It strikes me as odd** that the Tech Tyrants ignore their own training. Most of them started as engineers or programmers. In both trades MODULARITY is crucially important. Tech Tyrants practice the exact opposite. Everything they do is aimed at TOTAL ONE-WAY GLOBAL CONTROL of all objects and people and planets and stars and black holes and laws of nature by Elon (or Zuck or Gates et al).
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Complex tech, mechanical or biological or electronic or software, requires modularity. The word complex is important because the first primitive invention can be simple.
The first steam engines by Newcomen and Watt were simple, just a piston pushed by expanding steam to move a water pump.
After the engine became part of a locomotive with cars coupled behind it and a railroad under it shared by other locomotives, modularity took over. The locomotive has several separate but partly dependent systems. Boiler control, valves, governors, whistle, lights. Each car has its own brakes driven by an air pump in the locomotive. The track requires a signaling system, already a full-fledged computer network in 1880, with sensors for passing trains and a video control screen for the dispatcher.
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The first computers were Jacquard looms and Hollerith sorters. The cards controlled just one loom or one sorter, so they could afford to be ‘global’. They didn’t need separate and partly connected systems.
After the sorter acquired peripherals like a keyboard and printer and tape drive, modularity took over. The keyboard and printer and tape drive had their own semi-independent computing systems, not synchronized with the main sorter, able to encode keystrokes or decide when to strike a letter or move the reels. Each peripheral held its own private info and exchanged only public info with the main computer when the main computer asked it to.
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The first software for the Hollerith was also global. It was just a set of plugs connecting the punch card contacts with the indicator dials, pure one-way control. When one hole was sensed, it immediately clicked the connected dial.
After the software performed more complex tasks, it had to be modular, with distinct sections able to run on their own when commanded. The distinct modules can be modified without altering the main system. A module CAN’T BE ALLOWED to change any of the main interconnections. If it does, the whole system will get screwy. The main interconnector doesn’t need to know what’s happening in each module, and should never try to alter what happens in each module.
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Plants and animals work the same way, with very different structural forms. Even within one cell there are free-running modules like mitochondria and digestive pores. Plants are open-bus systems with detachable modules like stolons and branches and flowers and leaves. Animals are closed-bus systems, no way to plug in a different organ or graft in a different branch.
Needless to say, the Tech Tyrants are also trying to break into the modularity of closed-bus humans. See Neuralink.
Tech tyrants want the world to be simple and primitive, like a Watt pump or a virus.
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** By odd I really mean disgusting.
Polistra's Mill 