Life imitating art again.
The first time I encountered this it was expressed as the "thought police" in George Orwell's 1984.
#repression #1984 #ThoughtPolice #dystopia #Orwell #Gaza #Palestine #Israel #FirstAmmendment #FreedomOfSpeech
Haha, joke's on you, Black Mirror: reality is way bleaker and more depressing that whatever new dystopian shit you could come up with.
@Some_Emo_Chick
We just retained an immigration law firm to protect us in the event my green card spouse (here since 2004) gets detained, deported, or worse.
The firm is on speed dial.
Take steps, my friends, take steps now. Be prepared for whatever sick, fascist madness is coming, for you or your family, friends, and neighbors.
There's always an attic somewhere.
#dystopia
#HumanRights
I'm very happy to report that my 12-week course on the #Dystopian Tradition will be offered this summer #online at #SignumUniversity. These stories -- and the conversations they make possible -- are more relevant and important than ever. #Dystopia #ScienceFiction #SpeculativeFiction #SFF #Bookstodon #Books
We recall that miracle of progress, Silicon Valley. The success and growth of this new conglomerate produced a new and completely crazy proletariat in 1950, with salaries the lowest in the USA, overpopulation in a distant suburb, extreme industrial pollution, a high rate of divorce and infanticide, high-density population, etc. This is the result of high tech at its extreme. --Jaques Ellul The Technological Bluff (1988) #dystopia #technology
If these whackjobs start communicating in Sumerian, we should probably give Neal Stephenson a medal or something.
Guns, God—and Blockchain: Christian nationalists build techno-theocracy in Appalachia: http://archive.today/2025.04.08-235221/https://www.rawstory.com/christian-nationalism-2671692937/ #Dominionism #dystopia #SnowCrash
“At last! We have created #PreCrime, from the classic #PhilipKDick short story ‘Don’t Create PreCrime’!”
My 10th published speculative translation is out!!!
You can read Antonio A. Huelgas's story "My Rainy Season Diary" at Merganser Magazine now!
https://mergansermagazine.com/index.html#MyRainySeasonDiary
The Spanish version of this story originally appeared in the Uruguayan magazine Revista Mordedor in 2021. It took 23 tries over about 2 years to find a home for this translation, gathering 4 personal rejections and 2 holds along the way.
For the past several years, I've been arguing with AI advocates about the purpose of the technology they're enamored with. I mean don't get me wrong, I'm aware that there are use cases for so-called AI programs that aren't inherently evil, but when you take a look at the nazi billionaires who're behind the projects to force widespread adoption, their long term plans to establish city-state dictatorships out of the hollowed out core of the nation-state era, and what these guys ultimately do with it, it's pretty clear AI is a fascism machine; just as much as IBM's punch card computers were a genocide machine for the Nazis. It doesn't have to be this way, but this is the way it is.
As such, I can't say I'm shocked that after Elon Musk bought himself a president, the first thing he started doing is using AI purge his political enemies as well as their ideas, sort surveillance data to identify targets for a white nationalist regime, and now spy on federal workers in search of those with insufficient loyalty to God Emperor Trump, the regime, and Musk himself.
Exclusive: Musk's DOGE using AI to snoop on U.S. federal workers, sources say
"Reuters’ interviews with nearly 20 people with knowledge of DOGE’s operations – and an examination of hundreds of pages of court documents from lawsuits challenging DOGE's access to data – highlight its unorthodox usage of AI and other technology in federal government operations.
At the Environmental Protection Agency, for instance, some EPA managers were told by Trump appointees that Musk’s team is rolling out AI to monitor workers, including looking for language in communications considered hostile to Trump or Musk, the two people said.
The EPA, which enforces laws such as the Clean Air Act and works to protect the environment, has come under intense scrutiny by the Trump administration. Since January, it has put nearly 600 employees on leave and said it will eliminate 65% of its budget, which could require further staffing reductions.
Trump-appointed officials who had taken up EPA posts told managers that DOGE was using AI to monitor communication apps and software, including Microsoft Teams, which is widely used for virtual calls and chats, said the two sources familiar with these comments. “We have been told they are looking for anti-Trump or anti-Musk language,” a third source familiar with the EPA said. Reuters could not independently confirm if the AI was being implemented.
The Trump officials said DOGE would be looking for people whose work did not align with the administration's mission, the first two sources said. “Be careful what you say, what you type and what you do,” a manager said, according to one of the sources."
Naturally the regime and DOGE have denied that they're using AI to conduct "thought" policing inside the federal workforce, but I think given how readily the Trump administration has engaged in clear ideological warfare and suppression against its perceived political enemies, that denial sound a lot like a hollow lie. Speaking broadly however, I can't say I'm surprised at all that this is where a technology like AI and the billionaire nazis who're pushing it, have lead us as a society. There are a near infinite number of things "AI" technology is terrible at, but one thing it does really well is sort through the vast amounts of data and metadata collected as part of our already existing police state panopticon society; in fact, without automation we really wouldn't be able to sift through that amount of data at all with human eyes. AI doesn't have morals, it doesn't have humanity, it doesn't have any sense of what's right and wrong; it presumes the world it's programmed to presume, and engages in the tasks it's purposed to engage in - and billionaire nazi cultists who want to build their own technofeudalist dicatorships are the guys in charge of the coding and tasking of this technology. Whether it's picking out targets for extermination by the IDF during a genocide in Gaza, hunting down student protestors in vast seas of education and immigration data, or spying on federal workers for anti-Musk sentiments, the fact is fascist oppression and violence *can* be automated - particularly if you don't give a fuck about false positives because you're a soulless nazi murderbot.
Don't get me wrong, I love Philip K. Dick's books. Just let them remain fiction, please.
PS. That also goes for George Orwell and Margaret Atwood.
W ramach niedzielnego relaksu zapoczątkowałem cykl artykułów na temat Fediwersum jako narzędzia (i ramy strukturalnej) do budowy innego świata, prospołecznego, zdecentralizowanego i anarchistycznego (tak, jak to rozumiem).
Jak się komuś nudzi, zapraszam do lektury, a nawet rozmowy.
Fediwersum, czyli życie w sieci dla ocalałych z kapitalizmu. | Petroskowo: rozkminy niepasujące.
...pollution, health problems, protective measures, nuisances of all kinds. Growth carries with it costs that change all calculations according to whether we include them. There has been agricultural destruction in order to promote industrial development (e.g., in the Tennessee Valley in the USA or the juran??on vineyard in France). --Jaques Ellul The Technological Bluff (1988) #dystopia #technology
Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed, modern society gives them antidepressant drugs. In effect, antidepressants are a means of modifying an individual's internal state in such a way as to enable him to tolerate social conditions that he would otherwise find intolerable. --Ted Kaczynki, Technological Slavery (2010) #dystopia #technology
Four propositions concerning the use of technology: First, all technical progress has its price. Second, at each stage it raises more and greater problems than it solves. Third, its harmful effects are inseparable from its beneficial effects. Fourth, it has a great number of unforeseen effects. --Jaques Ellul The Technological Bluff (1988) #dystopia #technology
Apparently, the UK is creating a pre-crime division. I have only one comment to make: "A decision taken by a majority implies the existence of a minority report".
We are set in an ambiguous universe in which each technical advance accentuates the complexity of the mixture of positive and negative elements. The more progress there is in this field, the more inextricable is the relation between the good and the bad, the more choice becomes impossible, and the less we can escape the ambivalent effects of the system. --Jaques Ellul The Technological Bluff (1988) #dystopia #technology
Pre-crime unit. Nothing could go wrong there. #dystopia #MinorityReport #SeenThisMovie #uk #ukpolitics
UK creating ‘murder prediction’ tool to identify people most likely to kill https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/apr/08/uk-creating-prediction-tool-to-identify-people-most-likely-to-kill?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
My meaning is that technical development is neither good, bad, nor neutral. It is a complex mixture of positive and negative elements. Some are good and some are bad, if we want to use moral terms. It is impossible to dissociate them and thus to achieve a purely good technique. Also, good results do not depend at all on the use which we make of technical equipment. In effect, even in such use we ourselves are modified in turn. --Jaques Ellul The Technological Bluff (1988) #dystopia #technology
Analyses which appear very rigorous, which are built on statistics, and which make no reference to these problems are the most dangerous. For they, too, are ideological, but they pretend to be purely scientific and have an appearance of strictness that one does not find in more rhetorical but more honest studies. --Jaques Ellul The Technological Bluff (1988) #dystopia #technology
