In James Cameron’s curiously prophetic 1984 movie “The
Terminator”, a cyborg assassin is sent back from the year 2029 by Skynet, an
artificially intelligent military defense system that has grown smarter than
its human inventors and taken over the world.
اضافة اعلان
The mission of the Terminator, played by Arnold
Schwarzenegger, is to kill 19-year-old waitress Sarah Connor before she can
give birth to a son, John, who in time will become the leader of a resistance
movement that will defeat Skynet and restore human supremacy.
While hugely entertaining on the big screen (in 1984 we were
still a decade away from the birth of streaming), at the time the idea of a
collaboration of super-sentient neo-neural networks that had been created by
humans but had developed the power of independent thought and action seemed
laughable.
But then again, in 1984 we had no social media, no
smartphones, no smartwatches, no imminently ubiquitous autonomous vehicles, no
GPS systems plumbed into every device tracking our every move, no Alexa
listening in on all our conversations, no omnipresent surveillance, no Google
logging our online activity, no Amazon tracking our every purchase — and,
crucially, no internet, through which all these digital systems collaborate.
It has all happened so swiftly, and yet so smoothly, that we
have not really noticed. Instead, we have eagerly adopted every new digital
development as simply another convenience, while failing to see the bigger
picture.
In 2022, Skynet is already here, a vast digital network of
interconnected things in which we are all irretrievably enmeshed.
Do not expect to see any cyborg assassins traveling back in
time from seven years hence, however, because Skynet is doing just fine.
Unnoticed and unchecked, it has already done far more damage than
Schwarzenegger’s Terminator, for the simple reason that it has succeeded in
terminating our relationship with the truth.
When the internet was conceived, it was hailed as an
invention that would bring the world together, uniting disparate peoples and
cultures.
Briton Tim Berners-Lee, who in 1989 unlocked the potential
of the internet by inventing the World Wide Web, the background software
platform, viewed the web as “a tool for democracy and peace”. Ha.
Knowledge, we were told, would flow like water, creating a
super race of human beings empowered by truth, and equipped to transcend the
artificial constructs of borders, nationalities and cultural differences.
There would be no more war, we were told, because people
would no longer be fooled by the propaganda of vested interests. Instead,
people would be able to see those cast as their enemies by war-mongering
leaders for what they really were — fellow human beings just trying to make
their way in the world.
Social media is currently flooded with footage, imagery and
claims about events unfolding on Europe’s eastern border. In vain, mainstream
media outlets when reporting some of these claims, add the rider that they
“cannot be independently verified”, but this serves only to perpetuate the
myths.
Claims that the war is a gigantic hoax are obviously false,
but widely disseminated and believed on social media.
Ukraine is secretly developing biological weapons? False.
Images of farmers towing away Russian tanks and aircraft
with tractors? Old photographs, taken at air shows and the like.
The BBC, once among the most trusted of international
mainstream media (MSM, to the conspiracy enthusiasts) has even felt the need to
appoint “Specialist Disinformation Reporters”, tasked with exposing fake news.
Thanks to the internet, everyone has a voice and a platform and, as a result, truth has never been so elusive…
But, when they draw conclusions such as “one of the prime
sources for fake news on Twitter comes straight from the Kremlin’s network of
Twitter accounts”, a sizable proportion of the Twitterati is certain to respond
with skepticism.
Mainstream media, which in the past served as a reference
point for reality, are fighting a losing battle to hold the high ground.
Thanks to the internet, everyone has a voice and a platform
and, as a result, truth has never been so elusive, and the role of the “MSM”
never so distrusted. Mass “debate” has led not to rational meetings of minds,
but to an entrenching of positions reinforced by an overwhelming deluge of
information. On social media, we follow like-minded users, reading threads
whose authors’ views accord with our own and, in so doing, cut ourselves off
from other viewpoints.
Truth is important. Having access to it helps us make
well-informed decisions about our lives — and, in some cases, the lives of
millions of other people — based on reality, not fantasy.
The problem with not knowing what is true is that we end up
taking refuge in what we believe to be true or, worse, what we would like to be
true. Either way, this makes us extremely vulnerable to manipulation.
We saw this on a gigantic scale in the global “debate” over
the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccinations, which left tens of thousands
of people dead simply because they were unable to separate fact from fiction.
“Cancel culture”, the deadening hand of censorship laid on
many of those who dare to speak the truth (the latest victim: Harry Potter
author JK Rowling for her stance on gender rights) is a child of social media.
In 2022, truth has never been so important, and yet never so
elusive.
In 2029 Skynet will have no need to invent time travel and
send back a Terminator to protect its interests. There is no Sarah Connor among
us and, instead of mounting any kind of resistance, we have become willing
collaborators in the destruction of reality and the death of truth.
The writer is a British journalist, formerly with The Times,
who has lived and worked in the Middle East and is now based in the UK.
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