Todays human civilisations, particularly those cultures that steep themselves in digital media, are at the cusp of a concerning reality.
What if you couldn't tell what was real anymore?
I'm not talking about The Matrix, in which we all live inside a manufactured reality, unable to open our eyes and see the true world around us. No, I'm referring to a much simpler way to construct alternate realities. Everyday, you and I ascertain important events happening all around the world through millions of pixels. Those pixels being the visual foundation of our digital displays — computer monitors, smart device screens, LED TVs, and more. Screens have become irreplaceable in todays information transfer ecosystem.
These displays deliver our daily megabyte-sized version of trending reality. They are a crucial piece in what is about to unfold, but the screen is just an apparatus, its the final piece in the transmission of messages, concepts and ideals. Let us turn our attention to the messages.
Where are we now?
Hundreds of millions of people around the world have entrusted some form of media to be a personal source of truth. This media can take shape in the form of a TV broadcast, a YouTube video, a live streamed event or a viral news story. Decades worth of nightly news shows, broadcast entertainment, live breaking reports and most recently social media has accustomed us to believe that what's on the screen in front of us is real.
I'll pose the question though, when was the last time you questioned the media sources you've entrusted to inform your beliefs?
Someone who reads their news from CNN likely has an easy time questioning the authenticity of an article from Breitbart. And the opposite is true too, many CNN denouncers think CNN is ISIS. When was the last time you took a moment to question the source you have deemed competent and infallible?
For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
We will always have a much harder time questioning the things our hearts have decided to esteem as worthy. And for many people today, they have unkowingly given their hearts over to digital mainstream media. Without blinking an eye or questioning a motive, we've become conditioned to believe that media equals truth.
Real News, Fake News
When something important happens half way across the world, how do you possibly verify it? You didn't see it with your own eyes, and most likely you don't have an eyewitness you can call. What about in your own city? After reading a story that took place locally, do you run out and jump in your car to go verify it in person? Do you seek out the people involved so you can sit down with them and get their personal testimony? For millions of people the answer is 'no'. They blindly accept what is presented to them at face value shaping their perspective of reality.
In the last 6 months, the term fake news has become increasingly commonplace. The current incarnation of fake news is quite simple to construct:
- Craft a narrative that fits your agenda
- Make up one or more lies to reinforce the narrative
- Create a piece of media that will deliver the false narrative to your audience
- Hit the publish button
That's it. That is how fake news is created today. Authors, anchors and tweeters simply have to present a few carefully crafted, deceptive words to an audience who's already bought in, and they've now birthed an alternate reality to millions of people. Whether you agree or not, media consumption is a form of mind control — you are literally being told and shown what to think, no verification needed.
Deep down, we don't want to believe the organizations telling us what to think might actually be selling us counterfeits. In time we need to become more discerning of the words we're being told, and begin to weed out and seek truth amongst the lies.
From Words to Pictures
The fake media of today is built on words. Words that bear nefarious lies. Those lies form profoundly consequential alternate truths. But talk is cheap, visual imagery is powerful. So what does the fake media of tomorrow look like?
A picture is worth a thousand words
We are seeing the transition from crafted words to crafted visuals. In late 2016, ABC news was caught staging a crime scene for a camera shoot. After being called out by CNN, ABC apologized on "Good Morning America" saying "This action is completely unacceptable and fails to meet the standards of ABC News".
Even more recently, CNN has come under fire for the possiblity of manufacturing their own visuals to tell a story. Whether you believe that CNN was in the wrong or not, it is very clear they are carefully coordinating and setting up a scene to convey their story. There is clear intent to control every aspect of how a narrative is presented.
While these scenes are filmed and coordinated live, there's a more powerful world of cinematic visuals and generated graphics that we have to look at with a discerning eye.
The Rise of CGI
Many of us have experienced computer generated imagery (CGI) of some sort in our lives. If you watch television or go to the latest action hero flick, you would be suprised how many scenes have been stitched together using some form of CGI. And much of it today, looks unbelievably real - it has to. If you've ever stuck around to watch the credits of a Marvel movie, you'll sit through hundreds of names of cast and crew dedicated to visual effects and CGI alone.
It's pretty mind blowing what a team of talented creatives and engineers can do, but let's take a moment to see what solo artists can accomplish on their own with readily available tools and resources. This imagery looks stunningly real, but they are indeed fake.
Peter Haagensen - Catwoman for 'The Dark Knight Rises'
© Per Haagensen - Catwoman #1 - "The Dark Knight Rises"
Hyun Kyung - Kristen Stewart
Dan Roarty - Happy Birthday Nana & The Blue Project
© Dan Roarty - Happy Birthday Nana, The Blue Project
The tools and computing power used to render these detailed visuals are growing cheaper and more accessible everyday. You can purchase RenderMan, the rendering software that Pixar has developed to render your own graphics. Need processing power to generate those frames? A rendering cloud is waiting and ready, credit card and PayPal accepted. The promises of grid computing put vast amounts of compute bandwidth at your fingertips to solve problems or in this context render graphics that might be inefficient otherwise. And the culmination of computing power that will make super computers of today look like calculators is quantum computing. Many people believe that quantum computing is just around the corner.
A Whole New World [Order]
It's truly amazing what a few individuals with some creativity, a little bit of time and readily available tools can create. But let's play with the scale and the motive shall we.
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides currently holds the record for the most expensive movie budget at a cool $378 million dollars. Quick research shows that the total number of cast and crew is around 2,500 people. The movie is 137 minutes long and I'd venture to guess that there is some form of high fidelity, near photo realistic CGI in every minute of the movie. So for $300+ million, one could feasibly buy an entire team that can create 2 hours worth of high fidelity visual graphics.
If we set our sites on creating a 20 second video clip, plenty of time to convey an important event, it's not a far stretch to think that with todays tools and talent, we could get 100% photo realistic imagery and visual effects out of a 50 person team with a budget of $1 billion dollars. Imagery that would pass the visual truth test of hundreds of millions of people around the world. What could they possibly create?
A carefully crafted, stunningly rendered, maliciously designed reality of events. A fake reality, imperceptible from truth, for hundreds of millions of people who've dulled their minds and desensitized their reasoning by gorging themselves on mainstream media.
With proper planning, coordination and execution just about anything could be fabricated that would have such profound consequences, turning the tides of influential business men and women, political leaders, and world governments.
A couple billion dollars and an operations team is pocket change for corrupt governments that wish to manipulate their citizens, sowing confusion and causing uproar and chaos in the streets. It's childs play for malevolent leaders hell-bent on destroying their rivals and overthrowing other countries.
We are dangerously close to a reality where life altering, history changing events will be staged using high fidelity CGI and 3d renderings. made possibly by:
- The abundance of screens and the irreplaceable convenience they provide to gather information.
- Our strongly convicted acceptance of information sources as truth with little motivation to verify or check authenticity.
- The rise of fake news and narratives spreading socially and a shift from using fake words to fake visuals.
- Powerful open source and commercial tools as well as the exponential growth of available computing resources.
These things point us to one conclusion, the inevitability that the future will be faked, in which the consequences could be devastating.
Great post! I saw this YouTube video a while back;
You truly can't believe anything anyone tells you on a screen.
This is pretty crazy technology, I hadn't seen this yet. Thanks for sharing!
I agree with you that this technology will be used to sway the minds of citizens for political purposes. As you demonstrated above, we are already seeing it on a much smaller scale. I believe it was Karl Marx, who said, "if you repeat the lies enough times, people will start to believe it is true."
Wow!! Awesome post , mind blowing really !! Upped and resteemed ! 👍👍👍
Thank you so much @karenmckersie! Absolutely mind blowing when you sit back and start to think about the possibilites. Thank you for taking a few to read and especially the resteem :)
your very welcome ! Im also following you know !👍👍👍
You know, I don't believe hardly anything anymore. We live in a world of lies and it is disorienting to the extreme. I like how you were able to parse out how fake news is created or false narratives. What are we going to do when we can't tell the difference between what is true and what is not? I know I will just turn it off. One of the reasons Steemit is good, is for the choosing of content instead of the thrusting of content which Fbook and Twitter have. I hate it when things are shoved down my throat. Steem on and GOOD JOB!
Thanks @teaandkisses for a thoughtful response. Seems like you are on top of your game when it comes to understanding the impact of media / social media. What I'm concerned about is the millions of people who are not nearly as discerning, they'll take something they see on blind faith and then go act on it.
“If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed.” - Mark Twain. Great post and very true.
Good one. Good ol' Mark Twain. If you are ever in Connecticut, USA you should check out his home and museum there. http://www.marktwainhouse.org/
Thanks my friend and you're right. Some words of wisdom stand the test of time whilst others are scattered by the sands of time, Twain is definitely the former. And I will be sure to check out his home if I get the opportunity,thanks again.
So true. Good post. You can now not believe what you see or hear.
Omg, the Catwoman is so real, In the future, you will not be 100% sure about anithing, maybe even when you will see with your eyes.
Yeah it's astounding how real some of these renderings are, and the fact that a solo artist created them is unreal!
Yes, that is the power of computers, the PC make this randomly but some artists paint something like this many many years ago when this technology didn't exist. I don't know to much about fractals but they are stunning.
Nice and long post. Good Job!!
...Don't believe anything you hear, and only 1/2 of what you see??? Maybe it's down to believing only 1/8th of what we see now...
Seriously, my goal is to simply raise the idea and bring some awareness. If I can get people thinking about it then they can start asking questions.
Well documented! I've seen this theory floated around elsewhere and I read your article with fascination. Up voted! (And followed!)
I have stopped believing things anyhow for long.
Nice content @britt.the.ish.
And then you have a lot of people clamoring for more "augmented reality" lol.
That's actually an interesting point, as AR gets more popular we are bound to get desensitized to media and visuals that have a semi-fake appearance. AR is neat, but it's not realistic... this could lead to culture being more accepting of visuals that don't look perfect, which in turn makes the possibilities presented in the article even more doable.
Good point there. Acclimating to the computer virtual imagery so that it becomes the standard for "reality" or is indistinguishable that we assume it to be real.
But every technology has its own goods and bad .
As technology develops and producing convincing fakes becomes a greater and greater possibility, we need to try to find new ways to cope with what we are presented with and discovering what is true and what isn't.
Unfortunately, we have no guarantee that we will not lose this battle (or even that we haven't yet actually).
A cheap and simple mitigation that has been long practiced by skeptics is to get second opinions.
I'm not sure what that would mean if there is an absolutely real looking video of somebody saying something they have never said. Right now it might help a bit, but I prefer getting access to facts rather than interpretation.
The technology that manipulates the facial features is just as easily applicable to the entire body. With audio, and some CGI props, you can make it appear that anyone you want has done anything you want to show them doing.
We need to limit our certainty to data we can source from more than one supplier, and preferably from opposing sides of the story. That's the only way we might presently gain some confidence in the authenticity of video at present.
And that's but weak authentication.
Sure, I think that's what most of us are doing right now. I was just concerned that we might get to a point when that might not be enough. But we do are best and hope for the best, right?
Yes. I also entertain the idea from time to time that the panoptic surveillance and data harvest ongoing and ubiquitous that remains yet out of reach of honest men, will soon be our proper possession.
It is done on our authority, and afforded with our funds. It is rightfully our property, not that of those to whom it presently is exclusive. Whether those as have it would deliver it or not, the incessant hum of industry spins up an ever-burgeoning plethora of means of it's attainment.
Moore's Law, I suspect, applies to hacking as well as hardware.
It actually might be impossible to fake news before too long.
I hope it works out that way!
amazing article, well said my friend, AI is gonna get out of control i believe. with all the cgi and holograms , like they used with tupac at the concert that was insane it looked so real, imagine holograms in the sky..... just a random thought . since the future is writing itself, by every word we say creates something, just as every choice we make changes our reality for that day so to say... just keep an open mind with that your be able to dissect the false info from the truth, stay shinning n grinding all , stay humble, stay inspiring, most importantly continue to stay blessed steemians . what you perceive you can turn into reality. Just have to start after u create that vision, believe in yoursel :You must; No one else will until you do so. i believe in you all. thank you for this great mind opening article @britt.the.ish ,can't wait to read more of your work
Hell its way easier than using Renderman. For static scenes just get really good at using Daz 3D and the images you showed actually could be made with it. It can be done from the price of Free up through however, much stuff you want to buy and they always have sales going on so it can be addictive.
Absolutely! If the output you need are still frames or a couple of "photos" the effort and cost to create something like that goes down even more making it that much more accessible to bad actors
Daz is pretty high quality these days so you can make most of what you need and stick it into game engines, blender, maya, etc and it can get pretty detailed.
I've been saying for awhile we are no longer in the realm of SEEING IS BELIEVING unless you happen to be standing there and witness the event with your own bare unaided eyes.
And there goes my mind!
Mind ... blown :)
I got news for ya, most of the present is fake.....but no fear "the truth is out there"!
WOW Scary... but true :(
Best post I've read in a while. Followed!
Thanks @klye! That's a really great compliment :) Thanks for following back
I totally agree with you. That because of technology, the information line that determines fake and true has increasingly becoming thinner and thinner. And since you quoted "where your treasure is, there your heart lies"; I would like to add "beware of false prophets" as well. It will increasingly becoming a norm and only those who knows the true with the peace at heart will not be wavered by all the distractions around us.
Very valid post that worth to be re-steemed. I have upvoted you too. Good job.
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I LOL at this.
Great article. Resteemed. I find it ironic that the people that first started throwing the "Fake News" label around seem to be the most prolific at producing fake news. Though that does come out of the "Saul Alinsky" play book. And consider Hillary was a huge Alinsky fan and even spent time with him.
His playbook... "Accuse your enemies of doing what you are actually doing".
The actual creators of the fake news meme were the Washington Post cited anonymous group PropOrNot back in early November 2016 in the wake of the election and Wikileaks Podesta email revelations that revolved around references to pizza, as well as Clinton team collusion with Saudi Arabia and Qatar while knowing those countries funded ISIS. Concern about this funding and taking money from the Gulf State countries is admitted in the Podesta emails.
We cannot tell what is real anyways. Simulation hypothesis. Photons act differently depending on whether they are being watched or not. So when neither you nor anyone else is looking, the world might not even be rendered.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment
I've read a little bit about this over the past year or so, pretty interesting stuff. Regardless the point I'm trying to make is that we expect a certain level of truth from the media we watch (good motives), however we're getting to the point where we don't know whether something we watch is actually real anymore (bad motives).
LOL the double slit experiment is a great point. Crafty photons!
A superb post! Oddly I was thinking along the same lines today when I published <a href="https://steemit.com/fakenews/@valued-customer/face-2-face-real-time-facial-expression-mapping-software"this post
It doesn't take $1B to do much of this. These guys are not that well heeled, I am sure.