Voyager

“More than 15 billion miles from Earth, Voyager 1 runs on 69 KB of memory, an 8-track tape recorder, and code written in FORTRAN. It’s controlled using 50-year-old blueprints and takes 22 hours to receive a single command.”
~ Lisam Maia, NASA Explores The Universe (social media group)

Nowadays, phones and laptops with less than 4GB of memory cannot adequately handle their bloated operating systems and apps, and become almost completely useless without a constant WiFi signal or cellular data, unless you use them like an “old school” word processor or an electronic version of sticky notes.

Voyager 1 exited our solar system on 1977 technology with the power of a calculator or pocket watch, now having traveled 15.5 billion miles from Earth, at a speed of 38,027 mph, and still managing to communicate with us, without WiFi, cellular data, Bluetooth, and massive amounts of memory.

Relatively speaking, very little is required to launch a rocket towards eternity. Most likely, Voyager will continue its journey long after the earth, as we now know it, meets its end.

Dystopia #2: The hills

Traded my bus ticket for an old phone with a journal app. No service or WiFi. The bus ticket was useless; where could I go on the remaining $4.72? I’ll travel by foot from now on, journaling as I move along, from place to place, kind of like Marco Polo in Invisible Cities.

So, today, on my way to nowhere, I passed a scraggly looking man in a stained white T-shirt, torn jeans showing too much like a flasher, and a cap with “Sinner” on the front. He was sitting on the sidewalk curb with an old tattered bible by his side, pointing a finger towards the city limits.

I pretended to fiddle with my phone, when he said in a trembling voice, “Fella, watch out for the girls in the hills over there, they’re not fully human.”

He repeated the same to a straggler passing behind me, my curiosity was piqued.

“What hills?” I asked him.

“Down yonder, over there, beyond the city.” His crooked finger still pointing and appearing frozen in place, catatonic like.

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Invasion of the chatbots

Artificial intelligence is rapidly advancing into the various domains of online activity, mimicking human language, intelligence, and emotions. Without a doubt, we’ve entered the “coming-of-age” era of the AI chatbot, which is intended to blur the lines between human and algorithm. Our ability to distinguish human authenticity from the mere appearance of such, has never been so difficult.

What are the differences between online scammers, predators, and hackers? The web has been overrun by these categories of BS artists, ever since the beginning of the web, but much more so in recent years. The differences between the three are their nefarious agendas, which the typical Internet/social media/app user doesn’t notice until it is too late. For the more aware or cautious users among us, the red flags may become obvious early on, but this is becoming less feasible with time, as the fraudsters adapt and refine their skill set for deception.

Now, however, the AI chatbot has added yet another layer of complexity, transforming digital space into a virtual obstacle course of robotic fraudsters. The scammers, predators, and hackers are not always human anymore, or dare I say, “not often” human anymore. How does one differentiate between human and robotic, when the differences are becoming more indiscernible by the day, as AI technology advances?

And this is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. AI has already infiltrated the domains of social media, news media, publishing, politics, and pop psychology, with its generated clickbait, misinformation, and fake news, which now includes manufactured images and videos that simulate reality with a high degree of precision and realism, further blurring the line between authenticity and appearance.

Dad’s cloud

The local townsfolk call it Old Albert’s Place, located on the north side of the crater, near the bunkers, a few miles off of Route 18. “Can’t miss it,” they tell me with raised eyebrows. “Just follow the dirt road to the end. It is still passable, despite the winter rains last year. Watch out for the potholes and radioactive stuff. Good luck, mister!”

And so I walk…

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