"The people wish to be deceived,"

We live in a time of rapid change--something many people find stressful, to the point that they dream of escape. But there is no escaping the inevitable. The Third Civilization Industrial Age is in its death throes, and the Fourth Civilization or Information Age is suffering severe birth pangs. That Third was a time of intellectual and social fragmentation, but ideally the Fourth could (should?) become a time of re-integration on all fronts.

In the intellectual community, barriers between the disciplines are of necessity falling, for cleaning up the debris from the smokestack era, in particular dealing with severe climate change phenomena will not be an easy task and will require comprehensive interdisciplinary team cooperation. Moreover, the advent of the Spy's vision of the Metalibrary (an Internet holding curated information and running on metaphorical steroids) means narrow specialists who are memorizers of facts, will be replaced by more broadly educated problem solvers who are skilled at locating what they need when the need arises so they can more readily design solutions. Contra the obsolete logical positivism of the late philosopher-scientist E. O. Wilson, the Spy is convinced of the concinnity of all knowledge (i.e. that the necessary interdisciplinary design already exists as an aspect of God's discoverable creation and not, per Wilson, entirely as a yet-to-be-human-invented consilience.)

It is uncomfortable for disparate peoples and cultures to be thrust face to face as time and distance separations are erased. But the information age automatically demolishes artificial knowledge barriers because there is far less need for narrow specialists as information repositories when anyone can find out anything. Whether what is found conforms to any reality is another matter--the current Internet is a far cry from the Metalibrary the Spy envisioned in the 1980s, both in this space and in his textbook on ethical and social issues in technology adoption and use. The chief problem with what we have to date is that the available data is uncurated, and in that well-fertilized environment, more misinformation breeds and multiplies than information, more lies than truth, and more weirdness than sense, which is why the large language AI bots produce such empty blather, albeit doing so with surpassing eloquence in their lost cause.

It is easy to fear what is unfamiliar or different, to wish for a simpler time, to be suspicious of or even hate what and those different from oneself for no concrete reason. Such problems are exacerbated if the "differents" live close by, and in an important sense, everyone does now. "We the people" can too easily become supplemented by "but they ain't"--an attitude epitomized by the slanders some bring against immigrants who happen to be from non-Euro-centric cultures, and worse, in the slanderous eyes, have non-Euro skin colours. But the bottom line for blatant misinformation is that people can effectively choose their own reality from the current Internet menu, and believe whatever they want to think is the truth. To put it another way: "one person's lie is what someone else wants to be their truth, any connection with verifiable reality notwithstanding." Sorry, fans, but the current Internet and accompanying social media is a colossal failure and begs to be replaced with an information utility.

"Therefore let them be deceived."

Unscrupulous politicians may viscerally sense, rather than know such dystopic desires and fears exist in some people's minds and fan them to what they may think is their own advantage despite the destructive effect on the social contract. There is, after all, quite the power rush (not to mention money and get-out-of-jail-free cards) in being "in charge", so if telling people lies they want to hear and believe presents itself as a path to gaining and keeping power, taking it is a literal no-brainer. Master Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels supposedly put it this way: "Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth," though the attribution is itself disputed, and may well be a lie, even though the quote does express a verity. But, "what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive", while it expresses a certain truth, may not in practice be true, if the deception is believed. A person entangled in a web of lies is blissfully oblivious to truth.

To reprise a mundane example, the Spy well recalls pushing back hard in this space during the 1980s against an multiply-repeated false media yarn that a certain technology company was on the verge of bankruptcy and doomed to certain and imminent failure. Apple ended up doing OK, but as now, deliberately invented false rumours can often delude people into thinking they are true. A more dangerous, but still widely circulated yarn is that people once generally believed the earth is flat. However, that was a fabrication designed to slander Christians. Even in very ancient times simple experiments determined the true circumference of our little blue oblate spheroid with remarkable precision.

Other lies are rather more consequential. The very existence of whole countries (e.g. Ukraine), even modern democracy as we know it, could vanish into the maw of violent and vengeful totalitarian dictatorships depending on whether the majority of the U. S. Electoral College end up being among those lost under the influence of the Trumpeters of lies. What a spectacle!

The Spy is emboldened to ask who will invade Canada first--the Americans because our version of extremists would be too middle-of -the road for them, or perhaps the Russians because we have a large population of the very Ukrainians they seek to exterminate. Wait. Don't circulate either of those snarky similes as conspiracy theory rumours. Too many people might believe either or both. Try this one instead: "If you drink two cups of salt water before bed every night it will cure COVID much faster than that horse dewormer so many people use." The Spy would be interested in seeing if something absurd that he just made up on the spot could become a meme. Works for others. Maybe he could become famous for his medical acumen. Since 95% of COVID patients do recover anyway, any purported miracle cure could gain traction, however worthless it is.

The typeset manuscript

for the fifth edition of the Spy's The Fourth Civilization—Technology, Ethics and Society has now been returned from the publisher for a semi-final proofreading. In the light of current events he had substantially toned down the optimism of the first four editions. No, he never believed fellow Canadian Marshall McLuhan's forecast of a global village of peace and harmony would result from the advent of universal instant communication. Rather, the Spy warned five decades ago that being thrust into such close contact with "others" would instead bring old long-since debunked ethnic fears, lies, and hatreds back to the fore, even provoke a resumption of wars in Eastern Europe and possibly elsewhere. Yup.

But he never expected that George Orwell's "Ministry of Truth", whose only purpose was to ensure that history itself would become a pack of lies to conform with current government policy, would actually be instantiated in a social media vehicle by a candidate for a promised violent dictatorship of the United States. It is worth recalling that Orwell's fictional Big Brother also established a "Ministry of Love" for the systematic torture and abuse of dissenters.

It is too late now for major textbook revisions. The Spy must confine himself to pushing back on altered layouts and sussing out any remaining typos, misplaced words, and incorrectly worded sentences. He did, however, include for the fifth edition more warnings that a sufficiently traumatic disintegration of the fragmented Industrial Age could mean his foreseen Fourth Civilization might be stillborn. Should misogyny, ethnic hatred, and lies prevail, and/or the current Middle Eastern, Ukrainian, and potential Chinese conflicts spin out of control into WW III, we may instead be witnessing the advent of either a dystopic Disinformation Age or a very long, cold winter for anything that could be called civilization.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, (sorry, Roy)

the Spy's wait for WI-FI 7 access points from reputable suppliers is finally over. He has purchased and, channeling Jerry Pournelle, will "Real Soon Now" fully install his brand new Ubiquiti U7 Pro access point (cost: CDN $239 from the Ubiquiti Canada store, a more expensive $US199 down south, and more still on Amazon).

OK, scratch part of that yesterday morning thought. Last night, he strung a CAT-8 cable across the ceiling and made a temporary install near one end of the house close to his working office. After setting it up with a unified SSID (single one for all speeds) using the same name as his existing ASUS router, latterly itself demoted to an AP, the new box on its first subsequent boot grabbed every client away with its stronger signal. Even at the other end of the house his download/uploads speeds are 100/100, but in the office his M2 MacBookPro, which connected on the 6GHz band is getting up to 879/154 (wired on CAT-6 is 922/62) and his iPhone 12 Max Pro 270/210 on the 5 GHz radio. But that's with one wall and a bookshelf between. Closer to the box the phone clocks in at 375/178. Quite decent numbers for a first trial.

Why do this? Because he has far too many 2.4GHz automation and security devices for his old ASUS router (in access point mode itself since he bought a big box router last year). If a visitor signed on to the net or a new device was added, something got booted off its connection. Dedicated access points can handle far more clients. Moreover, there are places in the house the old radio fails to reach. The new AP has already passed his initial tests by doing much better more consistently (so far), so the Spy will probably purchase a second such device and have one in each half of the house. He'll report on the specifics after he finishes his MS proofreading and can install two U7 Pro(s) properly. The first is just lying on a brick serving as a heat sink atop a bookshelf just outside the office at the moment. The whole setup has to be discretely and invisibly wired up and fine-tuned for location.There is BTW a MAX version of the device that can accommodate even more connections over a larger area, but at the cost of possibly poorer penetrability, and the basic rule of APs is that quantity normally beats that kind of quality. We'll see, but all is pretty impressive thus far.

The Spy is aware that some people regard the Ubiquity APs as difficult to manage. The company sells hardware devices that can supposedly control numerous such devices in an enterprise environment (even remotely via the Ubiquiti gateway site), but a reasonable number of APs can be handled with their very simple app, so the Spy will not be commenting on their management hardware. Since this install is for a house and not the university, management is unlikely to be an issue, but the App's utility will also be reported on here once everything is properly installed and thoroughly tested. The initial configuration was brain-dead simple though. Sophisticated fine-tuning of his net can be performed on his OPNSense-driven router.

Prospective purchasers should also be aware that the U7, like the older U6 has only one 2.5 Gb RJ45 port and requires POE. Either an injector is needed at the install point (not supplied), or POE can be obtained via cable from a router or switch with such capability. The Spy's castle has POE on switches that fall down from his new router, so no issue there--works like a charm. Also, such installs ought to use at least CAT-7 cables for maximum bandwidth and reliable power supply, especially at a distance. Cables are cheaper than ever. He has some CAT-8, but may ultimately decide to run optical from his router to a remote POE switch near at least one of the install points and run a short CAT-8 drop from there. Testing, testing. One last thing. The device runs pretty hot, but has a thick metal plate base on which to mount it. Presumably that's all the heat sink it needs.

More comments on Canadian Politics

Last month the Spy mentioned the entertaining British Columbia spectacle of an entire political party--one that recently (before a failed name change rebranding) governed the province for several election cycles--falling on the sword of its financial and polling bankruptcy and throwing its support to an upstart Conservative party that elected no one last election, and whose leader and current members in the legislature are all defectors from the aforesaid kaput party. Some of its candidates are a bit weird in their "free" (but potentially expensive) speech, though nothing even close to the so-called conservatives in the now terra incognito to our immediate south.

Well, our little election is now officially underway, and is chiefly characterized by the governing nominally socialist New Democratic Party (a) running an obnoxious plethora of attack ads (they work, but are the creation of juvenile minds, and guarantee the loss of this citizen's vote); (b) announcing numerous costly initiatives to great fanfare, but that beg the question: "They've had two terms in office, so why haven't they already done these things? and (c) Since they've already turned a $6B surplus into a projected $9B deficit, how much deeper into debt are they saying they are willing to dive to buy people's votes with their own money plus more that doesn't exist and will only fuel additional inflation? Just asking. After all, don't most governments do the same thing when they perceive the possibility they could become unelected from their cushy high-paying jobs? Be nice if there were a few genuine independents running. The Spy is done with political parties, though he may vote for a candidate if a worthwhile one is available in his riding. Maybe he'll start a rumour that all the party-supported candidates kill and eat migrant grasshoppers flying by the millions across the undefended border to our south.

There's an old saying that goes: "If you owe the bank a hundred thousand dollars and can't pay, you are in trouble, but if you owe the bank a hundred billion and can't pay, the bank's the one in trouble". Government debts today run into the tens of trillions and are growing rapidly. They cannot continue to grow indefinitely or the whole house of cards will tumble down into chaos. Mind you, we wouldn't need computers to keep track of our money if there weren't any.

Just saying. Oh, and another Latin saying comes to mind that offers a proverb for speeches and an Internet empty of truth and sense (the latter not common anymore), governance empty of competence, opinions empty of facts, history empty of, well, actual history, promises empty of integrity, and government coffers empty of money: "Nemo dat quad habet"--literally "He cannot give what he does not have," but often loosely translated as "A Scotsman cannae gi'ye his pants."

--The Northern Spy

Opinions expressed here are entirely the author's own, and no endorsement is implied by any community or organization to which he may be attached. Rick Sutcliffe, (a.k.a. The Northern Spy) is Professor of Computing Science and Mathematics and Assistant Dean of Science at Canada's Trinity Western University. He completed his fifty-fourth year as a high school and university teacher in 2024. He has been involved as a member of or consultant with the boards of several organizations and participated in developing industry standards both nationally and internationally. He is a long-time technology author and has written two textbooks and ten alternate history SF novels, one named best ePublished SF novel for 2003. His various columns have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers (both dead tree and online formats) since the early 1980s, and he's been a regular participant and speaker at churches, schools, and academic meetings and conferences. He and his wife Joyce celebrated their fiftieth anniversary in 2019 and lived in the Langley/Aldergrove/Bradner area of B.C. from 1969 to 2021 and cancer happened, so he latterly continues alone, depending heavily on family and friends to manage.

URL s for Rick Sutcliffe's Arjay Enterprises:

The Northern Spy Home Page: https://www.TheNorthernSpy.com

opundo : https://opundo.com

Sheaves Christian Resources : https://sheaves.org

WebNameHost : https://www.WebNameHost.net

WebNameSource : https://www.WebNameSource.net

nameman : https://nameman.net

General URLs for Rick Sutcliffe's Books:

Author Site: https://www.arjay.ca

TechEthics Site (Fourth edition of text; the fifth is in preparation) : httpss://www.arjaybooks.com/EthTech/index.htm

Publisher's Site: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Richard-Sutcliffe.html

URL s for products mentioned this month:

Ubiquity Wi-Fi devices Canadian store: https://ca.store.ui.com/ca/en?category=wifi-flagship