Dystopia

Our climate is collapsing, inequality is at its worst level ever, our politicians are corrupt and in the pocket of massive corporations, millions of Americans are on the brink of eviction, at which point they will be threatened with state violence, tech startups may soon have their own autonomous cities where they will have complete control over the inhabitants, we've got space billboards on the way and people are lining up to get micro-chipped by the world's least responsible Twitter troll.

If that's not a perfect description of a dystopian world, I don't know what is. Here's the dictionary description for "dystopia": an imagined state or society in which there is great suffering or injustice, typically one that is totalitarian or post-apocalyptic. Everything there fits the present state of affairs in America and other western "democracies," with "imagined" being the only superfluous word because we're essentially already there. The introduction is lifted verbatim from the below linked video, and unfortunately there's nothing in there I have to correct or elaborate upon.

Well, maybe one correction and one elaboration. "The world's least responsible Twitter troll" mentioned is referring to none other than everyone's favorite tech billionaire, Elon Musk. It's well known that his irresponsible tweets have gotten him into much trouble with official institutions like the SEC:

The SEC had sued Musk after he tweeted on 7 August 2018 that he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private at $420 a share. The agency alleged the tweet, which sent the electric automaker’s share price up as much as 13.3%, violated securities law. Musk’s privatization plan was at best in an early stage, and financing was not in place.
_{source: The Guardian}

Heck, Musk even became unpopular in the crypto-verse after hyping up bitcoin and dogecoin, and then supporting baseless claims about bitcoin-mining's negative impact on global warming. After all the stupid ideas from this man, like the Loop, the Hyper Loop, Starship and StarLink among others, I really do not understand why so many fanboys still listen to a word he has to say. Here's a fun experiment for you all: search all these projects on Google, followed with the word "debunked." Look up how PayPal and Tesla got started and how he drove away the real founders of these products. If there's one figurehead for the tech-dystopia of tomorrow, he's it. And yes, the microchip mentioned is also a Musk "invention" (the quotes are because he never invented anything in his life; even the Hyper Loop, which he will never get to work by the way, can be found on concept artist drawings going back almost a century) called Neuralink.

The correction I have to make involves the space billboards. These are indeed on the way and are, you've guessed it, another senseless brain-fart by everyone's favorite real life Tony Stark. There's really no end to the stupid ideas this man manages to receive government funding and enthusiastic investors for. Let's just chalk that up to the power of holding up something shiny and new; it seems that if it's new and shiny enough, enough people lose their critical faculties. Musk is indeed working on satellites on which advertisers can buy ad-space, but it's a bit misleading to call this literal ads in space, which is how it's described in the video; it even shows the Coca Cola logo projected in the night sky. This is not how this will work, fortunately. How it really works can be read in this article: A Billboard Will Show Ads From Space, But You Won't Be Able To See It In The Sky. The tldr is this: rather than being visible from the ground, the ads will be photographed using a high-tech selfie stick and livestreamed on YouTube or Twitch. Senseless grandstanding, like so many of Musk's projects.

But yes; dystopia is practically upon us. The linked video shows how modern media is flooded with dark, post apocalyptic future visions, where much of science fiction used to portray a Utopian future not that long ago. All the writers, directors, producers and actors involved in contemporary media have grown up in a world that inspires those dark visions of our future. Just like you and I, dear reader. Still I want us to not lose faith in the possibility to turn it all around, because if we do, our night sky WILL be dominated by the logos and advertisements of the de facto rulers of the world...

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