AFP tells us regarding the current Consumer Electronics Show (CES):
>>Tech is the new religion, offering hope of salvation in a troubled world as industry leaders converge in Las Vegas this week.
Technology will not just help us communicate better and give us bolder and brighter screens. It is promising to end urban congestion, treat cancer and depression, and help us live fitter and more productive lives.
As tech industry players large and small converge for the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show, an overriding theme is that gizmos, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and super-fast internet connections hold answers to many if not all ills, the new religion.>>
Now, let us cross that with some concerns UD President, BA, has just drawn our attention to, as was reported by The Federalist:
>>The lawsuit James Damore filed against Google on Monday provides a fascinating glimpse into the way the company and many of its employees see the workplace in terms of a demographic hierarchy, and what happens to those who diverge from the consensus view.
Details from diversity training sessions, accounts of alleged reverse discrimination, and screenshots of internal communications on company forums and message boards in the lawsuit cast the company culture as extremely hostile to employees with unpopular opinions, especially heterosexuals, men, white people, and those who hold conservative views . . . .
In screenshots laid out in the lawsuit, “Googlers” as they call themselves, talk openly of blacklisting and purging the company of employees whose views or identities are deemed outside the bounds. Employees were allowed to award those who spoke out against Damore’s memo “peer bonuses” — a company kudos of sorts monitored by the “Google Recognition Team.”
“We want to be inclusive of people not ideas” one employee identified as Alon Altman wrote in a message included in the lawsuit. Damore says that sentiment was backed up at an Inclusion and Diversity Summit he attended in June, when he was told by Google employees the company does not value “viewpoint diversity,” but actively strives for “demographic diversity.”
The lawsuit succeeds in suggesting a sharply divisive worldview pervades Google, in which those deemed worthy of tolerating (women, minorities, transgenders, etc.) are to be protected and agreed with at all costs — the recipients of unbridled compassion and understanding — while those who fall outside the bounds are to be ruthlessly disowned and expelled.>>
What does this tell us about where subjectivism, relativism and “consensus” imposition can go? Given the history of Stalinist Russia, the Red Guards of Maoist China and the totalitarianism of Nazi Germany (especially the fate of Sophie Scholl and her fellow White Rose martyrs), what should we be thinking?
Should we implicitly trust Google to be fair, responsible, balanced and accurate as the number one web site and search engine? Or has Google now joined Wikipedia in the circles of manipulative, soft nihilist digital empires? END
PS: There is a report of the literal founding of a Tech Religion by one of the elite. (It seems that some are taking a Sci Fi theme several stages too far.) Here is Times of London:
>>Tech pioneer Anthony Levandowski founds new religion to worship AI god
Young people are often accused of worshipping technology and will now have a chance to do so for real after a Silicon Valley millionaire founded a new religion with artificial intelligence as its god.
Taking inspiration from the belief that the intelligence of computers will eventually surpass that of human beings, the man who helped to design driverless cars for Google aims to create a new god based on computerised artificial intelligence, or AI.
Anthony Levandowski, the engineer at the centre of a lawsuit between Google and Uber, founded an organisation called Way of the Future . . . >>