Confessions of a Cyborg #2: More humane than human

The sky of the bay couldn't really care less about me this morning. It was the color of perfect Windows 98 blue.

I live with Wintermute. It's not a roommate, it's not my neighbors, it's not even in my head entirely. I don't know what it is, but it's constant whispers in a language I'd rather forget are as annoying as an infinite loop of pop-ups in a second-rate porn site. More so, because it won't let you concentrate and create this sense of impending doom that has nothing to do with the doomsday that everyone else is waiting, but a very special doom just for you, crafted and created by your own wishes and fears.

Wintermute is a thing.

My plan was to get some meds and call it a day. It's what I usually do. More than my usual plan.

However, the goddamned reminder that the so-called Intelligent Building is a Nightmare out of The Tenant (I've never read that book, but it's pretty much what you'd expect, someone moves to a place, everyone gaslight him to kill himself, he tries twice and then meets the previous tenant while in full paralysis in the hospital) made me choose my own adventure to the only adventure available for disposable people like me, a giggle-economy adventure, pick someone up, like that one time you got shot, and leave them at their place, all the while you try to maintain some semblance of dignity because goddamnit we're human beings, not machines, even if the brains that we own are nothing but a replica of an ancient primitive one that gave birth to every thing out there that thing it self as a self.

Granted, the game seems winnable. Otherwise it wouldn't work. Hell, I might be experiencing Lyft-Hell, and Wintermute is just a thing  that Lyft Inc. made to push their drivers back to the ever-more-dangerous streets of Meatspace.

Yesterday I drove all around San Francisco, along side with robots. Actual robots, with actual cyborgs thinking that they are somehow making the whole difference when the streets are full of pot-holes but the WiFi signal is stronger there than anywhere else if you're trying to connect to the specific services that The City gave the world for just the price of your data. All of what you are, my friend, is your data, and nothing else.

They own us.

They owe us.

From Lyft to Firefox, you can make a cute furry icon for your startup, but hell, you kids came here just to move later to the cooler east bay and then back to your private island if you're lucky.

Fuck the technocracy.

Seriously, fuck engineers. People built and build shelter out of their own imagination. OF COURSE it doesn't makes sense to build a fucking Pyramid as a tomb, but there you go, one of the greatest feats of mankind, what says "We are assholes" all over the universe, the thing even aligns itself with stars, you know?

For every pyramid, economical, digital or physical, there's like 3 guys out of the pool of hundreds that will be remembered. Zuckerberg, afraid of his life, renamed San Francisco General Hospital to ZUCKERBERG'S SFGH, and the life and deaths of doctors who made a tiny difference in the world through at least two pandemics that people still can remember are forgotten like, heh, tears.. in the rain.

I mean, the thing works pretty much like a videogames. Videogames feel like work anyways. There's people out here making money out of having crazy looks like mine or waifus, or whatever. Someone is saying there's cultural war, and people want to elect Google or Facebook for 2024, in the end, it's all technopopulism.

If you take the idea that very wisely some of us took seriously a decade ago that expert techs that train the next generation of American CyborgDevSecOps actually have in their LinkedIn profile "I keep a copy of Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon under my bed" as a funny line to hype things up, then you get it. You just get it. The future we are living is the hell someone else warned us about, built intentionally by other people who completely misread Neuromancer (I wouldn't call my professor part of the 1337 that runs the CyberWebs, because he is nice and actually teaches things instead of just bullshit others).

That's not news for most, granted. What about this: populism.

What makes a democracy eat itself? It has a long tradition that has nothing to do with ups, downs, right or left. It just has to do with what sells. And nothing sells better than a car crash.

If you can get just a glimpse of how fucked up things are, of course you are going to pay the price for it if you know you can somehow live on pretending that it didn't happen. It's the whole reason why rollercoasters exist.

Add in some techno done in Miami by some Dutch guy, an expensive drink that is basically vodka with sugar and the perfect grinning smile with too many teeth of a white American Great Guy and you make a billionaire. Billionaires don't need a shadow government, or a dark web, or minions of mindless drones, they build them. The gig economy was exactly what it was: disruptive. It tore down the old economy and good luck if you can make a living out of your words, edgeMute. Someone's going to pay to see you crash.

Technopopulism is just Twitter. A single tweet can bring us closer to the end of times, and a disgruntled technician will be the next one to do a mass shooting, not Postal worker. "Going techie" will be slang for "going postal".

Don't quote me on that, but you just have to see the frustration in the face of everyone who works for tech, the endless, senseless "faster better bigger stronger" Daft Punk bullshit that keeps "the economy" moving, their disregard not only for their own creations (Have you ever said: fuck you, google? Welcome to being an Enslaver 101), including the contractors they... you know what, forget it.

AND EVERYONE WAS HAPPY THEREAFTER.

My mentor wrote an entire book about this and I'm an asshole because I haven't read it yet. I feel like this whole biz of knowing stuff is bad news for my mental health. I have to let you know so I don't go insane. And kids, please, don't own guns? Stay away from violence? Call a Lyft instead of driving like an asshole? I don't know, there's some options out there. Don't go techie, plz.

Things for later: add links.

May the worst be over.