Technofascism blog

“It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself–anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face…; was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime…”
-George Orwell, 1984, Book 1, Chapter 5

“Your worst enemy, he reflected, was your nervous system. At any moment the tension inside you was liable to translate itself into some visible symptom.”
- George Orwell, 1984, Book 1, Chapter 6

via The Buffalo News.

Imagine using the same technology to locate a lone bomber before he carries out his terrorist act and to identify a troubled veteran or first responder ground down by tragedies and violence.

Stop imagining.

How? “The computer system detects resentment in conversations through measurements in decibels and other voice biometrics,” he said. “It detects obsessiveness with the individual going back to the same topic over and over, measuring crescendos.”

As for written transmissions scrutinized by the computer program, it can detect the same patterns of fixation on specified subjects, said Guidere, who has worked for years screening mass data that involves radicalization and ideological indoctrination.

Read Full Article

via PhysOrg:

The replacement of humans by machines in the workplace took another step on Wednesday, as Japanese researchers unveiled a model they hope could lead to humanoid menial workers.

Its makers, Kawada Industries and the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), hope the robot will be a step towards creating a model that can help ease greying Japan’s looming labour shortage.

“We designed a working robot in the image of a lean but well-muscled track-and-field athlete,” Noriyuki Kanehira, robotic systems manager
at Kawada, told a news conference to unveil the blue-and-white “HRP-4.”

Designed to help researchers develop models that could replace humans in repetitive manual labour, the latest “athlete” model in a near 10-year-old series updates the feminine, catwalk-strutting, karaoke-singing HRP-4C.

But the tone this time is altogether more serious, according to a joint statement from its developers.

“It is Japan’s urgent task for the early 21st Century to develop robots that could carry out simple, repetitive works
… in a bid to complement the workforce in a country that is rapidly ageing with fewer and fewer children”.

Standing at 151 centimetres (59 inches) tall, the robot in a demonstration Wednesday stood on one foot, twisted its waist, struck poses, walked in accordance to given voice commands and moved its head to track objects.

The HRP-4 boasts joints that move more freely than its predecessors and can run a range of separately-developed software applications, its makers said.

Kawada and AIST will start selling the robot to universities and research institutes in Japan and abroad from January 2011.

The price tag for what is described as a “low cost” model is 26 million yen (306,000 dollars) each. Its creators hope to sell three-to-five units a year.

Kevin Warwick, a professor of cybernetics at University of Reading in the UK, back in 1998 was the first person to implant an RFID chip in his body and become the world’s first cyborg.

In a recent interview, Warwick tells how he is now busy building robots with home-grown biological brains based on rat neurons.  Although, during the interview he admits, “We will eventually be using human neurons.”  Right now, these self-directed ratbots can not only learn for themselves how to run mazes but they can even decide to stop trying when the task is thought to be impossible.

According to Warwick, these robotic creations will eventually develop powers that will put humans at a severe disadvantage unless humans begin upgrading themselves through cybernetic implants.  He warns, “Someday we’ll switch on that machine, and we won’t be able to switch it off.”  Warwick goes on to say that only upgraded humans, or cyborgs, have a real possibility of maintaining control after the technological singularity; non-upgraded humans will be relegated to a zoo, or become farm animals, or worse.

The idea that humans will upgrade themselves to enable them to compete with machines was promoted by fellow AI researcher Hugo de Garis. According to de Garis three groups will develop in this century: the Terrans, who will resist the development of the intelligent robots; the Cosmists, who desire to build them in the hopes of attaining immortality through merging with them; and the Cyborgists, who believe that the only way for some form of humanity to survive will be by upgrading humans with technology.  In the later part of the 21st century, these three camps will fight it out in a final battle for supremacy: the  Artilect War, (“Artliect” being a contraction of Artificial Intellect).

In the dawn of the 21st century, with the development of robotics and vast computer networks, could we now be seeing the technological groundwork being laid out for this coming battle?  If we are, then there is no doubt that Warwick will be seen as an early general, fighting on the side of the Cyborgists.

related: Hugo de Garis and the coming Articlect War

related: Scientist warns: I’ll become a god…or there will be warfare

via Guardian.

The world’s largest cargo ships are travelling at lower speeds today than sailing clippers such as the Cutty Sark did more than 130 years ago.

A combination of the recession and growing awareness in the shipping industry about climate change emissions encouraged many ship owners to adopt “slow steaming” to save fuel two years ago. This lowered speeds from the standard 25 knots to 20 knots, but many major companies have now taken this a stage further by adopting “super-slow steaming” at speeds of 12 knots (about 14mph).

Travel times between the US and China, or between Australia and Europe, are now comparable to those of the great age of sail in the 19th century. American clippers reached 14 to 17 knots in the 1850s, with the fastest recording speeds of 22 knots or more.

via News.com.au.

“For future applications out there the sky’s the limit,” David Edwards of the Biotechnology Industry Association said.

“If you can imagine it, scientists can try to do it.”

and related: FDA won’t require labels on GM Salmon

via MinnPost.

It wasn’t too long ago that apartment dwellers in Germany assumed that someone, somewhere in the building, was taking notes on everything they did. Even people who owned their own homes could never be certain whether a government mole was listening in on their conversations.

“Making sure the law was kept,” said Jobst Krause, a 67-year-old Frankfurter, of the surveillance during the Nazi era.

Krause is too young to have experienced the worst of Nazi surveillance, and he lived in West Germany when the Stasi, East Germany’s secret police force, kept tabs on citizens. But he understands the pang of worry that shot through the hearts of many Germans last week when Google, the American search engine giant, announced that it would launch its Street View application in Germany before year’s end.

It looks like our ever-diligent friends at DARPA have been busy creating a contingency plan for the OathKeeper movement.  Thanks to a newly-developed pain modulator and behavior modification helmet, any US troops who decide they will obey the Constitution rather than the commands of the global puppet masters will now be getting some remote-controlled motivational persuasion.

Reminiscent of the “Collar of Obedience” from Star Trek, this new helmet according to it’s creator William J Tyler at Arizona State University, will be able to non-invasively produce all the same effects that are now possible only through deep surgical implants.  Employing a form of targeted ultrasound technology, the “Helmet of Obedience” will be able to manipulate pain and motivational centers in the brain at a finer scale than even current magnetic stimulation.

It’s no mystery what agencies would be interested in this sort of technology and Tyler makes it painfully clear who his handlers are.  According to Tyler, “We look forward to developing a close working relationship with DARPA and other Department of Defense and U.S. Intelligence Communities to bring some of these applications to fruition over the coming years depending on the most pressing needs of our country’s defense industries.” [ref]

Certainly, everyone is well aware how the poor, under-equipped, under-funded largest military industrial complex in the world has such “pressing needs” for this new technology.

But wait there’s more.  Tyler is obviously a man with lots of DARPA grant money and time on his hands. When he’s not busy developing the “Helmet of Obedience”, he’s hard at work on another much needed technology that will become a boon to mankind: MyBrainCloud.net.

According to Tyler, “MyBrainCloud.net is a concept application of noninvasive brain stimulation using pulsed ultrasound, which is likely to emerge in the future. The concept is essentially to provide individual users with a personalized connection port through which various brain stimulation protocols can be administered in an open access manner using cloud computing. This technology has many broad applications ranging from at-home medicine to recreational applications such as interactive video gaming and virtual experience downloading.” [ref]

So it looks like Tyler might go down in history as the inventor of not only the Star Trek-style “Helmet of Obedience” but also the Matrix-style human-machine interface port; two dystopian science fiction inventions in one career.  Now that’s a level of achievement even the most egotistical, Harvard-educated, grant whore could be proud of putting on their CV.

—

The following image is a slide from Tyler’s Helmet of Obedience project.  Notice the “Pain Intervention” and “Behavioral Reinforcement” applications.

One of the major problems in building a total surveillance society is how to filter out the endless hours of visual data of wandering consumer-zombies to zero in on that one potential boogieman.  The answer, of course, as with anything, is more technology.  So, naturally, the grant-hungry architects of the machine at VTT in Finland have gleefully stepped up to the challenge.  If VTT succeeds in creating software that identifies abandoned luggage, not only will the potential luggage bomber be foiled but the global tracking system will be one step closer to complete automation.

via ScienceDaily.

VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland is developing image processing technology that will improve surveillance of abandoned luggage in public places.

Numerous CCTV systems are in use in public places which have the capacity to gather large amounts of image material. For the time being, however, there are no effective ways to analyse the mass of video data automatically and recognise potential risk situations in advance. VTT is involved in an EU research project aimed at developing IT solutions to this end.

A risk may be posed, for example, by luggage left in a public place which may contain explosives or other dangerous substances. Terror attacks based on this tactic have already claimed many civilian lives. Luggage surveillance is particularly important at airports, railway stations, trade fairs, and public spaces in nationally significant infrastructure.

The aim of the SUBITO project, which is funded by the European Commission, is to improve image analysis technology in existing CCTV systems. With the help of an application developed as part of the project, cameras recognise abandoned luggage automatically and rapidly identify, locate and track the person who left it there.

The new application has significant commercial potential, since it can be used to exploit image material before any incident takes place.

What will retail stores look like in the future?  If the latest trend in “automated kiosks” is any indication, most stores will one day be completely automated.

Right now, these robotic kiosks are rapidly appearing in malls and airports to replace the inefficient and expensive human retail employee.  Currently, it’s possible to buy everything from designer purses to iPods and digital cameras at these automated dispensaries across the country.

The financial incentive is certainly there for more malls and shopping venues to adopt this frightening automated approach to retail.  According to ZoomShop, the largest kiosk manufacturer, these robotic hucksters “can generate as much as $10,000 per square foot in sales a year, compared with about $330 in sales per square foot for the average mall store.”

If this robotic retail model is so profitable, one day even the mega-marts themselves will be entirely automated.  They will become, in essence, a gigantic vending machine that people will enter to fulfill their shopping whims.

via Houston Chronicle.

The term vending machine conjures up images of dropping coins in a slot to buy cola, candy or chips.

That’s so 20th century.

Today’s newest vending machines are high-tech “auto mated kiosks” that, with the swipe of a credit card, dispense designer purses, clothing, iPods, digital cameras and beauty products, to name just some of the offerings.

The snazzy machines are winning a following from buyers in airports, grocery stores, malls and even inside department stores.

While traditional vending machines represent a mature industry whose growth is slowing, the high-tech kiosks “are a new strong growth area,” said senior analyst Toon van Beeck at IBISWorld, a research firm based in Los Angeles.

“It’s all about convenience,” he said, which today’s consumers demand.

I’m heading out of town again for awhile.  I should be back on Sept 13th to post more wonderful tidings of sweetness and light.  In the meantime, check out Cryptogon, Latoc and BlacklistedNews for your daily dose of joyousness.