Here’s a headline you likely missed amidst the flurry of world war updates and cannibal-pedophiles-eating-babies stories that have been clogging the newswires of late:
“ENIAC, the First General-Purpose Digital Computer, Turns 80!”
Yes, while the 80th anniversary of the announcement of the advent of the “Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer” (ENIAC) may not be the flashiest or most important story in the world right now, it does provide us with a milestone for evaluating a turning point in human history—the dawn of the Information Age—and the two narratives that have been proffered to explain that turning point.
On one hand, we have the shiny, happy, techno-optimist view of the development of the computer and its impact on society.
On the other hand, we have a dark, dystopian tale of how humanity, enslaved by a techbro oligarchy, is being algorithmically steered into the slaughter pen.
The question of which framing is correct (and whether we can escape these narratives altogether) is not a trivial matter. In fact, it may determine the fate of humanity itself.
Today, let’s take a look at the rise of the computer, what it means, and where the human/computer symbiosis is going from here.
Happy Camping James!
It is still a bit cool for that kind of thing here in Michigan, but it will not be long before I too can venture off the grid.
Indeed, I have argued for some time that new technology has always been a double edge sword. It can be used for good, and it can be used for evil. Even the Printing Press could be argued for good or evil depending on how one views the contents of a book. My contention is that bad books won’t sell, but then, if corrupted governments mandate deceptive books of lies upon ignorant children in government run schools, then they tend to change the laws of nature and we might be inclined to think books are bad.
Just as everything printed in a book is not true, nor is every book worth reading, what we see and hear by way of the Internet is often propaganda, thus we must double check our sources, and then know that we can still be tricked.
I stopped using a Smart Phone about 10 years ago, and I no longer miss it. Perhaps everyone should at least try to go one day a week without one.
Truth seeker
True.
Book printing led to massive religious wars – on the long term it was a positive thing but the short term led to masses of dead people as folks accessed new ideas and information.
On the other hand mass literacy was made a thing so the peasant class could be programmed by those owning the press , but the good side was that it improved their minds at least a little where as social media is the ultimate post literacy cybernetic mind control.
Awh Jamiesan ,
Camping with the family is a joy beyond the limits of heaven. Maybe you can wrestle a trout out a mountain stream like you did when you were a boy in Calgary. No greater joy than passing that knowledge on to the next generation.
Take a picture or two for a thorough report when you return. Keeping a camera at the ready can produce life time memories for you and your family and not to mention some Hibagon ~ヒバゴン family you may encounter. You too can be come familiar with the furry creatures. You could share some of those trout you caught. They like trout and Pocky candy a lot.
Have fun and safe trip, see you soon.
In 1961 a high school buddy of ours had joined the Army after graduation in 1960. He got to stay in the Bay Area and worked in the Finance section in SF.
One night we drove over the bridge to see him at work. It was a huge warehouse room and there were these “computers” that resembled train tracks. He would take a hand full of maybe 3×8 inch cards with holes punched in them, walk them to the “front” of the runway and they would zipadeedo through the machine, rinse and repeat. It was the payroll for the Presidio.
In 1984 I was remodeling a B&W photo studio in SF and they let me use their office Macintosh computer. The GUI was amazing. Something I always wanted but never knew existed. Moving a cursor around a screen and drawing and typing, etc.!!
Now I use an off line 2000 G3 Mac Pismo for all my creative work…slide shows, songs, etc. and a 2009 iMac desktop for online stuff. Camera and mic is taped over, I clean my search and downloads off the machine and only comment here on TCR, no where else. Reasonably safe from being tracked, traced, and data based :-/
GLASS EYES WATCHIN’ YOU (song)
https://old.bitchute.com/video/8V5RDcAQlpR8/
Ejdoyle
I never saw a Mac as a kid but I know people who love them- I have a cheese grater Mac case I will put a computer in one day and it truly is a work of art. When I bought it it sat on the fire place for months just because it was pleasant to look at.
If your after a newer Mac you might look at the Neo- one of my kids wants to get one and I hear they decent for the price.
BTW it’s good to see your still OK after your health issue.
@Duck
>>…I have a cheese grater Mac case I will put a computer in one day and it truly is a work of art. When I bought it it sat on the fire place for months just because it was pleasant to look at.>>
Don’t know what that is?? Mac was in theory the VW of the computer world, the “people’s” computer. Tremendous amount of 3rd party software for cheap.
I still use stuff on my Pismo from the 90’s.
>>If your after a newer Mac you might look at the Neo- one of my kids wants to get one and I hear they decent for the price.>>
Nah. $600 is 90% of my SS payment :-/ I looked at the ad for it and it and it is the same old nonsense that has been going on since Apple started using 20 year olds with no life experience as designers. SPEED and weight. When Apple got rid of CD drives I stood on the shore as the ship pulled out to sea.
These kid designers grew up playing kill and shoot games on their computer. For me, a computer is a tool not a life style or entertainment source…that is the very thing I sing and talk about, to get away from the digital addiction and stay in the real world.
The models I have I can rebuild myself as I have done so already…new hardware, software, etc. The proprietary stuff they have now to force one to go to Apple techs is their game.
>>BTW it’s good to see your still OK after your health issue.>>
Thanks a lot. It has been a real challenge since April 16th last year. I’ve got my muscle mass back, Take no meds beyond a Thyroid pill. Only ‘symptoms” I have is a lowering of my Blood O2 level if I am up and about too vigorously w/o supplemental O2. Can go 2-3 hours w/o when playing music, creating videos, or watching the telly.
@Duck
After replying to you I sat down for breakfast watching the tube. One of my favorites is an Australian show, Autodidactic (self taught). The host, Campbell was a guest on a show called “Raised by Giants.”
It was another truly great episode and if you are an explorer of reality or consciousness this could be a very enlightening experience. Only an hour but way beyond the borders of common historical narrative.
Consider this one of those moments of opportunity that shouldn’t be passed up.
It is far more then the title in range of knowledge.
Tartaria, Airships and the Mystery of the Bells
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eH6ojgtOU88
New computer graphics are coming.
“This is the biggest thing since CGI” – Corridor Crew
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8yRlA7jqEQ
*Most computer power is used to create illusions of our reality.*
Zyxzevn ,
Thank you for bringing this to our attention. Hologram?
If this came from DARRPA it normally will have been perfected and used for 25 years before being introduced to the retail market. That’s how it goes.
Is there any reason why this couldn’t be so?. You know it must be considered now as it was flatly rejected as a theory in the big Crime , Operation , 25 years ago.
Next question, can it be a projection as well as a graphic?
One of the big reveals of the resent live test has been with the energy projection of an air craft Carrier that was 600 meters from the original for missile defence.
The technology changes quickly.
At the end of the video you can see how they talk with each other while being in different places.
For fake news media (like in Ukraine) it takes a lot of cameras and work. So it will take some time
before this new technology is active.
Yet we already see deepfakes that pretend certain politicians are at certain places.
The military is a black hole for money. I dont see them doing anything advanced unless they can sell it for 10x-100x the price.
News and US/IS military dont go well together, because they accidentally expose the warcrimes.
So these techniques will mainly be used by news agencies to create false narratives and possibly false flags.
Zyxzevn,
30 minutes was an investment in enlightenment. The news you can use. I don’t think news companies will be the only users . As you said for the truth or for the false-flag. The narrative is controlled by the creator for whatever the future holds.
Saturday I got a notice from my power company that drones will be inspecting the power lines and any ” threats ” to those lines that my property may offer. Trees , bushes and their equipments condition. They weren’t asking, they were telling.
So the location is now being captured as raw clay for the artists hands for any and all future narratives. I already have left a long trail of wrong- think and any narrative in the world could be constructed in minutes from what this giggling idiot is saying about this product.
These are strange times with new technologies and unfamiliar authorities.
The county where I reside in NY State is using drones to map all properties for tax purposes (so they say), plus the county has hired personnel to go to each household to interview the homeowner or resident. Super creepy to realize the control grid is already here. In the state of Ohio, all towns are part of a public-private partnership (led by the infamous pal of Jeffrey Epstein, Les Wexner), and all residents’ photos and vehicle license plates are logged in a state-wide database. For their safety, no doubt. I suspect all those detention centers supposedly being built for “illegal aliens” are actually dual purpose.
As someone who for the past 20 odd years has made the bulk of my income using internet connected computers, it may sound a little odd that over the past few years, at least since the world wide scamdemic, I’ve become quite disenchanted with computer technology and find myself moving away from it, even dreaming of digital-free existence.
I now see the digital world as a trap – particularly the ubiquitous use of smartphones. Even if the planned digital panopticon flops, as I expect it will, we remain stuck in a virtual world of endless distraction, scrolling our lives away, living under the illusion that we’ve never been more connected, while in reality we’ve never been more isolated, alone, staring at screens at home or into our little black mirrors while out and about.
Lately, after finding myself single again after many many years, I signed up to a couple of dating sites to meet other singles in my area. What I have discovered is shocking and demoralising. People are using AI prompts to pick their username and write their profile text. Even when chatting, AI prompt responses are often used. People increasingly struggle to write in their own words. When they do, grammar is terrible. (There are exceptions of course.) The worst fact is that virtually everybody wants to exchange pictures and text messages via this or that smartphone app, but virtually nobody want to leave the ‘safety’ of the digital world to meet in the ‘dangerous’ real world.
Is this not the real danger of the digital realm? That it becomes a substitute for real life and interacting with real people? That we waste our precious time, hours, days, weeks, years, immersed in digital distraction as real life passes us by?
Last year I read the recently released book The Red Shoes – Our devil’s dance with technology and how we can stop it – by Shannon Rowan (California). It’s a deep dive investigation into evolving digital technology, the devices and what it is doing to us internally and socially – and why we need to keep our distance.
She would make a brilliant guest on The Corbett Report to explore this topic if there were interest.
Kumro
Yes, tech 20 years ago made people more powerful and let them do and access more things. Today tech is basically a slop generator for the mind (and that was before AI)
Most people should never have been allowed on the internet because a normie brain on internet is just going to be more controlled and robotic.
Thanks for mentioning “The Red Shoes,” which I’d not heard of. Shannon Rowan also wrote “Wifi Refugee” a few years back. Both books seem to be available only thru EBay and Amazon– even the publisher’s web site sends you there to buy it, and they’re not in local libraries. Much like “What the Nurses Saw.”
Several years ago I read that red shoes are bestowed upon those who passed their Illuminati entrance test. I cannot say the source was reliable, and because the whole subject was so repulsive, I didn’t pursue it further. Recently I was horrified when I saw concert videos of Mark Knopfler (Dire Straits) wearing red shoes. Surely not HIM! I told myself it likely was just a fashion statement as he was also wearing a red blazer and red sweatbands (it was the 80s, after all).
Have fun camping, James… Hopefully, you aren’t bringing any laptops or fondle slabs with you.
I don’t see how we, the truth and freedom desirers, can eliminate being forced into the digital Panopticon, though I for one will not stop trying to thwart it. I pay cash for most everything, support local businesses and community, and don’t own any ‘smart’ devices. I wired up my house for internet, don’t use WiFi or Bluetooth for anything. I try growing food and learning self-sufficiency skills.
But I see how THEY are closing in on every level of our lives and it feels like they are actually ‘winning.’ THEY’ve made traveling so dystopic at airports that I would prefer walking to flying (which is not practical for long distances). So THEY win when we choose to not travel, despite our reasons.
THEY have optimized and finalized their infrastructure for digital identity and ‘vaccine’ passports, just waiting for the perfect psyop to coral us all once and for all.
THEY are making it VERY difficult to use cash for any recreational activities: Can’t go to a concert or sporting event anymore without digital money. Can’t go to a state park anymore for cash. Can’t drop garbage/broken appliances/furniture to the WM dump anymore for cash. Can’t shop in certain stores without digital money, etc. They are closing in despite a whole lot of red lines not being crossed. Frankly, it’s tiring…
I live on the social ‘security’ payment that I paid into with blood sweat and tears for 50 years, and it ain’t much. What will I do when THEY don’t allow any government interactions without digital ID and ‘Real’ ID? idk at this point.
THEY basically completely divided us all, so many of us don’t even have friends anymore after the plandemic. And the only way people are (falsely) ‘connecting’ is online. Once THEY implement mandatory online biometrics, a lot of us, including me, will be screwed. It feels like they must let a lot of us dissidents online as a way of keeping some kind of tabs on us. I have no idea what that will look like, but it doesn’t look pretty right now from my eyeballs.
♪Don’t worry. Be happy♪♫
In 1966, as a freshman at UP, I did my homework on punch cards that were connected to this very machine! My fate took me away from Electrical Engineering to musician and artist, but I am content with this. My mother was a technician there too, producing stacks of punch cards to document the subatomic particles created in the Wilson Cloud Chamber, which tracked cosmic ray collisions. It was kind of an Etch-A-Sketch setup that moved a cursor over microfilm projections. Commenter EJ Doyle may see this as a fabricated story, as he as accused me of being a kind of Forrest Gump character, with my unlikely tales, but this one is absolutely true, as well as everything that I ever posted here. Truth is stranger than fiction…
Hanky
Have you met my friends Metaphor and Fable.
James may meet them this week on Hiba. The Hibagon.
The Hibagon has a large nose, large deep glaring eyes and is covered with bristles. Theories to account for this cryptid range from a gorilla, a wild man, or a deserter from the Japanese chefs, to an individual ravaged by atomic radiation from the nuclear attack on Hiroshima.
Yes , I agree, but I would amend your declaration to
Reality is stranger than fiction. The lie here, finds it’s only place for amelioration in fables and as commenter Ethan Hunt told me recently , Metaphor. Lies are a lie but truth is lost in reality
Hankey
“….accused me of being a kind of Forrest Gum….”
The more history books i read the more I keep coming across the same people or the same families so it’s not that far fetched to be forest gump…..tbh there are times when I get the feeling there are only a few hundred real people at any one time and the rest of us are the back ground extras, lolol
I am an extra, or minor character, in your show. And vice-verse. The movie paradigm has skewed our contexts and perceptions. But it is also likely that the lenses that writers of histories use to focus, end up highlighting narrow bands of events that make certain people and families very prominent, sometimes accurately, sometimes embellished.
As to the ‘hidden hand’ and the serendipities, I have experienced some real doozies. (This Eniac thing is very minor; I was just gossiping, but not lying or exaggerating). Despite rejecting the religions that I have encountered, this ‘beyond coincidence, or probability thing, is something that has me declaring that I am NOT an atheist. I am OK with agnostic, one who knows that he doesn’t know.
I am pretty sure Tommy Flowers of the UK post office built the first general purpose electronic computer during WW2 but the machine was destroyed post war ti keep the cracking of Engima a secret.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Flowers
The problem with computers is that they are a tool that works both ways- they will eiwther make you more powerful or they will make people programming you more powerful…..surveillance is a problem but the fact that social media is a great way to program you via feedback is far far worse. An unformed mind exposed to the internet will end up like a Chinese woman’s bound foot, deformed.
Computers used to make us more powerful- giving access to new information and desktop publishing and such like. Now they are Super TV boob box.
You need to learn to maintain your own computers and set up your own services if you want them….there is a ton of stuff on the net how to do so from NAS to Kodi ti Calibre to everything else.
Thanks to the ENIAC – This is where the term “Computer Bug” comes from because one day a fly landed on one of Eniac’s hot boards and literally fried itself on there. Fun little tid bit I thought I’d share.
James: “If the would-be controllers of humanity are erecting a digital panopticon to keep us cooped up in their digital prison forever, then perhaps we will soon reach a point at which there are only two choices: eschew this technology forever and live completely, 100% computer-free lives, or become a permanent, digital ID-carrying member of the digital ghetto.”
I’m sorry to inform you that very soon there will only be one choice, not two.
Time and time again I have lamented and complained to financial institutions and other businesses that I don’t have a cellphone to receive their ‘text message’ to verify my identity.
There is a bank in my city that closed down personal (face-to-face) banking services altogether!
They want their clients to go digital or not go at all!
And if you want to go to a financial institution in person to conduct business, you better bring your computerized client card or you won’t be able to conduct any business with them at all.
Most here know already that many businesses are doing away with cash altogether.
Whether it’s a computer, cellphone or some digital card, we are quickly moving to that point in time when we won’t be able to conduct any business without some connection to the ‘network’.
I recently had discussions with three youngsters (on the phone speaking with a bank agent and talking to two door-to-door salespeople). None of them had heard of Digital ID’s.
God help us all!
Yikes , talk about a double edged sword. Mad scientists always come up with the best worst stuff.
“us non computer geeks…”
Speak for yourself brother!
Most major advancements of the 20th century were primarily developed for military purposes. The great technological leaps we made – rockets, computing, chemistry, jet engines, GPS, ad nauseam.
War is a great driver for technological innovation, and a lot of that trickles down to us.
Anybody remember the Unabomber?
Born in 42, about the same time when ENIAC was birthed. “Prison suicide”(?) in 2023.
Fun fact: One of his targets was a certain “Charles Epstein”. A relative?
Yes, we are getting down to the point where we have to chose or refuse digital ID.
Without the digital ID, soon enough we won’t have access to the financial system, homeownership, and services, such as internet, phone, utilities, medical care, etc.
I am all for living off grid and self-sufficiency, but without a digital ID I wonder how people will be permitted to “own” their land. I suppose one could find a generous landowner who would pay the property taxes and let you live there in exchange for work. Or, if you are lucky, the town and state might permit use of crypto and precious metals to settle accounts, but likely will need your digital ID in order to keep records.
Is digital ID much different from Social Security Number (ID)? I needed to provide my SSN to purchase a car via a certified bank check because any transaction over a certain amount is tracked.
Personally, I think we have already been assigned our digital IDs and the data collection process has been underway for years. Once they have finished tokenizing all of our assets, I am not sure that we will actually ‘own’ anything. I am certain that if I don’t pay my property taxes, my house will be taken away, even though I have no debt. I need to read Patrick Wood’s latest book and re-read The Great Taking by David Rogers Webb.