The Facebook “emotional contagion” experiment has created what is to me a surprising little storm. Facebook constantly manages what news you see and which of your friends you get to pay attention to, even with continual manual alteration of your feed’s parameters, so Facebook playing with FEELS in pursuit of algorithm development shouldn’t shock anyone. Hinky low-rent NLP experiments are right in their wheelhouse. People have gotten very bored with being told that they are the product in social network businesses, but, hey, we did tell you, so you don’t really get to be upset about it now. Facebook’s business is the transmission of language. Their eventual goal is control of communication. This is what will eventually bring them into direct conflict with Google. Google’s interest is in infrastructure, and it could come down to carriers. Imagine Africa as a new colonial theatre, with Google’s Project Loon up against Facebook’s planned 11,000 drones providing internet access — access that will doubtless require a Facebook account. While Ray Kurzweil toils in Google skunkworks to engineer some form of AI, and Facebook data scientists shamble towards an empathy algo that would emulate an element of higher animal consciousness.

It’s all good fun, out here in nightmare internet.

Reading SEASON OF THE WITCH: HOW THE OCCULT SAVED ROCK AND ROLL by Peter Bebergal.