The Dead Internet Theory

EPISODE 55 | The Dead Internet Theory

Weirdly similar but also somewhat nonsensical tweets, emails that seem written by bots, the same posts showing up again and again - something seems to be amiss with the internet. And some people think they have found the answer: the internet died a few years ago and is now almost entirely run by sophisticated AI bots. This is the Dead Internet Theory.

We'll look at the reasoning behind this notion, a timeline of events that includes some creepy real-world DARPA projects, the state of AI and computer-brain interfaces, and a peek at the (possibly) approaching Singularity - when humans and machines will essentially blend into one thing.

Special shoutout to Gerd Altmann, who made most of the images use din the video version of this episode and made them available on Pixabay. 

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SECTIONS

1. 02:14 - Imitation Is the Sincerest Form of Monetization - clone emails, I hate texting, @Capr1corn, @itspureluv, spoof websites, web bots, the Inversion, deepfakes
2. 09:13 - The Dead Internet Theory - IlluminatiPirate sniffs out a truth, stupid stuff online, doors vs wheels, the early net was better/sucked, Solipsism
3. 13:36 - The Metaverse gets handsy, the web is soulless, it's all a mindset, Pantone 448C
4. 18:11 - Something Rotten in the State of Denmark - Tracing the DIT, standardization runs amuck, algorithm fiction, CGI and deepfakes, many internets, wag the dog
5. 22:18 - A timeline of terror: DARPA's LifeLog, Facebook, Total Information Awareness, using Basketball for precrime, No Such Agency, Smith-Mundt Modernization Act, Project Mockingbird, Operation Mockingbird, Google's Selfish Ledger, NMT, Face2Face, Narrative Science, In-Q-Tel
6. 29:37 - A problem of scale: Google search results are ridiculous, there are a lot of stupid people, our brains suck, are you trapped?, link rot, awesome stuff on the web, Yvette's Bridal Formal, Flat Earth News
7. 37:02 - No 9000 Computer Has Ever Made a Mistake or Distorted Information. We Are All, by Any Practical Definition of the Words, Foolproof and Incapable of Error - Strong AI, the Turing Test, Eugene Goostman, autonomous vehicles
8. 41:17 - Human-computer interfaces, Neuralink, Brown University's wireless interfaces
9. 42:33 - One, Singular Sensation, Every Little Step She Takes - The Singularity approaches, transhumanism, immortality (of a sort), Ray Kurzweil and technofaith

• Music by Fanette Ronjat

More Info:

• Dead Internet Theory in The Atlantic
• Dead Internet Theory in The Daily Free Press
• We're Living in the 90s on Agora Road
• The Internet Is A Potemkin Village: Proof Of Dead Internet Theory?
• More thoughts (and science) on the Dead Internet
• A video on The Dead Internet Theory
• Total Number of Websites
• How Much of the Internet Is Fake? Turns Out, a Lot of It, Actually.
• Bad Bot Report 2021: The Pandemic of the Internet
• The Metaverse Is on the Way: Here's What You Need to Know
• The metaverse has a groping problem already
• The Wheels Vs. Doors Debate Tearing the Internet Apart
• Yvette's Bridal Formal
• The World's Worst Website Ever!
• Pentagon Kills LifeLog Project
• Q&A on the Pentagon's "Total Information Awareness" Program on ACLU
• Scientists dispute whether computer 'Eugene Goostman' passed Turing test
• The Internet Is Rotting
• Jonathan Zittrain Explains Why the Internet Is Rotting
• Facebook just released a database of 100,000 deepfakes to teach AI how to spot them
• The Strange Story of Google's "Selfish Ledger"
• Google’s Selfish Ledger ideas can also be found in its patent applications

• The Only Way Google X's Selfish Ledger Is "Good"

• The State of AI in 2022: Current State & Predictions
• What is limiting the autonomous driving rollout?
• The Current State of Play in Autonomous Vehicles on Hackaday
• The first successful wireless human brain-computer interface is here.
  Eat your heart out, Neuralink.
• Singularity: Explain It to Me Like I’m 5-Years-Old on Futurism
• Singularity Group website
• Digital Freedom Fund
• Digital Freedom Foundation
• Flat Earth News by Nick Davies
• The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil

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