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Trog was a term with subjective connotations. Originally considered a slur against tech skeptics, those same skeptics reclaimed the word and wore it proudly, and soon it was applied by all sides to anything resistant to tech takeover.
Think of how much more genuine and authentic our friendships could be,” she said, “if we just apply the right metrics to them.”
Because their devices dinged them a few times a minute, their minds were reshaped to the jittery, needy psyche that ruled the digital realm.
The third decade of the twenty-first century had been accompanied by a gradual but unstoppable transition to ever-tighter clothing for body celebration and the fanciful implication that the wearer might be a superhero.
A person would type or dictate a text, and TruVoice would scan the message for any of the Os—offensive, offputting, outrageous, off-color, off-base, out-of-date. O-language would be excised or substituted, and the message would be sent in a manner fit for posterity.
The medical professions had been decimated by doubt and litigation, with the vast majority of patients preferring AI diagnoses over those of humans, which they considered recklessly subjective.
“Gabriel’s main finding,” Hans-Georg said, “was that choice is one of the primary stressors for the last three or four generations. Millennials, Gen Y and Z—it’s not just fear of missing out. It’s the paralysis of unlimited options.
Delaney had eyed U4U with a mixture of respect and horror. Their personality quizzes, all of them titled innocuously and positioned as fun and frivolous, were wildly popular. What kind of co-worker are you? Are you a closet authoritarian? Could you be more productive as a Buddhist? What does your moisturizer say about your ability to seek true happiness?
she explains that newcomers to any culture should immediately celebrate their arrival, and celebrate the culture they’re bringing to this new, second culture. So we ask newcomers to celebrate themselves.
Bailey studied some storytelling texts, screenplay guides, Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces, and started reading about the patterns, the formulas, and once he saw that word, formula, it all clicked. A formula is essentially an algorithm.” “Exactly,” Delaney said. “Let’s start with screenwriting, which has been guided by formulas since the beginning. We did quite a bit of analysis here, and found that every successful screenplay ever written conforms rigidly to one of a few formulas, and the screenwriters we’ve brought in assure us that there is ready agreement in their ranks that formula,
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We had the data. So we’ve been working with most of the remaining film companies, and of course the bigger publishers, on making storytelling more efficient, audience-responsive, and successful. If you’re humble before the numbers, the rewards are significant.”
“Was ending bananas a result of any particular creative process, life path, or think-way? For example, you could say”—the words appeared on the screen as he listed them—“grit, failure-is-success theory, siesta-revelation theory, Viking management theory, Follow-the-Light theory, quiet-mind theory, clustering, scattering, fear-based camaraderie, love-based terror, working while standing, working while ambulatory, learning while sleeping, limes, or other.”
the inexorable rise in suicides these last twenty years is so obviously a result of two entwined products of the digital age—the catastrophic health effects of manic (and largely meaningless) mental activity, and the lack of real purpose. No one is resting, and no one is accomplishing anything of real worth. It is, instead, the endless churning of middlebrow nonsense, of smiles, frowns, Popeyes, How U/Me fine, that keeps us from meaningful contemplation, or any hope of a new idea.
“I really think they have a problem with ideas at the Every,” Wes said. “That’s why they buy them. We knew this.” “Right, but then something strange happens. They buy companies, and they buy the people who came up with the ideas from those companies. Then those people come to the Every and their brains die. Is it complacency? The fatted calf?” “It’s fear.” “Yes, but it’s not just fear. It’s an involuntary reaction to the frozen atmosphere there. Like when testicles shrink in cold water. They retreat.”
“Surveillance, data and shame as behavioral modifier. That’s been where all of this has been heading all along.”
Syl’s eyes snapped open, as if he’d just gotten new signals from a more compassionate planet.
This power to destroy. When we were kids, it was people. That constant erasure of people. Now it’s customs and practices, traditions, history. Or like your Thoughts Not Things work. That urge to wipe something off the earth.
The world is undergoing a movement toward authoritarianism, Delaney, and this is about order. People think the world is out of control. They want someone to stop the changes. This aligns perfectly with what the Every is doing: feeding the urge to control, to reduce nuance, to categorize, and to assign numbers to anything inherently complex. To simplify. To tell us how it will be. An authoritarian promises these things, too.
I know people roll their eyes every time I mention Erich Fromm, but forgive me. Remember when he noted the young SS soldiers who felt liberated by Nazism? They wanted to be told what to do. They were free from freedom. The limitless choices of the world were suddenly made for them. Order was promised. The streets will be clean, the lawbreakers will be gone, your days will be predetermined, and the unknown will go away.
“The world’s last crime, yes,” he said. “Then we move on down the line, eliminating the unknown, the unexpected. When everything is seen, nothing bad can happen.”
“No one wants to be judged by a human. Too painful,” Delaney said. Baseball umpires had been replaced years ago, given computers were better at calling balls and strikes. Then diving judges, gymnastic judges, figure skating. No one resisted. The subjective was being hunted to oblivion.
“How is freedom best exercised?” he asked. He hadn’t looked down at his screen. This seemed to be an improvised question. “Willfully,” she said. “Irregularly. Through the refutation of custom. The breaking of patterns. The rational flouting of irrational rules. Keeping secrets. Being unseen. Solitude. Social indifference. Fighting ill-wrought power. Irreverence for authority. Moving without limit or schedule through the day and the world. Choosing when to participate and when to withdraw.”
I should have talked to my colleagues in the Religion department years ago. Now I understand surveillance. God is not old. He/she/they were invented, all across the world, not more than ten thousand years ago. When human societies were small, they were close-knit and moral boundaries were clear. In a tribe of twelve, if you stole your fellow caveperson’s favorite club or wheel prototype, it was known and could be rectified. You were always seen, and all was known. But as societies grew, the wayward could do things unobserved, and crimes could be committed. So it became necessary to invent a
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