Dr R

Published: Dec. 28, 2020, 7:51 p.m.

The "1984" of the COVID Era THOUGHT CRIMINAL By Michael Rectenwald NYU Professor of Liberal Studies, Michael Rectenwald has written the "1984" of the COVID Era: Thought Criminal. In his 2019 book, Google Archipelago: The Digital Gulag and the Simulation of Freedom, Professor Rectenwald argued that the real danger posed by Big Tech is not digital capitalism as such, but leftist authoritarianism. Thought Criminal explores not only big tech, but also social media censorship, media propaganda, the virus, the vaccine, and collectivism. Most importantly, it shows what could happen to a society so eager to comply with tyrannical rules and regulations that defy common sense. CALL Sandy at 516-735-5468 or e-mail Sandy to schedule interviews with Michael Rectenwald. In Thought Criminal, a distinguished Professor of AI-neuroscience and Theory of Mind has dissident thoughts. He differs from acceptable opinion on matters of grave importance to respectable Human Biologicals and the Federation of Pandemos, the global state. Upon confessing his divergent theories to a graduate student assistant, his life is never the same. He is labeled a "Thought Deviationist," among other damning designations. He is arrested by a robot police agent and soon released but remains a covert "Thought Deviationist" living under the constant fear of future arrest, the treachery of friends, and the loss of his identity. Thought Criminal's "Thought Deviationist" character discovered that the ultimate threat is posed by the Collective Mind and submission to the virus spells the obliteration of the self. Resistance to the virus means living as a fugitive of the law and being forever hunted by robot police agents to be taken in for "treatment." The novel is set in a near-future dystopia where personal robots keep constant surveillance and report any conversations or actions that reflect dissident thinking; where Smart Cities track your every move; where a massive, centralized database, known as Collective Mind, threatens to regulate all thinking and obliterate individual identity. The main character, 48, has lost his prestigious position as professor of the Theory of Mind and AI-Neuroscience at Transhuman University in Santa Cruz, Region of California, after expressing his dissident views about the virus and its role in connecting the neo-cortex of subjects to Collective Mind. This transgression has earned him registration as a Thought Deviationist and Vaccine Resistor, and