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*طبك عليها ابو جي كلاس*

She was a gold digger after all

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We thought that, if nothing else, capitalism had granted us sovereignty over our selves, albeit within certain limited parameters. However hard one had to work, you could at least fence off a portion of your life, however small, and within that fence remain autonomous, self-determining, free. Leftists, like us, knew that only the rich were truly free to choose, that the poor were mostly free to lose, and that the worst slavery was that of those who had learned to love their chains. Still, even we, capitalism’s harshest critics, appreciated the limited self-ownership it granted us. For young people in today’s world, even this small mercy has been taken away. Curating an identity online is not optional, and so their personal lives have become some of the most important work they do. From the moment they take their first steps online, they suffer from two perplexingly contradictory demands: they are taught implicitly to see themselves as a brand, yet one that will be judged according to its perceived authenticity. (And that includes potential employers: ‘No one will offer me a job,’ a graduate told me once, ‘until I have discovered my true self.’) And so before posting any image, uploading any video, reviewing any movie, sharing any photograph or message, they must be mindful of who their choice will please or alienate. They must somehow work out which of their potential ‘true selves’ will be found most attractive, continually testing their own opinions against their notion of what the average opinion among online opinion makers might be.  Every experience can be captured and shared, and so they are continually consumed by the question of whether to do so. And even if no opportunity actually exists for sharing the experience, that opportunity can readily be imagined, and will be. Every choice, witnessed or otherwise, becomes an act in the curation of an identity. One need not be a radical critic of our society to see that the right to a bit of time each day when one is not for sale has all but vanished. The irony is that the liberal individual was snuffed out neither by fascist Brownshirts nor by Stalinist guards. It was killed off when a new form of capital began to instruct youngsters to do that most liberal of things: be yourself! (And be successful at it!) It has produced individuals who are not so much possessive as possessed. — Technofeudalism

traditional capital evolved into cloud capital, from a ‘produced means of production’ into a produced means of behaviour modification. The result was a new type of capital (cloud capital) which became a produced means of, on the one hand, commanding labour and, on the other, of extracting cloud rent from capitalists for access to consumers. — Technofeudalism

كل ستورياته وريلزاته بالسكراب والـ Dr بمعرف الانستا ما وكفن بعينك؟!

خيصيحلي كابتن عمي فد مندلة تعيين ممحصلين احنا يا دكتور

طبعا رأي غير مهم انت بالمستشفى وظيفتك تساعد ناس(مرضى) او ويه مريض وهوه جاي مجارع روحه سواء محترم او لا مو تتحسس من حجايه منهم

— Technofeudalism

Similarly with Alexa and other such devices. It matters not one iota that they are mindless appendages of a data-crunching network that only simulates intelligence. Nor that their creators might have been motivated by curiosity and profit-seeking, rather than some fiendish plan to subjugate humanity. What matters is that they exercise unimaginable power over what we do – on behalf of a tiny band of flesh-and-blood humans.

Machines, like Alexa, or even impressive AI chatboxes, like ChatGPT, are nowhere near the feared singularity. They can pretend to be sentient but are not – and, arguably, can never be. But even if they are themselves stupider than a wet tea towel, their effect can be devastating, their power over us exorbitant. After all, today, for relatively modest sums one can buy killing machines programmed with face recognition and ‘self-teaching’ capabilities that render them effectively autonomous (by contrast with, say, drones that must be remotely piloted by humans). If these can fly autonomously through a building, choosing whom to kill and whom to spare, who cares that they are not sentient?

ذَٰلِكَ لِيَعْلَمَ أَنِّي لَمْ أَخُنْهُ بِالْغَيْبِ وَأَنَّ اللَّهَ لَا يَهْدِي كَيْدَ الْخَائِنِينَ [سورة يوسف]