Comment by visualradio | Hacker News Reader

Comment by visualradio | Hacker News Reader

If augmented reality leads to neural implants it can potentially lead to an even worse dystopia if the technology is not open source. Limited access to resources may result in the coercion of workers into accepting patented neural implants in order to participate in an idea-based economy in order to accumulate any personal property necessary for survival.

Accepting such implants might then allow direct surveillance of thoughts so that all novel ideas which thinkers come up with are patented by private investors, implants also open up possibility of direct external suggestion to disable the ability of thinkers to consider whether or not they are free.

The highest value of thinkers is freedom of thought. Since thought arises from material conditions and living in a community allows more time for thought by decreasing the time its members spend on basic survival there is always a social \ political \ economic component which must be considered when building better realities to avoid simply accelerating the essential trajectory of a current reality.

> Accepting such implants might then allow direct surveillance of thoughts so that all novel ideas which thinkers come up with are patented by private investors

With the prevalence of cleartext cloud-based workflows (Discord, Slack, Notion, Google Docs, Github, ...) many people may already be living in a similar reality.

You just don't enter private thoughts into such systems. The line is pretty clear. The only problem is that if you want to WfH, it becomes nearly mandatory to establish side-channels for unofficial, non-company discussion between co-workers to replace neutral spaces in the office like the break room or cafeteria.

I think the only long term solution is to establish or work for a cooperative which does not patent ideas or which only patents ideas defensively to protect the free use of ideas for its members, to establish public banks, to levy distributive taxes on private land and natural resource holders.

Break room and cafeterias can be bugged, company phones and email addresses can be bugged or monitored. With externally controlled neural implants I'm not sure if there is any means of avoidance, the majority of the human race may simply end up as slaves, to provide extra brain matter and creative visual processing cores to a corporate computer network.

I would be surprised if break rooms or cafeterias could be legally bugged without displaying a prominent notice where I live.

That said, I totally agree about company phones and email addresses - those are under employer control and so could never be trusted, which is why the side-channel would be something like an unofficial WhatsApp group of a few co-workers who know each other well. Brain implants are not part of the threat model just yet, and I was sharing my observations purely in the context of my own recent experience.

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