Houston We Have a Problem

 It was once thought that globalization accompanied by the instantaneous spread of information by way of the internet in the 21^st century was going to bring societal classes and counties closer to the egalitarian utopia that so many people dream of. The truth may be just the opposite. It’s entirely possible and even conceivable that the network of personal data being gathered by the mega giants such as Google and Facebook will be used to manipulate and control the masses without us even knowing it. This will leave a few of the elites in control of the big data algorithms that in turn control the masses by deciding what car you buy, what show you watch, what books you read, and even who you date. You will not have a decision. You will be told by a computational algorithm what to do. Did I hear someone say zombie apocalypse?

  The right ingredients and proper formulas are becoming more and more readily available to turn the masses into drooling unconscious zombies working for their masters and whatever agendas they may have. The origins of inequality that so many people experience today date back millions of years ago. It is known by the scientific community that even the crustaceans followed this pattern leading experts to believe that inequality stems from a biological preset. Humans’ behaviors as many as thirty thousand years ago exhibited patterns of a hierarchical order. Some lived in huge elaborate caves with beads and jewelry while others lived in a simple hole in the ground. Inequality wasn’t as pronounced as it is today because there were few material objects to accumulate. That would soon change.

The dawn of the agricultural revolution is when inequality started to scale. Land became the chief possession that everyone desired and the few who obtained the most were the ones that would rise to the top of the hierarchical pyramid creating more and more inequality. And then there was a shift. Liberal and communist ideologies along with the industrial revolution created the highest rate of equality that perhaps we have ever known. This is because business owners and people of power relied heavily on the masses to keep the industrial economy ticking. Governments started investing in education, healthcare, and such things for the general public. It appeared that we were heading towards the egalitarian future that so many people dreamed of. Not so fast.

As we have seen the agricultural revolution and the acquisition of land fueled inequality.  Only for it to be tempered down by the importance and value set upon humans in keeping the industrial revolution a float. Liberal governments and communist governments both put value in its people. Why? Because they needed them for the new industrial economy to function. At the turn of the 21^st century the rate of inequality was far less than it had been in the early nineteen hundreds. Then something emerged Proving to be far more lucrative than land and perhaps more valuable than the very organism that  produces the commodity. Personal data.

The major tech giants such as Google and Facebook are accumulating a vast amount of personal data about us. They know what foods we like, what kind of entertainment we gravitate towards, who we think is sexy, our sexual tendencies, our thoughts (A simple google search reveals a thought and when the algorithm computes all of your google searches it most certainly can determine and influence what is on your mind most of the time) and this is just the beginning. Once biotech evolves to a point where it can completely understand your biochemical responses by way of biosensors, that could one day be mandatory to wear just like wearing your seatbelt is mandatory in today’s world, they will know everything about us. This immense amount of personal data will be part of a mass network of learning algorithms that have a certain programmed agenda set by the elites. The creation controlling its creator. 

We the people are not the consumers of internet information we are essentially a product. By engaging in the electronic world and cooperating with agencies that are collecting our personal data we are giving them an electronic version of the living breathing us. We are giving them a product to sell to political parties, competing nations and anyone who can profit. We are giving away our most valuable asset. Ourselves. Of course this can get much worse. With the accumulation of a mass amount of personal data experts will soon be able to understand life at a profound level giving way to an elite group of superhumans and potentially being able to engineer life in the lab. When this happens homo sapiens are doomed. The elite will literally engineer a class of AI life forms that work for them around the clock deeming plain old homo sapiens to be redundant and useless. We will be sent to the crusher.