It’s Not a Social Dilemma – It’s the Calculated Destruction of the Social [Part I]

October 28, 2020

By Cory Morningstar

 

Part one of a three-part investigative series. [Part 2] [Part 3]

 

Introduction by Michael Swifte, WKOG collective:

 

“The ruling class, with full knowledge of the technocratic plans being implemented, have fashioned a false narrative of our unpleasant choices in living with ever expanding digital ‘social’ networks and the force that is exercised by those who control the ‘social’. Klaus Schwab sits at the refashioned locus of globalist power, the helm at which the captains of stakeholder capitalism command and refashion the consumer economy, accelerated under lockdowns, amplified by the control and manipulation of data and the production of fear. Here Cory Morningstar in her usual richly detailed fashion illustrates the extensive networks and interrogates the heavily constructed statements that signify the growing political will for the management of global populations under the banner of the ‘great reset’ and the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Imagine the feeling of the strands of a fishing net being pulled ever more tightly against your skin. Now imagine that there is only one way for you and the shoal of which you are a part to escape. Morningstar shows that technology will not deliver efficiencies or reduce consumption, but rather, like highways that continue to widen, they will only bring further destruction and demand on resources.”

 

 

The Social Dilemma Documentary

Released by Netflix on September 9, 2020, the documentary “The Social Dilemma” was, in extremely short order, trending on the streaming platform. The Social Dilemma became a social contagion, highlighted by media outlets across the spectrum, including Forbes. On September 18, 2020, The Independent praised the film as “the most important documentary of our times”. On October 21, 2020, it was reported that 38 million Netflix subscribers had viewed the film.

Other words for dilemma include “predicament”, “quandary”, “plight”, “bind” and “embarrassment”.

The film is described by Netflix as a “documentary–drama hybrid explor[ing] the dangerous human impact of social networking, with tech experts sounding the alarm on their own creations.” Yet, in today’s world of foundation-funded film and media, what is not disclosed, is more often than not, far more important than what is. Such is the case with The Social Dilemma.

“A compilation of interviews, interspersed with a fictional film, this documentary is not as effective as it wanted to be, and definitely not as informative as it should be.”

 

— Sept 9, 2020, The Social Dilemma On Netflix Review: Doesn’t Say More Than You Already, Probably, Know On Addiction, Social Media, And Civil War

With capitalism destroying the planet, the false premise of “stakeholder capitalism” has been rolled out via media channels in order to permeate the public psyche. This can be more aptly described as a rebranding, marketing strategy. The goal being for the corporatocracy, insulated by the ruling class, to retain the social licence required, to continue their plunder of the planet. With the Fourth Industrial Revolution unleashed against a “growing public backlash against technology“, recognized as both a threat and hurdle by the World Economic Forum (January 16, 2018), one must contemplate if The Social Dilemma is to inhumane technology what “stakeholder capitalism” is to inhumane capitalism. An assurance of protection against harm that cannot be negotiated – in order to mitigate concern and quell dissent. In order to build and maintain the acquiescence of the global citizenry. And the answer to such contemplation, is – yes.

Let’s begin.

 

Center for Humane Technology, formerly called “Time Well Spent”

“Never before has a small sector had so much power over the entire World, to monitor the present and predict future behaviours of not just individuals, but entire populations. The problem is more alarming when we consider how the public and private sectors are merging in joint ventures in a quest for global domination, penetrating every government, every citizen movement, mediating every action in every connected person’s life through digital devices and data collection.”

 

— July, 2018, Defining the problem: digital colonialism and technological feuds

Consider the documentary’s protagonist and driving force Tristan Harris, who made Fortune’s 40 Under 40 list in 2018. In November 2011, Google acquired the Apture start-up founded by Harris for an undisclosed amount thought to be between 10-20 million USD. At this same time, Harris took the position of project manager at Google. In April 2013, Google would assign Harris the new title of “Design Ethicist & Product Philosopher.” In 2013, while working for Google (Harris would work for Google from November 2011 to January 2016), Harris and Aza Raskin (interface designer and entrepreneur, Forbes 30 Under 30, 2012), co-founded “Time Well Spent”, a term coined by Harris with social scientist Joe Edelman. James Williams and filmmaker Max Stossel (named by Forbes as one of the best storytellers of the year, 2016), are also co-founders of Time Well Spent. Stossel’s clients include Caterpillar, a gross violator of human rights, for its #TogetherStronger campaign, and National Geographic (a leading entity in the charge to monetize the planet’s “ecosystem services”). Prior to co-founding the Time Well Spent campaign, Williams worked at Google for over a decade, receiving the Founder’s Award, the corporation’s highest honour, for his work on search advertising and tools. Following the founding of Time Well Spent, on December 1, 2014 Harris would deliver a talk at TED Brussels.

“Harris hopes that companies will offer a healthier alternative to the current diet of tech junk food—perhaps at a premium price.”

 

— The Atlantic, November 2016 issue

On July 26, 2017, Nicholas Thompson, editor-in-chief at *WIRED, would publish an interview with Harris discussing Time Well Spent. This same day, *TED media would simultaneously release a TED talk by Harris recorded in April, 2017. Also in 2017, (April 7), Thrive Global, launched five months prior by media mogul Arianna Huffington, would publish its first two Time Well Spent articles on its website, authored by Harris. This same day, Thrive Global would announce the upcoming appearance of Harris, on 60 Minutes with Anderson Cooper which took place on April 9, 2017.

[*Here we can add that Peter Schwartz, scenario mastermind for Rockefeller, Shell, World Economic Forum, U.S. Secretary of Defense, etc., serving as Senior Vice President Strategic Planning for Salesforce, invested in Wired at its inception. Marc Benioff, founder and CEO of Salesforce serves as a member of the World Economic Forum Board of Trustees, and the inaugural Chair of World Economic Forum’s Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution in San Francisco. TED is owned and curated by Chris Anderson, spouse of Jacqueline Novogratz, named by Forbes as one of “100 Greatest Living Business Minds” in 2017, founder and CEO of Acumen investments, and a pioneer of social impact investing.]

“Harris hopes to create a Time Well Spent certification—akin to the leed seal or an organic label—that would designate software made with those values in mind.”

 

— The Atlantic, November 2016 issue

 

“For many entrepreneurs, this epiphany has come with age, children, and the peace of mind of having several million in the bank.”

 

— Soren Gordhamer, founder of Wisdom 2.0

 

January 25, 2018, Davos, “Future Shocks: Rogue Technology in the Fourth Industrial Revolution”: “Nicholas Thompson, Editor-in-Chief, Wired Magazine; Marcus Souza, Secretary of Innovation and New Business, Ministry of Industry, Foreign Trade and Service of Brazil; Feng Zhang, James and Patricia Poitras Professor in Neuroscience, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Mary Cummings, Director, Humans and Autonomy Lab (HAL), Duke University; Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, Salesforce; Peter Thomson, United Nations Special Envoy for the Ocean” [Source: Salesforce]

 

 

 

 

The simultaneous TED and WIRED media coverage would amplify the increasing exposure, catapulting Harris – along with the “Time Well Spent movement” into the spotlight. Approximately six months later, on February 4, 2018, Time Well Spent was renamed the Center for Humane Technology (CHT). (The Time Well Spent Twitter account has remained inactive since February 12, 2018.)

 

 

On May 23, 2018, Harris attended the Tech for Good summit in Paris, at the invitation of President Macron. On May 15, 2019, Harris would attend the second Tech for Good summit. Following the very white ensemble of industry leaders and heads of states, just days later, on May 18, 2019, the Yellow Vests anti-government protests across France would commence for the 27th week in a row. Fully demonstrating his aspirations for the good and well-being of citizens, Macron’s riot police would use tear gas and violence to disperse the crowds. [“According to the French Mediapart website, 11 people were killed, five lost their hands due to use of grenades and 23 lost their eyesight. Some 2,000 people were injured at the demonstrations. Of them 268 people suffered head injuries, 15 hand injuries, 64 body injuries, 26 back injuries and 106 leg injuries.”][Source]

The 2020 Tech for Good Summit, organized by Roar Media, will take place on December 3, 2020, in London.

Tech For Good Summit, 2018. Facing Macron, front and centre is Rwandan President and war criminal Paul Kagame. Tristan Harris is in the third row, far left. Source: Présidence de la République française, Tech For Good Summit 2020 Progress Report

“New technology is always disruptive. It kills jobs, creates new ones, and ushers in profound social change. But the breakneck speed and sheer scale of this round of technical change is something else – it threatens the very definition of what it is to be human. We’re being presented with a huge range of ethical dilemmas. How do we get together to agree the rules on things like genetically modified babies, the robots of war, and the algorithms that determine our life chances?”

 

— Tech For Good, World Economic Forum website

The Digital Africa initiative was launched by Macron in 2018. [Source] In September 2020, the European Union pressed to push back the elections in socialist Venezuela. This is what colonialism and imperialism look like. Imagine the reaction to a Digital France Initiative – launched by the President of Iran, Hassan Rouhani. Imagine the reaction if Venezuela were to demand the European Union push back elections, to meet conditions for the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) which would send an observer mission. Yet, the racism that undermines the foundations of a Western society built on white supremacy does not allow for such thoughts.

Here we can add that The Social Dilemma filmmakers have formed a partnership with imperialist NGO Amnesty International. Amnesty International serves as partner to the World Economic Forum “Civil Society in the Fourth Industrial Revolution Initiative.” [Source] In 2011, Amnesty played a leading role in the annihilation of Libya. Avaaz, another instrument of empire, belonging to the non-profit industrial complex, would also play a leading role. Avaaz and *Purpose, serving many of the most powerful corporations and institutions on the planet, create emotive campaigns for climate change, while serving as instruments for war and occupation on targeted sovereign states. The irony that the military is a key driver of both climate change and ecological devastation is seemingly lost on the collective Western citizenry. [*Purpose is the public relations arm of Avaaz, specializing in “public mobilization and storytelling… that can shift policies and change public narratives.”]

 

 

 

With markets in the Global North relatively saturated (with citizenry and state both inundated with debt), the world’s most powerful institutions, amidst a global consolidation of power are seeking to recolonize the Global South. “Tech for Good” is the exponential “scaling up of social transformation in the fourth industrial revolution“, transforming Africa into data colonies that serve the West. Transforming children, people, and all life into data commodities – a new asset class. This is a global behavioural change project, unprecedented in scale, with civil society groups and groomed influencers, having been tasked with replacing societal backlash with social licence.

“Business leaders must think and act differently to find their place in these new digital ecosystems that are creating markets where none currently exist—indeed, innovators put themselves in position to capture part of a $12 trillion market opportunity by 2030”

 

— Accenture, [“Accenture has partnered with the World Economic Forum  on researching Globalization 4.0, which is being driven by the Fourth Industrial Revolution”, Source]

On May 29, 2019, co-founder of Time Well Spent/Center for Humane Technology, Aza Raskin, became co-chair of the newly established Global Artificial Intelligence Council of the World Economic Forum. This council would represent one of six Global Fourth Industrial Revolution Councils. [May 29, 2019: World Economic Forum Inaugurates Global Councils to Restore Trust in Technology  – “Top decision-makers and experts from the public and private sectors, civil society and academia participate in inaugural Global Fourth Industrial Revolution Council meeting in San Francisco… Five of the G7 countries and more than 100 organisations are officially partnered with the Network to create policy frameworks, pilot them and scale up around the world.”]

“As the capabilities of AI-driven systems have grown beyond automating boring or repetitive tasks, to making decisions that directly impact people’s lives, the fact that many of these systems are still “black-box” leaves people skeptical about the fairness and effectiveness of the algorithms. This deadlock must be broken, or the progress of the last 20 years will grind to a halt.”

 

— Technology Vision 2020 | We, the Post-Digital People, Accenture, Civil Society in the Fourth Industrial Revolution Initiative partner

Time Well Spent/Center for Humane Technology identifies its purpose as “a movement to align technology with our humanity”. Yet, its answer to the inhumanity of tech is to be found in market solutions, within the capitalist framework, which can neither be tamed, nor negotiated. For it itself, is inhumane.

“Time Well Spent” – in Partnership with Thrive Global

“Thrive Global Is Leading Through The New Normal and Beyond”

 

— Thrive Global Website

Those serving capital are well-versed in utilizing framing, emotive imagery, and language as a means to entice a citizenry. Key words being utilized at present, to usher in the full digitalization of the global economy include ‘thrive’, ‘thriving’, ‘reset’, ‘imagine’, ‘imagination’, and ‘build back better‘.

Arianna Huffington

Time Well Spent, marketed as a “movement”, operates in conjunction with Thrive Global. Founded by Arianna Huffington and launched on November 30, 2016, Thrive Global is a behavioural change media and technology venture headquartered in New York with offices in San Francisco, Mumbai, Athens and Melbourne. Thrive Global partnerships include Accenture, JPMorgan Chase and Uber. Huffington serves on many boards including Uber, Global Citizen, and Onex, a private equity firm managing USD 36 billion in assets. Thrive Global investors include founder and CEO of Salesforce, Marc Benioff, World Economic Forum Board of Trustees, inaugural Chair of World Economic Forum’s Forum Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution in San Francisco, Jack Ma, founder and Executive Chairman of Alibaba Group,  member of the Board of Trustees, World Economic Forum, World Economic Forum Global Shapers board of directors, Breakthrough Energy Coalition co-founder (with Bill Gates), and the venture firm IVP (“We don’t just know growth; we drive hypergrowth.”) Thrive Global would target an elite bourgeoisie demographic serving as a promotional-marketing platform for venture philanthropy and social impact investing.

“I visited Thrive Global’s pop-up on Broome today. Just beautiful… People are searching for more balance—myself included. That nap room was TO DIE FOR. Shaggy, snuggly, sensational to the senses… I sat on the lower level with a dear friend, in the gray egg chairs for nearly an hour—sipped tea and connected. We so enjoyed it amidst the pressure of Christmas shopping and end of year work demands. I loved hearing your soothing voice and lovely accent coming from the speaker: ‘good night Instagram.'”

 

— My Trip To The Thrive Global Pop Up Store, A note from Megan Meany, SAP TV Global Anchor, to Arianna Huffington, December 26, 2016

Par for the course, Indigenous peoples are exploited for the marketing component of Thrive, while in real life Thrive protects and expands the very system responsible for Indigenous genocide that continues to this day. In addition, with Black Lives Matter serving as the new corporate anthem to assist in marketing an illusory “stakeholder capitalism”, images of Black Lives Matter protests also feature on the homepage.

On January 21, 2017, Arianna Huffington “stopped by Thrive’s partner Accenture’s lounge for a conversation on training the workforce of the future and humanising the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution'”. Joining Huffington was the chief leadership and human resources officer of Accenture, partner to the World Economic Forum “Civil Society in the Fourth Industrial Revolution Initiative, and the CEO of Manpower Group, Jonas Prising. The discussion was moderated by Fortune’s editor-in-chief. [Source]

Thrive Global published its first Time Well Spent article on May 10, 2017. The original Time Well Spent Twitter account has been inactive since February 12, 2018.

On November 29, 2017, Business Wire (owned by Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway) reported that Thrive Global raised USD 30 million “in a series B funding to scale its behavior change corporate and media platform around the world.” The drive was led by IVP, a venture capital and growth equity firm, with Marc Benioff joining the round funding “to dramatically accelerate tech and product growth”.

 

 

On October 16, 2019, Thrive Global acquired “Boundless Mind”, a neuroscience-based artificial intelligence corporation to power productivity behaviour change. “Led by a team of Neuroscience PhDs, Behavioral Scientists, and AI Experts, Boundless Mind combines decades of experience at the intersection of brains, minds, and machines.”

 

All Roads Lead to Further Plunder – the Fourth Industrial Revolution “Great Reset”

 

It is critical at this juncture, to expand upon the pivotal role of Thrive Global investor Marc Benioff, founder and CEO of Salesforce, which is a partner of Thrive Global. Benioff, a member of the World Economic Forum Board of Trustees, serves as inaugural Chair of World Economic Forum’s Forum Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution in San Francisco – home of the “great reset”. In addition to these roles, Benioff is a co-founder of Breakthrough Energy Coalition (nuclear, carbon capture and storage, biofuel, etc.), with billionaires including Bill Gates, Jack Ma, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Chris Hohn. [Full list] The coalition, led by Gates, is a private partnership created in tandem with the public-facing Mission Innovation, which is partnered with 24 states and the European Union. Mission Innovation is partnered with the World Economic Forum.

On September 17, 2018, Benioff purchased TIME magazine from Meredith Corp for $190m in cash. Such ownership offers many perks, specifically, shaping both public perception and public opinion. September 21, 2018: “Today, an increasing number of owners hail from the tech industry. Over the past few years, new entrants include Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive of Amazon, who bought The Washington Post for $250m; biotech entrepreneur Patrick Soon-Shiong who purchased the Los Angeles Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune for $500m; Jack Ma, founder of Chinese tech group Alibaba, who bought the South China Morning Post for $266m; and, in July last year, Laurene Powell Jobs, the philanthropist and widow of Apple’s founder Steve Jobs, who took a majority stake in The Atlantic magazine.”

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country… We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of… In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.

 

— Edward Bernays, Propaganda

 

 

“Prince” Harry and super influencer Meghan Markle [May 9, 2020, Town & Country: “Meghan Markle Is Poised to Become the Most Prominent Influencer in the World”] Brother of “Prince” Harry, “Prince” William, is assisting in building public support for the financialization and enclosure of nature, under the guise of protecting biodiversity. October 2020, “A Bloody-Green Conservation Effort,The reds and greens of the Kaziranga violence – These are the headlines that ran in 2016 when the royal couple visited the highly militarised Kaziranga National Park. During his visit, Prince William enquired about the challenges officials faced in the anti-poaching efforts, and here’s the stinger – he also enquired about the park’s requirements of sophisticated weaponry.” [Source]

“Credible celebrity endorsers can be deadly efficient in cutting into the toughest markets and combating the fiercest consumer resistance.”

 

—Celebrity Culture, 2006

TIME Next Generation Leaders, May 16, 2019. “The Future We Choose” – is in fact, the future they chose long ago. Manufactured movements serve those behind the new global architecture. The youth have been utilized and mobilized to capture, monetize, privatize and digitalize, the earth beneath their feet.

TIME Person of the Year, December 2019. Greta Thunberg photographed on the shore in Lisbon, Portugal, December 4, 2019. “But the needle is moving. Fortune 500 companies, facing major pressure to reduce their emissions, are realizing that sustainability makes for good PR.” Photograph by Evgenia Arbugaeva for TIME.

TIME: Davos 2020, Next Generation World

FLASHBACK | The Last Twenty Years of Social Liquidation

libcom.org

August 27, 2013

by Miguel Amorós

“In the society of the spectacle protest is a form of leisure and the tragic pathos of the class struggle must recede before hilarity, relaxation and festival, genuine forms of the neo-contestatory spirit which has found in pot and pan-banging, whistles, and costume parades its most suitable means of expression and in software, blogs and cell-phones its best weapons.”