glitch / digital dystopia / computational propaganda / concept ep

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Censorship
Obvious Propaganda
These are the old ways
The new fascism has more complex tactics
It survives by its multiplicity
Being all things to all people
An omnipresent whisper
Turning brother against brother
Sister against sister
Tribe against tribe
The whole society lurches towards automation
Like a robotic octopus
Whose tentacles believe
They are all independent
Working towards one goal
Building the Panopticon

This is a concept EP dealing with the issue of computational propaganda, set to a soundtrack of drum & bass / neurofunk music. It was composed in 2015 and released in 2016. During these two years I became keenly aware of the emerging dystopia which attempts to siphon every aspect of our digital lives into the new geopolitical battleground. This EP was my reaction to this realization, and formed the basis of my work going forward. At the time, some folks believed this music to be a vision of the future, but it is actually intended to show insight into the present. The Facebook / Cambridge Analytica scandal has proven this worldview to be 100% correct, but this specific story is only the tip of the iceberg. The larger issue is systemic, and built into the very core of our systems as they are enmeshed with hypercapitalism. A change is needed, and it starts by knowing about the thing we are in. From the interview:

The dystopian message of this EP is actually set in the present, not the future, which makes some of it doubly scary. Think about it for a moment. Algorithms regulate a vast percentage of both culture and the financial system. Democracy is being hijacked by disinformation and distraction on a massive scale, manipulated most effectively by whoever has the biggest computer or the most advantageous position on the network. Autonomous robot weapons are a matter of when, not if. The technocrats who develop these systems are enmeshed with government, and we will have a cast of truly terrible people in the White House, who will have access to the most extensive surveillance tools in history. This is today. I desperately wish this was just the plot of a decades-in-the-future cyberpunk movie, but it's all real. If we actually do wake up in the future to find ourselves in a more advanced stage of techno-fascist world order, I feel we’ll look to this time in history right now as the start of it.