THE BIG MACHINE - thoughts on the anniversary of Blade Runner
he Big Machine is already here. Orwell's and Huxley's and the others' dystopias have already materialised, albeit slightly differently to how they imagined them in their details. I always found science fiction novels unconvincing, even more so their adaptation for the big screen. That's because they depicted a future that was always in vitro, it was clinical, sterile and sterilised, odourless and colourless. The future has already arrived, the one exception to those books and films, the Blade Runner, already feels old. Sure, we don't have flying taxis yet, but most of it is here already. Besides, who needs flying taxis when Amazon's drones will deliver everything, from groceries to drugs, within the hour? Cars as we know them are becoming obsolete, and so are the jobs that came with making them. It is clear that we will be moving to fewer "transporters" which will be made by even fewer humans, if any at all, and will be used more. However, that's not the result of a meaningful decision by a mature society, but of the prospect of class action against VW, Toyota, Ford and Fiat. The dystopia is unfolding in all its real human glory, complete with unemployment, sanctions, blood, love affairs, shit, farts, devastation, hope and tears. But also, with its designer drugs, gender fluidity*, the voluntary censorship and its own, self-imposed, peculiar version of Newspeak. Flashpoints around the globe produce death en masse live streamed, shared, "liked" and "disliked." Lone killers massacre people in towns and cities on earth, relaying their acts in real time for the planet to see, with the few real power holders "unable" to do something about it, in the name of "free speech" or simply because it's apparently technically difficult, even "impossible."
People have their ability to work or their eligibility to help or even loans assessed by algorithms, and they die as a result, as we speak. The National Identity cards might have never existed in the UK but today they are redundant anyway as we've moved past them to a "credit score" we've all been assigned, regardless of whether we want one or not. States everywhere shrink and the real powerbrokers are becoming fewer and bigger, from the media monopolies to the industrial and financial city states, just as envisaged in the darkest comix books of the 80s. Where there is no meaningful state apparatus to protect their operations, these oligopolies rely on local militias, warlords and terror merchants. Most people might not be able to feed themselves in Mogadishu or Addis, but one can buy a Samsung phone fine, and they can get on Facebook, as long as they've got dollars. There is no central power to speak of, but when it comes to protecting the likes of Google and Aramco the world seems to act as if there was one. And why should there by a central power anyway? It's far too expensive and, as DDR showed, ultimately unsustainable. It requires far too many human employees for something that can be achieved in a much cheaper and easier way and in fact without any resistance. No one is following us in the streets, nor are they explicitly listening to what we are saying. They don't need to. We have handed our most intimate and banal "data" and thoughts to them on a plate voluntarily, for it's so convenient to be able to share our calendars, address books, photos and anniversary memories with just one click. As it's full of human tragedy, happiness, pain, glory, this is the actual future. Just as they imagined it, but not quite.
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* I hold nothing against it, it's an observation of the times, not criticism.