The Great White shark has emerged from the depths.
In a testament to the future shock nightmare of the post daytime television era, both motor vehicles and doorbell cameras are armed with the most proficient photographers that record subjects unrelenting influenced by the knockout blow of the digital.
The perpetual image documentation of society has officially been unleashed by big tech and the information market is now flooded beneath 66 feet of shark infused petabytes and tide zone plankton.
As the younger generations demand constant attention in an insatiable lust for validation echoing the egotism of career politicians not entangled in a “hammergate” scandal, images and virtual reality have become the facsimile for flesh and blood absent of the worst parts of the human condition and representing the best of the worst.
The ecosystem of the dark and baleful composed of artificial ingredients and a glowering sentience is now capturing the essence of life through terrestrial high definition facial recognition cameras across the US, a locust swarm of invasion of the basic premises of privacy that would even make the Chinese intelligence community blush. Through drones hovering, floating lanterns with a insidious purpose, electronic toys and self-driving vehicles, the data collected and collated is no longer beaming a steady stream of the cultural ebb and flow along with geographical and tactical information to Beijing, as more feasible channels for espionage exist.
Google initiated the “street view” feature through its map app over a decade ago which sparked a counterrevolution to topographical privacy and gave end users and dissident governments the ability to roam neighborhoods statically online, which has led to unintended consequences. The 3D mapping industry has become disturbingly relevant.
The river of electronic bandwidth and its destination is virtually untraceable thanks to the onset of cryptocurrency anonymity achieving a level of vaguery that provides a safe house and strains the energy grid. Selfies and trivial digital images contrived through a smart device aside, the full onslaught of the Information Age is coming into fruition as method actors flee for the solace and job security of Kabuki theater and the sanctity of ambiguous darkness. Enter stage left the conglomeration of gigantic transportation venture Waymo headlined by its fleet of apex predator Great White vehicles and the next generation of technology implacably insentient.
While the gig economy and ride share industry, specifically in offering services morphing into an unrecognizable and unfathomable depth of caustic curiosity- cue the lights, camera and action as self-driving vehicles now offered in major metropolitan markets. These vehicular services facilitate the transport passengers and perpetually capture billions of images annually at a cost that ultimately create a model of the world perceived through machine learning that far transcends a cab driver performing a play-by-play broadcast of describing reality from a human perspective. The facade of AI and the wholesale of accumulation is simply not a trendy fad anymore as the countdown to the fruition of Moore’s law maturing is subtlety blatant.
As drones become passee as far as an optimal intelligence gathering framework of cohesion and strategic data, the regression to the mean from cars and trucks as data collection devices is now the latest effective method of acquiring data under the guise of providing a customer with a reliable resource from getting from point A to point B. The value of the sanctuary of peace and anonymity will never be the same as a result while the blueprint of neighborhoods and suburbs across the expanse of North America and Europe sidles in the realm of exploitation and the intrusive to the highest bidder with bad intentions.
While trucks, cars and doorbells will be now be available to photograph weddings and graduations in the latest post modern performance art movement burgeoning towards the viral with a hint of voyeurism, the tattered remnants of modesty our being outsourced to a cultural museum promoting the instability of an uncertain future and managing to mock tradition. The access to three dimensions of reality is only a swipe or click away.