When you understand that most of what appears to be going on in the Empire of Lies is a boondoggle, you lose your fears about what might be… or not be. I’ll save you Googling it –
“The term “boondoggle” refers to protracted government or corporate projects involving large numbers of people and usually heavy expenditure, where at some point, the key operators, having realized that the project will never work, are still reluctant to bring this to the attention of their superiors. Generally there is an aspect of ‘going through the motions’ —for example, continuing research and development—as long as funds are available to keep paying the researchers’ and executives’ salaries.
“The situation can be allowed to continue for what seems like unreasonably long periods, as senior management are often reluctant to admit that they allowed a failed project to go on for so long. In many cases, the actual device itself may eventually work, but not well enough to ever recoup its development costs.”
In some respects, boondoggle refers to how the clever but unscrupulous fleece those with bags of money, whether they earned those bags of money themselves on the stock market, or whether they have access to taxpayers’ monies.
I believe that AI is a boondoggle. My own personal experience of it tells me that is nowhere near – or even near to near – fit for purpose. I’ve met more intelligent Speak Your Weight machines. If it was a child, it would still be in the kindergarten, let alone a godlike being ready to take over the world.
I believe that much of what Elon Musk and his family get up to is a boondoggle, that takes advantage of a failing American defence industry which has the money, but not the brains, to work out how to defeat its ‘enemy’ Russia, the war against which, either hot or cold, is in itself a boondoggle.
The Muskuvites live in a science fiction fantasy world where everything has ‘potential’, but little of that potential is ever realised. Even Musk’s cars, which he sells on the back of the Green New Deal (in itself a boondoggle), rely on electricity, which in turn relies on the big bad bogeyman fossil fuels.
It sometimes seems to me that the whole world just consists of boondoggles hanging off boondoggles, like baubles hanging off a Christmas tree.
We worry about the Transhuman Agenda… well, I don’t think we should. Elon Musk’s Neuralink – a chip to be implanted in human brains – is a long way from being workable. Even when it was launched, to a great fanfare about it’s ‘potential’, it was just a copy of something that was already out there, and it hasn’t got any further off the drawing board since then.
I’m not saying Musk doesn’t or hasn’t made anything useful. He has. There’s Starlink for example. (I’ve written an article here about how his work with SpaceX is making him a major player in the space race). And I’m glad he bought Twitter because now I can say what I think on that platform. But mostly, I think he’s a juggler – he knows how to juggle his way through the boondoggles, which is an admirable skill! But much more of the Brave New World for which he’s raising money will ever come about, we’ll have to wait to see. Perhaps it will always just be in a state of ‘potential’, for people with more money than good sense to invest in.
Annie Dieu-Le-Veut 
We’re not as real as I’d like. We’re just not as far gone as they’d like. I’d imagine it must be this way across the pond, but proximity to Portland (or London for you lot?) magnifies the peer reviewed stupidity of the cosmopolitan. Four or five towns away the instance of visible Liberalism (or whatever) is slowly confined to those irritating yard signs. A few towns further and we live up to the unofficial State motto.
It’s been an unseasonably warm winter. I don’t know who they put in charge of doing the weather this year, but the South got our big chills. Which of course they have no infrastructure for – folk actually die. And they buried New York, which isn’t thoroughly freakish till you reckon how New York got 55 inches inside of a few days and New England got off with grid failure but not much, normally the patterns, yknow, track. I got a few inches, now melted, and a few brisk mornings. But I’m sweating by eveningtide.
But that’s enough out of me. I’m off to microwave my tinfoil hat to see if science is still a thing. La-dee-da.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Very glad to hear that the people of Maine are still plugged into reality. There’s nothing like not being able to afford to put on the central heating in winter to bring one down to Earth!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Growing up, in my town and home, the word “Boondoggle ” referred to a thing to complicated for one to bother naming, or understanding.
It’s been my favourite word to teach my son, so far.
But seriøsly. I guess for me, personally, its the intent – or perhaps lack of intentionality- that worries me. Like children with toys the alternatives to our elites, so-called, seem more like children with toys. Fuelled by circuitous logic they do because they can, and perceive no higher telos than capacity. There is no apparent transcendence, much less telos, to “trans””humanism. ” Simply human, all too human, except *more.* Rather than expunge human weaknesses, things like meta seems to accentuate them.
As a result, at least where I am, the flesh is weak but the spirit isn’t even that willing. Nobody i know wants virtual reality, or to be plugged into a, wait for it, boondaggle. They’re worried about bills. I think the simulacræ and hyperrealities have gone too far and outweighed their welcome.
But that’s just me, in Maine. I’m sure experiences vary.
LikeLike