What is the meaning of the Internet?
How do human beings feel "on" the internet? Where do their minds and souls go while they are engaging with these virtual forms of life in need for energy, for supply?
This is an essay about the meaning of the internet, precisely, about the way it has taken our minds and souls away with some examples I found interesting.
If you dare to take a step back and become the "outsider" who is not connected, sharing their breakfast-lunch-dinner, morning-midday-evening outfits, travel destinations, new shoes and random feelings taking you to highest heights and to the deepest desperations known to human kind, in a matter of seconds, you might see the underlaying emptiness, the void we are walking on.
Bad Blood by John Carreyrou
Would this masquerade have been possible if the Mighty Internet, and its magical power to take people's minds away, wouldn't be exiting?
Would Elisabeth Holmes and her fake invention have gotten that amount of attention, trust, emotional and financial investment if the audience would have been better anchored in reality ?
I strongly doubt that.
The Silicon Valley Startup Theranos, the creation of Elisabeth Homes, turns out to have been fake, a "fake-it-till-you make-it" taken to the extreme, the dream of a summer day which will never be back.
A dream forced into reality, in the shape of a miraculous startup which was going to revolutionize the medical world but not only that!, it would have produced miracles and saved lives en masse, everywhere in the world where people need medical assistance and their blood needs to be tested.
But it was just a dream.
The dreamer was a pretty convincing woman.
She was called "The first female Steve Jobs" of all times. She even dressed and moved like Steve Jobs. In the course of my listening to this audio book, I watched numerous interviews and the discussions after the fraud disclosure. Specialist all over the worlds have analyzed her behavior , her way of talking, the low voice which some say was a trained way of speaking as to be accepted in that context.. While some do not believe that this pretense could be done for such an extensive time, others are sure of it. Some say this is a classic nutcase : the human Elisabeth Holmes was taken over and consumed by the mirage the hyped-up ego, the virtual machine which is probably hoping for a savior every day.
Don't all victims hope like that, in vain ?
This virtual world is so desperate to welcome a female Steve Jobs that they don't even see the obvious - she is not for real! The book is a masterful journalistic investigation, a sober look at the facts. The author did not only try to understand how, for God sake, could Elisabeth fool us all? He also shows us the reality, the truth we so often forget.
Kinds of Stonks (2022) - A Netflix series
Have you heard about the Wirecard Scandal in Germany? Go read about it! It's another real life case showing the power and let me add, deceiving but alluring power of the virtual reality, which like a dream is gone forever, gone there where nobody comes back from.
Kings of Stonks is a series, it is not true which makes it even more believable, because the degree of absurdity nowadays is touching the ceiling of the universe.
Oh dear, the Mighty Internet has created a masterful situation, a deceiving virtual situation, attracting those people who were faking it until they thought that they made it.
Surprise, surprise!
It was a fraud made possible by the Mighty Internet, by the egos hungry for validation, attention and power. The movie shows the birth and the oh so short life of a start up which turns out to be fake. Just like Theranos and its masterful deceiving face- Elisabeth Homes, the owners of this fictive startup manage to convince millions , take their investments, get listed at the stocks market and be paid millions while...there was no product!
Score : Internet: People = 10000000000: 0.
I'll go with the Internet here. I mean, who in their right mind is so naïve to raise castles on illusions?
Kings and queens of daily life.
Only humans are.
Quelle: internet by Sophie Passmann and Simon Dömer
This is a podcast series on Audible, with Sophie Passmann, Simon Dömer as commenters.
What are they commenting ? The interconnected jungle of the internets [sic].
The topics are varied and all weird, in the best way possible, the best of the Internet, that is.
But the best part, is the interpretation and the interconnections detected by Sophie and Simon. Sophie's mind in sharp as a razor blade and I love it!
She is a great speaker, her ability to express complex ideas in a simple language, the actual language of us the peeps, is really impressive.
Every new edition of the podcast is a discussion between the two , about a certain "event " on the Internet. Recently they spoke about the now famous "Dress", the dress. If you are like me, a spectator of the Internet (more than an actor), you might also be asking :
"What dress?"
Well, go ask Google. The dress has its own Wikipedia page as well :)
Another "intergalactic" phenomenon they spoke about is the "ice bucket challenge". Do you remember it ?
I do. I remember wondering: what the heck is happening ? Why all of a sudden, people I was having the impression were sane, were pouring a bucket of ice water onto their heads.... screaming because it was cold and wet.
I mean, what the hell was happening?
It was simply the Internet, again. The magical power it has over people is absurd.
This podcast is the best to watch the "Internet" with a clear mind and nice, dry clothes.
The culture Map by Erin Meyer
First of all let's talk about the author, who, I find out, has made a dent in the business world. Erin Meyer was awarded : Winner of the Thinkers50 2021 Talent Award with Reed Hastings and she is a professor of management practice in the Organizational Behavior department at INSEAD - the Business School for the World.
The book is sooooo interesting. It lays out a culture map, a way to humanly understand and visualize the cultural Babylon we are living in. In a very clear and understandable way, with maps and loads of examples from real life and based on research the mystical, cultural ocean becomes understandable.
This book is for anyone curios -to understand, to dive deep, pick up that pearl of knowledge on the bottom of the ocean and come back up with a new mind, a new perspective, new insightful powers.
The world is so complex, large and small, similar and soo different. I am mentioning it here, among all the other examples of deceit, as a reminder. There is truth, we need to stick to t, look for it, nurture it and pass it on to those who needs it and want the truth.
If you are working in a multicultural company, having to communicate daily with people born and educated in different cultures, this book is a must read.
Democrazia e potere dei dati by Antonello Soro
Even if I'm having a hard time talking about this one, not forgetting the fact that I listened to it two times, I find it interesting in many ways.
Antonello Soro is an Italian politician. His language is that of a politician - he is taking detours so large that by the end of them it is easy to forget the subject matter and what ever he was trying to make a point about.
In this book he analyzed the politics of data by looking at examples like : China, South Korea to mention just a few. Also, the systems behind corporations, countries and then continents are also analyzed. If you are still wondering what data is, well let me make it clear now - data is US, all of us living creatures of the internet are data.
There are powers out there, in the virtual world hungry for more power. How do they get their supply? They eat data!
What is the message of this book ? The message is : You, as individual with a device magically connected to the Mighty Internet in hand, don't have any power, unless someone or something bigger out there is using your data.
We are data now. What kind of data are you, reader?
P.S. I hope you are detecting the double meaning in the title, don't you?
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