Electric monk: Difference between revisions

So here is the thing I don’t understand: ''where are our [[electric monk]]s''?

Everything we know about the information revolution tells us they cannot be far away. Scrappy little [[Wikipedia]], crowd-sourced and free-for-all vanquished forever the grand, longevous ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. [[Reddit]] vanquished the [[master of the universe|masters of the universe]]. Yet, we insects, still crawling on the planet’s face — we seem on the end of a perpetual hiding from new-economy conglomerates with their [[artificial intelligence|artificially intelligent]] engines exploiting our innate horror of boredom; filling our heads with a clangorous noise that pleases us by obscuring the abysmal ''silence'' that otherwise would predominate.  

In this way we are aggregated, parsed, tracked, anticipated and nudged around like cups on some giant [[Ouija board]], and all this just to ''monetise'' us: to extract value from the magical well of human weakness into which it jams its stent, thereby consigning us by degrees to stale, mute, digital oblivion.

Okay, okay; enough already of the nihilistic dystopian moaning — the [[JC]] is a glass-half-full sort of fellow; this isn’t really his style.  

Here’s the question: ''why does this sorry state of affairs persist?''  

 

Regular readers will know the [[JC]] is no subscriber to the dismal futurism of {{author|Ray Kurzweil}} or {{author|Daniel Susskind}}. Unless by occupation you mindlessly follow predefined rules — and if you that is your occupation, will you miss it? — there will always be plenty to keep you busy.