Burton was the first White House employee with an official Twitter account, preceded in his position by Jen Psaki
Luminate’s CEO is Stephen King, former chief of an organization that looks like, but isn’t exactly, the BBC
It’s actually an independent node for large scale media operations funded by elites in and out of government
Center for Humane Technology has a laundry list of involved parties, including “generous lead supporters” like the Open Society Foundations
…and, perhaps predictably, among “founding allies, key advisors, and community:”
This suggests what was clear at the outset: Operation Frances is a coordinated high level effort to do something dramatic to Facebook. But it further suggests this “something” involves a deeply trans-Anglosphere project to use tech to establish a single new form of governance.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
The story of 20th-century Russia was one of the intelligentsia and the underclass catastrophically creating unstable, unsustainable power by trying to replace the energy of the soul with that of the machine—something 21st-century factions in the West are now trying to do better.
Based on Putin’s various remarks decrying the collapse as well as the rise and rule of the USSR he recognizes this situation. Russia watchers would do well to conclude that under Putin Russia is reoriented to the restoration of its civilization’s energy of the soul.
Of course this would only be consistent with the broader pattern of civilization states that are digital powers scrambling to establish official theologies in order to preserve their sovereignty under digital conditions
#HumanForever is out now in paperback. Canada and GoFundMe dramatize why I wrote it, published it on chain, and priced it in bitcoin. Our political life is being obsolesced—to terraform our natural and God-given humanity into a collectivist cyborg swarm. canonic.xyz/books/1YV9yExb…
Neither paralysis nor wars of words or dreams will save us. Our sacred and natural humanity, and the digital rights inherent in it, must be actively, physically preserved. We must retake rightful technological control—the aim of a #2ndAmendmentforCompute.
Our rights to mine, buy, sell, and use bitcoin and cryptocurrency to create culture and markets; to buy and use high-powered GPUs; and to do so free from enclosure in a social credit system of perpetual search and arbitrary seizure—all inhere in our Constitution and our humanity.
For months I’ve been telling all who can hear (including Congress) that the Russian civilization-state’s response to the digital catastrophe was signaled by its construction of a vast cathedral announcing a new and deeper relationship between the church and the armed forces. 🧵
The catastrophe in its geopolitical form is the obsolescence of any regime unable to establish sovereignty on digital ground. This has to do with the Main Cathedral of the Armed Forces as the catastrophe in its anthropological form retrieves the theological character of reality.
That retrieval is due to digital making foundational and reopening once again the ultimate questions about who and why we are and why we should bother with any of it—our life, our humanity, our sanity, our suffering. Questions (post)modern word games and feelings fail to answer
“One technology created within the digital medium has arisen with a clear and already well-functioning capability to move us past the passive faith in algorithmic fiat that today characterizes the approaching singularity of weaponized information...”
“back into the position of human beings extending rather than eliminating our senses and faculties to conduct arms-length but trustably face-to-face collaborative work in culture creation and valuation. This is bitcoin...”
I think a lot about Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor, and Nikephoras II Phokas, Eastern Roman Emperor.
While I can’t substantiate it, the story about Nikephoras is that he wanted to canonize fallen soldiers himself and the Patriarch said no. Henry, as is known, wanted to invest bishops with sacred authority himself and was also negged, ultimately renouncing claim to select popes.
The question of whether holy emperors could take secular control of religious appointments appears likely to have come to a general head around the turn of the millennium. In Christendom the outcome expressed for the answer a powerful no.
Anyone hoping to function in a digital age elite must grapple with issues like those raised here. Many pitfalls and ancient snares, devilish problems for people losing ancient wisdom. So, a few pointers:
The emergent ontology of social injustice responds to the problem of how to assign blame and take responsibility for the behavior of machines religiously, by spiritualizing transgression. People/machines “are” racist/sexist/whatever, but what’s more, the -ism is a -ness, spirit
The insight or instinct that only religion can be authoritative enough for digital cybernetics—for the re-establishment of control over both humans and machines—is crucial. But the execution immediately raises terrifying paradoxes...