TUESDAY, FEB 14, 2023: NOTE TO FILE
Ain't Technology Grand?
The Tantalus field
Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS
TOPICS: DOING WHAT IS IMPORTANT, FROM THE WIRES, LEARNING TO PERSIST LONG TERM
Abstract: Go to any university campus and sit outside in a well trafficked area by students and staff between classes. Count the number of passersby who are doing screen time or have earbuds with a microphone plugged into their smartphone. Do it. What percentage are plugged in? If walking in a group and texting, are they texting each other?
COOS BAY (A-P) — The Tantalus field was a 23rd century device found in the mirror universe to Star Trek TOS's universe, which could be used to monitor and eliminate enemies from existence with the touch of a button.
Why should a mirror universe have all the cool technology? We have no shortage of clever apes in this one. A new technology has been developed by a Meta employee, but they decided not to share it. It doesn't work like the Tantalus field in the original Star Trek world.
It is a field that can be emitted by any screen. The outcome is that anyone watching it drops dead. This includes any mammal and most vertebrates watching (fish, for some reason, are unaffected), so testing didn't require any humans to volunteer (or not). Death was by neural stoppage, which takes about 2 to 3 nanoseconds. The viewer's brain just turns off.
Obviously Meta couldn't use this technology, or other social media, as their profits depend on increasing the number of humans watching screens, i.e. doing screen time. The inventor thought there would be a limited market for the invention, such as at slaughter houses as a more humane way to kill livestock, or for animal shelters to euthanize former pets.
But as any screen could project the Tantalus field, the inventor became concerned that his invention might be suppressed out of fear that terrorists or politicians might use it. So to make the most possible money, he decided just to put the idea out there to create interest, but auction off the design/device to the highest bidder.
Only anonymous bids were accepted. Only proof of ability to pay was required. The inventor didn't want to know who, what, when, where, or why their technology would be used, just like all other inventors of technology since the wheel was used to make war chariots to slaughter villages of nomadic foragers.
There's about 2,700 billionaires out there, not counting corporations (who are people too) and governments (who are the people), so the minimum bid was 1 billion. There was only one Tantalus field technology for sale.
Apparently there was competition among multiple bidders as the inventor paid 14.6 billion for their island. The buyer remains anonymous. The inventor lives in luxury, but those seeking to serve the inventor on his island are informed that there are no screens on the island. The island is therefore virtually uninhabited, likely only a few thousand live on the island, though the island airport has a number of military aircraft on the ready at all times to protect them.
Many claimants came forth to say what they were going to use the technology for, but eventually the public, even bloggers, lost interest in the claims as there were so many of them, and not all could be true (but all could be false). A few years passed and climate change became the biggest concern again.
In 2028 a claim was made that on the second Sunday in February the Tantalus field would be broadcast. The exact time to the second was given, and the reason, as usual, was given (another crazy idea, this one crazier than crazy, about a 'need' for rapid depopulation of humans). But nobody cared anymore.
In hindsight it was clear that the exact time was given to prove that the warning wasn't another fake. Some people remembered the warning and reread it. The other claim made was that any screen could be hijacked to emit the Tantalus field, and would be at random intervals. No demands were made that anyone do anything.
After the second use, days passed, then weeks and months. Enough time passed so that most people could again enjoy and profit from doing screen time. The few holdouts felt ever increasing pressure to be normal. Then, about half of everyone they knew or knew of, apparently by chance, dropped dead.
Some got rich selling glasses that would protect viewers, but each time they lost over half of their customers. They reincorporated under a different name, made more certain claims backed by more studies, and kept on getting richer.
It took less than ten years for the population to be well under carrying capacity such that species extinction ended and the biosphere began to recover. Another announcement was indisputably associated with the last global use of the Tantalus field. The announcement was that in the future some screens would not be subject to being used to emit the Tantalus field.
Humans would need to ensure that the screens emitted only information, with zero tolerance for misinformation or disinformation (hence no advertising or religious or political ideological programming). Information technology was also not for distraction, so pornography and other entertainment media as distraction was not provided for. Of course anyone could watch porn or reruns of Star Trek or play Russian roulette, but those who did became fewer.
Video lectures and documentaries had to vet out as informational in the interest of public safety. Eventually old movies and other programming, e.g. The Wizard of Oz, High Noon, and even an episode of Star Trek TOS, as part of a lecture presentation providing context at a certified library did not cause neural stoppage.
This was censorship in the raw. Only claims backed by evidence could be trafficked in and then only for consideration. The screens would only be allowed in certified libraries committed to providing information to those who would rather know than believe. In this manner, information about how the world really worked and how to live properly with it became better known. Hence the number of humans continued to decrease even after doing screen time was no longer the norm. Virtually all 32 million humans, post-expansion, became Earth Guardians whose endeavors helped biodiversity to recover from the Anthropocene mass extinction event in less than 20 million years.
Better views are as vetted by the nature of things, aka Nature, who is the determiner of what is information and not misinformation, disinformation, or distraction (which modern expansionist human takers trafficked in). Those who endeavored to listen to Nature, who has all the answers, were able to share their best guess as to what Nature was trying to tell them with others who similarly endeavored to listen to Nature. In this manner, those benefiting from information technology were able to use it without being used by it. In just a few generations, the ending of doing habituated screen time seemed normal and the best thing that could have happened to modern techno-industrialized humans.
