A transhumanistic edge of society in dystopia. Daily life has been impacted by rapid technological takeover.
cross-posted from: https://corteximplant.com/users/x00001/statuses/112491302665199252
(title added by community mod)
Pirated for Alt TextImage description: the yaer was Two Thousand and twenty-four. I took a puff of my Electronic-Cigarette, inhaling the vapours. my mobile terminal buzzed in my pocket, a flat slab of microchips and glossy touchscreen. I ignored it....... probably another Electronic-Mail
(Originally published on corteximplant.com: 2024-05-23) - Click the Fedi-Link to visit.
It's not cyberpunk to my knowledge, but there's apparently a story out there that makes fun of this type of sci fi description writing, by telling what seems to be a military adventure story about going to fight and conquer some aliens, but is revealed by the very end to actually have been the story of the conquistador that conquered the Inca empire, but with everything described this way such that it sounds like more advanced technology than it is.
That sounds amazing. Any link?
I think I found it
Legend
Well that's definitely the kind of username I'd pick if I was telling history as a sci-fi type story.
The First Empire had conquered most of the known universe by political intrigue and sheer military strength; it had fallen because that same propensity for political intrigue had gained over every other strength of the Empire, and the various branches and sectors of the First Empire had begun to use it against one another.
The US is so fucked.
I advise young people that they are, in fact, living in a dystopian YAF novel, and yes, their own parents and teachers and ministers are (often without conscious self-awareness) setting them up to be disposable, replaceable components (soldiers and laborers) in the vanity projects of plutocrats, and the path of least resistance will lead them to this fate of being worked until they're worn out, and then cast aside.
Their story is how they escape this path. If they take too long, it's how they secretly serve the resistance while not alerting the authorities, but that's hard mode.
There is a quote somewhere - I can't find it now - about the likes of Jules Verne and HG Wells and Isaac Asimov etc., the pioneering greats, and how they were able to see so far ahead into the future and predict it with remarkable accuracy, b/c they saw clearly into the hearts of men.
Technology changes, but people do not.
This is my hypothesis, that our tendency towards small-society thinking and taking more than our share of the commons without maintaining it is going to steer us right into one great filter or another. The climate crisis and plastic crisis seem respectively driven by number-go-up thinking by industrialists who are driven to increase their own wealth and power even when they cannot utilize what they have except to seek out even more.
Taking a page from Zach Weinersmith, we might invent a sociological trick that allows us to retain self-awareness of this and adjust our behavior to one more large-community minded, which would be a path out of plutocracy sustained by any means necessary. (In the end, with the Soviets shelling Berlin, Hitler blamed the German people for not being fierce enough.) Otherwise, we're just going to devolve into fascism and enemy-within rhetoric (accompanied by purges and genocide), which is terribly convincing for large swaths of the population.
Well, I offer this for consideration: the other half of my earlier sentence stating "but people do not" is that "Technology changes". i.e., we are going through a cultural wave adapting to modern circumstances, particularly the internet. There is no guarantee that democracy will survive this adaptation.
Specifically, democracy requires an educated populace. Perhaps some EU nations can handle it, but can people in the USA, or the UK, or Russia? At one point long in the past, other nations were depressed from WWII, but the economy of the USA was inflated. That was a long time ago though. And disinformation these days can spread much more readily than someone having to travel here from another country to make speeches first-hand in every location that they want to reach.
Worse, we were warned - the founding fathers gave us this crucial warning even as before the nation was born. Originally, the only ones allowed to vote were cis, white, land-owning Christian men who rather than tilling the fields, loafed around all day long reading books for fun & chatting about philosophy mainly b/c they were bored. Expanding that to include non-land-owning men, and women, and blacks who weren't even considered "people" (well, 3/5ths you know...) was a good thing, but now we have the opposite situation where someone turns themselves into a puppet to vote however their preacher/pastor/minister/priest/shepherd tells them to - which isn't ideal under even the best of circumstances, if we assumed full friendliness (and seeing as how that is not the case, definitely is less than ideal now).
This is a main reason why I have lost faith in democracy - aside from places like the USA having a plutocracy rather than that, and the Electoral College, and the 2-party system encouraging neither party to do anything and instead merely blame the other side for all of society's ills, even on top of all of that, voters are irresponsible, and yet WE are somehow the ones IN CHARGE!?!?!?!
Particularly the Boomers, who have the most time to vote, and along with voting alongside religious values, choose to keep the stock market as their highest priority b/c their stock portfolios with retirement savings literally depends on that. You mentioned the "number-go-up" thinking, but why are they the ones in charge? Retirees voting in their own interests, and influencing their most-easily-led children to do the same, is one reason. Another that I can see is that the companies that survive in this climate are not the ones that are the most responsible, especially long-term, but rather those that are the most ruthless. They are too big to fail, too big to jail, and so those who hold themselves back to "play by the rules" get hostile-takeovered while the likes of Bezos & Musk & Cook & such run Amazon, Xhitter, Apple, Google and what-not to take over the world.
"While the cat is away, the mice will play." - this is not a new saying, but it takes on exaggerated meaning now, vs. the 50s & 60s when government was more powerful, and actually used e.g. its anti-trust powers. People are the same now as then (well, not totally - there are cultural shifts at work too, so here I only mean foundationally, so that's quite debatable I suppose how much this applies), but our circumtances are a bit different.
I made a previous comment about how to attempt to move forward within the existing systems. But, you might be right about the "by any means necessary" part being needed. In any case, most people including myself are mostly just talk and very little action, and too most of us are not quite sure that we even know which direction we should be heading in - e.g. is getting rid of plutocracy really the goal that we all want? THEY will try to divide us into thinking that it is not, in any case, and since liberals tend to eat our own, it will work; while on the other side the conservatives will harden their ranks and vote together despite any dissensions within their ranks, which gives them a decided edge in any future conflicts.
And liberals... I for one don't know what our core values are supposed to be - neoliberalism? Trans rights - which are supposed to be "people's rights", but there are definitely some lines there, like should someone who has testosterone in their body be allowed to compete in sports against someone who does not? Also, especially if we knew that the conservative and middle-ground Americans would push back against such viewpoints, why not do something rather about school shootings, or the wage gap - I'm not saying to entirely forget about human rights, but why make it such a central focus, when children are DYING (yes, sadly trans ones at higher rates too...) from shootings & poverty. Every choice to put energy & attention into is another choice to step back from something else.
Well, this is getting long - sorry. TLDR: I somewhat agree with you but there is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path, and even more of a gulf between knowing a potential destination and finding a pathway to get to there from here.:-)
There are still a lot of things from the early sci-fi/science thinkers that we don't have yet. Flying cars, unlimited wireless energy and instant communications, teleporters, robot house cleaners, green energy, space colonies, long lifespans, and of course endless free time.
A LOT of that we actually do have though?! Broaden your mind:-). Ofc it depends on which sci-fi you read, how you interpret the terms, etc.
e.g. flying cars exist! They are not "practical" yet iirc, and they mostly are things that you drive to the airport, then get out of the car and transform into an airplane, and then fly. But they do exist! You still need a pilot license though, bc you are flying through the air. Obviously available only to the very wealthy. Automated driving/flying software would help make them more user-friendly, like in Total Recall, or even just collision avoidance like in the Jetsons.
Similarly flying hoverboards exist too. They are quite dangerous iirc, as would be expected, and look more like the Green Goblin's one than the Back to the Future variety - but at least they do exist!:-P
Phones have unlimited wireless energy... after a fashion - I've never bothered paying the premium price for a type of phone that offers wireless charging, but the technology is quite widespread. Simply placing the phone down on the spot for it makes it charge, no wires needed! Yeah this one is a bit of a stretch, but I'll offer it nonetheless!:-D
Instant communications -> we are doing it right now! And someone could send me a text from literally thousands of miles away, and I would receive it instantly. Or call. Or email. etc.
Teleporters -> okay that one does not exist, that is true! And space colonies also, and long lifespans - although we do have a much greater "expectation" of living longer than previous generations. I forget the precise stats but some RIDICULOUSLY large fraction of children died prior to reaching 5 years of age, before vaccines were invented. Now that people refuse to take vaccines, we may start to see that era return:-(.
Robot house cleaners we definitely have! Here too I've never owned one, but reportedly they kinda suck... hehe, no but I mean in the bad way:-(.
Green energy - we've got it! Some of it is really just lately starting to get good too.
Endless free time - damn, that's a tough one. We have the capacity to feed the entire fucking world, but we choose not to. We all could have this, but we apparently don't want it bad enough to make it happen:-(. Similarly for space colonies - Russia was first to space iirc, and the USA to the moon, now it is India & especially China that are innovating, but for the most part humanity just kinda lost interest after the cold war. Was Big Dick Energy necessary for it to happen, and if so why can't we get it up anymore? Anyway, I was very sad about that for a long time, but now I actually agree with it: we have some MAJOR problems here on Earth that are a higher priority to solve:-|.
Vaping is gross
So is a cyberpunk dystopia :)
