The Bros of Big Tech Want Our Money, Dignity, and Freedom
"Two cheers for Democracy; one because it admits variety, and two because it permits criticism." -E.M. Forster
Question…Are you preparing to run for office, grow a business, or spark a social change movement? I can help you conduct the necessary market research, develop a go-to-market plan, name your product or project, and put a core team together. I can also help you write a business plan, apply for grants, and create customer-focused messaging.
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Last week, an account on Bluesky used the platform’s chat feature to ask me where I live and how the economy is doing here. The account was masquerading as a professor at the University of Texas. When I replied that we live in Bastrop, where big tech is fast becoming king of the pine-topped hill, the poseur descended into a script about the need to move all our money into crypto.
There were several telltale signs in the chat that the pitch was AI-generated bullshit and/or the “work” of a bad actor. I quickly unfollowed the account and reported it to Bluesky. The fraudulent account and the chat have been deleted from Bluesky.
For what it’s worth, the real person who was being falsely represented is on Bluesky and Twitter, where he rips Elon Musk a new one all day long. Perhaps this is one way Musk fights back. If you hit him hard enough and have a large enough following, he directs his ‘bots to damage your reputation by turning the fake you into a crypto fanboy who tries to steal from other people like me.
I guess he doesn’t have anything better to do.
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More news from the crypto mines…
Argentine President Javier Milei is facing impeachment calls - and legal action accusing him of fraud - over his promotion of cryptocurrency on social media. Milei first promoted the $LIBRA coin from his personal account on Twitter, which then skyrocketed in value to $5 apiece. Within hours, however, the coin's value plummeted to under $1 in what appears to be a "rug pull," a scam in which a crypto developer launches and inflates a coin only to pull out and leave investors hanging.
Americans who are 60 and older are increasingly being caught up in crypto scams that lead them to deposit thousands of real dollars into Bitcoin ATMs. Victims have been misled to believe they’re speaking with tech support about computer troubles, receiving sound investment advice, avoiding penalties for missing jury duty, or bailing a loved one out of jail.
In Texas, Senate Bill 21, authored by Senator Charles Schwertner, R-Georgetown, would permit the Texas Comptroller's Office to acquire, exchange, sell, manage, and retain investments in bitcoin, as well as other cryptocurrencies with a market capitalization of at least $500 billion. The state’s governor said, "This session Texas should become the crypto capital.”
Mike Brock (who writes Notes from the Circus on Substack) explains how some of the ideas underpinning crypto are also at work in the political world. “The notion that code can replace democratic institutions, that technical competence should override democratic negotiation, and that private power should supersede public authority—these ideas moved from crypto theory to political practice.”
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Let’s discuss expertise for a moment. Knowledge and those who produce it, protect it, and share it are under attack (because in an authoritarian state or unconscious corporation no one can know more or better than the Supreme Ruler).
Tom Nichols, a staff writer at The Atlantic and professor emeritus of national-security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College writes:
Musk’s assault on expertise is coming from the same wellspring that has been driving much of the public’s irrational hostility toward experts for years. I have been studying ‘the death of expertise’ for more than a decade, and I have written extensively about the phenomenon in which uninformed laypeople come to believe that they are smarter and more capable in almost any subject than experts. The death of expertise is really about the rise of two social ills: narcissism and resentment.
Ah, narcissism. Oh, resentment. Can we even begin to calculate the damages done to our nation and our people by filthy rich, totally insecure white men?
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One of the experts I love to read is Sarah Kendzior. She received her PhD in anthropology from Washington University in St. Louis, where she researched politics and digital media in authoritarian states of the former Soviet Union.
She’s a brilliant writer with her finger on the pulse. Her new book debuts in April.
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I just completed reading E.M. Forster’s short story "The Machine Stops." Written in 1909, the story takes place in a dystopian future where people live in total isolation under the ground. They don’t see each other or talk to each other except through the Machine.
Here’s a passage from the story:
We created the Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will now. It has robbed us of the sense of space and of the sense of touch, it has blurred every human relation and narrowed down love to a carnal act, it has paralysed our bodies and our wills, and now it compels us to worship it. The Machine develops — but not on our lines. The Machine proceeds — but not to our goal. We only exist as the blood corpuscles that course through its arteries, and if it could work without us, it would let us die.
I have the story in PDF form and will gladly send it to you upon request.