A new form of capital is ascending: cloud capital—networked algorithmic machines that grant their owners remarkable powers to modify our behaviour. And just as financiers needed neoliberalism, today’s tech lords need a new ideology to legitimise their rule. I call it techlordism.
I guess technofeudalism didn’t catch on, so he’s attempting a rebrand.
A stupid one. Lordism was never a thing.
Sure, but let’s call it what it is: fascism. We need to stop inventing fancy names for things that have existed for a century.
There is a difference, but largely in the industry whose capital backs this new fascism. In the 1920s and ‘30s, the dominant / ascendant form of capital was manufacturing capital, so those were the biggest backers of German fascism (both in Germany and the US). In our time in the US, the ascendant capital is big tech, but most of their assets are in cloud computing. This will inform the face it puts forward, so it does change the modes and styles of its propaganda, but you best believe the same fascist goals are at the heart of it all. So I say: call it fascism.
their kingdom can be unplugged
Destroying just one satellite will cause the debris to take all of them out. Someone will do this eventually :(
We aren’t at kessler cascade levels of orbital clutter yet.
“Hold my ketamine”
Not once they have private armies of killer robots.
“We don’t know who struck first, us or them. But we do know it was us that scorched the sky. At the time, they were dependent on solar power. It was believed they would be unable to survive without an energy source as abundant as the sun.”
If they have marching armies of weaponized death machines they will also definitely have unlicensed nuclear reactors.
And their workers outfitted with kill switches. Probably their stupid phones first, later collars that can deliver paid or death remotely. Dark shit.
We can already see how this will work out. They get you trapped in their walled garden kingdom.
If you get banned from their services and you can’t access your files, make payments, login to your phone or computer, start your car, etcetcetc.
Remember when we denounced China for setting that up 15 years ago?
Butlerian jihad when?
While true now, with the introduction of micro reactors, we might truely be fucked
These clowns can’t operate this shit safely. They will mini melt down and scapegoat others then do it again.
The regulators have been relegated to bootlicking. There is no one making them do it safely, only their own judgement (shudders.)
We are truly fucked though, and this nuclear bs is part of it.
this nuclear bs is part of it.
I’m out of the loop, what’s this nuclear bs about?
We are either headed to Cyberpunk or Fallout, but without the cool shit!
This article implicitly references but does not specifically mention, the essay The Network State, which spiritually feels like a predecessor to what Palantir decided to unleash on the world the other day.
Time to tax the rich. This has gone on long enough.
Dark Enlightenment.
There is nothing enlightened about this descent into the abyss.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment
This what Thiel believes in.
They have a lot more power than we do, and most of the peasantry support them. This is our future. We’d best learn to live with it in public, and gum up the works in private.
Jfc, it’s like the megacorp-run city states in Shadowrun. How the fuck does anyone think this is a good idea?
Megacorps: “I don’t get it, why aren’t you all on board?”
Neo Liberals are still in control of the, controlled opposition, the Democratic Party.
*(tech)warlordism
