Is it Live or Is it Memorex?

This iconic slogan first appeared in the early ‘70s as part of a legendary advertising campaign. The memorable promotion featured Ella Fitzgerald singing a note so intense that it shattered a crystal glass. They then artificially replicated that feat with a cassette recording of Fitzgerald to showcase the company’s superior audio quality, demonstrating that a listener could not differentiate between the live or recorded performance. This promotion successfully cemented that phrase into everyday vernacular.

The entertainment industry has capitalized on every new hi-tech electronic innovation, providing a mass audience with a perceived altered experience. The music industry utilizes synthesizers to replicate a full orchestra, overdubs and autotune to fabricate a perfect performance. Hollywood developed from the simple green-screen backdrop to full-blown CGI, taking viewers to an alternate “reality.” Don a 3D gaming headset and be transported to a virtual “out of body” experience or visit Disneyland and perceive lifelike holographic images. As computer capability advances exponentially, the line between actual performance and a manufactured event becomes increasingly blurred, begging the question, reality or illusion?

Are we living in “The Matrix,” unable to differentiate between a dream and the dreamer? I say hogwash!

This fundamental query has confounded humankind for over three millennia, from philosophers to theologians to quantum physicists. The recent progression of AI is obscuring any apparent resolution, casting a hazy distortion on what is and isn’t real. Any misidentification will create psychological bewilderment, alternating between truth and uncertainty, leaving even the most educated with a disheartened sense of doubt, despondence, and hopelessness. Is “reality” so easily manipulated that our detection and interpretation is purely subjective? Is this technological advancement the next evolutionary step, replacing humanity with cyber humanoids? Are we living in “The Matrix,” unable to differentiate between a dream and the dreamer? I say hogwash! Reality is real, existence exists, and as a species, we can integrate these novel innovations to discern fact from fiction, just as we’ve done throughout history.

The foundation of all knowledge is the perceptual integration of one’s senses to understand the world around us. This ongoing process requires active focus on “defining identity and discovering causal connections.” Through conceptual awareness, reason describes “the process of thinking.” This approach is distinctively individual and initiated by one’s mental acuity. Unfortunately, critical thinking and cogent debate have diminished over the last generation, and the Socratic Method has lost its way, with common sense nowhere to be found. The educational curricula have transformed from teaching students how to think to sanctioning what to think. Such radical ideologies like CRT, DEI, and ESG are disseminated with certitude and have become uncompromising and dogmatic. They have replaced the classical liberal education that previously allowed “Enlightened Western” societies to flourish.

As the quality and independence of our university system deteriorated, the search engines of Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google began organizing massive databases. While the innocent public enjoyed convenient access to information, several platforms were funded by governmental sources under the guise of business-related research into advertising. The developed algorithms have proven successful with subtle mind control to manipulate its users. But to what end? And hardly with noble intentions!

Once married to mobile devices, the entirety of historical knowledge immediately became available to anyone’s fingertips. Adding in the social media manifestations of Facebook, Twitter (X), and TikTok, you have an immense quantity of information dispersed at lightning speed, none of which benefit from the self-corrective mechanisms of “critical thinking.”

The lack of rational validation leaves the pliable mind unsure, relying on the thoughtless opinions of others, and clouding any logical pursuit of truth. Emotion replaces reason, and feelings become more valid than factual reality. These lost souls seek answers and need someone, or something, to tell them what is authentic or imaginary.

As Leonard Peikoff has stated, “Reality has to count for something.”

The consequences of the ever-advancing AI cannot be underestimated. AI’s quickness targets individual minds at overwhelming speed and constantly adjusts any message in real time. Algorithmic programming leans towards information control, rendering many vulnerable and dependent upon its answers to decipher “reality,” like “a sophisticated ‘magic-eight-ball’ that feeds them the illusion of wisdom and knowledge.”

The picture I’ve described appears bleak. However, as mentioned, the veracity of the human mind is skillfully adept, and it quickly adjusts its cognitive processes necessary for survival. While we have enjoyed the benefits, our subconscious has exhibited psychological behavior foreign to past generations. Over the last quarter century, this technology has been thrust upon us without adequate time for proper integration and adjustment. The Millennial and Gen Z generations have become generations of instant gratification, flexible morals, and diminished interpersonal social skills. Texting, Twitter, email, and the like allow an alter-ego to serve faceless responses without context, credibility, or accountability, entrenching them deeper in their alternate universe.

But reality, in its own time, is “the ultimate arbiter” that will bring this retreat and its apathetic sense of complacency to face the problems of the actual world. Once proper identification is understood, the behavior will slowly correct itself while rediscovering rational methods of adaptation. As Leonard Peikoff has stated, “Reality has to count for something.”

The velocity of AI will accelerate this process, with the next generation of children quickly discerning fact from fiction for continued existence, consistent with human nature. But, this is not instinctual and will differ with each person, as free will and individual thought are uniquely personal.

As with all new technologies, from the printing press to atomic theory to supercomputers ushering in this new era of AI, its usage and application can promote human flourishing and more freedom or exploit cruel authoritarian attempts to control humanity “for its own good.” The ability to discriminate the real world from simulation and “deepfakes” is paramount in choosing the right path forward.

…individual responsibility will not only improve the quality of our daily lives but will help avoid any despotic mind control, psychological dependence, psyop, or mass delusion.

Endless deceitful attacks, incriminations, and assertions will continue to be supported by manufactured and artificially generated evidence. These “facts” will seriously affect our psychological well-being and how we assess what is real. No one will trust the past empirical underpinnings of truth, and the phrase “I’ll believe it when I see it” will be rendered meaningless.

Fundamental corroboration criteria will become essential to determine authenticity, quickly aiding in objectively evaluating truth and reality. Jefferson stated 250 years ago that we must “Question with boldness,” and it will become ever more imperative not to accept another’s subjective interpretation thoughtlessly. Many have been lulled into a quiet serenity in recent years with a collective “go along to get along” group-think mentality. They seek the tribe’s approval while abandoning any personal accountability. The necessity of this shift to individual responsibility will not only improve the quality of our daily lives but will help avoid any despotic mind control, psychological dependence, psyop, or mass delusion. Our continued existence, freedom, and life will depend upon it.

My romantic belief in the human spirit and its cognitive ability can imagine a future that will harness this incredible technology and advance our social condition. But to accomplish that, we need accurate recognition and a rational code of values consonant with reality to properly guide our actions.

So, this critical question is far more than a brilliant advertisement, as we all look outward to discover: Is it live or is it Memorex?

Related Posts:

1. Postmodernists Enact Their “Real” America as Racist and Homophobic
2. Is Mathematics Just an Intellectual Game?

   

About the Author: Edward Pozzuoli

Edward Pozzuoli is a retired mortgage banker and businessman, music aficionado/promoter, restaurateur, casual real estate developer, and armchair Objectivist. He graduated from Brooklyn College with an economics degree and a doctorate in the "street smarts" of his Brooklyn Italian neighborhood. He worked at the Nathaniel Branden Institute in the late 1960s while attending college. He currently resides in South Florida. He bills himself as a seeker of truth in a "happy bubble."