of Christians killed yearly around the world for being Christian.  I know it is hypocritical for me to say so, but when you start giving a shit about everyone else's views, maybe we will give a shit about you.  And why do you guys(Christians in the USA) automatically imagine having sex with animals when the question of equality for everyone comes up, anyway?  That's just fucking sick.

Oh, yeah, btw, Spartans, and Greece as a whole, were very open sexually.  Any of you pussy-assed Bible thumpers feel like asking god for a time machine so you can call a Spartan a fag?

GOP 2012!

Republican Party Symbol

2012!

  So, I have been reading stuff that is rather harsh to the GOP, of which I am a registered member.  Unfortunately I do agree with a lot of it, though much of it is as far out there as anything the target can come up with.  I personally believe that the future of technological advancement is in trouble so long as the rather fanatical christian fervor of the party continues.  I do not see it stopping any time soon.  

  So, with this criticism of my own political affiliation, I implore more logical minds to once again make a stand within the party.  Take control once again.  If not, let's make another political party, one not left, not right, not libertarian.  One Logical.  One that looks to the future, not only of itself, but of the people of the good ole USA. 

 

Is this one better?  I only used the reversal of the Democrat's symbol for the equestrian nature of unicorns.