Earlier this year, the UK Government published its strategy for the introduction of the next generation of wireless interconnectivity, referred to as 5G or “fifth generation”. The Government document explains that unlike previous generations of mobile networks, 5G is not just about enhancing existing technologies through faster connections and bigger data transfer capacity; it is about establishing “a system of systems”, involving hundreds of thousands of new generation mini-mobile phone masts or antennas (referred to as “small cell transmitters”) that will be deployed in urban centers up and down the land. It is anticipated that in an area the size of the City of London (famously a “square mile”), forty-two thousand new antennas will be required. This is roughly as many antennas as currently exist throughout the whole of the UK, and gives an indication of the massive scale of investment that will be needed in order to implement 5G across the nation.
The introduction of 5G in the UK is part of a coordinated global effort that is now gathering pace, with trials already underway in many different countries, some further ahead than others. The aim is to create an electronic infrastructure, planetary in extent, and so comprehensive that what is planned is now widely referred to as the creation of a global “5G ecosystem”. We tend to think of ecosystems as composed of communities of living organisms interacting with soil, rocks, rivers and so on, but what is envisaged is the creation of a second, entirely electronic, network of interacting technologies that will encompass, embrace and interpenetrate the primary reality of the natural environment that human beings have for millennia lived within. This alternative electronic ecosystem will be like an invisible net thrown over the world, capturing an increasing number of objects — not only man-made appliances, but also living creatures and natural processes — and incorporating them into an ever-expanding global information network.
As the whole planet accelerates towards the dubious status of becoming “smart”, the Internet itself will increasingly shift its location to the external environment, becoming a so-called “Internet of Things”, to be accessed all around us, wherever we are. This of course is already happening, but 5G will enable it to happen far more effectively. One of the defining features of 5G is that it will give 100% coverage: there won’t be anywhere that is not covered by the new electronic ecosystem. Wherever one is, one will be “connected”. And this connection will be “seamless”. “Seamless connectivity” (a much used phrase in describing the benefits of 5G) means that any number of different computer programs or systems will be accessible through a single user interface, be it a smartphone, tablet or laptop. It also means that wherever the user is, he or she will be immersed in the greater electronic ecosystem. There will, in other words, be a growing seamlessness between the physical world and the electronic world: the two will increasingly merge. We will live “seamlessly” between them.
Today you can walk in fields for miles on end in the UK and you are likely never to set eyes on a farmer or farm laborer actually standing on the soil. Within the farming community, with the exception of small organic and biodynamic farms, it seems that relationship to the land, to the soil as “mothering power”, has finally been lost. The 5G ecosystem will carry this tendency to an even greater extreme of alienation because it is not an ecosystem for living organisms: it is an ecosystem for intelligent machines and robots. At the smart farming conference in the Netherlands, there was discussion on how to respond to the worrying decline of bees. No one mentioned that bees are high
highly electro-sensitive, a fact which has been known for more than forty years, with many recent studies confirming their hyper-sensitivity. The connection between colony collapse disorder and exposure to radio frequency and microwave radiation has been repeatedly argued by researchers, but at the smart farming conference a new “smart” way forward was presented as the perfect solution to the problem: a new pollinator drone called “APIS”. The acronym stands for Autonomous Pollination and Imaging System. It is a fully autonomous “micro air vehicle” designed for greenhouses — one of several currently being developed in different research establishments across the world. The technical advances that have been made in indoor navigation, miniaturization and precise vision-based control underpin the viability of the design. If our bees are being killed off by the new electronic ecosystem, never mind. The new ecosystem enables them to be replaced with robot bees.
In this one example the deeper purpose of the 5G ecosystem is laid bare. It is so to enable intelligent machines, or machine-organism hybrids, to usurp natural organisms. The technological revolution that we are currently living through goes beyond the extension of our control over nature: it is aiming at the replacement of nature with a fully technologized planet. If people today were not so enamored with the flood of increasingly sophisticated gadgets and robotic devices that promise to entertain or empower us, it would be tempting to resort to conspiracy theory to explain what is happening: a shadowy elite, a hidden agenda. But no, it seems that both nature and essential human values are being undermined by popular consent, and by an unbridled enthusiasm for ever-greater technologization of the conditions of life. It is as if something diabolical has got into our souls and cast a spell over us.
Jeremy Naydler
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(Extract taken from “Radiation, Robot Bees and 5G: The Nightmare Unfolds”, published in New View, Autumn 2017, where it is fully referenced. — Reprinted with kind permission from The Social Artist, Autumn 2018, pp. 52-54.)