Another year is coming to and end. During the latest weeks I thought a lot of what I could write about the end of 2019. I thought to write how important 2019 was for me on a personal level. It was the best year of my life after all, at least the most important. But, I wasn't in the mood of writing some inspirational, tear-jerking poem. I wanted to make something in my sharpest style. I wanted to unleash my black irony and highlight what I saw as the biggest issues occurred in 2019, from my point of view.
So, welcome to first edition of the Fuck Off Awards!
I could have put Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn, as well Trump and Erdogan, but to be honest, I didn't follow these guys so close to say whether they deserve a Fuck Off or not. Reality is never what it looks and I would never accept to generate opinions based on other's observations. As I am a cat, I don't follow the mass blindly, so whenever I don't know an issue well enough, I prefer to shut up and lick my fur.
So let's dive into the 5 people or bodies that earned my negative attention during 2019! We start from the less harmful to the most dangerous one!
1. JJ Abrams
Let's start with something light, not so serious, but still important to the many fans of the greatest saga of all time, brutally sacrificed for some Happy Meal in the worst McDonald's outlets.
I'm talking about Star Wars, precisely about the mastermind of its tainted sequels. JJ Abrams took over the project after Disney bought Lucas Films for just 2 billion dollars. It was clear that Disney wanted to have the fastest ROI possible over the Star Wars franchise. Even though Disney didn't buy a normal cow, they still went ahead to milk it ruthlessly, with the initial goal of “making a Star Wars movie every year until people will buy tickets!”. This is artistic violence!
JJ had the most profitable strategy in mind: starting this journey with a rebootquel. The Force Awakens was both a sequel for Return of the Jedi, but even a reboot as it was clearly a remake of A New Hope (the original movie) with also few moments taken from other chapters of the original trilogy, all meshed up in a modern blockbuster style, so Disney could capture the older and the younger audience with one stone.
This year, JJ came back to “fix” the flaws present in The Last Jedi, only to worsen the situation. With The Rise of Skywalker, that I would rename “The Rise of Confusion”, JJ Abrams could have beaten the last spike in the Star Wars coffin. He managed to ruin everything, in particular Return of the Jedi. Anakin Skywalker's sacrifice was useless, Luke was a fool, the Rebel Alliance fought for nothing at the Endor's Moon and you no longer understand if this is Star Wars or Transformers.
And in the meantime, we haven't learned much about the protagonists of this saga, that are in turn remakes of Luke, Han and Leia. JJ Abrams deserves the first Fuck Off Award as he is a ruthless businessman disguised as a movie director that has no respect for the only Space Opera and for all what it was meant to represent, tell and teach!
2. The French Authorities
France is daring to be the first EU country to implement the Facial Recognition technology. This is one of the direst uses of Artificial Intelligence, the one that most of all takes our minds to the novel “1984”.
The French Authorities will roll out Alicem, an online identity validation system that will provide a universal digital identity to the French citizens, making bureaucracy instant!
I'm using the term “Authorities” and not “Government”, because this term is abused. The Government is just one body running the state, which is in turn composed by several bodies. It's people's lazy minds that put everything in the “government” container.
Here, the main authorities are the Ministry of the Interior (part of the government) and the National Security Title Agency.
These two regulators claim that Alicem will simplify the access to online services but at the same time it will fight identity theft, will keep your biometric data safe, which will not be stored in the system, but will disappear after validating identity, so that third parties cannot get any data.
It seems so clean and secure, right...?
Well, France privacy regulator, the CNIL, states this project breaches the rule of consent included in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This EU Directive states that the citizens must have the freedom to choose how to validate their identity. The problem is that Alicem will be mandatory if the French citizens will want to access certain public services... No choice, resistance is futile...
At CNIL, they look deeply concerned and they are not the only ones. Even security experts say that the system could be target of hackers in search of precious biometric data. Identity Theft is more often the most common crime. It is essential to most of the online frauds. Alicem could become a golden mine for identity data. Even because, many are sceptical that Alicem will erase any sensible data after identity validation. Who guarantees that? Even WhatsApp or Snapchat were supposed to do that, but history proved to be very different.
And ultimately, we mentioned “1984”. With one centralized system checking where you are, whatever service you use, in the hands of the government and its regulators, the temptation of keeping tabs on the population could be too great even for the most reliable politician. A surveillance system with such efficiency, could be the gate to an unbreakable dictatorship. Every citizen will be regarded as a suspect, just as it happens already now with financial transactions. Especially in Europe, we are always scrutinized whenever we move more than 50-100 EUR, as the authorities automatically imply that we are laundering money for some dire purpose.
With such a mindset, how can you keep yourself from screaming at the authorities “Fuck off!!!”?
The French Authorities, developing Alicem, the last surveillance tool to undermine personal freedom, deserve 100% the second Fuck Off Award 2019!
3. Matteo Salvini
The third Fuck Off Award 2019 goes to a man who swore to serve his country, to pursue nothing else but the interests of his own nation, to represent Italy at the best he could. Well, this man did all the opposite, pursing noting else but his own personal agenda.
Matteo Salvini, leader of La Lega (The League) is a professional conman, who does politics in his spare time.
Salvini most common tactics include feeding the people with fake news and prejudice, exploiting their ignorance, biases and mostly fears, while “educating” them that the European Union is an evil dictatorship of unelected technocrats conspiring to ruin Italy. It is because of these evil supernatural beings in Brussels if Italy has so many problems. The EU plans to worsen these problems allowing hordes of migrants to invade the country and strip it off of its identity! Italy's identity is clear, strictly based on solid Catholic values, after Jesus himself explained how people escaping from war must be left drowning in the sea...
Also, for Matteo, Italy is one, as if he had never promoted separatists movements in the past, delivering to the South of Italy racist insults or when he claimed on Twitter during the Republic Day that “there is not a fuck to celebrate!”. Some years later, Salvini claims again on Twitter on the same day “Proud to represent these colours [of the Italian flag]”. Finally a coherent man!
Salvini's charisma derives from his compulsive use of vulgarities. This savage usage of the Italian language, creates in his followers the illusion that he says what he thinks, from the bottom of his heart, while in reality he says nothing that makes sense. This is a powerful ability, developed already by ancient politicians, but masterfully adapted to the modern world, where the average population is not able to process more than 3 words in a sentence.
Matteo Salvini was conquering the hearts and minds of the Italians, including members of my own family (great motivation to visit them even less than before) but as a born leader, that wasn't enough. The worst part of modern democracies is that only the biggest ego leads a country and Salvini's infinite ego made him start a government crisis, breaking bond with his allies and trying to call early elections, confident that he would have won the full pot. The plan failed miserably and it created confusion and uncertainty in a country that needed rather the opposite. The only consolation is that with this irresponsible action, Salvini damaged even himself.
Well done Mr Salvini, the third Fuck Off Award 2019 is yours!
4. Joseph Muscat
There was one politician that exceeded Salvini's ego. His name is Joseph Muscat, Prime Minister of the Republic of Malta.
Malta had its fame tarnished back on 16th October 2017, when the investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was killed with a bomb placed under her car, while she was leaving her house. The event broke Malta in two: the ones outraged by the event, and the ones who cheered for her death! Daphne indeed was seen as a witch that was “making up stories” to ruin Malta's reputation, while instead “everything was perfect”.
One of the main targets of Caruana's investigation into the infamous “Panama Papers” was the very Prime Minister, Joseph Muscat. After two years of investigations, mostly pushed by Europol, with the aid of the FBI and the investigative agency Reuters, it's turning out that two important representatives of Muscat's government were involved into or even ordered the murderer of the poor journalist. These individuals are Keith Schembri (Chief of Staff) and Konrad Mizzi (Minister for Tourism). Now, in a normal country, under such circumstances, the Prime Minister would resign along the suspected, immediately! But in Malta, nope... Initially, Muscat even didn't consider the resignation card, but after a series of protests that met an unexpected participation, the PM accepted to resign, though only at the end of January... Official reason: “to ensure Malta a stable leadership and give the Labour Party the time to elect a new leader”...
Every expert in law that I heard believes that Joseph Muscat needs time to “cover his friends” and to “clean evidence”. This theory is likely, as even a European Parliament mission in Malta suggested the Prime Minister to resign outright. The European mission even assessed that there are flaws in the Maltese democratic structure. It seems like the magistrates, but mostly the police, are not totally independent by the political institutions and that almost certainly, the PM was privy to the investigations about Daphne Caruana Galizia's death.
In the meantime, due to this scandal, businesses and investors are seriously considering to leave the island, while Deutsch Bank immediately warned its customers that “we will no longer accept transfers from Maltese banks”.
Again, a Prime Minister that minds first about his own business, putting aside the interests of his own country.
The bigger is your ego, the easiest is to grab a Fuck Off Award. Congratulations to Joseph Muscat!
5. Google
The last and most important Fuck Off Award 2019 goes to the most powerful entity that humanity has ever seen: Google!
Google is so powerful that it is everywhere, covers every essential service and it's used almost by every human being that is connected to the internet, with few exceptions like China.
You can't search for something without Google.
You can't move without Google Maps.
You can't send an email without Gmail.
You can't store files in cloud without Google Drive.
You can't browse the internet without Google Chrome.
And you can't live without your smartphone, powered of course by Google Android.
Though for some services there is virtually competition, the first two are used almost by everyone and no one seems to worry about lack of alternatives.
In the meantime, Google has harvested more data than anyone else. Data that describes how people think! This is hot and dangerous stuff, an immense power in the hands of a few individuals, arrogant enough to believe that they can handle it. And if this wasn't enough, Google keeps on running with the development of the technology that makes big data worth the effort of collecting it: Artificial Intelligence. However, to experience the real AI, current computers are not a good fit. They are very limited, stupid machines that can only say 0 or 1. They will never be able to become “smart” in the true sense. Current digital computers can only learn something very specific, but yet they cannot go near to human intelligence. To reach that technological utopia, to have a base upon which create a thinking machine, you need a quantum computer! It's something that until some years ago was believed to be just a theoretical machine as it requires to handle sub-atomic particles, the very tissues that compose our reality. But for Google, nothing is impossible, it doesn't matter if this goal can be a Pandora's box.
On 24th October 2019, Google announced that they reached the “Quantum Supremacy”, after their quantum computer managed to complete a complex task in 200 seconds. Ordinary supercomputers would have taken 10,000 years to complete such task. And even by listening to IBM, their most powerful machine would still take 2.5 days to do what Google's quantum computer did in 200 seconds!
But what could you do with a quantum computer? Well, nobody still knows exactly. This technology is brand new. However, I can have an idea. Google will deploy his quantum computers to process personal data as big as the whole world to maximize its sales. AI + Big Data + Quantum Computing will be fundamental for Google to literally read people's minds and know exactly what they want and what they need. After that, humans will need Google as much as they need the air they breath. I can bet on this!
Oh, and thanks to this powerful technology, governments will make their dirtiest dream come true: finally they will be able to place as many cameras they want, because they will have something capable of processing all that data, so to find and track whoever they want whenever they want... 1984 will become possible!
For this reason, I decided to give Google the special Fuck Off Award 2019! They worked hard for this prize, a prize that awards the company's arrogance and their lack of responsibility. I recognize a giant which is glad to keep the profits that technology offers, but punctually hides from any sort of liability for the big changes Google is imprinting on the whole humanity.