Life After Google

 The fall of Big Data and the rise of the blockchain economy

According to Gilder and other researchers the digital industry is rapidly approaching a "moment of singularity". Supercomputers and the cloud are becoming much more powerful and intelligent with accumulated multi-sensorial data banks that are appropriating data from our brains and bodies with the increasing power to even make many decisions for us. Added to this is the growing realisation that Silicon Valley seems to be merging a neo-Marxist political ideology with their expanding technological vision for the world. Historical Marxist vision for  mankind was one of redistribution of the scarce resources of the society, whereas Google's vision would seem to be one of redistribution of an abundance. However, rather than thrusting us into a utopian world of prosperity, the reality would be an 'algorithmic eschaton ' that 'renders obsolete not only human labour but the human mind as well.

Chimira

This would-be doomsday scenario has been rendered possible by a redefinition of what it means to be human. After the introduction of the seminal 'On the Origin of Species' by Charles Darwin man was re-conceived as just another animal, an ape that has evolved to be just a smarter product of random natural selection. Google's techno-Marxism has taken this development beyond natural selection to the point that it views technology not just as a creation of man but a superior chimera to mankind. 

Fiat system

Abundance is normally measured by accumulated wealth, and in today's information society wealth is a product of knowledge. Moving on from our previous review of circular and linear time (see previous blog - The Fourth Turning) knowledge can be seen as a product of an accumulation of wealth over linear time. Isaac Newton, like many other alchemists finally discovered that gold could not be produced from other elements, nor could it be reducible. For this reason it was seen as an ideal basis for the tangible accumulation and storage of wealth. This notion reinforced Newton's view of the world as a homogenous conception of one universe, one money and one God. However, Google would have us believe that this view has been eclipsed by the notion that money, like the cosmos can be viewed as relativistic and reversible. Under president Nixon in 1971 the gold standard was replaced by a fiat system that meant that the world financial system was linked to the American dollar, a system that relied on printed paper and trust that the American dollar could be a measure by which other currencies are valued.

The Judeo-Christian world view inspired a notion of progress that was linked to human creativity and free will. The Google conceptualisation of progress is also a religious one in that it sees the purpose of mankind as a blend of human and machine cognition that combines technology with metaphysics in a type of cyber singularity. What emerges from this is a creation of a new world order that redefines the very nature of mankind. The apple CEO, Tim Cook envisioned a digital space where everything would be free. However, the reality of this relationship is that if everything is free then you are not the customer but the product. Thus, the accumulation of personal information is the currency of advertisers and corporations. From your perspective, as a personage, you pay in time. Google aggregates your personal information and advertisers use this accumulated data. What is important to techno-conglomerations is that they want you to be kept online and involved for as long as possible. However, what could be Google's demise is its lack of personal security. This is the same problem as our current fiat money system with its lack of trust, particularly when America decides to print more dollars than their accumulated wealth should dictate.

Emergence of the blockchain

What is emerging, instead, is a revolution in the digital universe in the form of a distributed peer-to-peer technology that could spell the end of Google as we know it. This new cryptocosm builds on trust and  transaction security. Every entry in the crypto-ledger is time-stamped and decentralised, it is, therefore, a deterrent for information theft. The main difference is that Google is hierarchical or a top-down entity. This means that information (accumulated wealth) makes it way to the the top of the digital hierarchy:  consolidating wealth to the controlling techno-oligarchs. What is emerging, however, is a newer system that is bottom-up or heterarchical. This bottom-up cryptocosm will enable future users to control their own information and thus retain their identity, knowledge and wealth. 

"Consciousness is who we are, how we think, and how we know. It is echoed in religious institutions and in the form of psychological identity. It is the essence of mind as opposed to machine. It is the source of creativity and free will." Essentially the human mind is not defined by electrical impulses and digital algorisms and it is not determnistic but creative and independent. The machine is part of the deterministic order and, as such, confined to human interpretation and moderation. The emerging cryptocosm is built on the notion of the blockchain platform that supports this type of human intelligence and ownership. 

Cryptocurrency

What has emerged is a cryptocurrency that is enabled by the secure blockchain ecology. As transactions are recorded and timestamped immutable transactions become a form of currency which are much more reliable than the current paper fiat currency. The advantage is that it is also more transportable and more dynamic than gold or paper. After all, gold is merely dug out of the ground and placed in another hole dug into the ground to keep it safe! Just as gold is proof of work (knowledge) the blockchain is also secure and therefore, valuable. Cryptocurrency, like gold, is limited and therefore precious. Bitcoin, a type of cryptocurrency, is an artificially limited commodity, which, means that as more people use it the value increases. Fiat paper currency on the other hand can be printed at will and so the value decreases as more US dollars are made available.

At the end of the day Google will have to change or fall by the way as it relies on the false narrative that machine learning and the 'singularity' can improve human quality of life. However, what human kind needs is a dynamic platform that enables individuals to retain their identity, free will, and independence while at the same time empowering them to achieve more than they could by themselves.

Gilder, G. (2018). Life after Google: The fall of Big Data and the rise of the blockchain economy. New Jersey: Regency Gateway.