A Public Service Announcement

Normally I ignore everything I read like this story via Crytogon, but I don't know today I seem to have hit some kind of personal proverbial "tipping point"....

"US military experts are attempting to create an army of super-human soldiers who will be more intelligent and deadly thanks to a microchip implanted in their brains.

Scientists believe the implant will vastly improve the memory of troops so that they can recall every detail of their training and become more effective fighters.

Researchers at the University of Southern California's bio-engineering department have created the chip, which acts in exactly the same way as the hippocampus - the part of the brain that deals with memory."

Ok, now here's the thing. There are people working on creating brain-implant chips for human soldiers.

People work on these things. Willingly. Just because...well hey, it's a job that pays the bills dude. These aren't robots or trained dolphins with no self-awareness or even prisoners in Guantanamo being forced to develop brain-chips under threat of torture. These are USC science students who just think bio-engineering is a really bitchin' field we know so little about but heck the Army sure pays us pretty well while we monkey around trying to get it right!

I mean, seriously though. Wouldn't you have to be a very special kind of stupid to say "sure, I've got lots of brain-chip experience...just tell me what you fellas want me to do?". And yet there are people who work on all this crap during the day then just punch out and hit the Appleby's for a few happy-hours before the long drive home to the 'burbs.

So anyway....if you're a reader of this site who works in a scientific field, or even if you know anyone who does, and if that work involves "brain chips" or "weather modification" or "crowd-control devices", or maybe perhaps you're being paid to "massage" certain data to ensure that questionable corporate practices or chemicals get proven "safe" for use among the public:

Please. Please.

Stop what you're doing this very minute. Just sit still for a few minutes and try to relax. Maybe listen to yourself breathing for a just little while. Then get up, walk outside--it doesn't matter if it's night or if it's cold--and try to find a place where you can see the sky, maybe touch the grass with your feet, sense the air that you're breathing. And while you're standing there or sitting there, and while you're starting to sense whatever kind of tenuous connection you can begin to re-establish with a wider world that is always stable and always just waiting there for you to turn off the noise pollution inside and come back and join with it...then ask yourself:

"Am I OK with what I'm doing? Really OK with it?"

"Do I know anything at all about the people who are funding or directing what I do?"

"Do I feel that this is just the way it is? That I have no individual choice in the matter?"

"When I was a young child, how did I imagine myself at the age I'm at now?"

"What can I imagine my children will think of me, when they someday realize what it is that I'm doing?"

And after you've let these questions sound within you for a few moments...go back inside and QUIT your friggin' JOB you MORON! And tell all those other freaks you work with to do the same.

Because everyone hates you.

I'm not joking.

People not even born yet hate you.

Comments

[JK]

You've gotta check out the new Propagandhi disc! It just came out last week. The song, which precisely shadows this post is fuckin' some of the best punk rock I have ever heard and felt.

Ladies and gentlemen: Die Jugend Marschiert

Enjoy! And get the disc!

[Kyle]

Now is a good time to have a conversation centering around those Nazi's who never killed anyone, but whose participation ensured the death of thousands.

I love Propagandhi, but I'm a "how to clean everything" and "less talk, more rock" kinda guy.

[DigitalDjigit]

I am confused. Are the above comments spam or for real?

[JK]

This comment is spam. But the above three are not. ; )

[S2 de Tejas]

Back to the PSA from deconsumption:

Right on, Holmes! This kind of thing
needs to be said. We engineers and
scientists are too willing to focus on
NEET-O technical issues while abdicating
responsibility for how our work is used.

I recently made a similar case regarding
the glorious military robot race in the Mojave.

Perhaps we need an cartoon rendering of the
"battlefield of the future", complete
with cyborgs, robots, space-based weapons,
and some engineers scratching their head
over their "grave mistake" in upgrading
the Murdertech kernel before testing was
finished...

Perhaps if we bring the subject up enough,
folks will start paying attention. Keep
up the good work!

[Cornfed]

But will the engineers be prepared to quit their jobs, abandon their houses and go sleep on their parents couch? I would be, but most are not. If you extend this thinking to other jobs, arguably it is well nigh impossible to lead a moral lifestyle and still survive in this society.

[Kylark]

arguably it is well nigh impossible to lead a moral lifestyle and still survive in this society.

Well therein lies the root of a great deal of our problems.

[Phila]

Great post...thanks. I hope someone's listening!

[Chris Ball]

I'm an engineer, and I'll say right now that I'd work on something like this in a heartbeat. Think about it: regardless of who is funding the research, this could be one of the greatest inventions in human history! Think what it would be like to have perfect memory, or to be able to do computations in your head thousands of times faster than your biological brain could do them. It would be revolutionary!

Consider, on the other hand, all the thousands of engineers who work on designing better guns, bombs, warplanes, etc. They know full well that what they're doing is ONLY going to be used to kill. Yet for some reason you don't mention this case at all, and only mention the case which is morally ambiguous because SOME of its MANY uses are violent. I mean heck, the INTERNET was originally designed for military purposes; are you saying that the guys who invented the internet are sociopaths?

[Steven Lagavulin]

But it IS the military which is funding the mentioned project. What do you honestly think they're interested in? Whatever the spin they put on it, it still has to do with making more efficient weapons -- although in this case the weapons are the human organism itself. The internet argument is irrelevant -- the military didn't develop the internet as a "weapon" (and again, the stated purpose for these "brain chips" is to make better soldiers), and they also played no role in bringing the internet into the public domain. That result which was not related to their intended purposes.

I'll also add my personal opinion that I'm not even remotely interested in acquiring photographic memory or being able to caluculate advanced operations in my head. In my experience, those things don't even begin to approach a real consideration of what it is I want and value in my life. And I don't believe they'll contribute significantly to the Human Experience of the species either. I believe those are mistaken or misplaced priorities. And I might further add -- and I mean this with sincere respect -- I think this is a widespread fault of modern scientific culture, that they all too often fail to understand the divide between their dreams and fantasies of "a better world that might be..." and the actual practical results of the things they pursue. Because of this, what we find in reality is that the vast majority of scientists (in all fields) don't really serve "human society" at all, but are entirely directed by the interests of wealthy people and entities; and those people are expecting specific, subjective benefits in return for their investment. Yes, we can certainly recognize some examples of "pure" scientific discovery, but these are far and wide the exceptions when we consider all of the "products" of the scientific community.

And for the record I'm not a Luddite and I'm not preaching that humankind should not advance in its knowledge. I'm only trying to show that one must always try to be considerate and responsible for themselves and their actions, and that a paycheck does not resolve one from personal responsibility.

On a different note, I would pose the question: do we really need to discover how to artificially "boost" our brain functioning? Or is it perhaps more beneficial for us to explore and learn to understand that functioning -- on a personal level and as a direct experience -- and then to consider why it is that it seems so inadequate to me? And then, armed with this understanding, I could begin to wonder how I might develop these functions to allow for a more engaged and a more satisfying experience of my life. Isn't it true that all the increased knowledge about materialistic-specialization does nothing to address this basic human striving?

A study of my inner functioning through direct sensation and experience is very much a scientific study. But it's one which does not encourage a feeling of isolation between my "self" and the world I experience outside of myself. So it's a tuly integrative science, not a divisive one.

[Bloody Spike]

That's quite the philisophocal approach to the matter. I agree, we should be made to understand our own horizens instead of augment ourselves to reach such a capacity. While I admit, it would be quite nice not to have to pay that much attention in my algebra class to remember everything, I think it is morally wrong to try and boost what we were given at birth through fate. Please exscuse any spelling mistakes. I'm plagued with horrible spelling and grammer.

[Wadard]

Hmmm, I'm all for science and I know a lot of development come out of military research. Give me stem cells for breakfast on french toast, bacon and maple sirup, but if the US military is doing this stuff it makes me kinda scared. They seem so fascistic lately that anything in their hands is disconcerting.

[Wadard]

Hey Bloody Spike - wnat to eus mya spellig and grammer chip soem time?