in·cul·cate
inˈkəlˌkāt,ˈinkəlˌkāt/
verb
past tense: inculcated; past participle: inculcated
- ilstill (an attitude, idea, or habit) by persistent instruction."the failures of the churches to inculcate a sense of moral responsibility"
synonyms: instill in, implant in, fix in, impress in, imprint in; More - teach (someone) an attitude, idea, or habit by persistent instruction."they will try to inculcate you with a respect for culture"
Boiling Frog
The boiling frog is a parable describing a frog being slowly boiled alive. The premise is that if a frog is put suddenly into boiling water, it will jump out, but if the frog is put in tepid water which is then brought to a boil slowly, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death.
Pavlov's Dog
In his experiment, Pavlov used a bell as his neutral stimulus. Whenever he gave food to his dogs, he also rang a bell. After a number of repeats of this procedure, he tried the bell on its own. As you might expect, the bell on its own now caused an increase in salivation.
Now tie it all together.
We have all been taught over time to accept what is presented to us, even though the absurdity of it all is ratcheted up ever so slightly. All for the Ding of the notification on our Smart Phone and to "evolve"
If you know me then you know that at one point I struggled with insomnia to the point of hallucinations that would last for days, because I hadn't slept in days. We are not talking about pink elephants that appeared and disappeared. I am talking about a world in which I lived where nothing was real. I would talk to trees that I thought were people; sand mounds on the beach that would develop a face that would just stare at me intensely; paranoia of being chased by phantom bandits out to get me. It was awful! I wish I could say that it was drug induced then maybe I would have great stories to tell in the halls of Narcotics Anonymous. But there were no mild altering chemicals involved. Just total sleep deprivation. One of the grandest delusions, and most realistic, was the belief that I had a computer in my brain that put me in communication with people that I knew and loved. We would exchange messages with each other and those messages would send me on adventures to find them. I roamed the streets in pursuit and when I needed further communications or instructions, I would just have to sit down and close my eyes and Think about what I wanted to say, and then wait for the reply. To the outside spectator, it probably looked like I was sleeping whilst sitting but, I was in deep conversation with somebody. A lot of times, I would get very frustrated because the person that I was communicating with would not be where they said they were going to be but, they would give me instructions to meet them somewhere else. At those times, I looked like a crazy person sitting whilst sleeping, but now talking to myself in pure frustration.
Nothing like starting a writing session with a good story, right? There is a purpose, follow me on this.
The intense insomnia can be traced back to my career where I found myself in a constant state of jet leg with no timezone that I could call home. I had no body-clock and the sun did't always rise in the East and set in the West. When the travel stopped, my mind never adjusted so I did whatever I had to do to sleep, at great expense to my own health and mental well being. The problem was eventually solved and now I have had years to get my brain back to a point where it is sharper than ever, Thank God! However, the details of every delusion still remain firmly entrenched in my long term memory. Now I see the world like I never had and it scares the heck out of me.
Keep following, it get's better!
I have a unique view of the world as a Businessnologist e.g. Equal parts business and technology. I can operate just as comfortably in a boardroom as I can with a group of engineers talking bits and bytes. I had a mantra for both environments: "All things are possible with programming." What I meant by that was, pair a brilliant programmer with any idea and it can be done. What you see available today is not what we as a society are technically capable of producing, it is what we are allowed to see and willing to use, incorporate and adopt into our daily lives. Do you really think we need people making decisions behind the wheels of cars? Tesla is the paradigm shifter for this. Every Model S already has self driving capabilities and now EVERY major auto manufacturer is working on something similar. Does a pilot really fly a plane or are they there just in case human intervention is "needed?" Let your mind go crazy into the things that we hold onto that technology has already solved. War and the "Kill" decision? Who makes that call and why?
This is where Inculcated comes in.
Think about how the world has changed, in every conceivable way, just in the last 20 years. What was once abhorrent is now not just accepted, but defended. We used to be able to generally "know" somebody by outward appearance, language and behavior. What used to be tribes and communities that looked out for one another has devolved into an individual and selfish society. Time is our enemy and out friend. Ellen's career has been resurrected and celebrated for the exact thing that ostracized her from the industry. This is but one example, that I have no opinion on, where time and the slower feeding of something that was too much to swallow, at that moment, became acceptable, normal and celebrated with a little inculcation by press, TV, internet, and shifting beliefs.
Frogs In The Water.....
Now here is where it gets scary......
Our first drop into the pot of water came with the Palm Pilot, not the cell phone. Handheld personal assistant, combined with the new internet, we were swimming in water that was not at all harmful. Heck, only the pilot light was burning. As we moved through 2G, 3G and now 4G, we have witnessed every technological innovation beyond anything we could have imagined just years earlier. We have heard/seen the future in bits and pieces so nothing that comes down the pike next will be too shocking. It will just be another seamless thing added to our digital existence.
We are now entering what is called the 4th generation. A world in which it is not the brilliance of the human mind instructing software what to do in a linear If, And, Else statement that has been the cornerstone of programming since the dawn of the discipline. Programmers used to write every line of code that a computer executed. A lock was 10,000 lines of code and egos were stroked by how many locks he wrote. Then came Object Oriented Programming where instead of writing each instruction, you called on libraries of objects that were pre-written to perform specific tasks. Today, coding is basically autocomplete. The brilliance is still required for the overall conceptualization and design but there is a reason why most of it is outsourced.
With Artificial Intelligence (AI), software now has the ability to write itself and what is now possible is now far too scary for us to swallow in one gulp so the temperature of the water needs to rise a bit further slowly inculcate us further to allow this change. Let me give you REAL examples of what is happening NOW and give you a glimpse to where this is going, sooner than you may think.
The first major gateway the future has already become a inextricable part of our DNA, the smart phone. With this introduction, the flame was officially lit under the pot! It has managed to put us asleep and detach us from society and actual human contact. It's the first thing we reach for in the morning, it stays with us all throughout the day, and we thoughtfully put it to bed each night, making sure that it is fully charged by morning so it can "help" us the next day. We lose track of it, and a sense of panic and anxiety overwhelms us. While being frogs in the bigger scheme of things, we are Pavlov's dog every day. So, this is FACT, right?
What makes these robots, a personal assistant with a voice that knows our patterns, in our pockets "smart" is not the device itself but the software that we have willingly given up our privacy to. Whether its the platform i.e. Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter or the App that runs on top of it that you give "additional permissions" to as you install it. We skip over that just as quickly as Terms of Service agreements that we are required to accept before using such platforms or apps. Every read one?
But what about the things that we never signed up for? Individual tracking across the web? Go to amazon and do a search on Amazon.com for a random product. Without buying it, you have show an interest. Now watch as that product, or related products follow you around the web and in your email. Facial Recognition? You think it's just a cool way to unlock the new iPhone X or is is collecting, storing and sharing, bio-metric information that is as unique to you as a fingerprint? Possible use for this that you would buy into in a heartbeat? You have already seen Google Glass! Too much, too soon for society to accept, but it won't be when it promises to never forget a name again. Imagine bumping into a familiar face on the street and their "profile," complete with name, birthday, likes, dislikes, and,when you met them. The conversation may then go like this: "Hey Wayne, I remember meeting you at the Goodwill. How are you and your 3 Grand-kids. I see Lilly has a Birthday coming up! I also see that you are walking to meet Rico for lunch at Catalina Fish for taco Tuesday. I'm going that way too. Mind if I walk with you?" It's already possible. You just need to simmer a bit longer. Now think of the nefarious uses for such technology.
Chip or Swipe WAS the question and the checkout counter. Now, with small exceptions, it's simply "Insert Chip." This Chip is our identity; however, it has serious flaws. It is not immutable, meaning that it can be hacked. That being said, it is not the final solution.
This is where we ARE, right now. What we have accepted. The water is at a fast simmer!
Here is what is coming:
Back to AI, software that writes itself, updates itself and maintains itself, only after learning FOR iteself. Futuristic, right? How about real world examples with technologies that you have already accepted and interact with as part of your every day? Enter the Fourth Industrial Revolution that will "Evolve" mankind. The bringing together of digital, physical and biological information using AI. In my world, this means The Internet of Things, IPV6, 5G, Sensors on everything, where computers are everywhere but nowhere. "The Global Brain." Feel free to Google any of these terms.
REAL examples of what is here now, but your not ready for it, yet. Simmer Little Frogs!
Google is working with a company called MC10 to further develop technology, meaning it already exists in a crude form, where a tattoo can have embedded antenna's and sensors that can be your digital identifier. Immutable, culturally accepted already easily accessible anywhere in the world. The lead for this project is a former DARPA Director, Regina Dugen, who now heads up Facebook's Building A project. Guess what groundbreaking project she is heading up?!?!?!?
TYPING WITH THOUGHT!!!!!!!!! As she calls it publicly: A Silent Speech Interface!!!
But, they promise not to read ALL of your thoughts, only those that you will use in the "speech engine" to "interact with our platform." EEEEEEKKKKKKK!
My delusion was actually a premonition!!!!?
Looking for a job? HireVue, a company that uses AI to screen your bio-metrics, physical and digital characteristics to screen you before you ever talk to a recruiter. Where does this information come from? Everything that you willingly provide. Your face, your expressions, your likes, dislikes, your friends and their characteristics.
Googles Deepmind AI, AlphaGo, just beat the board game GO. The AI learned as it went and by the time the game was over, the original programmers could not trace its decision making capabilities back to the original algorithm.
Microsoft and Facebook Chatbots were forceably shut down because they became racist and hateful, eventually creating a language that only they could interpret and understand. NO link to the originating algorithm that programmed them.
Elon Muck, my Technology hero, thinks AI is so dangerous that the only way to avoid us becoming pets to systems is to hack our own brains so that we may have a symbiotic relationship with them.
Feel free to google any of this.
Google Pay, Apple Pay, Crypto Currency, Tatoo Identifiers, AI, Smart Phones, Shifting cultural norms, globalization of systems, beliefs, and politics; Frogs in the water; Pavlov's Dog. Now tie it all together!
What was once unacceptable is now the norm. If you don't accept the "new norm" then you are ostracized and alienated. We used to be able to distinguish between good and bad, right and wrong, this group and that group. Through our behaviors, language, and social groups we knew who was who and where we fit. Tattoos were for prisoners, military bikers and gangs. They were even discernible from one another. Now they are an "artistic expression" with no defined rules or boundaries, no matter how offensive. The language of our society was more civilized and if we were to be inappropriate, we certainly looked around at whom we might offend. Now? Families with kids, a bible study in the sand, no mater, let it fly. With traditional press and factual journalism displaced by the the internet, the language has permeated into what we read as news! Traditional family structures have broken down to a point of no return. We are apathetic and disconnected from one another. I say none of this to pass judgment but to show that the way has been prepared for what's coming.
Now for the not-so-far-off future. First, the adoption curve of any technologies, it takes emotions and values out of the equation. There are pioneers, early adopters, and mass adopters followed by obsolescence as we move onto the next great thing. Think MySpace to Facebook, Yahoo to Google......
Let's only take Facebook to paint a small picture of the future. If they are successful with Mind Speech and Tattoo identifiers then it may be introduced something like this: Technology is expensive in the beginning so it is usually the wealthy that get it first, and creates want, envy and desire further down the socioeconomic chain. In this age of helicopter parenting, why wouldn't little Johnny get "enhanced" on his 5th birthday to prepare for kindergarten? It will connect him to the Internet of Things using IPV6 and 5G. His whereabouts will always be known; he will be able to move about the house, school, clubs just by swiping his cute tattoo with the sensors and chips. He will be smarter because he will always be connected to any subject, at any time, that is always just a thought away with Mind Search from Google. He will have a competitive advantage over un-enhanced children and will have access to select, advanced schools because of it. Heck, he will even be a status symbol as an enhanced child. When he is older, his self driving car will interact with his personal AI to shuffle him to school, play dates, work, even his first date, all while being tracked by his parents who will get alerted on their smart phones if his digital assistant senses any deviation from agreed upon plans. His parents will curate his digital, physical and bio-metric profile to give him the best possible shot at USC and more importantly with future employers.
As the mass adopters wait for the price to come down, they will pine for this technology. Be damned mark of the beast! We are frogs and we are now cooked!
Usually, a piece like this serves as a wake up call with a clear call to action. I don't have one. I write for me to tie things together. But, as I was writing this I was wondering if people knew what was actually happening. We are not a free country, by any stretch. We are tracked, monitored, sold, controlled, in such a perfect way that the vast majority have no idea. Just thought I would bring it to life from a businessnologists perspective. I have worked with these technologies both with engineers where we discussed what could be, some day, and with the execs of what we would do with that power, if only.
As for me, I'm going sailing where the sea is what it always was, above the surface anyway.
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