"As the world is now acutely aware - with self-driving cars, job-stealing AI, around-the-clock Orwellian surveillance and a plethora of other nightmares that sci-fi novels warned us about - the fruits of tech's progress have not been 100% positive. We know that legitimately terrifying developments are already in full swing, even though our brains - and our lawmakers - can scarcely keep up with the speed of it all."
"You might think you know already - we all know how to click our cookie permissions, right? But have you considered that some of your appliances are keeping a record of how and when you use them? ("Surveil at Scale.") Or that your car might be reporting your driving habits to insurance companies? ("My Toyota Ratted Me Out") Have you considered the ways in which tech companies follow the playbooks of cults?"
Nostalgia for the 1990s, rebellion, and a desire to disconnect from pervasive computing motivate a renewed embrace of physical media. The text maps contemporary threats from technology: self-driving cars, job-displacing AI, relentless surveillance and rapid change that outpaces human cognition and regulation. It exposes data-harvesting by household appliances and vehicles and compares some tech-company cultures to cult-like playbooks. Practical advice and safeguards for personal data and privacy are prioritized. An optimistic essay proposes that online connectivity could transform Gen Z into a highly constructive, collective intelligence, offering a rare hopeful vision for the future.
Read at Kqed
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]