• 09 JAN 15
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    Welcome to the Matrix: Enslaved by Technology and the Internet of Things

    Sent in by Laura Jacobsen as published by The Rutherford Institute

    Excerpt

    Welcome to the Matrix: Enslaved by Technology and the Internet of Things

    By John W. Whitehead
    January 07, 2015

    “There will come a time when it isn’t “They”re spying on me through my phone” anymore. Eventually, it will be “My phone is spying on me.”” “ Philip K. Dick

    If ever Americans sell their birthright, it will be for the promise of expediency and comfort delivered by way of blazingly fast Internet, cell phone signals that never drop a call, thermostats that keep us at the perfect temperature without our having to raise a finger, and entertainment that can be simultaneously streamed to our TVs, tablets and cell phones.

    Likewise, if ever we find ourselves in bondage, we will have only ourselves to blame for having forged the chains through our own lassitude, laziness and abject reliance on internet-connected gadgets and gizmos that render us wholly irrelevant.

    Indeed, while most of us are consumed with our selfies and trying to keep up with what our so-called friends are posting on Facebook, the megacorporation Google has been busily partnering with the National Security Agency (NSA), the Pentagon, and other governmental agencies to develop a new “human” species, so to speak.

    In other words, Google””a neural network that approximates a global brain””is fusing with the human mind in a phenomenon that is called “singularity,” and they”ve hired transhumanist scientist Ray Kurzweil to do just that. Google will know the answer to your question before you have asked it, Kurzweil said. “It will have read every email you will ever have written, every document, every idle thought you”ve ever tapped into a search-engine box. It will know you better than your intimate partner does. Better, perhaps, than even yourself.”

    But here”s the catch: the NSA and all other government agencies will also know you better than yourself. As William Binney, one of the highest-level whistleblowers to ever emerge from the NSA said, “The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control.”

    Science fiction, thus, has become fact.

    We”re fast approaching Philip K. Dick”s vision of the future as depicted in the film Minority Report. There, police agencies apprehend criminals before they can commit a crime, driverless cars populate the highways, and a person”s biometrics are constantly scanned and used to track their movements, target them for advertising, and keep them under perpetual surveillance.

    Cue the dawning of the Age of the Internet of Things, in which internet-connected “things” will monitor your home, your health and your habits in order to keep your pantry stocked, your utilities regulated and your life under control and relatively worry-free.

    The key word here, however, is control.

    In the not-too-distant future, “just about every device you have “” and even products like chairs, that you don”t normally expect to see technology in “” will be connected and talking to each other.”

    By 2018, it is estimated there will be 112 million wearable devices such as smartwatches, keeping users connected it real time to their phones, emails, text messages and the Internet. By 2020, there will be 152 million cars connected to the Internet and 100 million Internet-connected bulbs and lamps. By 2022, there will be 1.1 billion smart meters installed in homes, reporting real-time usage to utility companies and other interested parties.

    This “connected” industry””estimated to add more than $14 trillion to the economy by 2020″”is about to be the next big thing in terms of societal transformations, right up there with the Industrial Revolution, a watershed moment in technology and culture.

    SNIP

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