An upward redistribution of certain undesirable futures
Natural filters applied Like all supplicants of literary cyberpunk, I’ve devoted a decent amount of armchair time to parsing the oft-quoted William Gibson-attributed maxim, “The future is already here -- it’s just not very evenly distributed.” Despite having some serious attribution issues, it is a favorite of technology optimists and a mainstay of douchebag keynotes for all sorts of industry conferences. It is generally interpreted as some version of the following -- that human progress realized in “the future” is generally technology-enabled and that those on the lower socio-economic rungs have less access to the technologies (the Internet, ubiquitous computing, etc.) with which “the future” manifests. A footnote would point out that, yes, many technologies have been distributed down the socio-economic ladder as they have become cheaper to manufacture at scale. There are other futures, though, largely outside of the experience of the global upper and middle classes. From Bhopa...
Comments
Post a Comment