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+25 +1
Chasing Utopia, Startup Style
A group of Silicon Valley’s most powerful figures are building startup societies that they believe will set them free. By Lily Lynch.
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+3 +1
MIT Predicted in 1972 That Society Will Collapse This Century. New Research Shows We're on Schedule
A remarkable new study by a director at one of the largest accounting firms in the world has found that a famous, decades-old warning from MIT about the risk of industrial civilization collapsing appears to be accurate based on new empirical data. As the world looks forward to a rebound in economic growth following the devastation wrought by the pandemic, the research raises urgent questions about the risks of attempting to simply return to the pre-pandemic ‘normal.’
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+18 +1
How Aldous Huxley prophesied the Big Data nightmare
In 1958 the journalist Mike Wallace interviewed Aldous Huxley, the British author best known for writing "Brave New World." This dystopian sci-fi novel, published in 1932, takes place in the fictional and future World State society, where human beings are produced in laboratories and assigned to different classes based on their intelligence and physical gifts.
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+25 +1
Ecuador gives US military permission to use Galapagos island as airfield
Criticising agreement, former president says Pacific archipelago is 'not for gringo use.' By Tom Embury-Dennis.
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+16 +1
Bad Air: Pollution, Sin, and Science Fiction in William Delisle Hay's The Doom of the Great City (1880)
Deadly fogs, moralistic diatribes, debunked medical theory - Brett Beasley explores a piece of Victorian science fiction considered to be the first modern tale of urban apocalypse.
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+2 +1
Orwell knew: we willingly buy the screens that are used against us
Orwell’s predicted it: citizens willingly buy for entertainment the very screens that can be used against us. By Henry Cowles.
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+13 +1
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Huxley vs Orwell
On the accuracy of George Orwell's predictions about future society over those of Aldous Huxley. It's informative and scary at the same time. "In short, Orwell feared that what we hate would ruin us. Huxley that what we love will ruin us." It's unfortunate that Huxley got it right because the latter is much less obvious. By Scott McMillen.
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+24 +1
We're building a dystopia just to make people click on ads
We’re building an artificial intelligence-powered dystopia, one click at a time, says techno-sociologist Zeynep Tufekci. (Sept. 2017)
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+15 +1
Animal Crossing is a dystopian hellscape
The horror that roils beneath your happy hamlet. By Laura Hudson.
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+4 +1
A Progressive Experiment That’s Doomed to Fail
If the states are supposed to be laboratories for democracy, where new ideas that reflect regional attitudes can flourish, then cities are like micro-laboratories. Local governments can try out ideas that would never get statewide traction. Unfortunately, some California cities are more like laboratories run by Dr. Frankenstein, where frightening concepts are given life — and local residents have few other choices than to flee to other places. By Steven Greenhut.
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+17 +1
Philip K. Dick and the Fake Humans
We live in Philip K. Dick’s future, not George Orwell’s or Aldous Huxley’s. By Henry Farrell.
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+27 +1
H.G. Wells vs. George Orwell: Their Debate Whether Science Is Humanity’s Best Hope Continues Today
Though Wells and Orwell were debating in the era of Nazism, many of their arguments reverberate today in contemporary debates over science and policy. By Richard Gunderman.
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+24 +1
A Radical Critique of Universal Basic Income
Rather than deliver a Utopia, UBI institutionalizes serfdom and a two-class neofeudalism in which the bottom 95% scrape by on UBI while the top 5% hoard what every human wants and needs: positive social roles in our community, meaningful work that makes us feel needed, and the opportunity to build capital in all its manifestations. By Charles Hugh Smith.
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+14 +1
Snake Plissken’s Letter to Sallie Mae Student Loan Services By Evan Calder Williams
Snake Plissken explains to Sallie Mae why he will not be repaying any of his accumulated debt and why they can burn in hell.
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+1 +1
Saving Orwell
From invading Afghanistan to dismantling Confederate monuments, George Orwell has been pressed into the service of all sorts of causes. But the real Orwell remains unknown. By Peter Ross.
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+23 +1
‘Our minds can be hijacked’: the tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia
The Google, Apple and Facebook workers who helped make technology so addictive are disconnecting themselves from the internet. Paul Lewis reports on the Silicon Valley refuseniks who worry the race for human attention has created a world of perpetual distraction that could ultimately end in disaster.
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+11 +1
One Hundred Great Works of Dystopian Fiction
Tales about a world gone wrong.
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+2 +1
The Rise of Dystopian Fiction: From Soviet Dissidents to 70's Paranoia to Murakami
Charting the wild progress of literature’s genre-of-the-moment. By Yvonne Shiau.
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+19 +1
Watch Edward Snowden and Cory Doctorow imagine our hopeful, dystopian future
Midway through a recent exegesis on civil liberties, whistleblower Edward Snowden’s Google Hangouts session cut out. By Adi Robertson.
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+12 +1
The Handmaid’s Tale Is a Warning to Conservative Women
Hulu’s adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s novel lays bare the horrors of collusion with the patriarchy. By Sarah Jones.
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