The ZDF team of authors Claus Kleber and Angela Andersen was back in Silicon Valley after six years and reports on science fiction that has come true in a report that is well worth seeing.
Frankfurt – Claus Kleber and Angela Andersen visited California’s Silicon Valley six years ago and shot the report “Brave New World – How Silicon Valley Determines Our Future”. Kleber openly admitted at the beginning of the film: “I wasn’t prepared for the energy with which things are moving forward here.”
At that time, self-driving cars were all the rage and new methods in genetic engineering. Former Facebook employee Francis Haugen had not yet gone public with her alarming statements. In the future laboratories between the university towns of Stanford and Berkeley, computer scientists and engineers went about their activities uncontrolled.
“Utopia – Crazy Visions in Silicon Valley” (ZDF): Intervention is necessary
Since then, a US Senate investigative committee has looked into Facebook’s practices. EU Commissioner Margrethe Vestager took action against Google and imposed heavy fines on the company. She continues to watch over the global corporations. Today they are known in Washington.
The politicians there, some at least, are now examining the plans of the large IT companies, some of which still sound like fairytales. In the new ZDF report by Claus Kleber and Angela Andersen, Senator Amy Klobuchar, a well-known representative of the Democratic Party, has his say.
If the author duo conveyed skepticism six years ago, but a rather vague criticism, they become clear in the sequel. This time, her combative conclusion is: “It’s time to (…) get involved.”
The first case study is Neuralink, a company founded in 2016 and owned by Tesla and SpaceX operator Elon Musk. He describes Neuralink’s product as a “fitness bracelet in the skull”. A deliberately chosen trivialization, because the wafer-thin wires and chips that the medical engineers want to implant in their fellow human beings are intended to enable a direct connection to computers and thus to the Internet. In Eva Siegmund’s dystopian novel “Pandora – What are you dreaming of?”, which curiously appeared in the founding year of Neuralink, all this is still science fiction. Reality caught up with the writer’s fantasy faster than many of us thought possible.
“Utopia – Crazy Visions in Silicon Valley” (ZDF): The end of freedom of thought
And the wiring of human brains is just one of many current projects that amaze, because they make utopias from literature and film come true in a similar way. Elon Musk’s boundless space dreams, deceptive
realistic computer worlds that overthrow any trust in pictorial information, Mark Zuckerberg’s flowery touted Metaverse. Immersing yourself in artificially created worlds seems seductive. However, customers should know that the necessary data glasses not only provide insights, but are also programmed to collect data. The thing registers the tiniest of human movements and feeds the results into the company’s databases, which then monetizes them as it sees fit, provided they are not restricted by the authorities.
Skepticism and objections don’t just come from outside the industry. The 62-year-old musician, artist and IT guru Jaron Lanier developed, among other things, the data glove and is considered the father of virtual reality. He speaks of “brainwashing” with regard to Mark Zuckerberg.
Fred Turner, as a Stanford professor right in the middle of the action, warns of Zuckerberg’s plans. He recognizes a tool for autocrats in the Metaverse. Even Elon Musk has concerns about artificial intelligence. Humanity has reason to be concerned. Unusual words from the mouth of the otherwise steadfastly future-believing, right-wing conservative multi-billionaire.
“Utopia – Crazy Visions in Silicon Valley”
Tuesday, July 19, 2022, 11 p.m., ZDF, available in the media library
Claus Kleber also admits an inadequacy in this program: “It’s impossible to capture this Internet of the future in one picture.” The author duo succeeds quite well, however, through montages of sometimes distorted recordings of society, culture and technology.
The topic will not lose its topicality. One can already speculate what awaits us when Kleber and Andersen provide another inventory of technological advances in six years’ time. (Harold Keller)
