Last week I travelled to Salt Lake City, UT. In addition to presenting to a few local groups, I visited seventeen locations in the region that have ties to human capital finance, educational technology, faith institutions, surveillance, and the Internet of Bodies via sensors, 5G, genomics, and bioinformatics. It was a veritable “Disneyland” of social impact investing.
One of my hosts was a Waldorf-trained teacher. Her humane approach to educating children as sacred, creative beings using natural materials sits in direct contrast to the digital instruction model advanced by local technology companies Waterford Upstart online pre-k and data-mining behemoth Instructure whose Canvas program aggregates digital dust on learners from kindergarten through a dystopian future of “lifelong learning.”
Imagine a classroom where young people use pastels and knit and choose their own books!
A place where children engage friends and teachers face to face, not on a screen, not through a gamified interface, not on a leaderboard – where collaboration is valued over competition.
It was beautiful to be reminded of what is possible.
This not easy work, putting together the pieces of a profane agenda and figuring out ways to share this information with people at all levels of knowing and stages of acceptance. Still, experiences like this trip and the connections made deeply enrich my life and keep me going. I am grateful for every minute, particularly in this moment of socially-straight-jacketed biosecurity.
During my stay we made a pilgrimage to Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake. We said a prayer and sang to the water and lit a candle for a friend on Buffalo Point Trail. The hubris of certain powerful humans to attempt to play god with their disruptive bio-nano-tech and virtual reality was particularly striking contemplated against the majesty of the Wasatch Front and in the company of the spiritual beings of that land from the humble lichen to the steadfast bison.
We are living in a moment when the wetiko mind virus of Western scientism seems to have cast a profoundly toxic spell. With loving intentions we hope to break that enchantment and bring forth a reckoning, healing, and ultimately redemption as we face down artificial intelligence. The Singularity is the ultimate settler colonizer, and humanity is in its crosshairs. We will all soon know what it means to be Ute, Palestinian, Black in Apartheid South Africa, descendent of enslaved and genocided people. Big tech and the Vaccine Credential Initiative seek dominion over non-GMO life. We are meant to be fodder for Utah’s 1,000+ “life sciences” start-ups. The capitalist paradigm insists we must be sick or if well, still avail ourselves of their therapeutic “solutions.” That is the twisted logic of a time where right relationship must become the imperative, or else.
If we cannot unite natural life may soon be erased from the planet.
This is one of the talks I gave with the accompanying slides.
I compiled a two-hour video of all my visits.
Individual clips can be found on this playlist.
I encourage you to watch Laura Poitras and Bill Binney’s 8-minute video about the Bluffdale NSA Data that was put out by the New York Times in 2012 and then watch my ritual of revoked consent outside that location. Avril Haines, the new Director of National Intelligence with purview over this facility, was a participant in Event 201. She is why we went to the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab last summer. Check out the 5G towers placed outside Ogden High School, too. Life is under assault with the goal of digital twinning society using military weapons.
It is time to look up from our sandwiches.
The children and the yet to be born are counting on us.
Pushcart memorial at Temple Square – sage and tobacco left at foot of the child in the back.
May we know the true history and work to heal past injustice.
Impact Hub downtown Salt Lake City
United Nation’s themed stained glass window in the Catholic Cathedral of the Madeline
Powder Mountain ski resort purchased by social entrepreneurs and ed-tech venture capitalists as an intentional community
The banality of the origins of digital slavery – left to right
Corporate office of Evernym (digital ID)
Waterford UpStart (online pre-k)
Sorenson Communications (social impact entrepreneur)
Instructure (data-mining learning management system)
Sorenson Impact Center University of Utah
Explore the natural world, learn, make friends, and don’t give up.
We listen to our gut, and try to be humble, knowing our place as the younger siblings of the world.
If needed we will walk through the zombie apocalypse, knowing that the Valley of Love is just beyond.
Live your life so that you will be an ancestor worth claiming.
In a time of profanity, channel the sacred.
I have not yet sifted through all of the info but I have long been a believer in the Waldorf schools. The problem is they are too expensive and too few of them.
I am a Waldorf teacher and am part of a larger effort to reimagine Waldorf education to meet the needs of families in this present crisis. Smaller, neighborhood, locally controlled locations using existing infrastructure and resources. It doesn’t have to be expensive as I have shown in my in-home program from the last twenty years. For further reference: https://www.academia.edu/34636767/THE_MATRIX_OF_WELL_BEING_The_Historical_Developmental_and_Cultural_Rationale_for_the_Cottage_School_Method_of_Early_Childhood_Education?auto=download
Thank you for all you do to expose the impact investment agenda!
Since early last year, I have felt that our very humanity was under attack with dark energies determined to integrate us into “their” system. As a means of resisting this, I felt the need to spend more time outdoors grounding myself, and honouring the sacred – the birds, the trees, the water, i.e. the Universe that protects us regardless of what the ecocidal, patriarchal corporate state tries to foist upon us. Knowing now what the endgame is helps put everything in perspective, and confirms my strong gut instinct. We must urgently abandon our identification with the corporate state to save humanity.
I have not yet watched your full presentation, but I watched all your short clips with interest because I’m a Utah native from generations of Mormons. I graduated from BYU in Film & TV. In 1973 as a young newlywed I lived for a few months in Bluffdale, on almost the exact location of the NSA data center. I left the state and the church for good in the 80s, but I have a lot of family there, and I still love the awesome landscape. I’m interested, and not surprised, by the growth of tech industry in SLC. If I may be permitted a bit of generalizing, I suspect it has a lot to do with the particular psychology of the LDS culture. Kids there are raised to respect authority, not question the rules, always be polite, clean, well-groomed. If you have good intentions, don’t lie or steal, do a good job at the tasks you’re assigned, take care of your family, you’ll be rewarded in the next life. Don’t look too deeply into anything; it might distract you from the righteous path, the “straight and narrow way.” These are people who make great corporate employees and are known for working in the security business. Howard Hughes hired Mormons as his bodyguards. At the same time, there is a strong but less visible hunger to integrate with mainstream America, to counteract the cultural imprint of “outsiderhood” that they carry with them from the history of persecution of the early church, fleeing to Utah, and the stigma of polygamy, racism, misogyny. Media and technology are a great way to join, and even lead, the mainstream. Young LDS people are perfect candidates to whole-heartedly use all the shiny new tools building our future digital jails, smiling all the while, because after all, social impact is good! Actually, it all makes me sad. Thank you for going there to make some small inroads into helping them Wake The Fuck Up.
I was warmly welcomed there and people were open to engaging with the material presented. Hardly anyone in the world right now understands the machine that is being built. Many are convinced these “tools” can be used for “good.” I think I planted some seeds and provided plenty of food for thought. The impact investing space rides on faith communities – all of them. Because tech and bio-tech have become a leading force in the state’s economy, SLC is a key node in the Internet of Bodies program. Though the more I learn about the early origins of the Internet and cloud computing, this is a project that has been a long time coming. This is a wild journey that we’re on. I’m glad it took me to the Wasatch Range. The lands are sacred and many hearts were open. We’ll just have to see how things unfold from here on out.
Yes. A parallel but less prominent strain in Mormon thought is the rugged western individualist, in which cultural outsiderhood actually fosters independent thinking. Those are likely the people who invited you there. It’s interesting to see the role of faith-based organizations in all this. As you’ve said, they’re under word spells — the Orwellian doublespeak. But also, something foundational in western religion is the willingness to self-infantilize. “Big Daddy in the Sky will tell me everything to think and do.”
I’m with you about the sacredness of the land — I may live out my days in the small-ish mountains of New York, but those big Utah landscapes will always be in my soul.
Thanks, & hello, Brent. Lovely to hear your thoughts.
Allison, as always, I am given hope by knowing you are in the world. The presentation here covers so much and does so very clearly. I am in awe. Thank you for being willing to carry all of this and transmit it to all who will hear.
It helps to understand that it is a first principle of capitalism that winners and losers are an inevitable outcome. When it matters you will know to not stop looking until you can determine who the losers are. Thank you for your remarkable effort and insight. There are some aspects of our lives that simply should not be subjected to capitalist motivation. I have been wondering for several years what the next frontier for capitalism would be as it always requires new frontiers to survive as it exhausts old frontiers. I had begun to think it had run out of frontiers. It is disheartening to discover that the next frontier is our minds and bodies. Until we develop a system in which we take only what we need and return in proportion to what we take there will be winners and losers including nature itself. The more creative capitalism is at discovering new frontiers the more devastating the inevitable collapse will be.