I decided to go full dystopia in the last blog of 2025 albeit the cringe Hollywood type.
This is a logical progression from the previous two posts and also letters I’ve had published this year on the subject of our at-risk humanity – as increasingly a majority ‘choose’ to hand over their lives, their privacy, information and even biometric data their very selves in minute detail to the tech oligarchy.
The dehumanisation of humanity by tech is a long running theme on this blog – check out – post 147 More Less-Contact Is Making Us Horrible
The jury is no longer out on whether social media is robbing us of our creativity and empathy. Its no longer out on whether the use of screens is robbing our children of the ability to concentrate and there’s no longer any doubt whether the use of AI is dimming human intellect.
SO – I refer to the Terminator films. Things I’ve always regarded as popcorn viewing at best.
RE-watching a 20p DVD over the weekend of the one I considered the weakest, I was struck by a quote from the character Kyle Reese when faced with the Cyborg version of John Connor. (So – no - I’m not doing the obvious one from Terminator 3 The Rise of The Machines “Skynet IS the virus”
It’s from the 2015 Terminator; Genisys and it relates to the way all human IT devices become connected, interactive and therefore easily under the control of the tech behemoths. And the juxtaposition of reality and fiction causes it to make sense.
Those who control the real AI systems are themselves malformed humans lacking decency, empathy and those things that in the past we valued about humanity. No need to lay out the current hideous examples.
Kyle Reese says something I’ve said in many forms many times about the current human willingness to give up autonomy, individuality and humanity…
“These people re inviting their own extinction in through the front door and they don’t even know it…”
And – of course when I’m in dystopian mood – I’ll recommend books of mine that I always do on such occasions.
The novella Zero One Zero Two
The calmer and more hopeful audio book/narrative poem - Casey & the Surfmen
Merry Christmas.