Total Information Awareness

Before there was Palantir and Five Eyes and Flock and Ring and Alexa, etc etc ad nauseam, there was Total Information Awareness. It was a horrible idea then, and it’s an even worse one now, especially since it’s been turbocharged through privatization and financialization by our tech overlord state.

But what is ‘total information awareness’?  Isn’t that what the whole concept of God is supposed to be? A figure who has total information awareness? That’s what our tech overlords are definitely looking to play, especially with their obsessive drive to implement an AI-controlled society as soon as possible, one that they have the keys to operating and manipulating.  

It was a program first attempted during the Cheney/Bush regime, though when publicly exposed was quickly shut down. However, like the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird it never really shut down, it just got re-branded and privatized.

This episode is a kind of continuation to the recent Sauronic Eye (Ep.81), as there was an overload of relevant material when that one was first being inspired into creation. In fact I very well could have just made an entire series out of this theme, since it is so relevant and ubiquitous to our current experience.

This stuff also pulls from my own background in media and academia.  Some IAH episodes are just my preferred form of writing white papers and academic thesis. They're almost certainly more enjoyable and easily digestible to an audience than those. Especially in our TikTok scrolling low attention span soundbite age. 

I do appreciate how the program has become for some listeners what comedy shows have become in regards to the news - a source for more clarity and insight into what’s really going on. Though of course any information one may come across in these things is just one more limited grasp onto that overarching elephant of existence.

This episode features a number of things that are fairly new to me as well, including works by Interpol and Cloud Control (great name by the way), as well as Evan Greer and Ron Gallo, who is another musician who is using music and the internet as a way to inform and educate. My friend Nick Kizirnis also makes a return, along with Stevie Wonder and the always relevant Thievery Corporation.

Also included are some insights from a guy I’ve known since my State College days, Jeff Edmunds, who was in a band at the time called The Seen. Jeff did a really good Ted Talk (link in the episode playlist) discussing the importance to access to information. It's inclusion in an episode that delves into the ubiquitous presence of surveillance in our society certainly gives a new meaning to his old band name.

There’s also Morcheeba’s ‘Who Can You Trust?’, which is an excellent question at this stage of our massively algorithimitized, manipulated and surveilled information ecosystem. We certainly have to be deeply cautious of our news sources, especially those that have long branded themselves as 'trustworthy' such as CBS and the BBC, which have become rank parodies of themselves.

Thanks for reading this far in. It's time to let the audio listening do the talking. After all, the program itself is the point of all of this in the first place.

Turn it up and pass it on...

Listen to the IAH episode "Total Information Awareness" (Ep.84)