black6

That doesn't seem like a quorum. Is there no quorum requirement for votes in the French Assembly?

That's similar the way I think about James Bond. He's not one singular person, but a code name given to an agent in deep cover. The agent, the person changes through the decades, but the name lives on.

That's fair, but I would argue that Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire was the genesis of the Eastern Orthodox Civilization, with the core now in St. Petersburg (or maybe Moscow.)

Western Civilization saw its start in Rome, and continued through the rise and fall of the Roman Empire when it contracted. The core of Western Civilization reemerged in England in the 15th century and expanded again, with the core moving to France in the early 19th century, before moving again to Germany in the middle of the 20th century. Post-WWII the core moved once again, this time to the United States, and after the expansion of the US Empire, we now see Western Civilization faltering and contracting under unpopular wars driven by a long series of self-serving poloticians. Whether Western Civilization can reorganize and expand (with the core migrating once again) or wither and die under the expansion and invasion by other civilizations remains the great question of the present day.

Yes, not exactly "unprecedented." The news of Commissaries having their freezers hacked should have been a kick in the rump for everyone else with infrastructure needlessly connected to the Internet.

We're coming back around to an era of the Citizen Scientist.

It's implied consent when you give it access to your WiFi.

Why you would give a coffee maker access to your WiFi is the real question,

"Oh you don't have to fight them, you just have to convince the pitchfork people that the torch people want to take away their pitchforks."

At what point do these services become free, in the Star Trek post-scarcity sense? How is the promise that automation will ultimately provides freedom from struggling for survival upheld? The piper has to be paid, unless the owner class all of a sudden does a one-eighty and decides they can stop raking in money.

Art mirrors reality. The Keystone Kops were en vogue in the nineteen teens.

Log in and navigate to the prompt for whichever flavor of LLM you prefer.

Ok, it is sitting there. Type in nothing.

Leave it sitting there and go to the bar. Go play a round of golf. Go to church. Take your kids to school. Go to the grocery store. Hell, go make love to whoever you are with. Do all that, then go to sleep.

Wake up in the morning, come back to the computer.

What has it done?

Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker

Not once they put themselves into the public sphere. They become chattel, bought and sold by special interests.