“And there are those who claim that Big Data will supplant Sapiens and drag him helplessly along like a straw in the mighty flow of information. We will then be close to knowing almost everything we don’t need to know.” – Roberto Calasso, The Unnamable Present, 2017

Onerous it is and more onerous it will be when AI relieves us of the burden of knowing anything except how to ask AI the answers to everything. The weight of thinking for oneself, reading books, and living in natural reality will be lifted. Siri, Alexa, and the other AI assistants will usher us conveniently into virtual “reality” – an insubstantial world – where all anxieties will be tranquilized by trivia and the natural flow of time will be replaced by pointillist beeps of agitated inattention.

And most importantly: truth will disappear behind propaganda, for artificial intelligence and the digital world have been created and are controlled by the technology companies and government intelligence agencies that together with the corporate media are our controllers. Their mission is mind control, MK-Ultra writ large for everyone.

Calasso wrote the words quoted above nine years ago, and I wrote the previous paragraphs in the future tense. But let us get up to date and realize that the future is now, even as we remember that the Internet grew out of the Pentagon’s Advance Research Project Agency (ARPANET) in the late 1960s when there were many warnings that the development of digital computer technology would lead to repression and surveillance, not emancipation.

“Hey, Siri, why am I asking you anything?” is not a question that many ask today.

There is a reason the smart phones are called smart: they are designed to make everyone stupid, but only stupid people would fail to grasp this. Everyone has a reason why they must have a smart phone. Cram people’s heads full of useless information and watch them spin. Henry Thoreau understood this in reverse long ago when he wrote in his essay, “Life Without Principle”: “It is so hard to forget what it is worse than useless to remember.” Today, no one can remember anything, so there is no need to forget. The useless washes minds night and day. It’s here and gone simultaneously, the ultimate evanescent mind bubbles popping incessantly.

So what is worth knowing? It is a good question.

But it is superseded by a prior question: What is important to ignore? Censorship today is primarily accomplished by flooding people with pointless information. Therefore, it behooves us to know how to avoid this inconsequential data.

Surely the first step is to ignore social media as much as possible and never to ask AI any questions. Then to avoid the corporate media’s reporting and nonsensical articles aimed at leading audiences down the primrose path where “relaxing” fiddle-faddle follows the fear-mongering headlines. And to dispense with “smart” phones, which are the current surveillance and distracting machines essential to the process of creating inattention and stupefaction in their users. Laptop computers are bad enough, but at least one can’t carry them in one’s pocket. Smart cell phones are self-imposed cells the keys to which are not carried by their owners. This is so obvious that it isn’t. Behind such tools lie the gullibility of those fooled by their jailers. Yet to suggest the abandonment of these phones seems so ridiculous and impossible that it proves their power over those who can’t imagine living without them.

Read More – Everything We Don’t Need to Know, and a Few We Do. “Ask AI the Answers of Everything”… Censorship …