The original full working title of this piece was: DARPA’s iXo AI Control Grid: The Official Version
NOTE: Nearly all of the quotes, graphics, animations and videos in it are all from government, military or military contractors websites, documents and quotes. The music track I constructed for this piece is the only thing except the obvious at the end, that isn’t theirs.
This was my 2nd film release, and one of my favorites. It definitely caused some stir, although you’d never have known judging by the hit counts (as they were already being shut off for my piece in 2006 by around then). So this one, I was officially from 2005 and well onwards the only source I could find on the ‘Official’ AI operations reporting front. Not even Infowars was all up DARPA’s, Google’s, and etc type AI / AGI / Transhumanist related fronts anything like I was, SADLY.
Whatever, so since late 2005 I had been on the hunt, track down everything I could dig out of Google for this effort. And in the spots I’d dig up, scour every last bit I could find out of them. Note I’m not a hacker… we’ll get back to why that’s relevant…
So as usual I was checking in on DARPA.mil’s website, and digging in. I had no ‘proper hacker’ skills or programs, just everything I could follow their own links to, and then whatever else I could utilize GoogleFu to extract out (back then Google was an actually awesome researchers tool).
And DARPA.mil especially, I’d always check back in on routinely. Their site is pretty bland as fuck right now, some tidbits about their role in COVID-19, blah, but you can click around a bit and pull up a good list of their previous programs. But back then they were jamming on it being a presentation to help sway more funding. So October 2006, I opened the site, and whammo, they had this, especially for the time pretty damn slick, browser based graphical multimedia experience. Which had this sort of command module feel to it, and when you’d click the buttons animations and so on would play.
This film has an operating system (OS), that DARPA multimedia experience thing I video captured.
And I just knew I needed to archive that. Meanwhile, I was busy on another film project, the origins of what would finally manifest as my The Darkest Patterns series, in 2018. It just kept proving to be too vast for the available computational technical feasibility I could hope to afford, at the time. So around February 2007, it hit me I had those clips, and it was go time. By then they had taken down the interactive experience. I was perhaps the only civilian anywhere that had video screenshots of the thing, and as many of their PDF files as I did.
Then 8 days later it was released. And it did get some good action, enthusiasm, and reactions….
So back to DARPA circa 2007, Back then they had this handful of six main “Offices” they used to categorize all their many cutting edge sciences projects, where the two I had the biggest hardons for were the “iXo” (Information Exploitation Office), and the “IPTO” (Information Processing Technology Office). And those six “Offices” were always obvious since I found the place in late 2005…
…until about five months after this films release. Then, suddenly the iXo office was repackaged into the IPTO and one of the others I cant think of at the moment. They even had a little announcement piece about the decision. One of the other fed.gov agencies that did some scrubbing over this film at the same time was NASA.
NASA had their own AGI wannabe program, being sold to help get them to Mars or whatever, was their “Intelligent Archives (IA)” program. Oh they had a bunch of pages and PDF files a determined sleuth could extract back then. Then POOF it was gone. GoogleFu was no good even. Afterall, they were already long ago partners, that development itself was what helped trigger my original eruption onto the scene as “Ignorance Isn’t Bliss” and this most my own hunting Hunting HUNTING down all this shit to try to understand it, report on it.
None of what I was posting was a secret, just nobody knew to even look for it. Nothing you would ever encounter, back then, would set you in motion to be on the lookout. Even now, it still isn’t. And the news actually talks about AI everyday now. This issue, of all the ‘conspiracy theory’ categories, exposing this is where “IIB” emerged from.
This isn’t bragging.
My adult life has not been an easy one so much in part thanks to ‘IIB Life’.
But this film gave me some of my ‘best’ ‘accolades’!
- It triggered two fed.gov agencies to scrub projects from the Internet, or literally restructure their departmental layout.
- “I” got “struck by lightning” twice in a 21 day window.
- Got ‘infiltrated’ by Russian FSB / ‘KGB’ ‘agents’.
- Perhaps, Chinese spies also visited me, I now occurred to me tonight.
- Eventually hand a DVD copy of the film to DnB music legend, DJ Dieselboy (whom a big chuck of the DnB content gets he credit for; big fan!).
- Showcase a track made by a Myspace friend of the era, The Great Benwa, my blog inspired him to make that sick track about 3/5 in, that includes “Military operations, kept from the public, for their implications” robot lyrics. One of my best honors ever, to happen to have the perfect video project to score it into right around then too!
#2 + #3? The same story.
Now it’s August, 2007. I was working for some months on a film still yet to be released, Iraq: The Killing Machine. Inspired by iXo, that machine interface thing with sick kill counters all around the edges of the screen. But again, the computer software and hardware options I had at the day just couldn’t render it right. I do have some drafts I’m going to post up soon though, and I argue every war needs one.
Meanwhile, real life situation bs, around Feb.-March I found myself a roomate without a roomate, where I was the only one on the lease. I was still in my 20’s back then! Doing all this bullshit LOL. But real quick, a good friend had me a new roomate. And the year went by. And it was renew time. And I asked, how long should I do. And he said, another year. Then a month later he said, I’m out, my job contract thing ended, move in with a chick whatever.
And so began a whole string of random roomates off of Craigslist the rest of the year, each month. Oh and I have stories. I can do a long thing about it all. Lots of different races / ethnicities. Including a nice kid from Nepal whom I still remember his name, his unique cooking, and adore most of all. There was a bunch of them. Constant stress each month a new temporary roomate. Another one was, a very nice Chinese man, a telecoms high tech contractor guy, his New York contract was up and he was moved down to Florida for the next contract. The story was, the temp housing angle was awesome to come in advance and set up to bring in his family.
Normally in this tale I’d have skipped straight to the ‘Russian couple Month’ (August 2007). Their story was, every year we take a break from college, and go do a month in America. For an entire month. The game was get a job and work to make it equitable.
And they were it. I was desperate, dont lose renters credit. So from day one, I had my ‘KGB jokes’.
While writing this I realized it never occurred to me that some of the others might too have been spies.
“Vito” and “Anna” were the Russians first names. I got them to explain that they went to universities in Russia and China. I can explain that, we Americans think we know what they sound like. But that’s all BS Perspective based on what they sound like speaking English. All the sudden, they’re in the kitchen, trying to talk to me, while talking to each other, I couldn’t hear the syllables.
It took me a couple weeks. I can hear French syllables, Try to follow along with Cuban Spanish syllables. LOL they”re fast. Chinese even. This was different. I had just never heard the real thing, but once before…
Meanwhile, I learned an exotic BO Perspective in the process… They dont smell body odor. Literally no concept of it. This one time I staged a joint grocery store visit with them, all to get them (him mainly) to the deodorant isle. One of my most awkward efforts I can remember, getting them over there and how to approach the subject… literally the whole fucking house stunk like armpits…
And they had no fucking idea what any of all that wall of armpit products was about. There’s literally a gene they lack. I used to write about it was consequences of the perpetual hardships of Communist poverty.
Hey! Maybe they weren’t spies. It’d seem spies would know to wear deodorant?
The things that have always gotten me about this story, is the facts that twice that month my computers “took lightning hits” and were destroyed.
In a 21 day window.