From:
pataphor@gmail.com
On Wed, 07 Nov 2018 16:10:08 -0600
superkuh <
superkuh@superkuh.com> wrote:
I want to believe.
I hate simpleminded technologists who think the world of themselves
because someone paid them a lot of money. We are far removed from a
situation where one could justifiably claim some kind of social status
because of how much work one contributed to society. Not that I have
been able to do that according to the most common evaluation standard,
because my thoughts are too diverse and wide ranging to ever amount to
much more than second place in any subject matter. But I think, knowing
a little about a lot of things, and functioning as a kind of interface
between the different closeted communities, has its own merit, be it
that such a thing is nowhere appreciated much, unless one already has
the social status to begin with.
What I find especially objectionable is certain people, for example some science fiction writers, claiming that poor people would perish in a
truly competitive economic environment. They don't realize that the exploitation they are part of is about as far as possible from equal opportunities or true competition as one could imagine.
Instead, we see developments where to right to do a job, and attain the corresponding social status, is now something between whatever happens
in a colony of penguins each fighting for a place on the breeding
ground, or outright buying of privileges with money acquired in the
family, originating from even more unjust feudal appropriations in the
past.
What does this all have to do with cyberpunk?
I think it's the reason we keep looking for examples of smart people in
the wrong places, and people like me, which I would call small scale
low level hackers, trying to make the most of whatever decentralized
tech that is left behind, or using software that has now become low
status because of some similar process as what happens with the sexual
or social super stimuli that we are now confronted with daily, are
simply fading away in the background.
P.
---
"It's not dead Jim, it's become invisible."
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)