"Everybody looks at everybody all the time and you don't need to be a celebrity to feel the need for privacy. I myself was recently in big trouble with my Confessor for being slow to post a birthing video. I'm not talking about being either an extrovert or an introvert: I'm talking about people who don't believe privacy is a perversion, people who think it might even be a virtue."
I'm in two minds about Blind Faith. I really enjoyed the sci-fi satire in Ben Elton's earlier novels, especially This Other Eden and Stark. But I find The Circle - the Dave Eggers novel not the lame NetFix adaption - to be much more effective as a dystopian projection of privacy-dissolving "social media". On the other hand, Eggers' novel was published in 2013, while Blind Faith came out in 2007, when FB, YT and Xitter were only just appearing. Making Elton's dystopia much more prophetic.
That said, there's a fine line between satire and snobbery. Idiocracy manages to stay on the right side of it by making its protagonists a working class grunt and a sex worker. Ben Elton's growing disdain for infotainment ("Reality TV" and "social media") pushes some of his later books onto the snobbery side of the line, starting with Dead Famous in 2001. Sadly, for all its aspirations to be Brave New World for the digital age, I think Blind Faith is firmly on the snobbery side of the line too.
I have AI hype, online form, and online survey exhaustion. Working in tech has taken a turn for the worse. Is this really what we want to do with our days? #dystopia#tech#ai
"Although I'm no longer with you in person, my darling, I love you so much. I remember the day we met as clearly as if... You can now make purchases in Bitcoin; visit our storefront now... it were yesterday. The yellow dress you wore was so... Get 10% off the new Apple iPad. Say 'PADOFFER' after this memory..." #AI#dystopia
Per BBC: "Saudi authorities have permitted the use of lethal force to clear land for a futuristic desert city being built by dozens of Western companies, an ex-intelligence officer has told the BBC.
Col Rabih Alenezi says he was ordered to evict villagers from a tribe in the Gulf state to make way for The Line, part of the Neom eco-project.
One of them was subsequently shot and killed for protesting against eviction. " #dystopia#SaudiArabia
File this one under the #comingLaborApocalypse. Really, I can't think of a job that is safe, but these are soon toast. Consider supporting basic income #ubi before it's too late.
Ok ok, so I started #reading E. M. Forster's #TheMachineStops and it is a #ScienceFiction short story, and it pretty much predicts a lot of stuff in today's society it is actually scary :blobcatnotlikethis:
There is a whole lot of #business#AI#IT and #chatgpt idiocy to unpack in this article, not the least is the self satirizing tone of the clueless author, despite the hopeful clickbait headline. If this is what companies are really thinking, it's the #cominglaborapocalypse around the corner. Either that or there will be no people who know how the computers or software works.
Red states like Ky are planning to eliminate income taxes to move to an entirely sales tax system. They plan to tax all goods & services, so presumably your doctor, home care, your bookkeeper, and your contract labor will all have to charge you sales tax on top of their regular co-pays & fees.
Of course, that means the brunt of all taxes will be paid by the low wage working poor, and the rich will not be affected - nor pay any tax on their income. Small biz is screwed.
Of course, this being the GOP in Kentucky, they will no doubt slap sales taxes on Food & Medicine, too, just to make sure they hurt the poor as much as possible.
B/c that's what right wing christians do - hurt the poor, disabled, elderly by depriving them of food, med care, affordable housing, and then criminalizing homelessness for good measure. In the name of their evil god.
"Sorry, didn't mean to incinerate your pet dog! The driveway was a bit icy, chap, had to pull out the flamethrowing robot! Can't have anyone slipping on the sidewalk and getting a lawsuit, chap!" #flamethrower#robot
Gdybym napisał to opowiadanie przed 2020, to - o ile w ogóle wpadłbym na taki pomysł - byłaby to groteskowa dystopia. Ale ponieważ pisałem je w "owym roku", jest tylko lekko - naprawdę lekko! - podkręconym odbiciem rzeczywistości.