Mark Whitaker on the Forms of Technological Consciousness

= a reaction to the editorial by Michel Bauwens: Recovering Our Technological Unconscious‎

Discussion

Mark Whitaker:

"Points for now on fleshing out the 'media' issue and what is actually unconscious or just unvoiced/unnamed consciousnesses?

1. I would add a middle point, that there is quite a "technological consciousness" though people generally lack names/labels for the different conscious values built into different future tech systems they are envisioning. The following fifteen terms give us 'new eyes to see' this cultural affinity for the ultimate purpose and goal of technological systems that can be quite different from each other.

The book Five Regions of the Future (2005) provided the original five views of how people culturally approach the social purposes/politics of technology

(that they call 'super tech' (bigger is beautiful; all environmental problems can be solved with future technology and larger scales so stop worrying, greater abundance from that larger scales for all around the corner, and the purpose of technology is to be a background workhorse to create leisure in our lives more, etc.)

'limits tech' ('limits are beautiful' efficiency is beautiful, recycling, etc. as the purpose of technologies, beliefs in limits as more crucial in systems design, etc.),

'nature tech (which I would now reframe as 'super-nature tech'), beliefs in adapting ideas from material handling from nature's chemical pathways that are already 'perfected' in a sense as low energy, and zero pollution assumptions; championed by Benyus first),

'local tech' (small is beautiful, building regionality into systems is the purpose of technology; labor is good and part of how people live and valued so the purpose of technology is hardly leisure, it is well integrated work and labor in particular regions) and

'human tech' (learning about human social optimalities or individual personal optimalities; learning about biorhythms, study schedules, scale of optimal happy arrangements for architecture and collaboration, etc., genetic knowledge, psychological self-knowledge, nutritional plans for individuals tailored to them, etc.).

After 2005, given a lot of technical change, I think people have invented ten other kinds of technological consciousnesses as the purpose of technical systems, so I have added 10 more:

[6. local nature tech]

I would call this future’s motto: “Ecological Systems Innovation Inspired by Nature”—different than the ‘motto of super nature tech’ above by Benyus. This local nature tech is like permaculture, agroecology, conservation biology; etc.; this is “[systems] innovation inspired by nature for local tech solutions”; systems, cycles, regional ecological conditions as what to learn from to fit people and their technologies into them.]

[7. ‘super-human-nature’ tech]

Garreau, Joel. 2005. Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies—and What It Means to Be Human. Broadway Books. Excerpts. ; transhumanism; cyborgs; artificial body parts; raising cloned body parts, etc. merging super tech and human tech and nature tech: seeing humanity as only 'humanity 1.0,' instead of a default given, a biological platform or application tweakable by design of others to serve certain ends.

8. ‘local-human-nature’ tech; critiques of ‘super tech’ in general and critiques of ‘super tech agricultural choices’ in particular; critiques of ‘super-human nature’ tech strategies (like genetic-intervention medicine to solve dietary issues)]; nature has already designed us genetically and in our metabolism to fit into particular ancestral regional food systems for our long term health: Whitaker, Mark. 2011. “Bioregional Videos: Savouring Europe, Severing the EU” [and my review of Nabhan and reframing our human species as ‘homo bioregionalensis’ and its implications for our health and future path] [Many nice videos here] http://biostate.blogspot.com/2011/02/bioregional-videos-savouring-europe.html

[9. centralized/surveillance/spying tech]; tech for maximizing surveillance; chipped human beings under the skin; ‘internet of bodies’; smartphone tracking, social credit systems, surveillance apps ‘required’ by the government, etc.]

Zuboff, Shoshana, 2020. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power

Tencent's WeChat SuperApp Global Surveillance State: The Secret Chinese Company That Owns Everything, Knows Everything about Chinese citizens, and shares it with the CCP, and is moving worldwide in a global cancel culture

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51fWzJ-A5w4 (1:18:00); just the first 10 minutes should be enough to learn a bit about the world you live in currently

[10. privacy/decentralized tech; tech for maximizing privacy and reducing the ability of ‘big data’ spying on people to preserve individual autonomy and freedoms.]

Unlike Us Reader: Social Media Monopolies and their Alternatives; encryption; etc. presumably Bitcoin, etc.

[11. smaller/mobile/networkable tech] (Take my course EST 372: The Mobile Revolution in Development!); the drive to make technologies smaller, more portable/mobile, and more accessible at any time and any place in network based technologies; the drive has been since the 1970s: getting smaller, that makes it get cheaper, when cheaper, more people buy them, and when more people have them, this makes a network form, the developing networkable mobility of technologies as people are ‘naturally’ mobile.

[12. Waste tech, non-edible]; some mentioned here in the film “22 inventions that are saving the earth”]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jU2Wff-DXBM 12:17

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWFb-8hFutY 7:01

[13. Waste tech, edible and/or biodegradable]; some mentioned here in the film “22 inventions that are saving the earth”; other points in this film are more typical local tech or limits tech, though many of these mentioned are ‘waste tech’ ideas that are a fresh technological system in the offing.]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jU2Wff-DXBM 12:17

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWFb-8hFutY 7:01

For #14: Recently possible, this other future of a truly ‘greener super-nature tech’ – has the same industrial scale as super tech and yet it becomes either a ‘big green limits tech’ and/or a ‘greener’ super-nature tech (take your pick of terms) instead of a more toxic ‘basic’ super tech or super-nature tech without ecological concern mentioned earlier.

Examples of #14:

· magnetic computers,

· OLEDs,

· borosilicate glass;

· greener industrial scale uses of biomimicry (diatom genetics for computer chip design)

For #15: Malthusian tech; merging of super tech’s big scale and optimistic disregard of environment and health (that they think can be solved later technically), to only big scale combined with an intentional and direct disregard of environment and health This is because the intent is policy to harm human health, in a Malthusian-inspired elite’s interests of demoting human populations, demoting fertility/breeding, demoting child intelligence, demoting genetic viability, and raising sicknessness and death by making tech and our infrastructures intentionally and knowingly toxic over time. Technology, materials, and products in this system are meant to be a parallel intentional depopulation policy that is consumed or used in the background. Thus these injuries are unable to use the alibi of ‘unintended, indirect, delayed’ harms, since many are widely known as harmful now and still nothing is done to demote the harm. Therefore, it is more clearly someone’s ‘intended, direct, and undelayed’ harm on us all and on the unborn. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, though there really are people out there, from the early 1790s to now, that write policy papers on how to make sure we are culled or more biologically sterilized and/or socially/economically incapable of having more babies. Malthusian tech has expanded tremendously from the 1970s to the present.

Examples of #15:

· filling our products with intentional harms

· suppressing healthy medicines that work

· Filling children’s products with intentional harms; (baby food in USA, mercury contamination; Hershey’s chocolate with heavy metals and cadmium—they are being sued for this by 2022.)

· knowing EMF pollution creates low sperm motility and infertility;

· knowing 5G electopollution has same symptoms as a ‘flu’.

· Promoting toxic medicines like radiation for cancer

· Promoting Remdesivir for the flu (that causes known organ failures) while blocking/suppressing better treatments like Hydroxychloroqine/Ivermectin/Fembendazole.

· Parkinson's Disease Toxin [Paraquat and diquat] Banned in 50 Countries, Still Legal in USA; Studies found those who applied it are 200%+ as likely to develop Parkinson's https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2023/04/05/paraquat-and-diquat-to-face-trial.aspx

· EMF microwave frequency bands chosen for our cellular phone communication have been known for 30 years to be the same frequency bands to cause mental duress and known to cause genetic damage and cancer; EMF is classified as a ‘class 1 carcinogen’ by the World Health Organization.

· untested gene therapies: mRNA vaccines from 2020 onward causing (1) mass excess deaths among the vaccinated, and (2) causing immune collapse for the more booster shots you have (2a) which encourages the rise of what is called ‘turbo-cancers’, (2b) in ‘VAIDS’ (vaccine-induced autoimmune disease syndrome, where your immune system starts to attack your own body for life, until you are dead), or as (3) ADE (antibody-dependence enhancement; leads to overzealous immune responses on the slightest sickness that create “cytokine storms” that explode your organs with inflammation and cause you to bleed internally with a “too large” inflammatory response.

All three lead to impaired immune systems explaining more sickness/cancer, more infertility, and more excess mortality/death with the more you have these mRNA shots after 2020. Plus, after the mRNA shots, there have been huge surges of youth myocarditis, youth heart attacks, menstrual problems, infertility, miscarriages, and spontaneous abortions likely from multiple factors though one of them are the way your body now will manufacture the toxin of a spike protein for life—which is what the prion-based BSE disease is (Bovine-spongiform encephalopathy) otherwise known as ‘mad cow disease.’ Others for this list:

· BPA in plastics is known to be hormone disrupting; some ‘BPA replacements’ are known to be worse, instead of better.

· Aspartame (neurotoxin sold as artificial sugar in food; never found safe in 1980s yet allowed)

· Chlorinated sugar (Spenda™) and fat deposits and organ damage over time.

· Sugar substitute stevia interested people in the 1800s in South America as causing infertility and making pregnancy hard to happen (plus, high doses harm your organs as well), can be an endocrine disruptor and mimic insulin to encourage diabetes as well.

· Keeping toxic food/fodder additives in animals like ractopamine, a beta-agonist banned in 160 countries including China, yet in U.S., Canadian, Korean, and Japanese pork; linked to cardiovascular problems in people; beta-agonists speed up heart rate, increase anxiety, etc..

· carcinogenic food dyes

· GMO foods can cause infertility in animals and humans; plus, can kill gut bacteria, and killing gut bacteria destroys brain functions since your neurological chemicals are made in your gut via bacteria there.

· GMO mosquitoes, spreading more diseases than solving them; bioweapons? People are seeding unknown and forced vaccines in mosquitoes now.

· Fluoride added to water systems, despite it being a known neurotoxin and simply industrial waste; eating fluoride is known to be associated with young bone cancer in boys (Harvard study); fluoride destroys your mental state as well; as well as is connected to more cancer; watch the documentary film for credit in this course called “The Fluoride Deception” (30 min.) about the book of the same name researched for 10 years by ex-BBC producer.

· Unchecked prion diseases of BSE in US meat covered up since the 1980s

· Herbicides like glyphosate or atrazine are known to be carcinogenic, yet are still authorized despite risk known.

Attempts to ban nutritional supplements globally via Codex Alimentarius"