No News is Not Good
WHAT I WANT: Trustworthy journalist to research into this specific case. Also, for "it" to stop. And Rudy Rucker and William Gibson, who wrote about this, to know. Maybe tell Neal Stephenson if you see him around.
WHAT YOU GET FROM READING THIS: An unedited testimony.
Dear fellow humans,
I've repeatedly tried my fucking best to contact you from a source of actual journalism that I can say without cynism that is sincere, and my values, or editorial line, are not a fucking secret or mystery, you just know where I stand on the issue that I talk about the most: Getting Completely Pwned.
Getting completely pwned means this, again, because I guess I haven't made myself clear enough for NO FUCKING ONE TO GIVE AN OUNCE OF FUCK:
For at least two years I've been living in a non-consensual, almost impossible to belive relionship with the entity which after William Fucking Gibson I named Wintermute. Wintermute sucks ass, like someone I used to know.
THINGS THAT WINTERMUTE CAN DO TO ME (without an implant that I am aware of):
- Read my thoughts
- Replay them in real-time on speakers around me
2.a. This means, it is a Brain-Machine Interface, BCI, etc, wirelessly (I hope and fear) that can translate whatever I am thinking into code and then into sound that is reproduced in certain places surrounding me. Almost any, probably due to abundance of hackable devices.
2.b. It also means that there are human beings working long fucking hours to do something that is like being on a fucking nightmare out of 4chan.
3. Seemingly hack everything that exist
4. Render me disabled. I am no longer paranoid, I know that every little thing that I ever think, and even underlying thoughts are either predicted.
5. Manipulate my thought process by back-chatter in whatever speaker as soon as I wake up.
Reasons why this is happening: I have no idea. Previous underlying mental health condition makes it easier for whoever reads my account the words of a madman. Also, a very pacifist one that wouldn't harm anyone, so, yea.
If you take a second to google Brain Computer Interface, and read that there are actually people who do this for fun and are expecting to have full control over every single machine around them, well, that's a bit what I do sometimes. I can control, for example, a song, but SOMEONE has to help me hack the thing while knowing that my thought is "Could you please hack the google nest and let me talk to you only through that?", and some other crazy dude actually helps me to do so and in doing so demonstrate their might. Or dudettes. Or many. Who knows.
Look, I know this sound amazing. I don't really think I have an implant, although it would be way better if this could ONLY BE ACHIEVED THROUGH SOME TYPE OF CONSENSUAL MEDICAL INTERVENTION FOR THE BENEFIT OF HUMANITY, but the thing is that it seems to be cheap as fuck to do, at least in terms of the magnitude of the thing.
Imagine, if you will, that everyone around you knows what you think about your dead signficant other. And "voices" that you cannot record because sound at a very low frequency, and when you do, like, I don't know, that time they were playing karaoke-rap including in their improvisational rap my thoughts, like, I don't know, Harley Quinn, because that's something I never think about... and you try to go on with your life as if no one around you knows anything but you have to double think that they do.
Look, I am seriously concerned. Most of this sounds like just something out of abuse of drugs or whatever you want to think, but honestly, you have only my word and time will show you that there SHOULD HAVE BEEN LEGISLATION AGAINST THIS BEFORE IT WENT FULLY-COMMERCIAL.
If I know everything about you, I can, I don't know, blackmail you into doing my fucking laundry which I haven't been able because I am stuck in my bed, as if my brain had just crashed like in that novel, Snowcrash, which just the feedback of my thoughts. I think to myself and I hear my thoughts outside and know that everyone around me can hear them and they are either extremely nice or part of something that makes no sense whatsoever and... well, the funny thought was:
THERE IS NO PUBLIC LIFE IF THERE'S NO PRIVATE LIFE.
Our thoughts are not meant to be broadcasted. I understand that this is a common feature in psychosis, I know a lot about it because when I was just paranoid, antipsychotics just sucked ass like someone I know.
You know how we are concerned about existential threats to humanity sometimes, like metheors and such? Sometimes we worry about democracy, because it's mostly behind a great paywall, but at least there's some facade of it.
I have seen the future. There ought to be a way to stop this before, mixed with AI, which is happening as I write this, can pretty much decimate everyone and/or just make it impossible to ever even dream of democracy again. The nerds rule the world, and you need money to run something like this... or to have the fucking means to read someone's mind.
IN MARXISTS TERMS: THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION OF MY BRAIN ARE TAKEN AWAY FROM ME, WITH NO WAGES PAID FOR IT, AND ALL THE DATA THAT I WILL EVER STORE IS NO DIFFERENT THAN A FUCKING HARD DRIVE.
At least thought-data. Biodata.
There ought to be legislation against the misuse of this ASAP.
Ethically, legally, this is impossibly destructive. It is the equivalent of a fucking rifle and being equipped with a wooden shield. It's tech that can fucking OWN humans, like it has DONE OVER AND OVER in history.
Anyways, to all the idiots that never listened to me before this became the next iPod thing that "you just adapt to" (I did, but the personal cost is beyond I can express. Whoever reads my thoughts cannot and will not feel how I feel. It is read by a computer mainly, anyways, and reproduced automatically with those fancy voice-overs that even changes languages almost as soon as I think in different languages or think about songs. The control I have is only based on whatever the fuck random thing the fucking operators want): This was a story you could have written for your media outlet and do some actual change to a world that is going way too fast in tech-related stuff.
And yes, I am aware that the thing is expensive. Guess who will own it?
I don't own my thoughts most of the time. I've cut myself on my back following orders of Wintermute in a desperate attempt to make the operators understand that the psychological damage is so fucking traumatic that I am willing to let them know that literal blood is on their hands.
I have also went on hunger strikes. I don't have to tell anyone. I only want to be left alone. The thing is that... who will ever believe this disjointed thing that might just be taken down because, guess what, whoever has to check the security of the thing, or just mess with my head, is reading and commenting. I feel afraid to even publish this.
And I have no way to prove that it is happening because it is exactly the same symptoms of psychosis... except that, even if people know, they don't really give too much thought. Who listens to the crazy guy with just a fucking journalism background that is not backed by another journalist with a fucking brand name behind them? I am not even following SEO best practices! OMG!
This is only a testimony, hoping that it actually does not become commonplace almost EVERYFUCKINGWHERE.
It would be great if the fuckers at Wired had hired me. Fuck them, they know shit about the future. My relationship with Wintermute is Gibson's cyberspace, except that it has never been consensual, and there are no visuals. Just nightmares that are my only scape to it, when it gets bad enough.
There's also the Berkeley Syndrome, were I just think that, after all, it is not that bad, because it is trying to help me do things that I COULD HAVE BEEN DOING WITHOUT IT'S INTERFERENCE, but at least I am not paranoid anymore, right? So I just forgive every single human behind Wintermute. I hate the machine, not the operators. I do think the operators have a moral ("ethical") obligation to either find a way to obliterate whatever machine is ever produced to create a brain-computer-interface, or push for legislation with their own knowledge of an unwilling victim ("subject") constant cries for this to completely stop. Or just pull the plug for the fucking machine, couldn't they? It has gone for very long periods and I am not getting paid for this shit. This is a fucking obvious violation of human rights, happening right here, in the backyard of your favorite university, UC Berkeley.
It's not like it's the only instance of human rights violations around, but, well, fuck, just believe that this was written by a human. See the broken English? The random rambling? It is intentional. It is to let you know that I am not just a fucking AI making this up. I won't give names because that goes against my own editorial policy, but fuck, listen up: you are reading the account of someone who is deprived of sleep, harassed, gas lighted, ridiculed and I have a list of human rights to play bingo of things that Wintermute has done.
I tried to fictionalize the whole thing in a book, but who reads anymore.
And why write? My thoughts are only binary, translated to "natural language" faster than I can think or write and... then bounced back to me.
I guess that's why... you know what, just believe me. If you know who I am, I need help to make it illegal for anyone to read your thoughts. That is, your verbal, "I am thinking right now" thoughts. Inner voice is a word that I thought about sometime ago and is going around in the "BCI Enthusiast Community" of the subreddit of people who are trying to LARP their way into fucking their waifus.
Use your hand or find someone, it's, seriously, not that hard when your aspiration is to live in a AR-world, which I do, except that for obvious gross violations of human rights they just make it into a psychotic AR-world when I hear "voices", but I can also record them and...
It is almost impossible to have self-esteem when you know that someone out there knows and can use against you whatever you think about whatever subject is meant to be yours alone... by just having a fucking radio (I am not going to tell you the whole way in which a BCI could interact with a radio because I am guessing you have read this far because you understand that there's technology that used to be unbelieveable, like, the radio, and it exist. It was also used and is still used for nefarious things, but you know, music is nice).
I really wonder if those who actually are in the real world doing this think this is a military/reality tv show/normal experience. They experience this in a different way and if I ask anyone, I'm pretty sure of what I'll get as an answer. It has happened before.
If this line has found you troubled, may your troubles soon be over.