Virtual Reality and the Network State
Ryan Matters
There is a willingness in this world for people to adopt new things because they are told to do so. There is also a willingness for people to sit back and let the course of human evolution be decided for them.
Who said that merging with AI is inevitable? It’s only inevitable if we decide to do it. If we made a collective decision to start picking berries and hunting deer with bows and arrows, we could do that, too.
The idea of inevitability has been programmed into us. It’s form of brainwashing. Nonetheless, as a society, we are on the precipice of a revolution – a change so big that it could irreversibly alter the very structure of human society and the way we form relationships, as well as completely redefine the nature of transaction and exchange.
Yes, I’m talking about the “metaverse”, the blockchain, decentralised cryptocurrencies, and the thing that started it all – Bitcoin.
But to understand how all of these things fit together, it’s necessary to first examine “Web 3.0” – what it is, how it’s being marketed and how it will affect us.
Web 3.0: The Next Iteration of the Internet
Unless you work in tech you’ve probably never heard the term “Web 3.0” before (also written as “web3”).
To understand web3, a quick history lesson is in order: When the internet was first made available it was “read-only”, in other words, it made information available to the public but in static format; regular people did not have the know-how to publish new content, as this required technical expertise and deep knowledge of code. This initial form of the internet, we will call “web1”.
The next iteration of the internet, which we experience today, allows regular users to both read content and publish it. With “web2”, the internet became interactive, paving the way for the creation of social networks, allowing users to connect and create.
The problem with web2 is that information is controlled by central authorities that collect and productise it. In exchange for the ability to create, we’ve allowed large corporations to establish ownership over our personal data.
That brings us to “web3” which seeks to solve the problems created by web2 while also providing the infrastructure for new, disruptive technologies.
The idea is that “Web3” will be:
- Decentralised (i.e., no organisations will control your data);
- Permissionless (anyone may access the network);
- Uncensorable (content that’s been published cannot be altered or removed);
- Monetisable (creators can be paid for the value they create, without a middleman);
- Private (identity is encrypted and anonymity is optional).
Sounds good, but how will this be achieved? The idea is that the internet will be rebuilt so as to restructure it around blockchain and cryptocurrencies.
You see, money is an age-old medium of exchange that has been in use for centuries. In fact, the concept of money hasn’t changed much over time, although it may be physically different than it was in the past. But up until now, money has been absent as a protocol that forms part of the internet.
This will change with Web3. The idea is that by integrating money into the structure of the internet itself, we can rid the online world of invasive advertising that relies on the mass collection of private data as well as shatter the power of authoritative, big tech monopolies.
“Web3” will see the internet undergo a massive restructuring, and it will be built on the following 4 “layers”:
1. The Blockchain (the Base Layer)
Underlying everything on web3 is the blockchain: a shared ledger run by a decentralised network of peer-to-peer nodes (the same technology that powers Bitcoin and Ethereum).
The blockchain is not owned or controlled by anyone and it cannot be found on a single server. Rather, copies of the blockchain are stored across thousands of participants on the network. Think of it like a decentralised database of transactions.
However, in order to maintain consistency, security and objectivity, each node (participant) much reach an agreement about the network’s current state. This agreement is achieved algorithmically using a consensus mechanism, such as proof-of-work or proof-of-stake.
Proof-of-work (PoW) is done by “miners”, who compete to verify new transactions and add them to the chain as “blocks” (hence, blockchain). The winner shares the new block with the rest of the network and earns cryptocurrency as a reward. The race is won by the computer which is able to solve a math puzzle fastest – this produces the cryptographic link between the current block and the block that went before. Solving this puzzle is the “work” in “proof-of-work”.
Proof-of-stake (PoS) is done by validators who have staked their own cryptocurrency to participate in the network. A validator is chosen at random to verify transactions and create new blocks. They then share them with the rest of the network and earn rewards. Instead of needing to do intense computational work, validators put up cryptocurrency as collateral for agreeing to strengthen the chain. This is what incentivises healthy network behaviour.
In order to defraud such a system you’d either need to control 51% of the computational power of the entire network (in the case of PoW), or you’d need to own 51% of the total staked cryptocurrency (in the case of PoS). This makes the system “trustless”, in that the cost of manipulating the system would outweigh any benefit gained by doing so.
The final thing to understand about the blockchain is that it’s a public ledger; in other words, anyone can view it and see the transaction history of the entire network. However, in order to write to the blockchain, you need to transact, i.e., you need to pay. And that’s where cryptocurrency comes in.
2. Decentralised infrastructure
The second “layer” of web3 is the infrastructure that sits on top of the blockchain. You see, the blockchain enables the creation of decentralised infrastructure, and this will form the backbone of the digital, web3 ecosystem. This includes decentralised storage, exchanges, communication systems, social networks and more.
3. New ways to engage
Web3 infrastructure leads to new use cases for the internet. In other words, there will be new ways for people to engage with one another, earn money online and entertain themselves. This includes the creation and selling of “NFTs”, new ways to conduct commerce, decentralised communities, gaming, and yes, the “metaverse”.
A quick word is needed about NFTs. NFT stands for “Non-fungible token” (i.e., something that’s one-of-a-kind); they are basically digital collectibles that are stamped onto the blockchain. They can also represent real-world items (this is important). The introduction of NFTs has resulted in jpegs of apes being worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
People have even begun to mint real-life animals as tradable NFTs (I’ll let you mull over the significance of that yourself). In short, NFTs will form the basis for ownership in the metaverse (of which more soon).
4. Access
The final “layer” of web3 will be the access layers, which are the means by which participants will access the system. Right now, we experience the internet through applications and websites. With web3, users will access the internet using these same means together with decentralised apps and crypto wallets.
With web3 comes a strange dichotomy between freedom and enslavement. On the one hand, it could lead to a free internet, ungoverned by authorities, and uncensorable, where everyone has the ability to transact freely, without the need for third parties.
On the other hand, many people that promote web3 as being an uncensorable utopia are the same people promoting “programmable” currencies and the “metaverse” – two concepts utterly adverse to the notion of a free society.
After all, for a currency to be “programmable”, somebody must be doing the programming. This brings us back to the promotion of CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies) and what researcher James Corbett refers to as “the Bitcoin PsyOp”; i.e., promotion of the idea that cryptocurrencies and blockchains are all created equal (they’re not!).
Like most things in life, the effect that web3 will have on society will depend on how we use it. In my mind, web3 has the potential to grant freedom or enslave us all. If implemented in the right way, it may well be the globalist kryptonite. On the other hand, it may also be used by the very same elites to construct a digital dictatorship.
We only need to look at the organisations investing in web3 to know that it’s not all sunshines and rainbows: Facebook is investing in digital wallets with “Novi”, MasterCard are planning to support crypto transactions and Blackrock is now trading Bitcoin futures… that doesn’t exactly fill you with hope about the future of crypto, does it?
And while there are many examples of web3 initiatives that would have you clapping your hands and pumping your fists in support, there are an equal number of such projects that would have you hanging your head in despair or slamming your palm squarely into your forehead as you shudder with disgust.
For example, there are a number of web3 projects seeking to unite the seemingly disparate world’s of crypto and climate. The idea? By tokenising carbon credits, i.e., bringing them onto the blockchain, and thereby removing them from the market, the real-world carbon price inflates, incentivising corporations to adopt “greener” practices. This is one such example of how web3 and climate are uniting to help drive the creation of new (scammy) markets.
There are more examples but this is not the place for a deep dive into the murky waters of crypto-environmentalism. Rather, we will turn our attention to an equally worrying offshoot of web3, one that is being actively driven by one of the most evil and powerful organizations in the world: Facebook’s “Metaverse”.
What Is the Metaverse?
The term “metaverse” was first used by futurist and Science fiction writer, Neal Stephenson in his 1992 book Snow Crash to describe a “theoretical” 3D virtual reality that ordinary people could occupy.
Noteworthy is that Stephenson worked at Jeff Bezos’ spaceflight company, Blue Origin for seven years during the early 2000s when the company’s focus was on developing “alternate” propulsion systems (an interesting job for a novelist, wouldn’t you agree?). He was later hired by Magic Leap, a Florida-based “augmented reality” company, but left in 2020.
A deeper look at Stephenson’s work reveals some interesting themes, for the list of topics explored in his books reads like the meeting agenda from a closed session at Davos; climate change, global pandemics, biological warfare, nanotechnology, geo-engineering, robotics, cryptography, virtual reality, the list goes on.
In fact, not only has Stephenson written about the “metaverse” before it became a thing, but some people even credit his 1999 book Cryptonomicon with sketching the basis for the concept of cryptocurrency!
Like certain science fiction writers before him, Stephenson is clearly privy to more than he lets on. And his close relationships with billionaire technocrats like Bezos and Gates only fuel my suspicions that he’s not merely a novelist with a good imagination and an uncanny knack for predicting the future.
But alas, we must return to the topic at hand – the metaverse, a virtual world where
you can go about many of your everyday life’s day-to-day interactions and occurrences – in your avatar form. This form can be a human, animal, or something more abstract with its customizable appearance.
Yes, that’s right. You can be whatever you want to be. Your avatar (a word popularised by Stephenson!) could be a boy, girl, dog, buffalo, toaster – anything you like!
You can then interact with other people’s avatars in this virtual world. In the Metaverse, you can buy and sell land, attend concerts and go to museums, build a house, and more.
As the work of Neal Stephenson shows, the “metaverse” is not a new idea. The concept has been gradually leaked into mainstream culture over the last twenty plus years. Just think of video games like Second Life and movies like The Matrix or Ready Player One.
It was only last year (2021) that Facebook rebranded as “meta”, positioning itself for a future in which it will play a leading role in developing the infrastructure to realise the metaverse.
Still not sure how this all fits together? Simple: With a virtual world like the “metaverse” comes virtual money and virtual goods, i.e., cryptocurrency and NFTs. Without cryptocurrency, the metaverse would not be possible.
The Meta-Economy: Will it Truly be Decentralised?
Web3 itself has the potential to drastically overhaul the global economy in many ways, one of which is through the adoption of truly decentralised currencies as an alternative to central bank issued money-as-debt.
However, as I alluded to before, the other possibility is a world governed by centrally issued “digital currencies”, controlled, tracked and programmed by the powers that be.
Although the metaverse is being marketed as a “decentralised” universe controlled by its users, that simply isn’t the case. At best it’s a mistake, at worst it’s another example of the “bitcoin PsyOp” at work.
If there were a world where the metaverse, or some form of virtual reality, were going to be beneficial to society, it would have to be spearheaded by transparent and accountable organisations with nothing to gain.
Facebook is hardly that sort of organisation. And joining them in building out the meta ecosystem are several prominent tech players. This will almost certainly ensure a continuation of the centralized, monopolistic practices that have allowed unethical behaviour, such as harvesting of private data, to go largely unchallenged (not to mention the stifling of innovation in the online space).
Cudos envisions a centralised metaverse as being “worse than the most creative dystopias yet conceived”. And I’d have to wholeheartedly agree.
During Facebook’s metaverse release demo, Mark Zuckerberg said that he’s
come to believe that the lack of choice and high fees are stifling innovation, stopping people from building new things and holding back the entire internet community.
Other players in the web3 space called Zuckerberg out for being a hypocrite, rightly pointing out that Facebook itself is the definition of a monopoly, having done exactly what Zuckerberg appeared to be condemning in his speech: stifled competition, and reduced consumer choice.
That said, Facebook is certainly not the only big company investing in the metaverse. In fact, several other big brands have seen the opportunity for massive profit and have gladly jumped aboard the meta-train. Nike, for example, responded by acquiring RTFKT Studios, a virtual shoe company (yes, virtual shoe company), to help them sell shoes in the metaverse.
Adidas were quick to follow suit, creating an NFT collection that sold for over $22 million! But that’s not all. They also bought a plot of land in the metaverse to host virtual parties and events!
As it turns out, virtual real-estate is big business. According to an article published on CNET:
Startling amounts of money are being spent on virtual real estate inside Worldwide Webb Land and other metaverses. In June, a metaverse investment firm called Republic Realm spent $913,000 on a parcel in Decentraland, another metaverse. It was the largest deal of its kind at the time. About six months later, the same firm bought 792 plots in Sandbox, still another metaverse, from video game company Atari for an eye-watering $4.23 million.
Among the global organisations buying plots of land in the metaverse are PwC, JP Morgan, HSBC, and Samsung. Some companies see it as an investment (as excitement over the metaverse grows, the prices of real-estate will go up), while others are simply establishing a presence there or investing in advertising space.
Even Snoop Dogg has gotten in on the action, purchasing a mansion in Sandbox and driving up prices of adjoining real-estate to well over $400,000 (a price that people are willing to pay apparently).
The Philosophical Ramifications of Web3 and Life in a Virtual Reality
While web3 and the metaverse have been the focus of much hype recently, what’s seldom contemplated is the philosophical and moral implications of a society that lives and breathes these technologies.
For example, how will our collective morality be affected if people begin living parts of their life in a virtual reality where they can do “anything” without fear of retribution? Where do we draw the line between “it’s just a game” and “you should go to prison for that”?
These are important questions that require careful consideration. In fact, there have already been reports of people being sexually harassed in VR and the problem is only likely to get worse.
These issues become more concerning when we realise that the metaverse is primarily being marketed to “Gen-Z” (anyone born after 1997), who often spend more than 8 hours online each day and are more embedded in digital culture more than anyone else.
Sadly, a generation that has grown up playing violent video games and having their minds raped by AI algorithms, feeding them all manner of abhorrent videos on TikTok is the perfect target market for VR and other mind-numbing technologies that the transhumanists are desperately pushing on society. It’s almost like they’ve been primed for it.
Quynh Mai, founder and CEO of Moving Image & Content, the Gen Z-centric digital marketing consultancy, describes Gen Z as follows:
They have been living most of their lives digitally since birth: making “friends” through social media, discovering music through Spotify algorithms, building games in Roblox, and buying and selling products literally off the backs of strangers on DePop. They are so comfortable maneuvering in the digital world as it’s built on shared trust and reputation. They understand the importance of nurturing their digital identity, whether it’s their TikTok account or a leaderboard score in a game.
Gen Z in the metaverse have none of the social constraints associated with their physical identities, something unthinkable to every previous generation in history. We have to consider the implications of this from a sociological, philosophical and psychological perspective. How will this affect their personal development?
These are serious concerns that nobody seems interested in tackling.
Furthermore, what if the metaverse is merely a stepping stone towards a far darker reality, one in which you are no longer in the metaverse, but the metaverse is in you?
None other than Elon Musk hinted at this during an interview last year in which he made fun of the metaverse saying he wasn’t sold on the idea of “strapping a screen to his face”.
It gets uncomfortable to have this thing strapped to your head the whole time.
No, Musk’s idea of a virtual reality is far more worrisome, for he for-sees a world in which the “metaverse” is literally implanted into your head via a brain-AI interface.
Long term, a sophisticated Neuralink could put you fully, fully in a virtual reality thing.
(This is a good example of the “transhumanist tiptoe” as I like to call it, where these technologies are slowly integrated into society, each serving as a stepping stone for the next until society finds itself embedded in a digital prison – “having this clunky thing strapped to your head is so cumbersome, why don’t we just insert it into your brain instead?”).
Apart from the concerning philosophical and psychological implications of living life in a VR, web3 brings with it all kinds of new possible futures, some of which may actually be an improvement to the way society currently functions, with its reliance upon corrupt central banks and infiltrated governments.
Futurist and former CTO of Coinbase, Balaji Srinivasan, envisions a world in which the blockchain has allowed online communities to “materialise” into the real world as independent, sovereign states. He calls this concept the “network state” and he defines it as follows:
The Network State is a digital nation launched first as an online community before materialising physically on land after reaching critical mass.
In other words, the “network state”, according to Srinivasan, will be the next version of the nation state. He maintains that, due to the decentralised nature of the blockchain, network states will begin as geographically decentralised communities, connected via the internet.
This community will be made up of regular people who believe in a common cause; it will be a group that is capable of collective action. Eventually, the community will begin to build up its own, internal economy using cryptocurrency.
This will allow them to start holding in-person meet-ups in the real world and eventually crowd-fund apartments, houses and even towns to establish co-living facilities and bring digital community members into the real world.
The final step of the process is for the new community to negotiate diplomatic recognition from pre-existing governments, increasing sovereignty and becoming a true network state.
This leads us to Srinivasan’s more complex definition of the concept:
A network state is a social network with a moral innovation, a sense of national consciousness, a recognized founder, a capacity for collective action, an in-person level of civility, an integrated cryptocurrency, a consensual government limited by a social smart contract, an archipelago of crowdfunded physical territories, a virtual capital, and an on-chain census that proves a large enough population, income, and real-estate footprint to attain a measure of diplomatic recognition.
Srinivasan’s philosophy is an interesting one, and despite being a self-proclaimed transhumanist, he just may have outlined a realistic route to gaining independence from the centrally-controlled, ever-more-authoritarian, world state.
What Is the “Blockchained Society”?
Make no mistake, web3 and the metaverse have the potential to squeeze human consciousness into a digital prison, while the controllers rob the world of everything that’s real.
However, with the advent of web3, it also means there’s a fine line between the development of an authoritarian, transhumanist, money-as-debt, “brave new world” and a world made up of decentralised communities working together for the good of society.
Indeed, web3, cryptocurrencies and the blockchain are going to change society as we known it. But whether that change will be for the betterment or detriment of humanity is up to us.
Does that mean we can allow ourselves to indulge in optimism? Not yet. After all, these are new technologies that aren’t yet well understood.
Having said that… what if decentralized finance does gain a foothold, making centralized banking obsolete? What if web3 leads to censorship resistance platforms that engender freedom and creativity? What if “network states” break out and begin declaring independence from existing control structures?
The possibility of any of those things happening would constitute a massive threat to the Schwabians and their Great Reset, one-world government agenda. And that would go some ways towards explaining the irrationality and down-right craziness that we’ve witnessed over the last few years.
The question is this: will the blockchain allow the creation of a new society, unburdened by monopolistic, centralised authorities, or will it quite literally “chain” us to the corrupt practices of a financial system in which there is no freedom to transact?
Ryan Matters is a writer and free thinker from South Africa. After a life-changing period of illness, he began to question mainstream medicine, science and the true meaning of what it is to be alive. Ryan is also the founder of NewBraveWorld.org where he posts a selection of his essays related to topics such as science, philosophy, medicine, spirituality and current events. You can also follow him on Twitter.
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I was watching the news the other day when Steven Bartlett turned up talking about web3 apparently the best thing since sliced bread. The last time he popped up on the news he was pushing some climate change action bullshit. I first saw Steven Bartlett on Dragons Den a show that is supposed to invest in start up business. Apparently he is an influencer what ever that is and is big on social media . As I am anti-social I am not into social media.
If you do not know who Steven Bartlett I would not be surprised. Comes across to me as a slick snake oil salesman.
No doubt web3 will get lots of investment and probably from the government as well. Has the smell of the dot com scam about it.
This covers the Bit Coin Scam rather well .
http://mileswmathis.com/bitfraud.pdf
The take away it is owned by very rich people they are trying to sell it to everyone. I am remined of the one dollar shares scam 1920’s.
So lots of kiddy porn and how to commit suicide video’s
All sorts of dodgy stuff rather like the Free ports that the UK wants and exist around the world.
Metaverse is coming Hell for those getting chip implanted. With Blockchain the Moment of Singularity happend already 2015! so satan, devils and demons themselves ARE these structures, this is Hell! Antichrist gets power for not more than 42 months! REVELATION OF JOHN; 13,16
NFT’s could be money laundering transactions involving real world transactions that are illegal and immoral. The virtual thing is a representation of someone or something in the real world.
Similar to art auctions involving a large amount of currency exchanged for a piece of graffiti or a piece of junk.
The Global Military Complex. Probably the best known invention to come out of DARPA is the internet. Indeed, if it weren’t for ARPANET, as the internet’s ancestor was known, you wouldn’t be reading these comment right now.
The dark horse of Global Governance is not Communism, Socialism or Fascism: It is Technocracy.
Very interesting viewpoint.
The problem I see with the whole concept (blockchain, decentralised cryptocurrencies) is is it is still very exclusionary.
Now, some will throw their hands in the air and adopt a facepalm, yes it is those very ones being addressed here in this post.
Only those with some money or a lot of money, knowledge and means (computer and data access) will benefit. Those who think and believe they are the real economy, you know the privileged few who mine from a laptop creating intangibles.
The others who really labour, i.e., miners, tradesmen, workers and crafters making real tangibles for survival will be excluded because of an arrogant perception of superiority.
It has always been the case. Not nice eh? The truth never is.
New tech has always been for the young. It is sad, but crypto might not be for the boomers. They are always losing their passwords and struggle with computer UI.
Those who are now boomers built the friggin internet/search engines etc etc. Not the dumbass Gen Z who couldn’t build their way out of a digital playpen.
Facebook is another CIA op.
No problem. Virtual reality is only bad when you’re there…
Amazing to me that citizens of the EU are putting up w the planned shut-down of their economies. How can the war pretext cover planned suffering while they know that it’s all avoidable just by certifying Nordstream 2?
What prevents the German people in particular from compelling a change in govt? They must know, as we do of Scholz’s connectiion to Schwab & the WEF.
Germany is basically controlled by the US deep state.
Still paying reparations from war world 2.
There’s something very wrong with the Germans. They correctly reject the current head clown for…the Greens?
The Matrix-verse.
The Veldt: Ray Bradbury.
Another visionary.
“you can go about many of your everyday life’s day-to-day interactions and occurrences – in your avatar form. This form can be a human, animal, or something more abstract with its customizable appearance.”
I grew up with Louisa May Alcott and Huckleberry Finn, so I’m confused. In the VR, can you shop at Walmart and will the virtual food make un virtual hunger go away? When you need to utilize the porcelain apparatus, what is actually happening on the other side where ‘you’ are?
same.
I’m reminded of the “holodeck” concept in the “Star Trek” TV franchise. (I never got past the first two or three movie versions, so I don’t know if holodecks are present in the films.)
A holodeck is a room or chamber, usually large like a gymnasium or indoor sports court, that generates lifelike interactive “holographic” environments that are superficially or nominally indistinguishable from physical reality. A user can select programs that recreate diverse large-scale events, e.g. a major-league baseball game or the Battle of Britain– or intimate romantic and sexual encounters.
It’s a dramatic vehicle to give starship-based episodes a way to break the monotony; it requires the wink and nod of conscious suspension of disbelief. As with the parallel use of “time travel”, it does not withstand rational analysis and considerations.
Just to pick one scenario: it’s all well and good to propose that the virtual reality seems or “feels” real, but when the holodeck simulates, say, a tropical resort, what are the physical bodies doing when they are supposedly taking a dip in the ocean, or eating delicious meals– or making passionate love with the locals?
Obviously, the audience is compelled to relax and go with the flow instead of getting hung up on the impossibility of the concept.
And those of us who grew up with Star Trek on TV were seriously underwhelmed when Fuckerberg rolled out his lame cartoon environment.
Well, Fuckerberg wasn’t about to let the impossibility of a concept stand in his way of ginning up an abysmal flim-flam that might fool enough techno-thralls into adding to his profits.
Dictionary definition of ‘virtual’,
Existing in the mind,especially as a product of the imagination. Used in literary criticism of a text.
This tech fantasy is likely to appeal to those who have been willingly jabbed. They will love the idea of being jabbed/implanted with an internet connection. Perhaps they will then be deleted – one way or the other.
The ‘virtual twin’ echos the ‘strawman’, according to our present system of maritime law.
Neom/The Line:Smart Prisons / Hugo Talks
Sounds good. I’m guessing Zelensky could regain the Donbass and Crimea within the Metaverse.
Leaving the real world to the big boys and girls…
“with the advent of web3, it also means there’s a fine line between the development of an authoritarian, transhumanist, money-as-debt, “brave new world” and a world made up of decentralised communities working together for the good of society'”?? (hmm. the good of society. Riiight.) Sorry but both versions sound like prison (and hell) to me.
Not to mention the obvious–that this will take massive amounts of server farms, which suck up water at an insane rate and are metal and energy and resource intensive. I’d rather not live in a world made up of server farms and adult infants playing around with virtual real estate. good lord.
“There is a willingness in this world for people to adopt new things because they are told to do so. There is also a willingness for people to sit back and let the course of human evolution be decided for them.”
Yes, it seems these opening words were quickly forgotten by the alternative programming into inevitability here. I’d rather be “picking berries and hunting deer with bows and arrows.”
deer & berries for me too.
ditto
A 2017 estimate was that “mining” crypto-currencies consumes 23 TW/year of electricity. Some of this is stolen electricity.
Warren Buffet agrees that this is insane. Like the US dollar, it is based on nothing. But it is worse: dependent on so many complex systems that may collapse. On the one hand, we heat that the records are incorruptible. On the other, we hear of trust.
And for what? NFTs indeed! This seems to be an attempt to deny the physical world including the body. Like those who want doctors to cut off one or more of their limbs.
Another article here (a few months ago) on local currencies based on tangible goods and services was sensible.
Human endeavor has always required energy and resources, why is this suddenly a complaint now? Maybe focus on NATO arms production and disposal instead. Wall Street will be replaced by tokenised stocks, so of course Buffett hates crypto.
Crypto has always been a scam.
But so is everything else.
With crypto “they” have basically engaged the brightest minds in tech to develop the technology for them, for free.
With the added advantage that its almost all open source, so no tricky intellectual property issues.
This is an important point of note:
The core protocol of Bitcoin HAS BEVER BEEN SUCCESSFULLY HACKED.
Thats despite the finest criminal minds using it as a medium of exchange and store of value.
Please give examples of other tech that can state this.
Don’t bite, This is another trap being laid by the corpocracy as it pushes the Great Reset. This is part III of a series by the author, Leo Saraceno, one of the architects of Cryptp and Blockchain.
https://siliconicarus.org/2022/05/24/blockchain-digital-twins-and-global-brain-economics-part-iii/
Blockchain, Digital Twins, and Global Brain Economics,Part III, Leo Saraceno. 5/24/22.
Virtual Reality. What a concept…
Joke: A guy walks into a bar. And knocks himself out…
Big clue at the beginning, where Economist Pettingill, states that none of AJ’s companies have any equity. Why is this important, because info wars is an intelligence asset, not a for profit company, like he and they want us to believe. It’s also interesting to hear he is working with 5 major companies, Monsanto, Berkshire Hathaway, 3M, Dupont, who’re facing similar questioning, whatever that means. And that Koch Bros, or sisters.. Lol, are also being evaluated. This also proves they’re liquidating American companies, for the crash to come. Joel Miller
Rabid followers?
Well balanced and nice 360 reasoning in this essay…
Of course there is the astoundingly obvious Achilles Heel:
It all requires ELECTRICITY!!!
They who control the generation and distribution of electricity will control this messy pseudo-world.
It’s all an illusion.
Yup. The digital illusion requires electricity, and plenty of it.
As of 2019, digital communications alone were absorbing the equivalent of 15 medium sized nuclear power plants. Civil surveillances also utilize billions of watts of electrical power daily. Add in the advent of 5G capability, and the energy consumption figures escalate massively. No one wishes to discuss the ramifications of all this. They just want faster delusions of grandeur…
For your next comment at 8:56 pm, there is no reply button; so I am replying here.
A less boastful alternative to virtual reality would be plain “3D simulation”.
Yes! and water. Server farms suck up massive amounts of water…and you’d need a whole lot of server farms (like, continent sized amounts) for people to get their virtual shoes and real estate.
So you believe we are in an energy crisis?
Or a water crisis?
If we aren’t then these technologies can roll out (as they are doing)
So the actual experience of reality, differs somewhat from the version of reality we are being told
When a SYSTEM, a society and it’s governing processes, controlled by the rich has so constrained and caged Humanity out of the possibility of a free, productive life, like the movie Brasil, all that’s left is to live in one’s imagination. Except this is not one’s imagination, it’s the imaginations of the rich ones again…
…selling us a cure to a disease they create.
As Marshall McLuhan points out, technology should improve the social conditions of Humanity. If it does not, and instead yields minor improvements with side effects worse than the improvement, we should stop submitting our passive consent to it’s deployment. For him technology offers enhanced super powers to potential users, a narcissism named “progress”. We are now on the verge of self destruction by nukes, industrial pollution, resource depletions, extinctions, wealth inequality and pointless conflict when we should be working together to solve these problems. The solution is to base technological deployment on value to society as a whole, with public debate and individual consent required by all in some form of consensual process. The technology to do this should the only new technology we work on. Had we done this 45 years ago we’d never be in this nightmare.
Virtual technologies and virtual things are never an end in themselves, they are merely tools to imagine possibilities. Living in virtuality is an oxymoron and magical thinking at best. And with the 1% Wizards still being authorized to pulling the strings behind the curtain…
sandy. Excellent comment! We’ve been warned many times over. >>>
“Concern for man himself and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors…in order that the creations of our minds shall be a blessing and not a curse to mankind.”
– Albert Einstein –
(California Institute of Technology, February 16, 1931)
Thank you for that quote by Einstein, Paul. The smartest man in the room also wrote an excellent defense of socialism in Monthly Review 1949 which i try passing along to folks. It’s all about providing for the social needs of Humanity first. Let everything else come after and we’d be on the right path. Really simple common sense stuff.
https://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism/
“value to society as a whole” = communalism. Most people living under neo-liberalism have been innoculated to believe that this is a bad thing,and that “rugged individuals” rule.
I don’t care what words are used as emotional hot buttons to get a predetermined reaction. Humans working together is how humanity progresses. Community, collective, whatever, working together is done everyday by everyone including YOU. If we do so and protect the individual right to say no or withdraw from a policy, and thus the policy cannot harm that individual then society as whole benefits and everyone’s life gets better.
Unfortunately, a good number of us will sell their mother to the knackers for a couple of bucks and a pat on the back..
That’s why if you bought or collectivised into a landholding, learned to grow vegetables and rear livestock, built supply lines and a dependent community, it wouldn’t really matter what they did. It really is that easy but it takes a little work.
Christ, what a mishmash of ignorance and informative content.
1) Web 1.0 was, indeed, read only, meaning that your BROWSER simply read (and parsed) text files and displayed images. Web 2.0 was about allowing Javascript embedded in websites to be downloaded and executed BY your computer, including writing files TO your computer (cookies, et al).
2) Stephenson mostly contributed “sci fi inspiration” stories to Blue Origin. This is because Bezos believes that the TV show Star Trek inspired all the original NASA guys, so the next gen of spacefarers need(ed) something similar.
3) I’ve read the Cryptonomicon 7.. 8 times? Nothing in there about cryptocurrency. All the ideas around cryptography in there are about real-world tech from WW2. If anyone gets credit then, it’s Turing.
4) Second Life existed long before FB’s Metaverse.
5) Real estate prices in the Metaverse have been crashing, lately.
6) There’s nothing abhorrent about TikTok. The reason the app/company is so popular is because it is good at figuring out what you want/like rather than delivering content from your network of “friends” (real or otherwise).
7) Approximately 1 billion people on planet Earth have never even made a phone call, so 8 billion folks strapping on VR headsets is an utterly ridiculous proposition. And implanting 8 billion chips into people’s brains is exponentially more unfeasible and ridiculous.
8) Coinbase lost umpteen billion dollars this year. So why are we listening to these f—knuts as some kind of visionaries? Same goes for Elon Musk.
9) Oh yeah, “avatar” and all its meanings are an idea about 3,000 years old from the Hindu scriptures.
At this point, the Venn diagram between people who got mRNA shots and people who want to exist in a 3d digital world all day is nearly a perfect circle. The rest of the people on the planet are doing just fine, thanks very much.
I was just about to write roughly the same thing but you’ve done a far better job of explaining this than I can.
What I can contribute is the notion of the “Web” as a technological kluge that unfortunately segued into a vast moneymaking operation which not only enshrined the kludgey nature of the technology but also layered more and more crap on top of it. A true castle built on sand. The web is also just one tiny part of the Internet as a whole, albeit one that everyone’s most familiar with.
The kludge comes from taking something like the Hypercard application found on early Apple computers and melding it with the notion that distributed computing (not a new notion, either) makes it irrelevant where the actual card files are stored. Putting them on a central point, a ‘server’ enabled them to be shared by many. The actual web protocol is horrible, its a peversion of FTP that’s grossly inefficient (fortunately Google et al are trying to fix this). Scripting just heaps gasoline on the fire — a typical web page is a huge amalgam of random bits of code and files, or as one person pointed out some years ago “a typical web page is larger than a 19th century Russian novel”. Web3 just compounds the problem; blockchain as currently practiced is neither efficient nor decentralized; not only are Bitcoin transactions (for example) slow, they’re also expensive. (A ‘mining’ operation uses significant amounts of power — proof of work is non-starter, it doesn’t scale. Proof of stake might be more efficient but I’ve yet to see proof.) The whole notion sees to have started off a hack of the distributed SETI code, anyway.
Operations like Facebook aren’t players in some kind of bleeding edge societal development, they’re essentially huge scale intelligence gathering operations that collect, collate and mine — and then resell (or more accurately, auction) – the refined data. They provide the chicken feed for we, the chickens, and we provide the raw material for their chicken pot pies. This doesn’t mean that this sort of thing is useless but it does mean that unless its approached with caution there’s a serious danger of it taking over one’s life. Adding a VR dimension to this just adds another addictive dimension to the mix. As for major investment houses ‘taking stakes’ in the Metaverse you have to remember that investment houses are very good at inventing investments that don’t really exist — the amount of money available for investment far exceeds the value of tangible things to invest in. So of course they’ll go in….there’s money to be made. As for me, I’ll stick with the infrastructure — virtual worlds are just data and there’s nothing stopping you generating your own worlds if that’s what you’re interested in.
Good one.
Excellent comment.
I would like to add one thing, the author writes:
“regular people did not have the know-how to publish new content, as this required technical expertise and deep knowledge of code”
This is nonsense, “web1” had some of most amazing user created sites and blogs, some can be found via https://wiby.me/
Calculations can well be done with AI. The psychopaths in power are always calculating how to make more money. Money buys them power.
AI is not intelligent, it’s a machine, or a machinery one might say, a network of machines. It is mechanical. It is not human. It lacks humanity.
When those machines are at the hands of criminally insane, psychopaths, they do evil things. That shouldn’t come as a surprise.
Psychopaths really lack something – humanity. Those snakes in suits are suitable partners to machines and other non-human things.
In this evil world man worships man, and what’s even worse – man made things.
”The worship of billionaires has become our shittiest religion”:
https://theoutline.com/post/8187/billionaires-are-not-people
AI is not intelligent, it’s a machine, or a machinery one might say, a network of machines. It is mechanical. It is not human. It lacks humanity.
It lacks more than that. It lacks real understanding:
Techniques such as “causal cognition”—which focuses on mapping and understanding the cognitive processes that are involved in perceiving and reasoning about cause–effect relations—while undoubtedly constituting a huge advance in the mathematization of causation will, on its own, move us no nearer to solving foundational issues in AI pertaining to teleology and meaning. While causal cognition will undoubtedly be helpful in engineering specific solutions to particular human specified tasks, lacking human understanding, the dream of creating an AGI remains as far away as ever. Without genuine understanding, the ability to seamlessly transfer relevant knowledge from one domain to another will remain allusive. Furthermore, lacking phenomenal sensation (in which to both ground meaning and desire), even a system with a “complete explanatory model” (allowing it to accurately predict future states) would still lack intentional pull, with which to drive genuinely autonomous teleological behavior46.
No matter how sophisticated the computation is, how fast the CPU is, or how great the storage of the computing machine is, there remains an unbridgeable gap (a “humanity gap”) between the engineered problem solving ability of machine and the general problem solving ability of man47. As a source close to the autonomous driving company, Waymo48 recently observed (in the context of autonomous vehicles):
“There are times when it seems autonomy is around the corner and the vehicle can go for a day without a human driver intervening … other days reality sets in because the edge cases are endless …” (The Information: August 28, 2018).
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.513474/full
Yes. This article explains that it is infact artificial reasoning and not intelligence, which is exclusive to sentient beings.
“A — perhaps non-accidental — failure to distinguish linguistically between reason (dianoia, ratio) and intelligence (noûs, intellectus) has given rise to the term “artificial intelligence” which consequently engenders misunderstanding if not indeed fear. In keeping with the original meaning of the words in question, the term “artificial intelligence” should de jure be denominated “artificial reason,” a correction which might help to resolve a great deal of confusion and perhaps even forestall disaster.“
https://philos-sophia.org/unmasking-ai/
Can I grow potatoes in the metaverse? i mean real potatoes that I can eat.
Computers, software, etc. are fine tools as they are. No need to bridge any gap. The problem is schemers and hucksters misrepresenting or marketing them as AI.
The name of the digital age young people says it all: Gen Z. You can’t go nowhere after you get to Z. It’s the final step.
And that’s just what the psychos who sit around getting high and making all these insane plans intend: these digital kids are to be the last humans. After them, the hybrid.
Or as our buddy Louis XV noted: “Apres nous, le deluge.” (Or, if you prefer, “Apres moi, le deluge.”
The alphabet descriptors are merely for marketing to morons.
After Z you start back at AI.
This video supports the off-guardian theme, therefore it’s at risk of being removed from YouTube. It’s been carefully worded to avoid YouTube bots.
We have seen this type of thing before. It’s the trade of convenience for power over your life.
This is the start of a digital dictatorship. Those who are watching are under no illusions. This isn’t going to be a utopia but a prison where access to everything you need or want will need permission by the controllers. If you think that this network won’t be controlled somewhere then how about a bridge going cheap in Manhattan?
The NWO will control the digital currencies and thus your access to the ‘free’ web. They will see every transaction you make and everywhere you go and everything you do. They will also control your travel and your food intake and how much resources you worthless parasites need to keep from freezing over winter.
They will control your children, what they learn and what they do, and they will control the population of the Earth of course because the NWO junkies think they are gods.
The metaverse is just another TV set, containing the same narcissists and attention seekers. Sukerberg certainly knows how to play the political game. Maybe he has a political script writer doing his speeches?
The same people who brought you the WHO, the UN, the WEF, the disasters of the modern day, starvation, fuel poverty, need i go on? now want to bring you the metaverse. I.m sure the trendies and the confused will love it until their corneas burn out.
Demoralization post. Crypto is permissionless and the only way to stop it to turn off the internet: can’t be done. It is over for the NWO, the WHO, the UN, the WEF. Government will be decentralized and we all will be free.
So I guess we just wait for that day, right? Funny, even in my very simplistic understanding of the metaverse, I wonder if all “they” need do is control every server on the face of the earth? Isn’t that how China censors the internet access of their citizens, by owning every server that handles the internet coming into their country? Would a timed EMP perhaps work to take all the existing servers down and replace them with new, fully owned ones?
As for demoralization, you can see it that way, or you can choose to see it as a warning – that believing in tech as our savior could be another in a long line of supposed saviors that turn out to be anything but.
But hey, I’m an old fuck now, so I am probably just a negative Luddite who simply refuses to see the wonders of tech and does not have, nor do I ever plan to have, my very own super kewl avatar. A useless eater as far as modern society goes, with any luck I won’t be around to see such a Brave New World or be forced to exist in it.
You will be using blockchain in a few years without even knowing it, it will be the backend underpinning web3. You claim to reject tech, but how are posting your comments?
Oh please. What a tired old non-rebuttal that remark always is. I’m sure I will be using blockchain eventually, as that’ll be the only means of transaction left to us, very soon probably. Does that mean that is a good thing? Do you simply refuse to see how all the “freedom” of a technology that is entirely dependent on a server can be corrupted by those who already own most of the servers in the world?
You keep on trying to get many of us out here to simply ignore the negatives and only embrace the positives. Technology is like everything else – there is a good side and a bad side, and so far, a lot of bad is ignored until it can’t be ignored any longer. Then we get all the blather about how the “experts” simply couldn’t foresee all the negatives, they’re sorry, but now we all will just have to live with all those negative repercussions, oh well. We all are supposed to pass that off as mere incompetence, but if all those experts are really that damned smart, how come they never study those repercussions? And if they do, are we made aware of that before that great tech fix is adopted, or after, when it’s too late to matter?
Do you still believe in elections that change things? How about party politics – still think one fake side is honest and the other is the bad? Do you refuse to see how that has worked out, even at this late date? Personally, I for one highly doubt you’re that kind of believer, but your unwavering faith in tech and blockchain seems similar in some ways.
It is one thing to use technology, and another thing entirely to believe it is not only the only worthwhile tool, but that it is THE answer to all the worlds problems. It is the constant refrain of how blockchain will “save us” that makes me instantly suspicious, and for good reason IMHO. Why on earth would we think the central banks of the world would ALLOW any widespread adoption of any technology that can skirt their systems? The very idea they would even participate in inventing something that would allow us to refuse to use their central banking systems seems utter naivete to me. They didn’t get to where they are by allowing the plebes to opt out, and they’re very close now to instituting systems we can never escape from unless we’re willing to find some piece of wilderness and live off what we can farm or hunt. If it comes to that, I doubt one will be able to take those blockchain funds with them, so how does that solve the problem of a global technocratic dictatorship? It doesn’t.
The problem with Web3, and Web2 and Web1 is that their origins are all the same: US military and intelligence. 20 years ago internet enthusiasts claimed that the Web would bring new levels of democracy, never before seen. Then, after it (the bait) became part of the daily lives of almost everybody, the creators started reeling in the net (pun intended) with their catch – control of the population.
Somehow we don’t think this going to happen again?
Are we spiders or the fly?
If internet is controlled by NWO, how is this site still up?
Because no human outfit controls anything at all to the degree that we – little self-regarding human farties all – like to kid ourselves.
This article by Ryan sounds like an SF hallucination that seems unlikely ever to happen; and even if an attempt is being made to begin it, with luck that will be destroyed and swept away by the Long Descent; brought about by catabolic collapse: https://www.ecoshock.org/transcripts/greer_on_collapse.pdf.
That’s a good point! Instead of downvotes, why are there no counter-arguments?
77th Brigade are not sending their best.
Military intelligence is a well worn oxymoron.
“Cull Juice v Kill Switch”
“Hey, hasn’t one seen this before?”
/revision/latest?cb=20180618125108
“What is this, Dystopian Movie Weekend? Blade Runner vs Logan’s Run, a question for the ages.”
Excellent question for the ages.
I believe no one can say “suavity” quite like Peter Ustinov!
Exactly which part of the beast system do you not grasp?
Endlessly dressing it up in differing costumes will not change what “it” is nor “what” drives it.
Trying to “charm” a serpent of this magnitude is fallacy
If the choice you now have before you is not clear, then ask your self :
Exactly which part of the beast system do you not grasp?
Ultimately those who choose no may die hungry, cold, in pain, but free
The MetaVerse is being ‘sold’ to the global population as a ‘solution’ in the same manner that private Central Banks were ‘sold’ to the American population over a century ago.
The MetaVerse has the potential to track & record (in real time) every detail of any ‘thing’ with a digitalID, not just an Internet of Bodies(IoB) but an Internet of Things(IoT), every movement or change of state becomes a ‘transaction’ thats gets recorded & reaches ‘consensus’ within milliseconds.
This panopticon future will not manifest if a critical mass simply reject it, this will be our challenge & it’s not going to be ‘convenient’.
Look into the deep research being done by Alison McDowell on her channel as well as her blog.
Facebook stocks shares dropped big time.
The meta = death needs a little bit more selling that whats been happening.
Although many of us spend a lot of time on screens i.e you tube / birchrt / forums etc films etc. .
The metaworld meta means dead/death in מטא פירושו מוות Hebrew isnt selling.
Decentralised and cryptocurrency is oxymoronic. To even buy or sell gold/silver now you need photo i.d.
To buy cryptocurrency set up a account you need Everything and the kitchen sink in i.d and face i.d. (that was 5 years ago) so imagine it now.
The real Decentralised is what is deemed the underground and you wont get any alt media lot discussing that except the scaring you stories about it.
You can and should still mine your own crypto. But the passport with my photo in it belongs to the government anyway, I don’t mind sharing it with centralised exchanges. Once you move your privacy coins to your wallet, that capital is untraceable, anonymous, anti-fragile, unstoppable, permissionless, trustless, and decentralised.
There is trail.
ip address. Coin exchanges are theee worse when it comes to photo id phone email confirmation, then the sending to the wallet on a cia m16 computer operate system.
wake up
What is VPN and linux?
“Once you move your privacy coins to your wallet, that capital is untraceable, anonymous, anti-fragile, unstoppable, permissionless, trustless, and decentralised.”
You have no idea what you’re talking about
Maybe, but your lack of counterargument means you have none.
Privacy coins like Monero may or may not be decentralised (not sure if it’s POW tbh, and POS is still unconvincing in this regard): We’ve recently seen sanctions on another privacy token and we don’t know yet what regulations might get slapped onto privacy crypto in general:
All crypto is subject to valuation via market prices so your coins may or may not be worth much over time: Perhaps the privacy coin is a bit of a pipe dream, given the wave of KYC:
One may wish to buy into the whole bitcoiner/monero-maxi utopia but nobody knows if the whole Satoshi project may have been a Citigroup/3-letter-agency psyop from the get-go: I sincerely hope it isn’t but invite some minimal skepticism at least:
The 3-letter agencies, banks, governments, Wall Street, and media all condemn crypto in unison, but I am the one that that should be skeptical? You can mine your own Monero using almost any CPU, how would they stop you? They haven’t even been able to take down The Pirate Bay after all these years. Now we are pirating money. Society will acclimatize to this as well, and it will be for the better.
The elites & gov made a mistake in allowing an open internet back in the 90’s.
They have been trying to correct that ever since with censorship, banning and access to data. Try accessing RT website from uk isp.
They won’t make the same mistake again any new version of the internet will have gov control built in.
unregulated, de censored future internet dream on lol
We shouldn’t forget that there are always inventors who do not work for the government – at least not to start with.
From that simple fact, I would deduce that there will always be human beings who can, and will, invent very large spanners that can be thrown into the works of our robotic would-be manipulators.
The narcissistic egomaniac automatons who appear to be controlling everything right now are always going to have to fight to stay one step ahead of their human brothers and sisters.
One day, they will have to account for their deliberate subscription to this warped agenda from hell.
Agreed. Scholars are not interested in creating totalitarian dictatorships. And satanic cabals do not produce the most gifted cryptographers.
I suspect you are right. I always wondered why they taught the majority to read and write way back….
Because they required an updated peon to replace the farm animal
The future will see the rise of the ultimate internet: web0. This is the web that no longer exists because people will have gotten bored with the few things left standing after the psychos finish censoring anything that could conceivably interfere with their psychotic plans for humanity.
Crypto is probably a Mossad plot.
Probably?
Crypto is mathematics and logic.
Crypto is:
Babylonian Money Majic.
So why is the Babylonian media so anti-crypto?
what isn’t?
Explaining the metaverse: The problem is; evil and entities who’s purpose it is to manifest it, can only be halted, minimized and ultimately overcome at least individually, by what we know as consciousness; an experienced tangible lucent awareness of ourselves and environment and that includes the suffering and the joy.
All this digital ‘reality’ reminds me of Patala, a hindu netherworld story of a place decorated in jewels, with beautiful lakes and desirable prostitutes the place is ruled by snake-people. There is no old age, no sweat, no disease in Patala. It lulls humans to sleep, anaesthetised, unconscious, with object satisfaction and the demons live at the gates to it, basically the metaverse.
The only thing that would keep people from believing the Metaverse is in fact reality would be the memory of reality, the ability to recall that there was something different (and better). This is the point PKD was making in ‘Total Recall’.
Has there been any evidence of an attack on memory in recent years?….
There has been an incessant attack on cultural memory since 18-1900’s on Western nations populations, as the knowledge of herbs, medicine, diet, building, skills, folk music, ethnic history, poety and stories was transferred to books, it became impersonal. As familial relations distanced, listening to elders became ‘those old fogies’ as the youth was taught by dawsons creek and the OC to become disinherited narcissists. A whole scale memory wipe.
We had Grange Hill mate.
Add to that medically-induced dementia. There’s a pandemic of this, happening at an ever earlier age.
and grasping the fundamentals of what you say it exactly what many people need to do, its time to get “real” and real is a long, long way from the 3d experience most are immersed in
Yes, of course, if you aren’t building then they are destroying. Building (food, skills, children, family, barter systems, supply chains, moral communities, spiritual knowledge) our way out is the only tested viable defence.
The letters in meta can also spell TAME. Humans to be like tame dogs. Woof Woof. Sit. Heel. Good dog. No walkies for you.
Ryan, you need to research cryptocurrencies a bit more
“In order to defraud such a system you’d either need to control 51% of the computational power of the entire network (in the case of PoW)”
For the last several years, China has been responsible for well over 60% of all bitcoin “mining”. Theoretically, their “miners” (in reality, vast arrays of PC video cards) could validate the transfer of ALL bitcoins in existence to Xi Jinping, and there is not a single thing that anybody could do about it.
Not a great foundation on which to build a free society, in my opinion.
Of course, you could argue that everybody is “free” to buy a GPU or two and start mining bitcoin themselves, but this is the same as saying “you’re free to buy a house” to a homeless person.
“cryptocurrency” does not solve any of the real problems that we face, it is just another form of “money”. The criminally unequal distribution of wealth and property in this world will remain the same.
If all BTC got transferred to Xi it would immediately lose all of its value, so that would be pointless. Same reason Satoshi doesn’t spend any of his coins. And crypto does solve the problem of the government existing. Indirectly that should decrease wealth inequality.
Basically another house of cards, just like typical fiat currency.
Truthstream media did a good series on the history of banking called “trust game”
Having to not spend coins reminds me of the reason why the billionaires and banks need huge balances that produce nothing but artificial value
You could not be more wrong, crypto is the antithesis of fiat and has more in common with gold. For starters: limited supply.
“If all BTC got transferred to Xi it would immediately lose all of its value, so that would be pointless”
You miss the point. I’m not suggesting that China will actually do that, just illustrating that the “blockchain” is neither secure nor “democratic”. If one entity controls more than half the network or owns more than half the coin supply, they can do what they like…
As an aside, nearly all BTC in existence today is in the hands of governments and “asset managers” like BlackRock (early adopters of BTC all cashed out long ago, many of them becoming millionaires). It’s main uses (apart from buying drugs off the dark web) are as untraceable / unattributable “digital cash” to pay for black ops and to launder dirty money from other sources.
“crypto does solve the problem of the government existing”
I’m afraid I have no idea what you mean by this
I mean that politicians are not needed in the Network States described above. As well as removing the governments’ access to infinite money, blockchain enables a trustless new form of direct democracy.
And how is bitcoin, et al, valued…?
In USD…
Hahahahahahaha
Splat!
BTC done well against gold as well, it has outperformed any and all other assets significantly.
Just a default measure, like the inch or the metre or whatever
What commodity, security, stock, bond, currency, asset or property cannot be valued in USD?
(a) The total money any one crypto coin supports is limited. (b) Mining gets harder over time. (c) The usage of electricity for mining is horrendous. (d) There is no intrinsic value, only speculative, and it is highly volatile. (e) Disappearances of stashes are common; commercial crypto “banks” (where people park their coins) themselves have been robbed. (f) A major use has been to extract ransoms.
The whole thing is one big joke.
(a) What? No. (b) Yes. So? (c) Hospitals and farms also use electricity, you wanna close them too? (d) More intrinsic value than the dollar, which is only volatile downwards. (e) Keep your keys safe. (f) Irrelevant if true.
The problem is; evil and entities who’s purpose it is to manifest it, can only be halted, minimized and ultimately overcome at least individually, by what we know as consciousness; an experienced tangible lucent awareness of ourselves and environment and that includes the suffering and the joy.
All this digital ‘reality’ reminds me of Patala, a hindu netherworld story of a place decorated in jewels, with beautiful lakes and desirable prostitutes the place is ruled by snake-people. There is no old age, no sweat, no disease in Patala. It lulls humans to sleep, anaesthetised, unconscious, in object satisfaction and the demons live at the gates to it, basically the metaverse.
The pop up communes of the 60s come to mind. Hippies squatting wherever possible. Smoking pot and dropping acid in between working on their gardening skills and scrounging for food while slicing fetuses out of movie starlets. A few movies come to mind like Easy Rider, Born Losers and Joe. Kumbaya.
Don’t discount web-zero so fast: network of people talking face to face with no electronics in between. Check out Solaris, an internet of humans. It started in France in September 2021, http://solaris-ontario.org/ is a comprehensive website in English.
New study shows an alarming link between being a conspiracy theorist and not having myocarditis..
I know I will eventually have to pull the plug and go into the woods looking for berries and deer. I’m going to bring a couple of friends as emergency rations.
Benton you wrote:
I’m going to bring a couple of friends as emergency rations.
Do you think that the friends that you take with you, might be in the form of Soylent Green wafers by then Benton, or in the form of some other culinary delight to enjoy in the woods along with the berries and the deer that you might find? That is of course, if the berries and deer haven’t already been acquisitioned by the ‘Klaus Cult’ and its henchmen. We are now living in a time when most things are possible – who knows?
No, just good old emergency rations who carry their own weight while engaging in interesting conversations before supper time.
A plot line lifted from James Meeks’ The People’s Act of Love
Don’t need to plagiarize things since I have a mind of my own.
The article states that:
The question is this: will the blockchain allow the creation of a new society, unburdened by monopolistic, centralised authorities, or will it quite literally “chain” us to the corrupt practices of a financial system in which there is no freedom to transact?
Firstly, the creation of a “new society” will depend on many different factors and conditions other than “blockchain” which I cannot see being “unburdened by monopolistic, centralised authorities” since those “authorities” including governments, and their Illuminist masters. After all, these parasites are, for all intents and purposes, currently running the planet and they will not allow what power and control they possess to be usurped and will use all the ideological and repressive means possible to prevent that.
Secondly, the article also states that:
The possibility of any of those things happening would constitute a massive threat to the Schwabians and their Great Reset, one-world government agenda.
That’s precisely why the NWO – one-world government fraternity would not allow that to happen (without a fight) unless it supports their Cult agenda in some way.
my kingdom for a tulip bulb strikes me as better value
… and this techno laden future is going to be powered with what energy?
Ignorance Battery’s i.e. ignore-ance/distraction
Oil-fields in the metaverse
I think we all know the answer to that question.
It’s not going to be powered by anything. On the contrary, it’s one of the main drivers of the Long Descent away from hitech industrial ‘civilisation’ – the ever-tightening ligature of energy shortages – which is going to sweep away such sick fantasies as outlined in Ryan’s piece: No leccy: no startrekkytechietechie.
And no, the mirage of ‘renewables’ isn’t going to substitute anywhere near adequately for the current huge splurge of fossil-hydrocarbon energy; even if they really were independently self-bootstrapping net-energy-delivering systems, with no unavoidable need for fossil-hydrocarbon energy subsidies to keep them in existence and working; which they’re not…
Access can be controlled- you gotta get a computer. You gotta buy electricity….on and on. In the end there’s plenty of people who’ll chop off ya hands. The only answer I can think is- pull out the plug.
Heard a Russian medical doctor Denis Ivanov yester say that about 30% of Russians have not access to home toilets.
On the spur of the moment GREAT RESET SOLUTION: let’s build toilets for the Russians in the metaverse.
So that’s why they invaded Ukraine- to steal their lavatories.
the situation there is even more dramatic
The Prof that I am quoting, Denis Ivanov, was commenting on the idea of tele-medicine/e-medicine/digital-medicine being peddled nowadays by the NHS in Russia, pro which there is a noisy, wildly active lobby.
So this Professor Ivanov, ironic as he is by birth, nonetheless instead of pure sneer, he tried to bring to senses the insanity of this idea by using the ”30% homes in Russia do not even have lavatories!” argument.
The remaining chain of conclusions to be drawn from that ”30%” argument downwards [ or: backwards]..
Really good decision. The Metaverse is just for the toilet anyway.
The CIA must have found a way to cram 25 hours into a day, they are so busy figuring out new ways to control our lives.
“Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell and also the other way round, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise”.
So said Rudolf Hess or whoever wrote ‘Mein Kampf’. Who will care if they are living in a pod and eating mashed mealworm if they have a really cool avatar, lots of VR “friends” and a high social credit score? BTW one of the cute touches in the ‘Black Mirror’ episode ’15 Million Merits’ is that people have to earn credit merely to turn the propaganda off, otherwise the wall-sized TV constantly triggers pop-ups.
One thing to realise about avatars is that Gnostics believe their body is an avatar created by an incompetent God-proxy, the demiurge. Thus existing through your own avatar is no regression but embodies progress and rebellion.
Ryan Matters mentioned “inevitability” as part of the psy-op which indeed it is – but so is “progress” (and its partner “modernity”). Pass hell off as “modernity” and people believe its paradise.
That was the best Black Mirror episode. The guy who finally breaks through to tell the truth about the system….. just gets his own TV slot to carry on complaining!
It’s already been done.
It’s called dreaming.
You can’t hold or hug it.
You can’t love it.
You can’t eat it.
But it can steal your sanity.
And your human ‘nature’