The other day I wrote a piece for this site on the Post Office scandal and what it has to tell us about the prospect of digital mayhem when the entire scandal derived from an over-reliance on technology that wasn’t understood by anyone involved and which was defective.
Peter Cardwell of TalkTV picked up the article and interviewed me yesterday. You can watch the interview here. He’s an excellent interviewer who asks very perceptive questions and listens to the answers. I much enjoyed the experience but of course we barely scraped the surface of the subject, and I was also left thinking about what he’d said.
One of his questions was: why have we ended up placing so much trust in all this tech and what do we do about it? That left me thinking.
Human beings have always looked to a higher and infallible authority for reassurance, to seek help in an uncertain future, to provide coherence and structure to life, and to legitimate or validate our actions, among which are some of the most terrible conflicts in human history. Cult is also used for coercion and control and so often it works because coercion and control masquerade as security and stability. As soon as literacy came into being around 5,000 years ago, it’s religion that became one of the first aspects of human culture recorded, and from the start it was integral to the state.
A proliferation of gods appeared in antiquity as well as evidence for cult, and most of all the performance of ritual in which human beings seek to propitiate the gods and seek their support. Colossal quantities of resources were poured into the performance of cult and temples in antiquity, not least because the regimes depended for their entitlement to rule on the ‘approval’ of the deities.
Let’s take a single example. Egyptian Pharaohs routinely claimed that they had been sired by the god Amun who had appeared in guise of their fathers and impregnated their mothers. Not surprisingly then, the Pharaoh handed over vast amounts of booty and slaves into the Amun cult which became a state within a state. The remains of the cult centre at Karnak, just outside Luxor in Egypt, bear witness to this: despite being ruinous, it’s still one of the largest religious complexes in the world. Amun was constantly depicted as the god in whose name the Pharaoh did everything, from appearing in a temple procession or brutal wars of conquest that destroyed cities and enslaved thousands. The cult of Amun was a machine which managed resources, owned vast tracts of land and goods and controlled labour.
In our highly secularised state it seems to me that perhaps we’ve transferred our need for reassurance to a new form of cult: technology. Instead of rain dances and sacrifices we look to weather forecasters, satellites and modelling to tell us the weather future. Instead of expecting gods to protect us, we have turned to computers and electronics and all their attendant systems to run the world around us. They are increasingly treated as if they were infallible, as if they were a pantheon of gods, mainly because we want them to be. In our uncertain world we are desperate for certainty. This thread ran throughout Covid, but that kind of belief in what mathematics and technology and the will to believe we can control our environment runs through almost every part of our society now.
The Post Office scandal exhibits this perfectly. Even when it had become manifestly obvious that the Horizon system was flawed, no one involved in enforcing its operation was prepared to admit that. The possibility was simply too agonising and terrifying to contemplate. It meant, quite literally, admitting that the god of Horizon was not infallible, that the liturgy of the software might be incapable of delivering the promised control and order. The implications went way beyond the tragedy inflicted on sub-postmasters.
I’m not some kind of Luddite, pleading for a return to the old world of religion and to obliterate the science and technology of our era. Not for one minute would I like to live in the Middle Ages or in some fanciful post-apocalyptic rural idyll. Religion has led mankind into some of its most terrible places, peddled outrageous lies, and in some parts of the world it is still doing so. At the time of writing, it has the potential to act as catalyst to a new era of conflict.
But we do need to try and understand ourselves. There is a prevailing sense that science is somehow different, that it represents our leap into a whole new type of human existence. To some extent that is true but human beings have not changed fundamentally. That is why technology has become a new kind of cult, even if we do not appreciate it on an everyday basis.
We are all now being drawn deeper into the systems and protocols of technology. We have to interact with the Government and banks through machines, following new types of rituals which (as everyone knows) can leave us reeling with frustration and despair when confronted with some new digital dead end. We have become ever more infantilised because technology is capable of performing far more actual tasks than conventional religion; moreover, it is also beginning to take on a life of its own. That means everything from a satnav (which annihilates the native ability to develop a sense of direction) to calculators that have reduced our ability to perform basic arithmetic, diminished our capacity to remember things, and made us reliant on machines we not only are unable to repair but which are also designed to be unrepairable. And every moment of our lives is being recorded by these machines.
Alongside the machines, we are invited time and time again, like the omens of old, to treat scientific modelling as a form of fact. No real scientist would ever pretend it was so, but some do, and more to the point, many of us want it to be – everything from weather forecasting to predicting school results, Covid deaths and election results. They are all laid out before us, all ‘validated’ by their scientific credentials as a reliable depiction of the future. The evidence that none of this is truly reliable, that the future is only certain when it’s in the past, doesn’t stop us sliding ever further into this new form of religion.
It cuts both ways of course. Technology is also breeding new forms of doomsday saviour cults that are wholly anti-technology, or at least profess to be. These cults promise redemption if all of us bow down before their dogmas and liturgies and unquestioningly obey their precepts and demands. And like all such cults they are veering ever closer to ruthless enforcement and suppression of any diversity of thought. The great paradox of course is that the theology of these cults is founded on forms of scientific modelling, mathematical prophecies of the end of the world, rather than punitive thunderbolts hurled down by Zeus, which are trotted out with ever more frantic and zealous hysteria.
None of this should occasion any surprise to anyone. ‘Know thyself’ has always been one of the best pieces of advice, or in this case, know ourselves. Human beings have not changed. The Post Office Horizon catastrophe might serve as a timely warning, but I’m not holding my breath. Cult, whatever form it takes and everything it involves or leads to, is a facet of the human experience, a product of ourselves. We could start by understanding that.
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I started in tech long before it was ‘cool’. There is indeed good and bad. It depends on the actors and the actors running our ‘systems’ are for the most part, quite evil, totalitarian and in my opinion in many ways, rather idiotic as most totalitarians are. These actors will use technology to tie you down, censor you, track you, make sure you comply and if not, you will lose your bank account and job. The actors, not the underlying technology is to blame. Akin to the use of guns, or cars, if you drive drunk and stoned.
We see the abuse of technology and ‘data’ in the Rona scamdemic and Climate bollocks amongst many other examples. I would say it is more the cult of $cience and $cientism, using technology as a means of control to lever power and profits and kill off our freedom.
Trust big tec at your peril, even if, and it’s a very big if, it appears benign and helpful.
The death of spontaneity is already upon us – try just going to your local train station/airport to go somewhere – No can do without bigbrother knowing all about you.
Submit to change What is your Vax staus – that will be the new normal of course for the Greater Good. (Blair you utter bastard, I pray you rot in Hell).
I often wonder what George Orwell would have made of Clown World.
The RPTB never stop. Control of the MSM is the key.
RPTB? I’ve seen this a few times recently, but unclear about the initialism’s meaning.
I assume ” … powers that be”, but the R?
“Real”
“Modern technology teaches man to take for granted the world he is looking at; he takes no time to retreat and reflect. Technology lures him on, dropping him into its wheels and movements. No rest, no meditation, no reflection, no conversation – the senses are continually overloaded with stimuli. [Man] doesn’t learn to question his world anymore; the screen offers him answers-ready-made.”
“The world of tomorrow will witness a tremendous battle between technology and psychology. It will be a fight of technology versus nature, of systematic conditioning versus creative spontaneity.”
Joos Meerloo
To be clear I think we cannot blame technology much the same as we cannot blame science. It is always people, whether it’s malevolence or stupidity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltjI3BXKBgY
Ascent Of Man, episode 11 – Knowledge Or Certainty
“It’s said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That’s false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance, it was done by dogma, it was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.
Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known; we always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible. In the end, the words were said by Oliver Cromwell: “I beseech you in the bowels of Christ: Think it possible you may be mistaken.”
I owe it as a scientist to my friend Leo Szilard, I owe it as a human being to the many members of my family who died here, to stand here as a survivor and a witness. We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to touch people.”
Is that Bronowski from the 1970’s? It’s very good.
Regardless of the technology, the same wisdom applies to all ages of homo sapiens.
It is he and I fully agree. I find the last sentence the most important and moving, especially against the backdrop of all the tyranny of Covid where human contact was outlawed. In contrast to Jacob Bronowski’s plea above, here is an excerpt from Klaus Schwab’s book about resetting Humanity.
Page 156 – Accelerating the digital transformation
In one form or another, social and physical distancing measures are likely to persist after the pandemic itself subsides, justifying the decision in many companies from different industries to accelerate automation. After a while, the enduring concerns about technological unemployment will recede as societies emphasize the need to restructure the workplace in a way that minimizes close human contact. Indeed, automation technologies are particularly suited to a world in which human beings can’t get too close to each other or are willing to reduce their interactions.
Yes. Superb. Still available on DVD I believe.
And free on Archive.org
https://archive.org/details/the-ascent-of-man-ep1
And here on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pMhqKVYNHA&list=PLVVydzWYmxcl5m0wXY5X176IvbJoLrz6q&pp=iAQB
i.e. Hubris on a monumental scale.
And as those of us lucky enough to have studied the Classics, Hubris (not “pride”, rather “breaking well defined boundaries”, is ALWAYS followed by Nemesis.
We all need to beware of what will be claimed in the name of AI. It is called Artificial Intelligence because it has no real intelligence. It is an artefact of human minds and is likely to embody their prejudices and preferences. This is already showing as left wing bias in Chatbot.
I recall an online discussion between a retired pilot and a young computer programmer. The programmer was proposing the removal of the ‘error prone’ human to be replaced with ‘reliable’ computers. The retired pilot urged the programmer that it is a very bad idea to replace the pilot. The programmer accused the pilot of trying to protect his job (the pilot was retired). The pilot’s age and years of experience was lost on the young programmer as lacking in years himself he had no concept of what experience actually is. The retired pilot was Capt. Sullenberger.
I picked up this discussion with another programmer and to back up the pilot story above I recounted a friends story about his father, a retired airline pilot. He was originally in the RAF and moved into civilian flying. Before a fight he would calculate his route, timings etc. He would then load the same inputs into the onboard computer and check if the computer gave the same result. If it didn’t he would ignore it. The programmer I was discussing this with asserted that this pilot was wrong and should always believe the computer.
“There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots. But there are no old, bold pilots”
Anon
“It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.”
T. Sowell
“I’m not young enough to know everything”
J. M. Barrie
Back in the early 1990s New Scientist ran an article about automation and concluded that there were two different drivers which had profoundly different outcomes. Either automation was used to replace humans or it was used to enhance humans. In the case of aviation automation must only ever be an enhancement to the skills of the pilot (this also applies to Sub-Postmasters), although there are also mundane and reliably repetitive jobs where automation is a bonus. In the case of flying auto-pilots have been a great help by reducing the work load, but it is also understood that automation can lull pilots into carelessness, or worse de-skill the pilots. This was evident in the case of Air France 447. Following this accident pilot training to deal with ‘upsets’ was re-introduced as it had been reduced in the belief that the auto-pilots would prevent the aircraft getting outside the flight ‘envelope’. And then there was the two Boeing 737 Max accidents where the auto-pilot flew the planes into the ground and the pilots were unable to dis-engage the auto-pilot. Automation must always, always be our servant.
The graph below shows a graph from Hans Rosling’s excellent book FactFullness, showing the dramatic improvements in airline safety since the 1930s. This is how Hans described it:
“Back in the 1930s, flying was really dangerous and passengers were scared away by the many accidents. Flight authorities across the world had understood the potential of commercial passenger air traffic, but they also realized flying had to become safer before most people would dare to try it. In 1944 they all met in Chicago to agree on common rules and signed a contract with a very important Annex 13: a common form for incident reports, which they agreed to share, so they could all learn from each other’s mistakes.
Since then, every crash or incident involving a commercial passenger airplane has been investigated and reported; risk factors have been systematically identified; and improved safety procedures have been adopted, worldwide. Wow! I’d say the Chicago Convention is one of humanity’s most impressive collaborations ever. It’s amazing how well people can work together when they share the same fears.”
All good, but what is interesting is the lion’s share of improvements that happened before 1944 convention. In addition fully automated airliners start appearing in the 1970s except the general trajectory of improvements remains the same. All this safety has been achieved not through regulation or punishment, but through pilots sharing their experiences and through skilled and diligent analysis of accidents and the general application of the knowledge gained across the various contributing professions, and for the most part, across the planet. In every case it is humans that make it all work.
When we don’t have religion we don’t believe in nothing, we believe in anything.. I can’t even remember whose that quote is, but it’s one of the best!
Climbing on the shoulders of the giants of the Enlightenment of the past 400 years, we collectively, complacently imagine that we are so wise and intelligent.
The opposite is often the case and ‘knowing thyself ‘ remains as elusive as at any time in human history.
The cult of Science/Technology and the online/digital world of the past few decades deludes us into believing we are all knowing, with our super intelligent electronica to hand.
In fact the opposite is, as often as not, true. Hence the belief that computer modelling, based on the often highly questionable assumptions of the programmer, have more validity than mere speculation, or that any computer programme is somehow more able than the abilities of the human being that created it.
The evidence of the online age of the 21st century, with infinite distraction, and with the decreasing attention span of most of the population, is a return to pseudo religions and cultism, as witnessed with the, yet to be proven, climate emergency death cult, with it’s unquestioning belief system, and it’s need to silence and vilify heretics.
Science and technology are not cults. It is people that become cultish, and arrogant and hubristic. I think that we have been predominantly collectivist and cultish for most of human history. In addition when humans come up with better and more powerful ways of doing things these become targets for corruption, whether by an individual or the group. Thus we have Galileo being threatened with torture and death unless he renounced the idea that we lived in a Solar System instead of an Earth centred system. The Church had become cultish and malevolent towards any threat to it’s power. Jon Huss was burned at the stake for having Bibles written in English. Therefore, I’m not convinced that the predicament we are is entirely due to a lack of religion. Most people behave in a civil manner and not because of the threat of punishment if they don’t. The Rotherham rape gangs are not lacking in religion. Although I do agree with your last paragraph.
GK Chesterton. And boy, was he right. Climate Change for example; Marxism, all full-blown quasi-religious faiths, in which belief replaces reality. And Covidmania/Jabmania
Konstantin Kisin opened up his Substack for questions for one hour yesterday.
I asked him a question:
“What will constitute a meaningful life once AI takes over?
Jobs left will be in IT and regulatory bodies.
Shall humanity just eat and drink and be happy?
Will humans feel satisfied and meaningful in that world? Purposeful?
Sorry, feeling a bit gloomy on this wonderful sunny day!”
Konstantin Kisin’s answer:
“Humans will never feel happy or satisfied by eating and drinking and consuming. Life is suffering. Life is struggle. Without that, there can be no meaning. But, like all disruptive technology, I think AI will simply change the nature of the challenges we face. We will find new struggles and new challenges to overcome.”
Re. The Post Office scam, even the big banks have errors that affect people. Here’s a little extract from a recent document issued to me in my account with one of them: “Between 3 January 2019 and 27 July 2022, we have identified that as a result of an error some customers’ may have incorrect figures showing on their Return on Investment figures within their GIC costs and Charges statements. We’re really sorry about this. This issue has been fixed and all future statements will show the correct figures. If you have any questions about this or would like us to provide corrected figures or any previous Costs and Charges statements, please let us know by calling us on the number at the bottom of this statement.” It came to light on 16/1/2024 (sic). It won’t be in the press.
I think this article is good and quite true (he might have said that hugely increased use of technology is aided and abetted by the desire of so many for convenience, time-saving, whatever it might be, as well as just pure laziness). However, I believe that we need to acknowledge our sinfulness (inadequacy??) before God and turn to him in repentance – in the face of all that is going on in our world, we have no hope otherwise!
Top article on the flawed ideology of some of the major people behind it:
The Right Wing Progressives (RWP, like Elon Musk) and their commonalities and differences with conservatives, lefties and libertarians.
https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-the-right-wing-progressives
More here
https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-the-right-wing-progressives
You can all start by ditching your Smartphones (form which every piece of personal data is scraped off to be used against you). It will also help you to live in the here and now – someone on their Smartphone is not here, not present. Appalling effect on society
And this…
“The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for the Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff — Big Tech is stealing our lives”
https://archive.ph/D0dJi#selection-2527.8-2527.149