Right. The point is: No, unfortunately I’m not. Damn shame really, but what can you do?

No, I don’t remember any of those people, and I doubt they care about me either. While we’re on the subject, that is far from the only way in which I’m nothing like Ryan Gosling.

It’s even more potent than that! I’m not even female, but now I suddenly want to be so this can make me gay.

Alternatively, you could use a browser instead of an advertisement delivery app.

It really doesn’t. I highly doubt there isn’t office politics going on inside Microsoft, Apple and Google, but unlike them, Linux development is all public. If anything, that’s likely to curtail a lot of bad behavior rather than encourage it.

Eh. It’s not like we’d be getting anywhere at sub-light speeds regardless and a working Alcubierre drive isn’t exactly right around the corner.

On the other hand, it might make it harder for anybody with working FTL to get to us, which is probably a good thing. If they saw how we’re conducting ourselves at the moment, orbital bombardment would be the best we could hope for.

Ah yes, the printing press: Likely the most cumulatively subversive memetic infection vector ever conceived.

Define ‘mind-control’. Trans-cranial magnetic stimulation has been perfectly capable of changing people’s broad moods since 1985 and is being actively used to treat depression right now. The underlying technology is only going to get more precise, especially as more research on spintronics is done for other purposes. Sure, right now our understanding of how what goes on in a given brain translates to ‘thoughts’ is insufficient to change those thoughts in any reliable way, but there’s little doubt that when we do, the technology to make it happen will almost certainly be around.