From what I can work out there are three main 'pieces' on the global board at the moment all moving together. 1) The threat to humanity of zoonotic pathogens emerging as human induced global ecological stress increases 2) A big-med arms race against those zoonoses and the launching of mRNA medical technology (i.e. covid vacinnes) aimed at tweaking/improving the human genome (covid vaccines are just the start of mRNA medical treatments) and 3) The drive to create central global management infrastructure (e.g. more mega companies like Amazon) and a central/global big data company which contains the digital profile of all global citizens, a global computer system (effectively managed by a world government) which can be used to manage global systems (for better or worse)- i.e. social crediting scoring systems, targeted advertising/selling, health management, ecological management, CO2 emission management etc etc
Change creates fear and fear is used to drive change and the internet is awash at the moment with anti-vax and anti passport vax conspiracy theories. Massive social experiments in the past have failed (USSR communist bloc collapse, the Imperial Wars of the early 20th Century etc ) and led to genocide and mass suffering so the fear has a rational element to it and as the world becomes more global the potential for experimental failure has never carried such a high cost risk. It's almost inevitable that unimaginable horrors lie ahead as the world evolves into a completely new higher state of AI, high tech global computer controlled management system. This is a journey into the unknown, the same journey that human history has always been on and disaster and danger is part of the course. It is likely some of us, maybe most of us, maybe all of us are going to get hurt, or killed or very frightened at some point. We are all going to die anyway so dying on this adventure is arguably better than dying in a nursing home with dementia during one of the more slow phases of history. History now is unfolding fast - we are in a period of rapid, frightening and dangerous change fuelled by climate and ecological crisis and financial system crisis.
So lets park that existential threat and primal fear and unpack what this all means for birding- the most important question in the world of course. Now I have no problem with global government and computer Totalitarianism for as long as the algorithms behind that system are benevolent and egalitarian. However the fight for the soul and values of that global computer political system will be as a big a fight for the soul of all political systems with players from all points on the moral compass competing for dominance. What I don't want to see is some computer system that I'm integrated into that doesn't value birding. Birding is one of the great manifestations of the era of small government and experimental individual liberalism. Birds are the resource, ticks are the currency, labours of love (avifaunas, atlases, nature reserves) are the high culture and the society built around that ideology is free, autonomous and independent. It's a beautiful thing.
What if this new computer system does not recognise the value of birding time. What if my social credit score starts going down because of instead of working for money I was out birding. What if the Chinese social credit system that is currently operating there is imposed on the world through Chinese domination? That system rewards those who support the Communist regime and punishes those who are persuaded by the temptation of western style liberalism and democracy. Not sure if it's true but I've heard that your qualifications can be removed from your digital profile if the Chinese government dont like you and (this is definitely true) you can't enter certain restaurants and get certain jobs if your score goes too low (a score tracked by whether you posted some anti-government meme on social media etc and whether or not you bought too many fat and salt products in your shopping basket).
The system will be able to track my every movement and engagement and score me on behaviour which is considered positive or negative to the algorithm (which will only be a good as the values programmed into it by the coders behind it). What if I'm not too happy of being part of the global community having my individual genome tweaked and improved into a new super human (I actually find it quite interesting- could I get binocular vision implanted into my retinas that link directly to ebird and Merlin app?). The point is, history moves forward whether we like it or not and to me it appears that this is the direction it is moving in. For birding that means central global databases like Ebird (from Cornell Lab- the silicon valley of ornithology), databases that are used to create real time global models of bird species and distribution to aid in targeted conservation measures and funding, to track bird migration and create remedial measures (black outs over cities during mass migration evenings, wind turbines being turned off etc). Ebird will presumably integrate into the whole global nature conservation system and global nature conservation economy and birders will be part of globalisation, targeting our spending, our work hours, our time in the field, our travel, our engagement in policy and decision making into a global effort that is sustainable and manages global ecology. That's the tech utopian fantasy.
The dystopian likely reality is a huge disconnect and mis-trust of globalisation, conspiracy theorists and low energy reactionaries cannibalising the minds of the vulnerable for power trips and hard-ons with links and submissions to nefarious groups and individuals within the global elite which see the global computer system as a means to create the biggest ego trips, sexual orgasms, slave armies and personal decadent empires the planet has ever seen. In traditional terms this dark super power rise is some kind of anti-christ, the ultimate fear of not just this generation of human citizens but all generations before this generation (the Roman empire was considered the anti-christ at the time of the actual Christ or rather the actual timing of the story of the Christ).
So that's basically it. What will happen to birding in all this. Will the number of records we submit to Bbird (I'm deliberately not saying Ebird/Birdtrack because the only sensible thing for Birdtrack is to integrate with Cornell - the BTO is a tiny national organisation and Cornell has emerged as the global dominant hub of global ornithology already) , the hours spent in the field populating the global system with data and information, will this effort be measured as a positive. Can we earn a wage from collecting this data (the balance for birders to find both time and money will become increasingly more difficult in an homogenising global system) , will there be a link between Universal Basic Income and the maintenance of some of the greatest manifestations of late C20th neo-liberalism- the democratic natural history societies, the nature conservation organisations and movements, will the architects of the system keep those efforts going (by evolving and integrating those societies into the algorithms and systems). Will the fact that I spend over half my productive time a week engaging in non-profit citizen science be used to score me up or score me down. Will my Masters of Science be stripped from me because only Professional Academics are scored for current activity , will birders be seen as unproductive time wasters and sent to the Amazon factories or the Uber cars , will I be denied access to a restaurant because only I spent half my productive time working for social credits (I was out birding or moth trapping the other half of the time) . I guess the answer to what direction it will go in, depends on how much we all engage in it and fight for our values to be expressed in this algorithm and this global system. Moving democratic and voting structures over to this global system seems vital in my opinion.
The conspiracy theorists are saying the Vaccine Passports are the first step in the green tick or red tick on whether you can engage in society or not - I'm not worried yet, I support sensible public health measures deployed to deal with the novel threat of zoonotic pathogens (I don't however support the over reliance on big med and big tech to neutralise the risk and believe that the global ecological society has some equally important nature based and regenerative solutions) . So I'm not too worried (yet) but I would say that anyone who has not got their eye on this ball and the pieces currently being moved on the world stage has every reason to be worried and if you are an unproductive person that has used the era of liberal individualism to parasite off society, well the Totalitarian in me looks forward to a scoring system that can lift you and all of us up to a new level of quality of life and planetary management. (I identified such a scoring system as a way of improving local democracy in our Beddington Farmlands disaster experiment HERE - that experiment revealed the need and urgency for such a scoring system on citizens to prevent the corporate-community poodle culture ).
Too much resistance and paranoia will lead to the fulfilling of self prophecies - those who seek to enslave those for their own gain will cannibalise the irrational (the morons). A future belongs to empowered and engaged global citizens who move with the lead of benevolent visionaries. Another future exists and that belongs to those who follow the lead of those who divide and conquer the planet. Now, more than ever, during the period of rapid escalation our choices of what we get behind are more risky and exciting than they have been for many decades. We are all going to die!!!!!!!! (at some point), seems like coming to terms with our mortality will not only help us with dealing with the threat of dangerous zoonoses but also in taking the necessary risks to fight for a nature filled future and a nature metric filled global planetary system algorithm.
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