Revisiting Philip K. Dick, JG Ballard, Hunter S. Thompson, Kurt Vonnegut, Ursula K. LeGuin. Something about the vibe of that era of sci-fi rhymes with the 2020s.
One thing about them, with the exception of HST, they were all kids or teenagers during the Great Depression. The rise of fascism and totalitarianism. Of state-sponsored mass-delusion. And they saw (sometimes firsthand) the resulting horrors.
PKD basically describing AI slop videos on YouTube:
“You insert one of the Great Books, for instance Moby Dick, into the reservoid. Then you set the controls for long or short. Then for funny version, or same-as-book or sad version. Then you set the style-indicator as to which classic Great Artist you want the book animated like. Dali, Bacon, Picasso… the medium-priced Great Books animator is set up to render in cartoon form the styles of a dozen system-famous artists; you specify which ones you want when you originally buy the thing. And there are options you can add later that provide even more.”
This is like how Orwell foreshadowed ChatGPT.
Inspired by this episode of El Hilo, about the attempt to build a technolibertarian dystopia that exists beyond the nation state in Honduras.
https://elhilo.audio/podcast/millonarios-isla-honduras-archivo/
Which, like all I Heart Radio podcasts, is unironically prefaced with the disclaimer "Guaranteed Human"
The redeeming outcome of this story is going to be all these ultra-wealthy dudes trying to cheat death by creating a regulation-free bubble so they can attract a bunch of quacks and fraudsters to administer unproven longevity therapies with unknown side-effects that end up killing them early.
