William Gibsons Technopolitics
This weekend will see the premiere of Amazon's new Peripherals , a nifty sci-fi thriller in the vein of the HBO hit Westworld, but with a little extra resonance for those serious about the future.
Peripherals is an adaptation of the 2014 bestseller of the same name by author William Gibson, best known for coining the term “cyberspace” in 1982. Gibson coined the term before the advent of the World Wide Web and made it famous. like a seer
In today's world of big technology, science fiction is not just entertainment, it can be an inspiring force. Mark Zuckerberg renamed the entire company after a word used by writer Neil Stevenson . Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos' obsession with science fiction is well documented.
Gibson is a little different from other speculative writers. Speaking to The New Yorker in 2019, he described the process of imagination as a kind of advanced engineering: observing current trends and intentionally translating them into the future. He once told PC Magazine that "he never really cared about computers. I don't watch them, I watch how the people around them behave. This is hard to do because everything is "around".
This method appears in both the book and the Peripherals series. As in this newsletter, Gibson's work intersects with technology and management, creating the rules that govern our daily lives.
But Gibson came from the opposite side of tech journalism, even entrepreneurship. Politicians and business leaders think they write the rules. You can clearly see in Gibson's Future that technology writes its own rules and the rest of us play by them.
Without getting into plot or spoilers, suffice it to say that Peripheral paints a rather disturbing picture of how several different trends — virtual reality, immersive gaming, quantum computing, and growing social stratification — are building a future no one wants. per.
It's not exactly dystopian. It's more... empty.
Many political observers took a keen interest in Gibson after Periphery, and not just because his restless liberal politics matched so well with theirs. (His very active Twitter feed is full of agitprop, and his next novel is set in an alternate timeline where Hillary Clinton won the 2016 election.)
The world the characters live in bears a striking resemblance to "Trump Country," which Gibson conceived with startling accuracy even before it was even a political concept. This gives the series an interesting non-fiction appeal, with its characters being professional Appalachian gamblers and its villains being the global cosmopolitan elite. The future depicted in the Periphery, in which the entire environment of society (and to a large extent the natural world) is simply destroyed , despite the spinning wheels of technology, is a disturbing and completely unknown social and political vision. Stratification
Gibson's vision of a slow apocalypse brought on by climate change, political unrest and pandemics (sounding in 2014) may sound uncomfortably familiar, but that won't change. However, given his track record and the tenacity with which sci-fi fantasy inspires and reflects the technological advances of the real world, it's worth considering what he says about where technology is actually taking us.
Test the crypto lobby
Cointelegraph has spent a lot of money in D.C. in recent years hiring high-profile employees amid industry demands for friendlier regulations.
Now some leading Democrats are calling it a possible new revolving door in the capital.
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), and Rep. from a group of senior regulators, including Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan), asked them to elaborate on what they have there is. done to get the seal. That's what the group said in a letter sent yesterday, citing a Technology Transparency Project report that warned that "crypto firms have hired hundreds of former government officials to lobby on their behalf," which could lead to the same takeover risk. regulatory policy. . Pharmaceutical advocacy "Powerful Wall Street Interests" has criticized the industry.
This, of course, strongly links cryptocurrency to other established American industries, and not to the image that revolutionaries in this area are trying to cultivate.
Bite off an apple
On Monday , Apple announced that it would allow NFTs to be purchased through apps sold on the App Store . This is an unconditional victory for the cryptocurrency, isn't it?
It's a little more difficult. By managing them through the App Store, Apple provides a full level of crypto-like functionality for NFT sales. Here, they will now be subject to their very mocking fees, just like any other transaction made under the auspices of the App Store. You also cannot use cryptocurrencies for payment For them, because Apple does not support crypto payments.
Our sister site, Protocol, suggests that the broader impact of the rule change may push NFT developers away from the Apple platform: "While NFTs are more common in iOS apps, some developers may choose to leave them in browsers." website,” says Tomio Gueron TODAY, “Or they could restrict iOS apps to avoid App Store fees that can be as high as 30% on transactions.” established tech giant Apple is trying to integrate with insurgent technologies like Web3.
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Contact the entire team: Ben Schrekinger ([email protected]); Derek Robertson ( [email protected] ); Steve Hueser ([email protected]); and Benton Ives ([email protected]). Follow us on Twitter @futurodigital .
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