In the Cross Hairs

Here at the Galaxy, we often refer to the Faustian bargain, where a person trades something of supreme moral or spiritual importance, such as personal values or the soul, for some worldly or material benefit, such as knowledge, power, or riches. Now this may seem a bit heady for the world if video games but it did give us pause here we we read that AI is being used to play video games and that quickly master skills that can take weeks or years for people to learn. Of course in time computers learn to beat their human teachers. While this may not be a concerning it also seems that computers are now learning to play first person shooter games. While one may say that this is a simple exercise, it seems a bit like teaching your dog to attack the mailman. Why would you do that if, at some point, you did not really want the dog to attack the mailman. So why teach machines to become deadly snipers if but to kill people? I mean, who would want to do that. Surely not the people who bugged offices to win an election, or sold arms out of the White House to fund rebel armies? What about the corporations who kept pushing narcotics on people just so they could line their pockets, or the bankers who had the government bail them out after they gutted the savings and loan industry, or played Oprah, giving everyone a mortgage that they couldn’t pay for.

Perhaps this is all speculation and we should just relax in our easy chairs with our games and hope that the pixels we kill don’t come back to seek revenge.

The Plural of Media is Medium

how when there are fewer media outlets there is less and less tolerance for a variation of truth, a predetermined idea of what is important and what we value as a society. When there are many media outlets, there can be a variation and richness that can threaten the singular status quo.

It never fails to amuse us here at the Universe that we continually seem to keep falling for the same things over and over again. Adding to the list of lessons never learned is that every new innovation creates disruption. The printing press brought on the Reformation, while the advent of television with its three headed truth brought out a standardized idea of what was true, what was normal and what was reality. No one really realized that power until the Vietnam war, lynching’s and fire hoses turned on crowds of innocent protesters came spilling into Ozzie and Harriet’s living room- a waterfall of foul reality that did not fit into the black and white (well, really just white) reality that lived here.

What else would happen but shock, rage and violent reaction to what we saw. The power of the media pushed people out of their living rooms into the streets. Now with innumerable streams of information, why should we not expect a shattered explosion of outrage. Now we offer outrage in every flavor, in something to suit your particular need. A virtual outrage are us.

And yet, we have been her before. As we mentioned the reformation was an explosion of information available to an entirely new audience fraught with upheaval and belief that the end was upon them and that the world they knew was due for destruction. In a way they were right, for the ancient Greek work apokálypsis , our source for the word apocalypse, means a uncovering or unveiling. Perhaps not the end but a change. If every change is a death, then we are in an endless age of little deaths unless we understand that change is inevitable and a part of life. The only thing that doesn’t change are reruns. Better outrage than a life binge-watching others lives and not living your own.

Attention must be paid

Here at the Galaxy, we have a penchant for rules and arcane reverences. We hearken back with glee to Comden and Greens Lyric for “A good way to loose a man” where the female singer laments her being single while diagramming a sentience uttered by her last date, correcting his grammar. It seems here that here, from the depths of the 99th floor, we also have something for getting it right, While we may and I am sure often do miss the mark, we attempt to get it right we often miss the mark which we believe is different than not knowing there is a mark at all. It seems that in this age we have given everyone a “get out of jail’ free pass for their behavior. It seems that we can have riots excuse me- demonstrations (in which cars are overturned and store windows shattered) and that is just an expression of ones rights. Your right to swing your fist no longer ends at the instant before it touches my nose, but that line is now found somewhere after my fist hits your face, or after my brick crashes through your store window. We dare not hinder anyone’s expression of their beliefs and civil liberties even as they whip their feet on the civil liberties of others.  This is not to say that things like systemic racism, does not exist, nor that people have no reason to be angry, bitter. Yes, there is systematic racism, a police force does not decide to act in a racist manor in a vacuum. We must all be begin to look beyond how our actions effect not only ourselves but the world we live in. We can not pay workers non living wages just so that we can have cheap goods and expect to continue to thrive while others languish. This new reality is upon us with every flicker of our screen and demands our attention.