With All The Nonsense Out There, Wouldn't It Be Prudent To Slow Down A Bit?
5G is coming at us fast. The last one hundred and seventy years went by us like a bullet. The level of complexity in human society has skyrocketed. It's hard to keep up with the amount of information coming at us every day, and it's even harder to separate the nonsense from practical and beneficial information. It seems that even the most biased and false narratives always contain a grain of truth, making it even harder to evaluate its value.
What's worse is that communicators from conspiracy theorists to scientists, to government officials and media pundits, are getting extremely good at the art & science of bull shit.
Nonetheless, I'm fascinated by conspiracy cranks. They can be as mesmerizing as an evangelical preacher or a new age profit's garbled and confused musings.
Today I watched another episode of The Corbett Report on YouTube. If you aren't familiar with James Corbett, he's a prolific proponent of alternative narratives and conspiracy theories.
Media Bias|Fact Check summarizes his work this way:
CONSPIRACY-PSEUDOSCIENCE
Sources in the Conspiracy-Pseudoscience category may publish unverifiable information that is not always supported by evidence. These sources may be untrustworthy for credible/verifiable information; therefore, fact-checking and further investigation is recommended on a per article basis when obtaining information from these sources. See all Conspiracy-Pseudoscience sources.
Factual Reporting: LOW
Notes: The Corbett Reports is a right-wing biased conspiracy site. Some featured topics are the New World Order, 9-11 conspiracies and of course false flag operations. There are many more. (D. Van Zandt 2/4/2017)
Never the less, sometimes people like James Corbett publish something that inspires one to do more investigation of a subject, and that's not a bad thing.
Case in point, his rundown of the dangers of 5G networks and the so-called, Internet of Things. Have a look.
Many of his concerns are interesting, while some, like his veering off into his typically biased views on technocratic initiatives and movements may be a bit off the mark. It's not my desire here to breakdown and criticizes his video. I only want to suggest that the unintended consequences of 5G could be daunting and we might want to slow down a bit before connecting everything in the world to a data producing network with their massive databases run by supercomputers that are controlled by organizations|corporations that don’t necessarily have ordinary people's best interests at heart. If we could first solve the socioeconomic structural issues that make our civilization vulnerable to so many existential risks, all of this technocratic stuff would probably be a good thing.
The world is getting more complex, and people can't digest it. The rate of change is fast. It's impossible to keep up. Soon we may find ourselves without any sovereignty or agency what so ever.
I wish we could slow down somehow so ordinary people could take back more control. Democracy is in decline; inequality is exacerbating concerns about freedom and justice; ecosystems are deteriorating; and then there is climate change. Oh, and, how do you think you’d fare if the grid went down and you didn’t have all of your gadgets? Could you last a month?
Where shall we invest our resources? In what ways does The Internet of Things benefit us when our civilization is falling apart?
Falling apart, Steven, now you sound like a conspiracy nut.
Advanced technological civilization developed fast, and it could, even more quickly, deteriorate.
Is The Corbett Report fake news?
Below are some links to, perhaps, some better information about 5G. It's essential to understand it because it's coming fast.
5G Is Coming
The imminent roll-out of 5G technology has again sparked media coverage of the possible risks of EMF exposure, but the scientific consensus remains that the technology is safe.
Steven Novella / May 15, 2019
Are Smart Meters a Health Risk?
Don't worry. There is no plausible health risk from the miniscule EMF from smart meters.
Steven Novella on February 27, 2019
What is 5G?
The definitive guide to next-generation wireless technology
It is a capital improvement project the size of the entire planet, replacing one wireless architecture created this century with another one that aims to lower energy consumption and maintenance costs. It's also a huge gamble on the future of transmission technology, doubling down on consumers' willingness to upgrade.
Scott Fulton III
By Scott Fulton III | February 1, 2019 -- 17:01 GMT (01:01 GMT+08:00) | Topic: How 5G Will Transform Business
What Is 5G?
AT&T, Verizon, and other carriers are starting to launch 5G networks this year. But what exactly is 5G, and how fast is it compared with 4G? Here are the facts we know so far.
By Sascha Segan April 16, 2019 10:23AM EST
Where Each Wireless Carrier Stands in the 5G Race
5G technology could change the world, but carriers have to build networks that support it first.
Adam Levy (TMFnCaffeine) Sep 21, 2018 at 8:18AM
5G Radiation Dangers – 11 Reasons To Be Concerned
Posted by Lloyd Burrell on May 12, 2017
5G Mobile Wireless Technology
The new 5G mobile communications system will enable many new mobile capabilities to be realized - offering high speed, enormous capacity, IoT capability, low latency and much more it provides the bearer for many new applications.
Why Controlling 5G Could Mean Controlling the World
The United States believes that whoever controls fifth-generation cellular networks, known as 5G, will have a global advantage for decades to come. The fear is that China is almost there. NYT Daily Podcast
And last but not least, please read this essay by Chris Hedges. When a few corporations and governments have all of our data, who will watch the watchers?
The Thought Police Are Coming
Chris Hedges Columnist
We have watched over the last decade as freedom of the press and legal protection for those who expose government abuses and lies have been obliterated by wholesale government surveillance and the criminalizing of the leaking and, with Julian’s persecution, publication of these secrets. The press has been largely emasculated in the United States. The repeated use of the Espionage Act, especially under the Obama administration, to charge and sentence whistleblowers has shut down our ability to shine a light into the inner workings of power and empire. Governmental officials with a conscience, knowing all of their communications are monitored, captured and stored by intelligence agencies, are too frightened to reach out to reporters. The last line of defense lies with those with the skills that allow them to burrow into the records of the security and surveillance state and with the courage to make them public, such as Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Jeremy Hammond, now serving a 10-year prison term in the United States for hacking into the Texas-based private security firm Strategic Forecasting Inc., or Stratfor. The price of resistance is high not only for them, but for those such as Julian willing to publish this information. As Sarah Harrison has pointed out: “This is our data, our information, our history. We must fight to own it.”
