Josh's musings on the end of the Information Age and the dawn of the Machine Age reminded me of an old series of 4chan posts I read ages ago, perhaps on this very website. Does anyone have a saved copy? I remember the post started with an image of Charlie Brown witnessing the downfall of humanity from Evangelion. From what I remember, the poster essentially said that the "Machine Age" has already been around for a while now. It started with computer algorithms predicting changes in the stock market but eventually the script got flipped and now the algorithm
itself is what drives the changes in the market. Eventually people's politics become intertwined into what kinds of products they buy and what shows they watch (

) and now the algorithms are essentially marketing entire lifestyles to people, eventually influencing broader society as a whole.
And apparently we cannot stop or even edit these algorithms because they've become too unwieldy and bloated for their own good. They've evolved well past their intended design and any attempt to stop them could result in total economic collapse. Shit like this is far beyond my ability to control, so the best thing I can do to resist this is to block out all advertisements and commercials, and limit as much information as I can about my browsing and spending habits. Perhaps by feeding this algorithm the wrong kind of data, or starving it entirely, we can turn things around.