It’s Not a Social Dilemma – It’s the Calculated Destruction of the Social [Part I]

Published October 28, 2020, by Wrong Kind of Green

Part one of a three-part investigative series. [Part 2] [Part 3]

Introduction by Michael Swifte, WKOG collective:

“The ruling class, with full knowledge of the technocratic plans being implemented, have fashioned a false narrative of our unpleasant choices in living with ever expanding digital ‘social’ networks and the force that is exercised by those who control the ‘social’. Klaus Schwab sits at the refashioned locus of globalist power, the helm at which the captains of stakeholder capitalism command and refashion the consumer economy, accelerated under lockdowns, amplified by the control and manipulation of data and the production of fear. Here Cory Morningstar in her usual richly detailed fashion illustrates the extensive networks and interrogates the heavily constructed statements that signify the growing political will for the management of global populations under the banner of the ‘great reset’ and the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Imagine the feeling of the strands of a fishing net being pulled ever more tightly against your skin. Now imagine that there is only one way for you and the shoal of which you are a part to escape. Morningstar shows that technology will not deliver efficiencies or reduce consumption, but rather, like highways that continue to widen, they will only bring further destruction and demand on resources.”

The Social Dilemma Documentary

Released by Netflix on September 9, 2020, the documentary “The Social Dilemma” was, in extremely short order, trending on the streaming platform. The Social Dilemma became a social contagion, highlighted by media outlets across the spectrum, including Forbes. On September 18, 2020, The Independent praised the film as “the most important documentary of our times”. On October 21, 2020, it was reported that 38 million Netflix subscribers had viewed the film.

Other words for dilemma include “predicament”, “quandary”, “plight”, “bind” and “embarrassment”.

The film is described by Netflix as a “documentary–drama hybrid explor[ing] the dangerous human impact of social networking, with tech experts sounding the alarm on their own creations.” Yet, in today’s world of foundation-funded film and media, what is not disclosed, is more often than not, far more important than what is. Such is the case with The Social Dilemma.

“A compilation of interviews, interspersed with a fictional film, this documentary is not as effective as it wanted to be, and definitely not as informative as it should be.”

— Sept 9, 2020, The Social Dilemma On Netflix Review: Doesn’t Say More Than You Already, Probably, Know On Addiction, Social Media, And Civil War

With capitalism destroying the planet, the false premise of “stakeholder capitalism” has been rolled out via media channels in order to permeate the public psyche. This can be more aptly described as a rebranding, marketing strategy. The goal being for the corporatocracy, insulated by the ruling class, to retain the social licence required, to continue their plunder of the planet. With the Fourth Industrial Revolution unleashed against a “growing public backlash against technology“, recognized as both a threat and hurdle by the World Economic Forum (January 16, 2018), one must contemplate if The Social Dilemma is to inhumane technology what “stakeholder capitalism” is to inhumane capitalism. An assurance of protection against harm that cannot be negotiated – in order to mitigate concern and quell dissent. In order to build and maintain the acquiescence of the global citizenry. And the answer to such contemplation, is – yes.

Let’s begin.

Center for Humane Technology, formerly called “Time Well Spent”

“Never before has a small sector had so much power over the entire World, to monitor the present and predict future behaviours of not just individuals, but entire populations. The problem is more alarming when we consider how the public and private sectors are merging in joint ventures in a quest for global domination, penetrating every government, every citizen movement, mediating every action in every connected person’s life through digital devices and data collection.”

— July, 2018, Defining the problem: digital colonialism and technological feuds

Consider the documentary’s protagonist and driving force Tristan Harris, who made Fortune’s 40 Under 40 list in 2018. In November 2011, Google acquired the Apture start-up founded by Harris for an undisclosed amount thought to be between 10-20 million USD. At this same time, Harris took the position of project manager at Google. In April 2013, Google would assign Harris the new title of “Design Ethicist & Product Philosopher.” In 2013, while working for Google (Harris would work for Google from November 2011 to January 2016), Harris and Aza Raskin (interface designer and entrepreneur, Forbes 30 Under 30, 2012), co-founded “Time Well Spent”, a term coined by Harris with social scientist Joe Edelman. James Williams and filmmaker Max Stossel (named by Forbes as one of the best storytellers of the year, 2016), are also co-founders of Time Well Spent. Stossel’s clients include Caterpillar, a gross violator of human rights, for its #TogetherStronger campaign, and National Geographic (a leading entity in the charge to monetize the planet’s “ecosystem services”). Prior to co-founding the Time Well Spent campaign, Williams worked at Google for over a decade, receiving the Founder’s Award, the corporation’s highest honour, for his work on search advertising and tools. Following the founding of Time Well Spent, on December 1, 2014 Harris would deliver a talk at TED Brussels.

“Harris hopes that companies will offer a healthier alternative to the current diet of tech junk food—perhaps at a premium price.”

— The Atlantic, November 2016 issue

On July 26, 2017, Nicholas Thompson, editor-in-chief at *WIRED, would publish an interview with Harris discussing Time Well Spent. This same day, *TED media would simultaneously release a TED talk by Harris recorded in April, 2017. Also in 2017, (April 7), Thrive Global, launched five months prior by media mogul Thrive Global, would publish its first two Time Well Spent articles on its website, authored by Harris. This same day, Thrive Global would announce the upcoming appearance of Harris, on 60 Minutes with Anderson Cooper which took place on April 9, 2017.

[*Here we can add that Peter Schwartz, scenario mastermind for Rockefeller, Shell, World Economic Forum, U.S. Secretary of Defense, etc., serving as Senior Vice President Strategic Planning for Salesforce, invested in Wired at its inception. Marc Benioff, founder and CEO of Salesforce serves as a member of the World Economic Forum Board of Trustees, and the inaugural Chair of World Economic Forum’s Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution in San Francisco. TED is owned and curated by Chris Anderson, spouse of Jacqueline Novogratz, named by Forbes as one of “100 Greatest Living Business Minds” in 2017, founder and CEO of Acumen investments, and a pioneer of social impact investing.]

“Harris hopes to create a Time Well Spent certification—akin to the leed seal or an organic label—that would designate software made with those values in mind.”

— The Atlantic, November 2016 issue

 

“For many entrepreneurs, this epiphany has come with age, children, and the peace of mind of having several million in the bank.”

— Soren Gordhamer, founder of Wisdom 2.0

 

January 25, 2018, Davos, “Future Shocks: Rogue Technology in the Fourth Industrial Revolution”: “Nicholas Thompson, Editor-in-Chief, Wired Magazine; Marcus Souza, Secretary of Innovation and New Business, Ministry of Industry, Foreign Trade and Service of Brazil; Feng Zhang, James and Patricia Poitras Professor in Neuroscience, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Mary Cummings, Director, Humans and Autonomy Lab (HAL), Duke University; Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, Salesforce; Peter Thomson, United Nations Special Envoy for the Ocean” [Source: Salesforce]

January 26, 2016, Tristan Harris, Thrive Global, on Medium. On April 7, 2017, Thrive Global, launched five months prior by media mogul Arianna Huffington, would publish its first two Time Well Spent articles on its website, authored by Harris.

April 9, 2017, Arianna Huffinton on Twitter

July 28, 2017, Ruslan Tovbulatov citing Thrive partnership with Harris.

Rusian Tovbulatov, Chief Marketing Officer, Thrive Global, July 28, 2017

The simultaneous TED and WIRED media coverage would amplify the increasing exposure, catapulting Harris – along with the “Time Well Spent movement” into the spotlight. Approximately six months later, on February 4, 2018, Time Well Spent was renamed the Center for Humane Technology (CHT). (The Time Well Spent Twitter account has remained inactive since February 12, 2018.)

Time Well Spent Twitter account, 2014-2018

Time Well Spent marketing under Tristan Harris

On May 23, 2018, Harris attended the Tech for Good summit in Paris, at the invitation of President Macron. On May 15, 2019, Harris would attend the second Tech for Good summit. Following the very white ensemble of industry leaders and heads of states, just days later, on May 18, 2019, the Yellow Vests anti-government protests across France would commence for the 27th week in a row. Fully demonstrating his aspirations for the good and well-being of citizens, Macron’s riot police would use tear gas and violence to disperse the crowds. [“According to the French Mediapart website, 11 people were killed, five lost their hands due to use of grenades and 23 lost their eyesight. Some 2,000 people were injured at the demonstrations. Of them 268 people suffered head injuries, 15 hand injuries, 64 body injuries, 26 back injuries and 106 leg injuries.”][Source]

The 2020 Tech for Good Summit, organized by Roar Media, will take place on December 3, 2020, in London.

Tech For Good Summit, 2018. Facing Macron, front and centre is Rwandan President and war criminal Paul Kagame. Tristan Harris is in the third row, far left. Source: Présidence de la République française, Tech For Good Summit 2020 Progress Report

“New technology is always disruptive. It kills jobs, creates new ones, and ushers in profound social change. But the breakneck speed and sheer scale of this round of technical change is something else – it threatens the very definition of what it is to be human. We’re being presented with a huge range of ethical dilemmas. How do we get together to agree the rules on things like genetically modified babies, the robots of war, and the algorithms that determine our life chances?”

— Tech For Good, World Economic Forum website

The Digital Africa initiative was launched by Macron in 2018. [Source] In September 2020, the European Union pressed to push back the elections in socialist Venezuela. This is what colonialism and imperialism look like. Imagine the reaction to a Digital France Initiative – launched by the President of Iran, Hassan Rouhani. Imagine the reaction if Venezuela were to demand the European Union push back elections, to meet conditions for the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) which would send an observer mission. Yet, the racism that undermines the foundations of a Western society built on white supremacy does not allow for such thoughts.

Here we can add that The Social Dilemma filmmakers have formed a partnership with imperialist NGO Amnesty International. Amnesty International serves as partner to the World Economic Forum “Civil Society in the Fourth Industrial Revolution Initiative.” [Source] In 2011, Amnesty played a leading role in the annihilation of Libya. Avaaz, another instrument of empire, belonging to the non-profit industrial complex, would also play a leading role. Avaaz and *Purpose, serving many of the most powerful corporations and institutions on the planet, create emotive campaigns for climate change, while serving as instruments for war and occupation on targeted sovereign states. The irony that the military is a key driver of both climate change and ecological devastation is seemingly lost on the collective Western citizenry. [*Purpose is the public relations arm of Avaaz, specializing in “public mobilization and storytelling… that can shift policies and change public narratives.”]

“Amnesty has partnered with the filmmakers”, Amnesty New Zealand Twitter account

Center For Humane Technology & Avaaz: “fixing the attention economy”

Tristan Harris at the World Economic Forum annual meeting, January 27, 2020

With markets in the Global North relatively saturated (with citizenry and state both inundated with debt), the world’s most powerful institutions, amidst a global consolidation of power are seeking to recolonize the Global South. “Tech for Good” is the exponential “scaling up of social transformation in the fourth industrial revolution“, transforming Africa into data colonies that serve the West. Transforming children, people, and all life into data commodities – a new asset class. This is a global behavioural change project, unprecedented in scale, with civil society groups and groomed influencers, having been tasked with replacing societal backlash with social licence.

“Business leaders must think and act differently to find their place in these new digital ecosystems that are creating markets where none currently exist—indeed, innovators put themselves in position to capture part of a $12 trillion market opportunity by 2030”

— Accenture, [“Accenture has partnered with the World Economic Forum  on researching Globalization 4.0, which is being driven by the Fourth Industrial Revolution”, Source]

On May 29, 2019, co-founder of Time Well Spent/Center for Humane Technology, Aza Raskin, became co-chair of the newly established Global Artificial Intelligence Council of the World Economic Forum. This council would represent one of six Global Fourth Industrial Revolution Councils. [May 29, 2019: World Economic Forum Inaugurates Global Councils to Restore Trust in Technology  – “Top decision-makers and experts from the public and private sectors, civil society and academia participate in inaugural Global Fourth Industrial Revolution Council meeting in San Francisco… Five of the G7 countries and more than 100 organisations are officially partnered with the Network to create policy frameworks, pilot them and scale up around the world.”]

“As the capabilities of AI-driven systems have grown beyond automating boring or repetitive tasks, to making decisions that directly impact people’s lives, the fact that many of these systems are still “black-box” leaves people skeptical about the fairness and effectiveness of the algorithms. This deadlock must be broken, or the progress of the last 20 years will grind to a halt.”

— Technology Vision 2020 | We, the Post-Digital People, Accenture, Civil Society in the Fourth Industrial Revolution Initiative partner

Time Well Spent/Center for Humane Technology identifies its purpose as “a movement to align technology with our humanity”. Yet, its answer to the inhumanity of tech is to be found in market solutions, within the capitalist framework, which can neither be tamed, nor negotiated. For it itself, is inhumane.

“Time Well Spent” – in Partnership with Thrive Global

Time Well Spent merges with Thrive Global

“Thrive Global Is Leading Through The New Normal and Beyond”

— Thrive Global Website

Those serving capital are well-versed in utilizing framing, emotive imagery, and language as a means to entice a citizenry. Key words being utilized at present, to usher in the full digitalization of the global economy include ‘thrive’, ‘thriving’, ‘reset’, ‘imagine’, ‘imagination’, and ‘build back better‘.

Arianna Huffington

Time Well Spent, marketed as a “movement”, operates in conjunction with Thrive Global. Founded by Arianna Huffington and launched on November 30, 2016, Thrive Global is a behavioural change media and technology venture headquartered in New York with offices in San Francisco, Mumbai, Athens and Melbourne. Thrive Global partnerships include Accenture, JPMorgan Chase and Uber. Huffington serves on many boards including Uber, Global Citizen, and Onex, a private equity firm managing USD 36 billion in assets. Thrive Global investors include founder and CEO of Salesforce, Marc Benioff, World Economic Forum Board of Trustees, inaugural Chair of World Economic Forum’s Forum Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution in San Francisco, Jack Ma, founder and Executive Chairman of Alibaba Group,  member of the Board of Trustees, World Economic Forum, World Economic Forum Global Shapers board of directors, Breakthrough Energy Coalition co-founder (with Bill Gates), and the venture firm IVP (“We don’t just know growth; we drive hypergrowth.”) Thrive Global would target an elite bourgeoisie demographic serving as a promotional-marketing platform for venture philanthropy and social impact investing.

“I visited Thrive Global’s pop-up on Broome today. Just beautiful… People are searching for more balance—myself included. That nap room was TO DIE FOR. Shaggy, snuggly, sensational to the senses… I sat on the lower level with a dear friend, in the gray egg chairs for nearly an hour—sipped tea and connected. We so enjoyed it amidst the pressure of Christmas shopping and end of year work demands. I loved hearing your soothing voice and lovely accent coming from the speaker: ‘good night Instagram.'”

— My Trip To The Thrive Global Pop Up Store, A note from Megan Meany, SAP TV Global Anchor, to Arianna Huffington, December 26, 2016

Par for the course, Indigenous peoples are exploited for the marketing component of Thrive, while in real life Thrive protects and expands the very system responsible for Indigenous genocide that continues to this day. In addition, with Black Lives Matter serving as the new corporate anthem to assist in marketing an illusory “stakeholder capitalism”, images of Black Lives Matter protests also feature on the homepage.

On January 21, 2017, Arianna Huffington “stopped by Thrive’s partner Accenture’s lounge for a conversation on training the workforce of the future and humanising the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution'”. Joining Huffington was the chief leadership and human resources officer of Accenture, partner to the World Economic Forum “Civil Society in the Fourth Industrial Revolution Initiative, and the CEO of Manpower Group, Jonas Prising. The discussion was moderated by Fortune’s editor-in-chief. [Source]

Thrive Global published its first Time Well Spent article on May 10, 2017. The original Time Well Spent Twitter account has been inactive since February 12, 2018.

On November 29, 2017, Business Wire (owned by Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway) reported that Thrive Global raised USD 30 million “in a series B funding to scale its behavior change corporate and media platform around the world.” The drive was led by IVP, a venture capital and growth equity firm, with Marc Benioff joining the round funding “to dramatically accelerate tech and product growth”.

Salesforce partnership with Thrive Global.

Thrive Global Clients

On October 16, 2019, Thrive Global acquired “Boundless Mind”, a neuroscience-based artificial intelligence corporation to power productivity behaviour change. “Led by a team of Neuroscience PhDs, Behavioral Scientists, and AI Experts, Boundless Mind combines decades of experience at the intersection of brains, minds, and machines.”

All Roads Lead to Further Plunder – the Fourth Industrial Revolution “Great Reset”

UNICEF (UN), OHCHR (UN) & World Food Programme (UN) were the first international organizations to join the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution Network. Initial corporate partners include Amazon, Cognite, Deloitte, Guardian Life, JD.com, Vara Tech, Netflix and Visa.

It is critical at this juncture, to expand upon the pivotal role of Thrive Global investor Marc Benioff, founder and CEO of Salesforce, which is a partner of Thrive Global. Benioff, a member of the World Economic Forum Board of Trustees, serves as inaugural Chair of World Economic Forum’s Forum Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution in San Francisco – home of the “great reset”. In addition to these roles, Benioff is a co-founder of Breakthrough Energy Coalition (nuclear, carbon capture and storage, biofuel, etc.), with billionaires including Bill Gates, Jack Ma, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Chris Hohn. [Full list] The coalition, led by Gates, is a private partnership created in tandem with the public-facing Mission Innovation, which is partnered with 24 states and the European Union. Mission Innovation is partnered with the World Economic Forum.

On September 17, 2018, Benioff purchased TIME magazine from Meredith Corp for $190m in cash. Such ownership offers many perks, specifically, shaping both public perception and public opinion. September 21, 2018: “Today, an increasing number of owners hail from the tech industry. Over the past few years, new entrants include Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive of Amazon, who bought The Washington Post for $250m; biotech entrepreneur Patrick Soon-Shiong who purchased the Los Angeles Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune for $500m; Jack Ma, founder of Chinese tech group Alibaba, who bought the South China Morning Post for $266m; and, in July last year, Laurene Powell Jobs, the philanthropist and widow of Apple’s founder Steve Jobs, who took a majority stake in The Atlantic magazine.”

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country… We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of… In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.

— Edward Bernays, Propaganda

October 2020, TIME, The Great Reset Issue: “The COVID-19 pandemic has provided a unique opportunity to think about the kind of future we want.”

“Any account of celebrities must be predicated on the recognition that ‘the interests served are first of all those of capital.’” — Celebrity Culture, 2006 citing Graeme Turner

“Prince” Harry and super influencer Meghan Markle [May 9, 2020, Town & Country: “Meghan Markle Is Poised to Become the Most Prominent Influencer in the World”] Brother of “Prince” Harry, “Prince” William, is assisting in building public support for the financialization and enclosure of nature, under the guise of protecting biodiversity. October 2020, “A Bloody-Green Conservation Effort, The reds and greens of the Kaziranga violence – These are the headlines that ran in 2016 when the royal couple visited the highly militarised Kaziranga National Park. During his visit, Prince William enquired about the challenges officials faced in the anti-poaching efforts, and here’s the stinger – he also enquired about the park’s requirements of sophisticated weaponry.” [Source]

“Credible celebrity endorsers can be deadly efficient in cutting into the toughest markets and combating the fiercest consumer resistance.”

—Celebrity Culture, 2006

TIME Next Generation Leaders, May 16, 2019. “The Future We Choose” – is in fact, the future they chose long ago. Manufactured movements serve those behind the new global architecture. The youth have been utilized and mobilized to capture, monetize, privatize and digitalize, the earth beneath their feet.

TIME Person of the Year, December 2019. Greta Thunberg photographed on the shore in Lisbon, Portugal, December 4, 2019. “But the needle is moving. Fortune 500 companies, facing major pressure to reduce their emissions, are realizing that sustainability makes for good PR.” Photograph by Evgenia Arbugaeva for TIME.

TIME: Davos 2020, Next Generation World

In addition to assigning monetary value to all nature, human and social “capital”, yet another new horror is unfolding, away from public view and oversight. The nefarious Fourth Industrial Revolution architecture designed and sought by Benioff, Schwab et al., will demand more minerals and rare Earth minerals than what remain on the planet’s fragile and exhausted terrain. Thus, they intend to mine the oceans under guise of watchdog. Holistic linguistics such as ‘safe’ and ‘responsible’ are employed. Benioff has created his own NGO, the Benioff Ocean Initiative, in addition to appointing himself as watchdog over the new rapacious industry.

 

January 2020: The Benioff Ocean Initiative and The Coca-Cola Foundation Announce $11 Million in Funding. Pennies for greenwashing the massive waste they produce.

 

“Friends of Ocean Action” is financed by Benioff as part of the Benioff Ocean Initiative. It is convened by the World Economic Forum, in collaboration with the World Resources Institute. Members include Marco Lambertini, WWF lead for the financialization of nature, José Figueres, and billionaire Richard Branson.

“Since the 1970’s as many as 90% of the species discovered by researchers in the Clarion Clipperton seabed mining zone were previously unknown to science.”

“We cannot responsibly assess the impacts of deep sea mining until we understand what species are present in a mining claim area, “how globally unique or rare these species are…”

It’s not for Benioff et al. to decide what life has value and what life does not. Ecosystems are not ‘assets’. Biological communities exist for their own purposes, not ours.

The United Nations International Seabed Authority has granted over 1 million square kilometers of claims for mining exploration in the high seas of the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans to at least 16 countries. In June 2019, the World Economic Forum partnered with the United Nations. The World Economic Forum presides over the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, which must be understood and recognized as emerging markets. The sought plunder of the Earth’s oceans contributes to ten of the seventeen “sustainable development” goals.

To plunder the planet’s oceans, under the guise of climate emergency and protecting biodiversity, is beyond the pale.

Benioff, September 9, 2020: “Everyone must watch this.” Twitter.

 

Harris quoting Benioff, May 16, 2018: “Time for common sense regulation”.

 

Harris, March 22, 2020, Twitter.

 

Twitter, August 23, 2018. Harris joins Al Gore, Unilever CIO Jane Moran, and Will.I.Am for an all-star “Dreamforce” cast.

September 21 2018: “Along with nearly 200,000 devotees of the cloud-computing company Salesforce, I will attend Dreamforce, the firm’s annual takeover of San Francisco and the largest tech conference in the world… Dreamforce’s string of ultra-famous musical acts—past headliners include U2, Stevie Wonder, and The Foo Fighters—so I should try to get my head around them… Separate the can’t-miss speakers from the must-miss speakers. Can’t-miss: Al Gore, Unilever CIO Jane Moran, former Google design ethicist Tristan Harris, and for some reason, I’d really like to see what the NBA player Andre Iguodala has to say. Must-miss: Adrian Grenier and Will.I.Am.”

Center for Humane Technology Alliances

Center for Humane Technology (formerly Time Well Spent) partners include Exposure Labs, a film and impact production company founded by Social Dilemma director Jeff Orlowski, and Bryson Gillette, a strategic communications and public affairs firm. Clients of Orlowski (director and producer of Chasing Ice and Chasing Coral) include Stanford University National Geographic, and the Jane Goodall Institute. [Source] Here it should noted that these three institutions play leading roles in the global financialization of nature.

Center for Humane Technology funders include foundations, tech billionaires and tech creators including Open Society Foundations, Ford Foundation, Knight Foundation, Evolve Ventures Foundation, David Magerman, and Craig Newmark. [Funders] The Omidyar Network would partner with the Center investing USD 800,000 (USD 450,000 in 2018). In addition to its partnership with the Center for Humane Technology, other Omidyar partners under the theme “Responsible Technology” and “reimagining capitalism” include the United Nations Foundation, Wired, the World Bank and the World Economic Forum.

“You might expect that Facebook, which derives its profits from the amount of time people spend interacting with the advertisements in its apps, would reject the Time Well Spent thesis. Instead, the company co-opted it. In a January 11th post, Mark Zuckerberg invoked the initiative by name. “By focusing on bringing people closer together — whether it’s with family and friends, or around important moments in the world — we can help make sure that Facebook is time well spent,” he wrote.

— January 17, 2018, “Time well spent” is shaping up to be tech’s next big debate, A War of Words”

On February 5, 2018, “Common Sense” partnered with the Center for Humane Technology for the “Truth About Tech” Campaign “in response to escalating concerns about digital addiction”. Common Sense reported USD 19 million+ revenue in 2015. Major funders include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Marc Benioff. In September 2017, Center for Humane Technology funder Knight Foundation announced a USD 2.5 million investment in projects that address “a declining trust in media in the internet age.” [Source] Many continue to identify this increasingly familiar pattern as co-optation. It is not. Rather, it has become the preferred method of public relations. Create a movement, appoint a spokesperson to fulfill the role of “leader”. For pennies on the dollar, billionaires are channelling millions to organisations framed as opposition. Ruling class sanctioned “critics”, rewarded with media exposure celebrity and access, have become the most effective means of smothering the “techlash flames” and a growing distrust of corporate power. A poorly understood genre of effective crisis communications management, this strategy has proven to be deadly efficient.

Center for Humane Technology funders

The Center for Humane Technology hosts the podcast “Your Undivided Attention”. The May 18, 2020 podcast “The Stubborn Optimist’s Guide to Saving the Planet” features the prominent Christiana Figueres, who explains “a clear and alluring vision of a future that can supplant the dystopian” is required for the “great reset” Fourth Industrial Revolution architecture, as sought by the World Economic Forum, to take hold. The “future we choose”, (The Future We Choose by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac, February 25, 2020) is, in fact, the future they chose some time ago. The podcast attributes Figueres with “stubborn optimism” for having convinced state governments to sign the Paris Agreement. [Further reading: This Changes Nothing: The Paris Agreement to Ignore Reality, Clive Spash, Vienna University of Economics and Business] The podcast then explores “how a similar shift in Silicon Valley’s vision could lead 3 billion people to take action.”

“This could be the most important wake-up call of our times.”

— Professor Klaus Schwab, CEO World Economic, Forum, Praise for the Future We Choose

 

“Figueres and Rivett-Carnac dare to tell us how our response can create a better, fairer world.”

— Naomi Klein, Praise for the Future We Choose

Christiana Figueres, Twitter, May 21, 2019

In the same way that Greta Thunberg never touches upon the sought financialization of nature, global in scale (expected to be implemented in 2021), instead serving as the very face of the campaign; in the same way that Thunberg does not shine an imperative light on militarization as a key driver of climate change, the Center for Humane Technology, which highlights climate change as a key concern, makes no mention of the massive and growing carbon footprint by the Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) sector [A look at this growth is extensively detailed further in this series]. In the same way that Thunberg remains silent on the roll-out of 5G (the fifth generation technology standard for broadband cellular networks), adding additional layers of threats to biodiversity and all living life forms, including human, neither does the Center for Humane Technology. 5G is, unequivocally, the very foundation of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, launched to the public as “the great reset”. Without 5G, the Fourth Industrial Revolution architecture, as sought by the ruling class, will collapse like a house of cards. These deliberate omissions represent the most egregious form of climate denialism that goes largely unchallenged. To call for humane technology while making no mention of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is an impossible oversight. We are being conditioned to accept, and even demand, the very infrastructure and said “solutions” that the states, serving the ruling classes, wish to impose on us. This is social engineering en masse.

Social Media – We Think the Price Is Worth It

Just as there is no negotiating with the brutality of capitalism – there is no negotiating with a trillion dollar social media industry, firmly entrenched in the jaws of capitalism. “A path to humane technology” is just one public relations effort going forward to quell any backlash against the new global architecture, financed by the very entities advancing their depraved collective ideologies.

“The shocks of digital commodification are writing a new chapter in capitalism’s long history of violent dislocation.”

— Dan Schiller, historian of information and communications [Source]

The Social Dilemma film highlights the arrival and exponential growth of social media, and its direct correlation with self-harm and suicide amongst pre-teens and youth: U.S. hospital admissions of girls aged 15-19 have increased 62% since 2009 (correlating with social media becoming accessible via the mobile phone), with the admission of young girls aged 10-14 having increased a staggering 189%. U.S. suicide rates for young girls are just as alarming with a 70% increase for girls aged 15-19 (*compared to the average from 2001-2010), with the suicide rate of the younger group of girls (aged 10-14) increasing a whopping *151%. This tragedy alone should be enough to relegate social media to the dustbin, yet in an “Albright-esque” depravity, society has accepted the self-harm and suicides with the unspoken yet collective “we think the price is worth it” non-response. The corporate world that lies and breathes this depraved ideology never has espoused nor never will espouse a higher regard for humanity than for profits.

And while the documentary appears to highlight social media’s atrocious negative impacts on the social fabric of whole societies, and in spite of highlighting the incredible harm on youth, the film does not once mention Facebook’s latest colonial conquest: the continent of culturally rich and diverse Africa – with a median age of eighteen years old.

Nor does the film, or Harris, mention the Facebook project “internet.org”. Not dead, but rebranded as “Free Basics”, rolling out quietly behind a purposeful media blackout. [Discussed in part II.]

The goal of Facebook is world domination. On February 4, 2016, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced the corporation’s goal of obtaining 5 billion users by 2030. Two days later, following nationwide protests in India, the Facebook project, having been rebranded to “Free Basics”, was banned by the Telecom regulatory Authority of India.

Facebook realised it would need to attain, what the World Economic Forum today must also acquire for “the great reset”. That is, social license. With unlimited resources, the World Economic Forum has retained and financed civil society (non-profits, NGOs). Influencers have been chosen and moulded. The Global Shapers have been mobilised. In January 2020, “The Schwab Foundation community joined world leaders at a time where the issues at the core of the community’s work is now front and centre of the global agenda.” Nightmares for citizens and biodiversity are being wrapped in dark green vellum and holistic linguistics. “Humane” is to tech, what “stakeholder” is to capitalism. A rebranding exercise selling a kinder, new gentler form of oppression, exploitation and misery. A kinder, soft power form of psychological manipulation, purposeful addiction, and democratic depression.

As a nod to its funders and neoliberalism itself, the film warns of the threat to be “radicalized” by “anti-vaxxers”, and those that don’t vote. That is, those that are not interested in a “vaccine revolution” being sought to further serve the interests (profits) of the pharmaceutical industry, rather than the interests of society’s health and well-being. That is, those who understand that elections held in states that serve the global corporatocracy represent nothing more than “another exciting round of elections in the fabulous wonderland of bourgeois democracy.” (Stephanie McMillan). All while the real threat is the continued pacification, conditioning and domestication of the citizenry.

 

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Vanity Fair Annual New Establishment Summit 2017. Photograph by Annie Leibovitz. Vanity Fair, 2019, Tristan Harris “[F]rom his childhood as a magician to working with the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab to his role as CEO of Apture, which was acquired by Google. He has been featured on 60 Minutes, TED, The Atlantic, the PBS Newshour, and more. He has worked with major technology CEOs and briefed heads of state and other political leaders.” [Source]

The devolving of physical relationships and whole societies, up against an accelerating, digitalized, virtual world is not a social dilemma. The leveraging of COVID-19, waged as a weapon against the citizenry, is not a social dilemma. Rather, this is the strategic destruction of the social. A social dismantling. A social deliquesce. A social nightmare.

For the Fourth Industrial Revolution to take hold, our global society must be socially engineered to accept, even prefer an artificial existence over that of a physical one. The saturation of the collective psyche with language and framing such as “tech for good” is strategic, a key method and means of obtaining the social license required for the Fourth Industrial Revolution “great reset”. The “watch dogs” put forward as reassurance to assuage a growing anxiety, thus a growing threat of backlash, serve not society, but the hand that feeds.

Physical is dangerous, digital is safe. Humans are lethal, technology is benign. Masks assist in dehumanising the human body. The conditioning for avoidance of human intimacy. Children learning not to touch. Nature is both separate and zoonotic – stay home, stay safe. Our deteriorating social fabric, already eroded from social media, and technology at large, has been doused with gasoline. It burns in silence behind a veil of willful blindness. Both isolated and detached from the physical presence of one another, and nature herself, we are in freefall. Remains of relationships in piles of invisible ashes.