“We live in a digital world, but we’re fairly analog creatures.”
— Omar Ahmad
“We are analog beings living in a digital world, facing a quantum future.
— Neil Turok
“Being human in the digital world is about building a digital world for humans.
— Andrew Keen
“Believers are increasingly aware that, unless the Good News is made known also in the digital world, it may be absent in the experience of many people for whom this existential space is important.”
— Pope Benedict XVI
“The digital world is developing with such force and such a pace that you simply can’t ban or control it. People want to be globally connected.”
— Elif Safak
“The digital world has been in a separate orbit from our medical cocoon, and it’s time the boundaries be taken down.”
— Eric Topol
“Do not fear the digital world, it will not kill us all.”
— Theophilus London
“The digital and physical worlds are starting to come together more seamlessly – it’s only the tip of the iceberg in terms of what’s coming.”
— Mark Parker
“Algorithms are crude. Computers are machines. Data science is trying to make digital sense of an analog world.”
— Christian Rudder
“Anyone who steps back for a minute and observes our modern digital world might conclude that we have destroyed our privacy in exchange for convenience and false security.”
— John Twelve Hawks
Rapidly engulfing us globally is a world like we have never seen or dealt with before. Digitally-based, centrally-controlled, totally-surveilled, and virtually inescapable. Much of this new world is in place today. It’s here. How can we possibly survive as human beings in such a world? Is there any way that us normal folk can change what is happening to us?
If you had a glance through the “digital world” quotes above, you might see that “digital world” means different things to different people. These few are the most understandable, to me at least; others just leave me shaking my head.
Even the usually verbose Wikipedia has only a brief entry on “digital world”:
“The notion of the digital world comprises the entirety of all individual phenomena that can be described by the concept of digital signals – including all their aspects of information processing and of graphical information interpretation into virtual worlds – or that can be influenced or transformed through the means of digital signals.”
“Humanities and education discussions of the ‘Digital era’ tend to create variations when categorizing and defining the mass of mediated technologies and human interactions that are suggested as part of the Digital World. The phrase ‘digital world’ is used loosely as a mass noun with many possible meanings and variations [emphasis added].”
I don’t know about you, but this “explanation” doesn’t explain anything to me. Digital technology? I have been working with digital technology for over 60 years. It involves information or signals that have the form of discrete binary states or values – such as on-off, 0 and 1 – rather than continuous analog states having an infinite number of values. Techie stuff.
What does “digital world” mean in practice?
The term reflects the use of devices and technologies that handle data of all sorts in digital formats such as 0 and 1, or on and off. Musical notes from a vibrating violin string are analog in that the sound frequencies – what we hear – can take on any of an almost infinite number of values. When we record the notes on, say, a smart phone, these values are transformed into a series of binary digits – 0 and 1 – by various magical electronic techniques. When they are replayed on your headphones, the digital data is magically transformed back to its analog values form. More techie stuff.
“Digital”, then, deals with data in binary formats (mostly). In this form it can be transmitted, computed upon, transformed, and so much else.
“Digital world” in turn refers to the huge and fast-growing number of uses – applications and devices – that work with such digital data.
In the end, however, digital world describes a fully-connected world and vast stores of digital data about almost everything. It’s involves access to all of this data and the exploding range of uses of the data. Truly amazing, even to a techie.
I wrote about digital everything a while back. Everything interconnected by digital links. Even our money is rapidly becoming digital, while old-fashioned physical money is going away.
In principle, there is a lot of good in all of this digitization. Speed, convenience, better protection against loss, … long list. In reality, there is very much to be concerned about. Why? Because people are involved. No people, no digital problems. You may laugh, but they are working very hard on achieving just this situation. Well, not quite no people, since they only want about 95% of the most inconvenient people gone. At least so said the late Georgia Guidestones, along with similar plans from the likes of Bill Gates, the UN, the WEF, and kin.
The scary parts of our digital world: surveillance and control
While our digital world is not going away absent a really messy world war, it is presently heading off in some very troubling directions. It is pretty clear at this moment that several major organizations are moving us toward a one world government, as a recent post outlined.
These one-world-everything folks include the usual suspects: World Economic Forum (WEF), United Nations (UN), International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, Bank for International Settlements (BIS), World Health Organization (WHO), World Bank (WB), and the European Union (EU) among many others. This effort is global and so powerful that it seems almost certain to succeed within a relatively short time.
This new world order, or disorder in practice, is heavily based on and enabled by digital technologies. It requires a digital world to succeed and to survive thereafter. Digital technologies make it possible to effectively integrate – control – the entire world of 8+ billion souls.
How exactly could this be done, you might wisely ask? The answer, in a word, is money. Control people by controlling money.
If you like myself are among the folks who require food, shelter, transportation, health care, and other such life-enabling items, you need money. Money takes many forms – from cash (fiat money) via credit cards (debt), mortgages (debt), and more recently digital money (cryptos). Whatever its form, money is absolutely essential to our daily lives. Even for preppers, if you can imagine that.
Who controls money? The government, banks, and various financial organizations of dubious repute and competence.
Why is this of concern, when things today seem to be working pretty well in general, digitally speaking? Too well, according to the-powers-that-be-and-wannabe. That’s what they are frantically trying to change. You can’t control people if money is decentralized in form and location – like physical cash. You must have one money, one world money, if possible. Fully centralized.
Maybe Worldcoin is just what we need for our (digital) world money
Those who run things in our world today have developed a nasty habit of announcing a “wouldn’t this … be a great idea?”, when they have already developed whatever it is and are ready to roll it out. COVID warp-speed vaxx for example.
Just announced via Natural News among others is Worldcoin: “’Worldcoin’ is here: Just get your eyes scanned by ‘The Orb’ and your new ‘World ID’ will be issued to you”:
“Once you sign up for Worldcoin, your new ‘World ID’ will be issued to you. Ultimately, the goal is for the entire Internet to start using this new ‘World ID’ system…”
“Worldcoin consists of a privacy-preserving digital identity (World ID) and, where laws allow, a digital currency (WLD) received simply for being human. We hope that, where the rules are less clear, such as in the U.S., steps will be taken so more people can benefit from both.”
“Ultimately, the goal is to ‘freely distribute tokens to all eight billion people on the planet’…
“The goal is simple and modest: To create a system that will, eventually, freely distribute tokens to all eight billion people on the planet, as a form of universal basic income (UBI). But because the rise of AI will make it tricky to figure out who is human and who’s a digital fake, Worldcoin first needs to create a system that lets people — all people, across the globe — prove that they are in fact human beings. The idea of a ‘universal basic income’ certainly appeals to a lot of people out there.”
“But if you want your free money, you have got to visit ‘The Orb’.
The ‘Orb’?
We just knew there had to be a catch to getting all of this free digital money. We have to be “orbed’. In case you, like myself, have no idea what an ‘orb’ is, the Natural News article goes on to “explain”:
“… The plan is for ‘The Orb’ to eventually scan the eyeballs of every single person in the entire world. Here is more from the official Worldcoin website …”
“You can now download World App, the first protocol-compatible wallet, and reserve your share. After visiting an Orb, a biometric verification device, you will receive a World ID. This lets you prove you are a real and unique person online while remaining completely private. As the global distribution of Orbs is ramping up, you can find the closest one and book time to be verified with World App and at worldcoin.org.”
“Worldcoin is an attempt at global scale alignment, the journey will be challenging and the outcome is uncertain. But finding new ways to broadly share the coming technological prosperity is a critical challenge of our time. We hope you’ll join us.”
“I don’t know about you, but I never plan to visit ‘The Orb’, and there is no way that I am ever going to allow these freaks to scan my eyeballs.”
“But it is imperative for all of us to understand that this is a very serious threat, because one of the guys heading up this project is also the CEO of the company that brought us ChatGPT…”
“If Worldcoin was the brainchild of some random crypto bro, maybe it could be laughed away as a delusion of grandeur. But the project has real intellectual heft. It was co-founded by Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI (creator of ChatGPT), who’s arguably the most central player in the development of AI. Altman suspects that the world will change forever if — or when — AI becomes so advanced that it achieves AGI, or Artificial General Intelligence, meaning it truly surpasses the abilities of humans.”
“Sam Altman is certainly a force to be reckoned with.”
“And now he is absolutely determined to get as many people into this new system as he possibly can.”
Umm …
Our amazing new digital world: Worldcoin (WLD) plus World ID?
Amazing for sure. Even more surely, terrifying.
When I wrote a post about “digital everything” a while back, it appeared to me that digital everything was just a concept being heavily promoted by Klaus Schwab and his WEF gang, among others. Implementation would require overcoming many development and acceptance challenges, which would take years.
Now, a few months later, it just so happens that a prototype, or possibly a first operational version, is being launched. Sam Altman, while busy launching the pioneering ChatGPT AI application, must have found enough spare time to get Worldcoin/ID rolling as well. Truly impressive achievements. Even magical.
Or maybe, just maybe, all of this was planned and started quite some time ago.
One (digital) world everything is here
World domination is a fairly major undertaking. You probably can’t do it the old-fashioned way as recently employed by Napoleon, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and kin. Huge armies and wars are not just messy and outcome-uncertain, but low-tech and so very inefficient. Today, we have digital everything and AI to help out, making great things happen at warp speed or faster.
This I now believe is the world that we are facing and in which we must do very different things to survive. What may have worked in past will not work going forward. Our new world truly is digital, and our actions and responses must address a digital world. Not the past, which has gone away forever.
I have no idea what to suggest for others, so I’ll simply try to think through what I might be able to do myself in such a brave new world. This will I hope serve as an example as you figure out what might work better for yourselves.
Reality bites
Job #1 is taking a hard look at where things, aka life, seem to be heading. As noted above, this will be as I see things for myself – an engineer’s view of the “real” world that, whatever I’m up to, must deal with.
A central feature that I see is extensive, possibly almost complete, surveillance. I will have a digital ID because folks are unlikely to survive without one. Should I look for an early way to sign up for such so that I can get firsthand experience of how digital ID’s and surveillance may work? Kind of a know-your-adversary kind of thing. Tentatively, yes.
A second central feature, a certainty, is that I will be forced into digital money at some relatively early point. This means in effect that my money will no longer be mine but now the property of some AI-critter run by a bunch of robot-people and their flawed leaders. And stored on a cloud somewhere. Happy thought.
As background to these, I expect the various rulers-and-wannabes to continue fighting for dominance. None will prevail, I believe, so the digital world as well will continue in an increasingly multipolar structure and behavior. This difficult and confusing situation will be made worse due to the blinding egotism and incompetence of most leaders. Probably even chaotic, which may be helpful.
World War III? Possible, but not likely in my view. Even rulers-and-wannabes who are not smart will see that blowing everything up may include themselves as part of the dispatched everything. But lots of minor wars, as always.
World dominance? In some technical ways, yes, but not big-brother-1984 dominance, aka enslavement. Blocks of partial-dominance, supported by complete surveillance seems more likely. For folks in each block, it may well function differently in practice. Competing dominance blocks seems likely.
Complete surveillance
With digital ID’s forced upon us, surveillance will be effectively complete. Anything that can be tied to a digital ID will be captured, analyzed, and used to control. The systems that can do such mischief will be enormous, complex, and failure-prone. Herein – perhaps – lies opportunities for survivor-wannabes?
In any case, digital IDs are a virtual certainty. A digital ID in the form of a driver license or Real ID seems like a perfect entry point, at least for adults. Student IDs will handle the younger folks.
Once they have a starting point like these, they can begin to hang all manner of additional data items, such as credit/debit card transactions, airline travel … and so much more. My guess is that much of this data integration has already taken place. In effect then, most of us probably have a digital ID active today.
No real need to sign up for an ID via Orb, it seems.
Likely entry point for full Digital ID.
In case you might be interested, my own foray into the digital ID realm will almost certainly be through a Real ID version of my driver license. I’m easy, yes?
Digital money up next
The next step – no doubt also well advanced – is to make the transition to digital money. Not cryptos, but government issued CBDCs to replace physical money like cash. And goodbye cryptos.
This step seems like a real challenge. Folks just aren’t going to willingly surrender use of cash and its kin. They will need some sort of crisis, or maybe a bunch of crises, that make the transition unavoidable. And you surely know what these will be …
… a financial collapse, probably and conveniently accompanied by another pandemic-triggered lockdown. Maybe even a major war of some kind as well? And we can’t forget about the catastrophic climate crisis, can we?
The goal here is some sort of martial law in which all kinds of necessary mischief can be implemented by decree (Executive Orders) while folks are crisis-distracted. And probably prior to the 2024 election so that another messy election doesn’t get in the way.
All of the foundation pieces for a colossal crisis seem to be place at this moment.
One crisis that probably won’t happen is a major electrical power outage. All of the digital ID and digital money machinery depends completely on electricity. No power, no digital-us.
Brandon Smith has a slightly different version based on discussions at a recent globalist gathering and originally published at Birch Gold Group: “Globalists Suggest ‘Finance Shock’ And Climate Controls To Launch Their Great Reset”:
“At the end of June government leaders and think-tank power brokers from around the world met at the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact in Paris. Participants include United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva and World Bank President Ajay Banga.”
“The supposed purpose of the summit was to find financial solutions to the goals of tackling poverty while simultaneously curbing ‘planet-heating emissions.’ As with all climate change related events the discussion in Paris inevitably turned to international centralization of power and the formation of a global consortium to fix the problems that they claim sovereign nations cannot or will not fix.”
“However, what I’m seeing more and more in the past couple years is a convergence of narratives – Central banks and international banks are now suddenly more concerned with carbon taxation and global warming than they seem to be concerned with stagflation and economic collapse. Likely because this was the goal all along and economic collapse is part of the plan.”
“Globalists are now combining the climate change issue with international finance and monetary authority [emphasis added]. In other words, they aren’t hiding the fact that the climate change agenda is part of the ‘Great Reset’ agenda anymore. They are even suggesting that the threat of climate change be used as a springboard for giving global banks more power to dictate the circulation of wealth and for deconstructing the existing system so it can be replaced with something else.”
“French President Emmanuel Macron told delegates at the Paris summit that ‘the world needs a public finance shock’ to fight global warming while also creating ‘equity’ for less wealthy nations. He also argued that the current system was not well suited to address the world’s challenges.”
These are the-powers-that-be talking quite openly about using a real financial system crisis along with climate change hysteria to move things along a bit faster.
This unfortunately is almost certainly going to happen. And soon, before a disruption or a black swan event can interfere.
CBDCs will be the primary tool for coercion and control
Digital money in the form of a government-issued and -managed currency (CBDCs) will very soon become a central part of our digital world. Will, not might, with the only question being timing. Even Russia just signed a bill authorizing a digital ruble.
Michael Snyder writing in his typically cautious and indirect manner describes the CBDC threat as he sees it in his Economic Collapse: “The CBDCs Are Coming, And The Elite Plan To Use These ‘Digital Currencies’ To Enslave Humanity”:
“Central bank digital currencies are feverishly being developed all over the globe, and this is something that should deeply alarm all of us. For a moment, I would like for you to imagine a world where the government instantly knows whenever you buy or sell something. No transaction would ever be truly private, not even your most personal or embarrassing ones. In addition, your money would not be truly your own under such a system. Your access to the digital currency system would be a privilege which could potentially be suspended or revoked with the click of a mouse. All of a sudden you would not be able to buy or sell anything and you would become an outcast from society. Under no circumstances should any government ever be given such power.”
“Unfortunately, the CBDCs are coming, and they are going to radically change how commerce gets done.”
“Once ‘digital dollars’ issued by the Federal Reserve become the dominant form of currency in our nation, whoever has power over that system would truly have an unprecedented ‘tool of coercion and control’.”
Despite this being considered a disallowed topic by the-powers-that-be, it is being echoed by increasing numbers of soon-to-be-disallowed-writers.
Is there anything we can do to stop all of this?
My take at the moment is that this will happen – and soon. Once they have effective control over our money, our wiggle-room virtually disappears. They must move quickly to prevent any strong resistance from organizing. And keep in mind that this is occurring globally. Two possibilities that I see:
- CBDCs are implemented and used for coercion and control.
This seems like kind of a worst-case scenario. Through tight control over your money (which will soon be their money), they can force you to do almost anything. Refusal may mean non-survival. Our way or else.
. - Human nature and incompetence among rulers wins out.
Rulers-and-ruler-wannabes tend to have great power, huge egos and ambitions, and major blind spots. They are intelligent but not smart. This combination may well assure failure by self-destruction. Timing uncertain. The trick here is to survive until the bad guys eliminate themselves.
These may well be extremes, with reality finding itself somewhere in between. The ability to fully-control and -coerce may turn out in practice to be quite difficult, and highly prone to corruption. This seems highly likely so that, when coupled with serious ruler weaknesses, our survival likelihood may in fact be rather high.
This is my bet at least.
Bottom line:
Our new digital world is a world like we have never seen or dealt with before. Digitally-based, centrally-controlled, totally-surveilled, and virtually-inescapable. It seems already here, or very nearly so.
However, it is likely to consist of two or three competing blocks of dominance. This may allow some amount of migration, but it may result in fractures and diversity developing as inevitable corruption and incompetence do their thing. We can surely count on corruption and incompetence at the very least. These may assure survival of most of us.
Related Reading
- Martin Armstrong in Armstrong Economics reported in August 2022: “Canada to Launch Digital Identity Program”:
“Trudeau is pushing forth the Great Reset at any cost. Canada will impose a federal ‘Digital Identity Program’ to help the World Economic Forum develop a global ID system. Since the COVID passports failed, they are outright demanding that everyone carry proof of their digital identity. Canada’s Digital Ambition 2022 report revealed the details of its plan:”
“Now more than ever, we have work to do to make it easier for Canadians to interact with the Government of Canada, and we are committed to better serving Canadians in a digital age. This will require modern, integrated systems and an unwavering focus on the needs and experience of citizens. We have made progress, but we must continue to improve.”
“During the pandemic, the government quickly deployed new and innovative programs to support Canadians, but we have also seen examples where we can do more to deliver secure, reliable, and easy to use digital services.”
“Building on the vision outlined in Canada’s Digital Government Strategy, I am pleased to introduce the Government of Canada’s Digital Ambition (GC’s Digital Ambition) which has been developed with this service imperative in mind… The GC’s Digital Ambition will provide a solid foundation for the ever-evolving digital transformation of government. It will serve as an important tool to support the focus shared across ministers and departments to identify and implement better ways to ensure Canadians receive high quality, accessible, and efficient government services.”
- Luke Hogg writing in Reason clearly illustrates the dangers inherent in innocuous, government-issued digital IDs: “Government Wants To Control Your Digital Identity”:
“Take Colorado. Since 2019, Coloradans have been able to use a digital ID as a legal form of personal identification throughout the state. Users download an application to their smartphone, enroll in the service, and have their identity authenticated by taking photos or videos of a valid ID card or other government issued documents to prove that they are who they claim to be. Then that information is encrypted, and the user is granted a digital ID and an associated key or code that serves as an identifier.”
“Colorodans can simply show their digital ID to verify their identity in much the same way as you would show your driver’s license to a bartender to prove you are over 21. That means of verifying identity is relatively private. However, many services, both public and private, are increasingly turning to electronic verification, which requires pinging a government server. This ping creates a data record outlining who, what, when, and where. Over time, these records create a government-controlled ledger of information about its citizens.”
“Built and maintained by third-party vendors, Colorado Digital ID collects troves of information from users. As outlined in the privacy policy for myColorado, the app collects data ‘including, but not limited to your IP address, device ID and browser type,’ and information on the ‘general geographic area’ of the user. The privacy policy further details that the government shares information with third-party service providers and, much more concerningly, with law enforcement and other government agencies upon request.”
“The fundamental flaw in digital ID systems like Colorado’s is that they are centralized. In order to work, citizens must trust the government to protect their data from malevolent actors and from the state itself, despite the fact that government agencies have not been good stewards of citizen data.”
- Martin Armstrong via Armstrong Economics and The Burning Platform offers a typically direct and stark view of where all this digital machinery is headed: “The CBDC Crisis of 2025”:
“They will most likely cancel all currencies AFTER the US 2024 election. It will need to be coordinated to prevent capital flight. Whatever is in bank accounts or brokerage accounts will be re-denominated in the new digital currency. The IMF is pushing hard to replace the dollar with its version. The likelihood of the collapse of the IMF and world institutions will probably arrive in 2031.”
“Big Tech will comply. They are already stripping us of our freedom of speech. This will become IMPERATIVE to oppress all freedom in hopes that they can establish this new totalitarian state which is the dream of Klaus Schwab and his band of merry thieves at the World Economic Forum. So the Internet will be highly monitored and restricted.”
“The point of investments post-2024 will be to hold on to tangible assets. They will make the transition from one currency to the next.”
