So I watched a video by Sabine about transhumanism.  People like Elon Musk say this is the inevitable future of humans and the only way we'll survive.  She did a great job in this video, and dropped a few humor bombs in her usual way.  The video started with examples of some people I found rather disturbing, who had self-implanted things inside their bodies.  They call themselves grinders.  They are the hackers of the realm of implants.

There was a guy who had a magnet inside the tip of his finger.  There were people who had installed RFID chips inside their bodies to allow them to do everything from paying for things by swiping their hand to altering thermostats and other smart home devices.  Just like Sabine, I will mention but not linger on the prospect of serious infections that can happen when people essentially undertake surgical procedures on themselves and install foreign objects inside their bodies.  In the comments, many people asked what happens to the guy with the magnet in his finger if he has to get an MRI.  Indeed.

The disturbing thing about the comments under this video was that the overwhelming majority of people were dismissive of any need for concern about a future involving implants.  There were countless examples given of medical and assistive devices that could be defined as making people transhuman already for decades, from pacemakers to glasses and contacts, to hearing aids, prosthetic limbs, knee and hip replacements, dental implants, and then even the prospect of devices that aren't implanted but are with you constantly, such as phones and smart watches, was counted as part of the same.

Many people actually said they thought it would be great or cool or whatever to be able to use the internet by way of an implant in their body, even if the implant was in their brain.  They had no issue with medical implants that would deliver drugs and monitor their health from the inside.  There were comments from people who work in IT and software development who were quick to say that implants are always going to involve code and software and firmware, and that the constant need to update these programs, as well as the pretty much guaranteed glitches and bugs that will happen, and the risk of hackers gaining entry and being able to control or manipulate another person's body, information, or even their mind gave them pause.  But only people who work in fields related to technology expressed any concerns.  The rest sounded like people who drank the Kool-Aid.

I rarely comment on YouTube, but I left commentary to the effect that this is not being done for the good of humanity, though of course that's the spin they put on it, just like everything else with untapped potential and dollar signs.  I said it's an emerging industry that should scare the shit out of you.  People really don't understand that there's a world of difference between the established medical implants and devices they listed and the spectrum of possibilities we're talking about now.  All those conventional devices were dumb.  They don't connect to the internet or to Bluetooth.  They don't share information about the inside of your body with anybody outside you.  They don't collect data at all.  They just serve their purpose.  

It always amazes me that society can continue to be oblivious to the fact that "smart" doesn't mean intelligent, when talking about technology.  SMART is an acronym that stands for self-monitoring and reporting technology.

Your phone collects and shares your location and keeps it up to date.  GPS in vehicles, which was rolled out as helping you find places without paper maps, tracks your location constantly and shares that information.  Your email and social media accounts collect information about your location, your device that you use to log in the account, and adjust what ads and recommendations and feed content you see based on your activity - what you say, what you like, what you share, who you follow.

I really don't think the average person actually realizes that this kind of tracking is done constantly.  The allure of the smart phone and the world on a screen in a portable fashion was too hard to resist.  The GPS in vehicles made it possible to never get lost again and to just go, not have to look up a destination in advance.  There are apps for everything.  People keep track of their health, their fitness, their diets, their periods, their sex lives, their schedules, and their feelings, through myriad apps that have replaced diaries, journals, notebooks - you know, what people always did before, just write it down.  Anything you keep track of using an app is automatically being shared with the app, with its servers, with its owners, with any staff that company has, and with third parties for advertising and for dubious studies on things about the public.

Facebook's infamous "it's free and it always will be" went over people's heads.  Yes, it was free in terms of money.  They pretty much all are.  Some offer tiers, where if you pay for certain perks, you have access to features the basic free account doesn't.  But just to join is usually free.  Same with email.  The reason you don't have to pay money to join is because you pay with the data they collect about you.  You are a commodity.

You don't have to be an Elon stan to know that he wants to implant everybody with brain implants that start out assisting with disabilities and lead to technological telepathy and brain to brain internet.  People really don't have a concept of what that means.  This is the part where the concerns about AI become warranted.  It will not necessarily cause the annihilation of humanity, as some fear, but it will change humans.  It will change society.  It already has.

People have had a couple of decades to get used to the internet, to email, to social media, to having a phone with them 24/7, to apps for everything, to oversharing their personal lives with strangers online, to daily selfies, to 24/7 notifications from apps in the background when they're not using them but never log out, to GPS, to looking everything up on Google instead of having to know or learn or remember anything.  It's beyond them that data collection poses any risk. They hear about data breaches, but until they're personally affected by one, they treat it the same way they treat news about Africa or the Middle East - it happens to others, it happens somewhere else, it doesn't happen to them.

The only people sounding the alarm over AI and the future of technology are people who work in related fields. The unwashed masses think it's all the greatest shit since sliced bread and all they see is how it can make their lives easier, faster, more convenient, and they don't know how anything works and don't want to.  They lose their minds if Twitter or Facebook is down for a while, or their internet is down, but they take bugs and glitches and spam and viruses and bots and hackers in stride.  They have no concept of the business model of Big Tech and refuse to learn.  They're easily impressed with the shiny things and the seemingly magical advancements, where gestures can replace actually touching things, where you can use your face to unlock your phone, where algorithms have learned to suggest exactly what you want or need to see today.  Technology learns all about you, and it's not to give you a better experience.  It's to put money in the pockets of the few.

So everybody's records of any kind are online now, from medical to financial to legal to vital stats, because everything is in databases.  There are constant hacks, constant ransomware attacks, leaving such records exposed.  Beyond your privacy is the realm of identity theft, which doesn't seem to worry people until it happens to them.  It seems like another lifetime when it was big wisdom to not open attachments in emails from people you don't know.

What these tech titans envision is a future where you comply.  There has always been a goal of controlling the masses, and this will never change.  It's done through politics, religion, social norms, mass media, social media, and now they're invading your inner space with devices that monitor your heart rate, your glucose, your blood pressure, your location, your mood, your menstrual cycle, your medication compliance, your politics, and while they're at it, why not get your fingerprints and your voice and your iris involved.  Facial recognition is being rolled out all over the world, so that all the cameras that do surveillance in public can be used to identify anyone who shows up on camera.  The problem with all of this is that this data is all in databases that you don't control, and you have no idea who has access to that data or what they'll do with it.  And then there's hackers.  And then there's system errors.  And then there's disasters where the entire contents of servers are lost forever.  So now you don't even exist in that scenario.

The fundamental issue with all of it is that it will become the norm.  It won't be a two-tier society where some are augmented with technology and some aren't.  Just like the disappearance of pay phones and paper money, just like the phasing out of combustion engine vehicles in favor of electric vehicles, once there is a certain degree of voluntary adoption, it will be forced upon everyone else.

Outer space is not the final frontier.  While the expensive telescopes observe things that are far beyond man's ability to ever visit directly, the plans remain limited to expanding ourselves within this local solar system.  Space is far too vast for man to even think about conquering.  Inner space is the final frontier.  Inner space is accessible.  At the point where you give up dominion over your own inner space, your own body, your own vital processes, your own neurological system, your own brain, you have surrendered to overlords in a way that nothing in all of history can compare to.

In reality, though, people have already done it, haven't they.  They already can't be without their phone or the GPS in their vehicle. They already voluntarily jump at things like using their face or prints or voice to unlock things and to replace passwords.  They already keep track of everything in apps and online instead of writing it down.  Why? Because it's there.  Because the advertising was a success. Because the pitch of how it would make your life easier and better worked.  Because they sold you the idea that everybody else is doing it, and you need to be like everybody else, so you do it.

People don't understand that before they sell you a product, they sell you a concept.  And when it comes to technology, much like yearly fashion trends, they first sell you the idea that everybody else is doing it. They get you to click on news stories because "everybody is talking about this" and they get you to watch new TV shows because the ads make it seem like everybody is watching this show.  Do people even have tastes of their own? Does society really just blindly, obliviously, like sheep, follow whatever they're told everybody else is doing?  That's damn scary.

The more technology advances, the less it seems there's any possibility of free will, and even of freedom of choice.  The majority follow the majority.  And once anything, no matter what its risks and downfalls, has been voluntarily accepted by a majority who just follow everybody else, it becomes mandatory for everyone else. The risks and dangers of anything become part of normal life, part of what "we all" have to worry about, when "all" of us didn't necessarily want this.

The problems that can be solved or eliminated or better managed by technology will only create other new problems.  So you're full of implants and you do social media without the need for external devices.  You're shown ads in your brain.  Spam and robocalls become inescapable because there's a direct line to your brain.  Then someone hacks in and takes control of your neurological system.  Maybe they cause you pain.  Maybe they paralyze you.  Maybe they just mess with you, maybe they take you hostage this way until you pay a ransom.  The new era of ransomware.  Implants connected to financial systems and institutions - what could go wrong there?  Just maybe someone forcing you to pay for something for them at gunpoint.  Just maybe someone chopping your hand off to steal your financial information.  Hey, women cut babies out of other women.  Don't think it won't happen with implants.  It'll become the new face of theft.

Any implant that can regulate something in the body that isn't doing so well on its own can also cause chaos.  The same "smart" implant that isn't just an object in your body anymore - it's connected outside you and others have access to it, and still others have the opportunity to try to gain access to it - that implant can be used to cause disability, dysfunction, disease, chaos, distress, and pain.  It will also cause those problems if there's issues in the system it's connected to.  It's disturbing that so many people don't think there's any cause for concern there.  It's disturbing that so many people are willing to be blindly led and steered into a future where they're connected to external entities they have no reason to trust, and dependent, ever more dependent, on these connections.  And I am disturbed by the idea that their oblivion will lead me into a future where I'm forced to be dependent on these connections and all the risks and problems they'll entail.