Undawntech: Technology That Is Stranger Than Fiction

Imagine a world where an insane aristocracy oversees the human race. Classic dystopian novels tell of such extreme societies and caution readers to avoid falling into the trap. The question is: have we heeded the warnings?

1984, Animal House, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, and The Handmaid’s Tale are some of the most popular and recognizable stories in this genre. As modern-day writers, we have seen the world fall from stable nation-states to the dehumanization of culture wars, sneak attacks, propaganda, economic downturns, and invasions. Either
the writers from a bygone era were psychic, or everything we are seeing now… was planned. Planned to keep humanity distracted while an elite class work on technology beyond any innocuous application.

Past narratives could not have foreseen the future of augmented reality, artificial intelligence, biochips, mRNA technology, or tracking satellites. By any other name, would dystopic smell as sour?

Let’s take a journey into next generation technologies, most being hidden in plain sight:

For instance, currently, Iridium Satellites can track wildlife, personnel, data and assets, as well as bridging the internet of things… this technology is real-time situational awareness.

“Iridium’s unique constellation architecture makes it the only network
that covers 100% of the planet. Satellites are cross-linked to provide
reliable, low-latency, weather-resilient connections that enable
communication anywhere in the world.”

www.iridium.com

On a mundane level, medicine has exceeded its normal perimeters. With new technology, comes new issues that medical science has no answers to give. mRNA technology has potential, but its numerous and fatal consequences have been obscured from public scrutiny:

“In this paper, we call attention to three very important aspects of
the safety profile of these vaccinations. First is the extensively
documented subversion of innate immunity, primarily via suppression of
IFN-α and its associated signaling cascade. This suppression will have
a wide range of consequences, not the least of which include the
reactivation of latent viral infections and the reduced ability to
effectively combat future infections. Second is the dysregulation of
the system for both preventing and detecting genetically driven
malignant transformation within cells and the consequent potential for
vaccination to promote those transformations. Third, mRNA vaccination
potentially disrupts intracellular communication carried out by
exosomes, and induces cells taking up spike glycoprotein mRNA to
produce high levels of spike-glycoprotein-carrying exosomes, with
potentially serious inflammatory consequences. Should any of these
potentials be fully realized, the impact on billions of people around
the world could be enormous and could contribute to both the
short-term and long-term disease burden our health care system faces.”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9012513/

Or is there more to injecting untested, unregulated technologies into our bodies than heart inflammation, other serious adverse reactions, and increased morbidity in the injected? What if, the scare of 2020 was to introduce tracking systems into the human genome?

Internet of dead bodies Bluetooth MAC address corpses

https://www.brighteon.com/41a1e7f3-ca8a-42d3-b201-f31e4a2c3189

In a novel, a scientist might believe the only thing the human brain would need to plug into technology like brain chips, artificial intelligence, and augmented reality would be a third strand of DNA made from silicon, but that is so 1980s and 90s technology:

Science: A triple helix to cripple viruses

“As scientists accumulate more knowledge of the sequence and function
of human genes, the triplex approach should allow scientists to turn genes
on or off at will, says Hogan.”

www.newscientist.com/article/mg13017644-100-science-a-triple-helix-to-cripple-viruses

What has grown from hypothesis and curiosity of the scientific community has transformed from the dystopic and into the realm of horror. Technology being employed to change the human race sounds as if the nightmare of Mary Shelley has been realized. The author of Frankenstein once wrote of surgically combining body parts with an electric jolt from lightning. Today’s scientists have gone beyond ethics and straight into creating artificial life forms.

Engineers Put Tens of Thousands of Artificial Brain Synapses on a Single Chip for Portable AI Devices

“MIT engineers have designed a “brain-on-a-chip,” smaller than a piece
of confetti, that is made from tens of thousands of artificial brain
synapses known as memristors — silicon-based components that mimic the
information-transmitting synapses in the human brain.”

https://scitechdaily.com/engineers-put-tens-of-thousands-of-artificial-brain-synapses-on-a-single-chip-for-portable-ai-devices/

As technology advances, external sources to manipulate the human brain are becoming readily available. Pull up a seat. Put on a cap. Play your favorite video game without lifting a finger. Mind and artificial intelligence merge through frequency of brainwaves.

Transfer learning promotes acquisition of individual BCI skills

“Noninvasive brain–computer interfaces (BCI) based on
electroencephalography (EEG) have proven efficient in applications
such as neurorehabilitation (1, 2), robotics (3, 4), communication (5,
6), or virtual reality (7, 8). Motor imagery (MI)—mental rehearsal of
a limb movement without execution—is a common EEG–BCI modality.”

https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/3/2/pgae076/7609232?login=false

As writers, we have to ask ourselves: are we already in a dystopian novel, playing characters, who unknowingly, unwittingly are about to face a critical juncture in human evolution?

What does this evolution entail? Will humans and technology as one creature relinquish our independence? Individual sovereignty? Our Constitutional Rights? Will we be considered homo sapien sapien? Or, homo sapien extincti?

Horror has manifested in our world. The horror that dystopia was not an end, but a beginning to the ramblings of madmen. Writers have the obligation to warn humanity that we have ventured past derangement and into the immoral machinations warned in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

As the establishment plays god, what would the dystopian authors caution us about? What would Mary Shelley write as her sequel to Frankenstein with the knowledge present herein? To be, or not to be… human with all our flaws or a controlled serfdom at the whim of a plutocracy? According to science, we are already there. The only choice now is preservation or slavery.

Isn’t that the conditions writers should be asking of their readers? Because no one else is giving humanity the time to think about the ethical obligations, horrific consequences, or generational ruin that these technologies have laid at our feet. It is not difficult to ascertain: the world we live in is stranger than fiction.

“No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.” Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

Has the road of futurist technology been paved with good intentions? Only time will tell what the intention for humanity and these technologies are. For humanity’s sake, we better know evil when we see it.

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DL Mullan holds a Master of Arts in Teaching and Learning with Technology. 

Her lecture, Spacescapes: Where Photography Ends; Imagination Begins, debuted at the Phoenix Astronomy Society, which then led to her Sally Ride Festival lecture invitations. Her presentation, Bridging the Gap between Technology and Women, won her accolades at a community college’s Student Success Conference. She has been a panelist at speculative fiction, science fiction, and other regional conventions. Her digital exhibition pieces have won awards at convention art shows, as well as garnered her Second Premium at the Arizona State Fair. Currently, Ms. Mullan’s artistic renditions are seen on book covers, blog sites, video presentations, and various merchandise. As an independent publisher, she uses her technical background to innovate the creative arts.

As a writer, DL Mullan loves to stretch her imagination and the elasticity of genres. She writes complex multi-genre stories in digestible and entertaining forms, be it poetry, short fiction, or novels. Her science, history, mythology, and paranormal research backgrounds are woven into her writings, especially in Undawnted’s Legacy Universe. Ms. Mullan’s creative endeavors are available in digital and print collections, from academia to commercial anthologies. She is also an award-winning poet.

Be sure to subscribe to her newsletters and follow her on social media. For further information, visit her at www.undawntech.com and www.undawnted.com.

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