Many decades ago there was an issue of Mad comics that portrayed a future time when everything was done by robots and humans had no function.\u00a0 One day the system failed. As it had been eons since humans had to do anything, no one knew how to fix the system.\u00a0 It was Mad comics version of Armageddon.<\/span><\/p>\n I think that is where the digital revolution is taking us.\u00a0 I remember when appliances and cars responded to humans, and now humans respond to them.\u00a0 When I grew up cars and home appliances did not go \u201cbeep-beep\u201d to remind you of the things you were supposed to do, such as turn off the car lights and take the keys out of the ignition, or turn off the oven and shut the fridge.<\/span><\/p>\n Cars, except for British sports cars, didn\u2019t have seat belts.\u00a0 Today a car doesn\u2019t stop beeping until you fasten your seat belts.\u00a0 I hear that soon the cars won\u2019t start until the seat belts are fastened.<\/span><\/p>\n When the electric company\u2019s outsourced crew failed to connect the neutral line to my house and blew out all appliances, sprinkler system, and garage openers, the electric company replaced everything on a prorated depreciated basis that cost me thousands of dollars.\u00a0 The worst part of it is that the new appliances boss me around.<\/span><\/p>\n The old microwave would gently beep three times and stop.\u00a0 The new one beeps in the most insistent way\u2014open the door you dumb human right this second, immediately\u2014and keeps on insisting until I obey.\u00a0 The fridge refuses to let me leave it open for cleaning.\u00a0 The oven insists that I open it immediately, despite my habit of cutting the on time short and leaving whatever it is to cook awhile longer in the hot oven.<\/span><\/p>\n Here is an explanation of how our electric meters spy on us and pass on the information to interested parties. https:\/\/www.paulcraigroberts.org\/2020\/01\/15\/the-digital-revolution-has-destroyed-privacy-and-made-everyone-insecure\/\u00a0<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n Self-driving cars seem to be our future, and robots are taking our jobs away even faster than global corporations offshored them to Asia.<\/span><\/p>\n What exactly is it that humans are going to be good for?\u00a0 Nothing it seems.<\/span><\/p>\n Why will we need a driving license when cars drive themselves?\u00a0 If there is an accident, who is to blame?\u00a0 The company that made the car?\u00a0 The company responsible for the software?\u00a0 What is the point of car insurance when drivers have no responsibility?<\/span><\/p>\n Perhaps it is true that aliens are living among us.\u00a0 Their language is \u201cbeep-beep\u201d and they are using our machines and cars to train us, like Pavlov\u2019s dogs, to respond to their command.<\/span><\/p>\n I can remember when telephones were a convenience before they became a nuisance.\u00a0 When my land line rings, 95% of the time it is a scam or a telemarketing call, usually robotic.\u00a0 Now, a man will listen to a sexy female voice, for a time, and a woman will listen to a courtly gentleman\u2019s voice, but until sex doll robots catch on, no one wants to listen to a machine\u2019s voice.\u00a0 So why the calls?\u00a0 Why do the telephone companies permit their customers to be scammed and their privacy to be constantly invaded?\u00a0 How do the phone companies benefit from permitting unethical people to destroy the value of phone service?<\/span><\/p>\n The same thing, I am told, happens to cell phone users.\u00a0 Recently I finally had to acquire a smart phone, because two people I need to reach only respond to text messages.\u00a0 They refuse to answer any phone, and email is so invaded by scammers, malware, and marketeers that they do not use email.\u00a0 They do not even set up the message system on their cell phones. If you try to call them, you get instead of an answer the message that the person you are attempting to call has not set up their message box.<\/span><\/p>\n So there you have it.\u00a0 Except for texting, which can\u2019t (yet) be done with a land line, telephones are a nuisance.<\/span><\/p>\n Growing up in Atlanta during the 1940s and into the early 1950s, you could not yourself place a call from your telephone.\u00a0 When you picked up the receiver, an AT&T operator answered and asked: \u201cnumber please.\u201d\u00a0 You gave her the number, and she rang it and connected you if there was an answer.\u00a0 If you did not know the number, you asked her for information.\u00a0 If you knew the complete name and perhaps the street address, you were provided with the telephone number.<\/span><\/p>\n In those halcyon days even in a city such as Atlanta, Georgia, there were party lines.\u00a0 That meant that you shared a telephone line with a neighbor.\u00a0 If you picked up the receiver to make a call through the operator and heard voices speaking, you knew the line was in use and decency required that you hang up immediately.\u00a0 As the talking parties heard the click when you picked up the line, if they didn\u2019t hear the click when you hung up they asked you to get off their call.<\/span><\/p>\n In that system, there was no anonymity. Anonymity appeared with dial phones, which allowed you to make your own calls.\u00a0 From a public telephone, the call was not traceable to you.\u00a0 This technology was the beginning of our downfall.<\/span><\/p>\n Dial phones, something youths have seen only in antique shops or old movies are still with us in everyday language. We still say \u201cdial the number\u201d when we are punching buttons.<\/span><\/p>\n Today thanks to technological \u201cprogress,\u201d it is much easier to invade privacy.<\/span><\/p>\n Technology is destroying us and the planet.\u00a0 The pollution from technology is phenomenal. 5G itself may do us in. The destruction of privacy, identity, and freedom by the digital revolution is far beyond George Orwell\u2019s imagination.\u00a0 Insouciant humans delight in the gadgets that are turning themselves into unfree people who are under control but who themselves control nothing.<\/span><\/p>\n This outcome is easily seen in China where the government uses universal spying to construct for each person a social credit score.\u00a0 If that person is a dissident, has bad habits, etc., that person gets a score too low to qualify for a loan, university admission, employment, etc., and becomes a non-being.\u00a0 Here is Soren Korsgaard\u2019s explanation of our future. https:\/\/www.paulcraigroberts.org\/2020\/01\/15\/a-digital-prison-is-being-created-for-humanity-and-it-is-close-at-hand\/\u00a0<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n