Future shock: How Big Tech blowhard Bono makes a convincing Biblical profit...with your Facebook data

Pictured gurning on the cover of MIT Technology Review like Popeye on a comedown, a hesitant flick through the respected journal’s glossy pages a few years ago revealed a particularly self-regarding Bono puff piece where the old blowhard evangelises about Big Data. As ever, the U2 frontman states the obvious as if it were poetry – denouncing a “fracturing” world where competition for natural resources creates “conflict and instability”. Such insight. But, as always, Bono also had the answer.

“It’s avoidable,” the singer mused while utilising his superpower, a unique genetic mutation which allows his bowels to loosen by operation of the jaw muscles. The world’s worst X-Man continued: “I’m confident we can overcome the worst trends – but only if we get even better at building innovative networks to do more of what works and less of what doesn’t. How might this happen? Collecting more data – more open data – so we can drill down further on knowing what to do.”

Was St Paul of Bonovox actually advocating spying as a tool for the greater good? “Uncle” Joe Stalin would certainly approve. Of course, U2 did go “ironic” in the 90s – a scoundrel’s defence which supposedly makes any bad idea bulletproof. Undoubtedly, irony fitted Bono like a glove – wearing sunglasses indoors was no longer the action of an irredeemable goon, but a self-aware sideswipe at rock star egocentricity.

So, perhaps, his cheerleading of social media was just a similarly clumsy attempt at being a bit arch and wry. Had to be. Surely Bono of all folk, a man targeted by 93.4 per cent of all online mockery and abuse, would be acutely aware that Twitter and Facebook simply facilitate their users’ retreats into blinkered silos, their CEOs passively profiteering as word bombs are hurled across the barren No Man’s Land of moderation. There will never be a Christmas football match truce on Twitter. Unless Bono’s head is the ball.

Digging a deeper hole, however, Mr Hewson continued: “Corruption is deadly, but there’s a vaccine for that too – it’s called transparency. It’s much harder to rip people off when they know what’s going on. We can gather and disseminate data in all sorts of ways, giving a whole new meaning to the word ‘accountability’.”

Superficially, this resounds as worthy, if somewhat naive, bluster. I believe Anne Robinson once said something similar about Watchdog. Yet, Bono’s righteousness is diminished somewhat when you know who is actually funding Big Tech’s global soul harvest. Oh – it’s Bono. As a managing director at venture capital firm Elevation Partners, he struck gold with an early investment in Facebook and Dropbox. His shares – a sizeable 2.3 per cent in Mark Zuckerberg’s firm – made Bono even richer than Jedward. Both of them. In 2009 alone he reportedly made $86 million from his tech stock. Rock n’ roll, indeed. Bringing the world together at the right price.

Bono-funded Facebook has now acknowledged that during the horror show of the USA’s last – and perhaps final – democratic election, 146m users likely viewed Russian propaganda. Far from spreading the love in a new dawn for human understanding, social media has clearly incited global chaos and disorder, leaving the planet as fractured as Bono’s predicted “global war for finite resources”. At least we won’t wake up to any “free” U2 albums on our phones after the apocalypse.

Now, I accept the singer is a genuinely enthusiastic tech head – scientific advances allegedly gave him his hair back after all – but claiming Big Data will ‘save’ politics was as accurate as a Michael Fish weather report. Trump’s ascension to power exposed the deep fault lines under social media’s pancake make-up artifice – with Brexit’s tremor further weakening the foundations. And even as users protest with the current mass exodus from social media, Bono continues to rake it in, with or without you.

APPLE IS DRIVEN TO WOW US

LIKE Nicolas Cage movies, Apple peaked early – blindly convinced of its own genius and cannibalising the spark which made the company special for financial gain. Innovation took a back seat to commerce, with all-too-familiar clones of what worked before excreted like clockwork twice a year. And Apple did the same.

Cage, however, is now skint after blowing $140m on dinosaur skulls and hair transplants. His white-knuckled grasp on fading commerciality is understandable. But with a $1trn war chest and no barnet to lose, Apple has few excuses for resting on its laurels.

When the wondrous all-in-one supergizmo iPhone was introduced to the world a decade ago, many expected time machines and starships by 2018. Or at least hoverboards. What we got were bigger iPhones. And a watch. Even John the Baptist had one of those. A waterproof one.

Something is brewing, however. Apple’s top secret Area 51-style research and development lab was subject to a rare leak this week, with a new patent displaying genuine innovation. The plans imagine a near-future where all the windows of Apple driverless cars are actually ultra-high def 3D screens – turning the vehicle into its own virtual reality chamber. Much like the holodeck on Star Trek: The Next Generation, any environment you wish can be projected as the world outside. M8 no more, as the Proclaimers nearly once sang.

In the patent, Apple – rather macabrely – enthused: “Passengers may choose to have relaxing virtual experiences … or drive through a post-apocalyptic wasteland with zombies attacking. If the vehicle stops at a red light, the experience may cause the vehicle to appear to stall and not restart until the light turns green to build suspense.”

It’s one way of keeping the wee ones awake, certainly. Or quickly getting your hands on granny’s inheritance. Turning cars into VR horror funfair rides is certainly a forward-thinking notion and Apple is to be applauded for such stretches of imagination, whether they come to fruition or not.

If consumers deem it too wacky or isolating however, perhaps Nasa or SpaceX can apply the concept on future space missions. Folk spending months staring into an infinite black void will likely go mad half-way to Mars and slaughter the entire crew. This can be avoided with lifelike depictions of rolling green hills, luscious trees and sparkling rivers on the spacecraft windows. Or failing that, Con Air on a loop.

A VERY ODD ILLNESS...NO BONES ABOUT IT

IT’S often said we Scots have funny bones, but one East Coast woman recently found herself at the docs with a problem that wasn’t amusing at all – bones were mysteriously vanishing inside her body.

Stop tittering at the back, it’s not leading up to a particularly tasteless joke – this really happened, with researchers at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh currently studying the highly unusual case. Perhaps coming up with too many results on Google for her sore arm, the woman’s GP had diligently organised some X-rays. These showed a lesion in her humerus – normally suggestive of cancer, but in this case something else which was rather remarkable.

Gorham-Stout disease (GSD) is a condition only ever found in 64 other people. It’s where lymphatic vessels destroy bones, causing them to be absorbed by the body itself. There is no cure, but the illness does sometimes mysteriously fix itself. Perhaps it’s all the work of mischievous magicians with real powers. Or, more likely, the latest in the long line of conditions that have baffled doctors over the centuries. Here are four peculiar medical puzzlers that even Dr Who finds otherworldly.

MORGELLONS

BRANDED “the disease from outer space” by sufferer Joni Mitchell, morgellons sees rainbow-coloured fibres popping out of folks’ skin, like wee My Little Pony manes. These psychedelic structures are accompanied by a crawling, gnawing sensation, leaving many sufferers convinced they are being eaten alive from the inside. The cause is unknown – and many doctors still refuse to admit it even exists, believing morgellons to be a psychological disorder with bizarre psychosomatic symptoms. Joni’s unjustifiable suffering definitively proves karma does not exist.

HUMAN CHIMERAS

WELCOME to The Jeremy Kyle Show, live from the seventh layer of hell. You find out from a crumpled envelope that you’re not your child’s biological mother – despite vividly recalling giving birth. No, Kyle didn’t switch the results to boost ratings, it simply means you’re a chimera – a double-DNA homebrew where two non-identical twins fused in your mother’s womb. Now take that £150 appearance fee and drown your sorrows. And remember you’re drinking for two.

FOREIGN ACCENT SYNDROME

IF you wake up with a strong German accent, maybe you should lay off the History Channel for a while. Don’t have a TV? Well, not only are you a self-righteous try-hard, but you may also be suffering from Foreign Accent Syndrome. This rather common condition was once regarded as a psychological disorder, but it’s now thought to be caused by physical damage to the brain. And before you ask – no-one has ever woken up speaking an actual foreign language. And if someone ever does, run. They’re a spy and your entire life with them is a lie.

LEWANDOWSKY-LUTZ DYSPLASIA

TURNING sufferers into walking, talking fire hazards, this extremely rare immune deficiency transforms limbs into what looks like an explosion of wood, bark and branches. It occurs when the human papilloma virus doesn’t just make itself known with warts and itchy genitals, but instead transforms folk into haunted trees. Even Jesus doubted God’s existence after witnessing it.