Finally, someone has put my pedestrian thoughts into words. Envious as I may be, I applaud and concur your feelings.
Unfortunately, as I often have said....Every country has the exact type of government that the people allow.
It's in the younger generations hands now. I've bowed out. As Sir Carlin proclaimed decades ago. Paraphrasing ..."Non voters are the only one's with any authority to bitch about our Kings and Queens. The voters are the guilty party of complacent." May the Peasants awaken before it's too late to for a mulligan.
I was struck by how the term “feudalism” is making a comeback to describe today’s political/cultural/economic landscape. Yanis Varoufakis makes a different point in his book Technofeudalism, which is that unlike in standard capitalism in which there is a material product and in which a large percentage of the money still goes to wages, today the billionaires and like Bezos and Thiel mostly just charge rent so we can use their services, and only a tiny percentage goes towards wages. We’re dependent on their services and there are very few of them. China is ahead of America as everything is centralized. The rest of the world is far behind.
“I’m saying the monoculture emerging in the tech space is a dangerous witch’s brew of very smart people with very poor social skills attempting to reinvent government”
Exactly!! Yes yes yes yes to this. And it’s scary as hell,
Good piece, I think you've gotten pretty close to the mark here, some of this is stuff I've been considering as well, though I haven't fleshed it out quite so well. Of course, I mostly don't know wtf I'm talking about either, but I've read enough science fiction to know a dystopian scenario when I see one, and also understand that yesterday's science fiction tends to become today's science fact.
The socially awkward, to downright anti-social aspect of the thing is what hits for me, and the trickle down aspect of that, the former definitely being an observation I've had, especially when listening to Leon struggling through public speaking engagements being as painfully awkward to listen to as it is, and the broader aspect of the latter being the part I hadn't considered til you mentioned it. Though now it's -been- mentioned, it won't be a thing I can unsee, you're absolutely onto something there. It's like a hyper-toxic, Revenge of the Nerds sort of thing. It kind of puts a finger on something I hadn't yet been quite able to put a finger on, but man, it's bleeding into -everything-...
Thank you for this. This is insightful and not a little disturbing.
On one level I do think there is something in the neo-feudalism that we are seeing. We are already seeing tech fanboys segmenting based on the networks that they use, and thus the information they trust, sorting much like the Cory Doctrow's Eastern Standard Tribe. Though I would argue that some of the people doing it are not just doing it for the lulz, but also because they feel that the lulz are all they have. If you are born too poor and don't know LLMs then you likely feel you are gonna stay that way, especially if you spend all day staring at a feed. In that case your only way to feel power or to lash out is going to be through the lulz or through joining a movement that tells you that you are not wrong, everyone else sucks.
The other place where I see an alignment with feudalism lies in the information. In the middle ages it was not just that the king could do no wrong or the church speak no wrong. They couldn't even be told they *were* wrong. So they could run around massacring random people and burning people alive to see if they were witches and noone was allowed to tell them off. As a consequence they were always absolutely certain that what they were doing was right and good and helping everyone even if the poors were too stupid to understand. They thought this both because noone could give them other information, and because they never faced the consequences of their actions so they assumed that which made them happy must make everyone happy.
Consider that with the things that Trump, Musk, and others have said about the world. It is not just incompetence, or hubris, but the kind of mental isolation that fabulous wealth and an army of sycophants can bring. They cannot ban us from disagreeing at this point, but they can shout louder than anyone else and shut their ears when we make a noise (or shoot us in the legs as Trump wanted).
As a final point I think another comparison of what at least some of Trumpworld wants is not feudalism, or even a strongman dictatorship but really a Cultural Revolution. They want an environment where they can purge the other without constraint or, to put it another way, if "America is For Americans Only" then they will define who is and is not an American. Mao launched the cultural revolution just to retain power. But he sold it on lies that turned it into a horror show of purges and revenge. If you look past Musk and Ramuswamy to Hegseth, and Miller and the Heritage Foundation, that is what I see.
Your approach to this topic is really insightful. I’ve been saying for years that social media has been killing society’s ability to demonstrate empathy and compassion. Those are human emotions that come from our gut and heart, not a motherboard. We are raising new generations of beings that truly don’t understand those traits of human interaction. Why should they bother? The technology is their “friend” and their like-ability is now measured in likes and stats. We’re living in an age where you can shiv a stranger online and then go about your day with zero consequences. The behavior is normalized, with no shame for treating another human being like garbage. We need a new age of Enlightenment 2.0!
We've been saying that new technology was going to wreck everything since the start of civilization. To make this argument stick, you've got to address why it didn't happen with e.g. writing, smelting, printing, steam power, mechanization, radio, flight, electricity, the telephone, television, the transistor...
I think you've misunderstood my point - I'm not claiming that "technology will destroy everything." I'm only trying to tie together various cultural and historical nodes with our current state of technology to understand why we are here and to, perhaps, peer into the fog deeply enough to have some sense of where we're heading.
Finally, someone has put my pedestrian thoughts into words. Envious as I may be, I applaud and concur your feelings.
Unfortunately, as I often have said....Every country has the exact type of government that the people allow.
It's in the younger generations hands now. I've bowed out. As Sir Carlin proclaimed decades ago. Paraphrasing ..."Non voters are the only one's with any authority to bitch about our Kings and Queens. The voters are the guilty party of complacent." May the Peasants awaken before it's too late to for a mulligan.
Teach The Children Well. ✌️
I wrote a whole novel about it!
I was struck by how the term “feudalism” is making a comeback to describe today’s political/cultural/economic landscape. Yanis Varoufakis makes a different point in his book Technofeudalism, which is that unlike in standard capitalism in which there is a material product and in which a large percentage of the money still goes to wages, today the billionaires and like Bezos and Thiel mostly just charge rent so we can use their services, and only a tiny percentage goes towards wages. We’re dependent on their services and there are very few of them. China is ahead of America as everything is centralized. The rest of the world is far behind.
“I’m saying the monoculture emerging in the tech space is a dangerous witch’s brew of very smart people with very poor social skills attempting to reinvent government”
Exactly!! Yes yes yes yes to this. And it’s scary as hell,
I just had a thought, after seeing these emojis that look like minions. They'd make great ‘peeps.‘. Just a random thought.
Thanks for sharing
Good piece, I think you've gotten pretty close to the mark here, some of this is stuff I've been considering as well, though I haven't fleshed it out quite so well. Of course, I mostly don't know wtf I'm talking about either, but I've read enough science fiction to know a dystopian scenario when I see one, and also understand that yesterday's science fiction tends to become today's science fact.
The socially awkward, to downright anti-social aspect of the thing is what hits for me, and the trickle down aspect of that, the former definitely being an observation I've had, especially when listening to Leon struggling through public speaking engagements being as painfully awkward to listen to as it is, and the broader aspect of the latter being the part I hadn't considered til you mentioned it. Though now it's -been- mentioned, it won't be a thing I can unsee, you're absolutely onto something there. It's like a hyper-toxic, Revenge of the Nerds sort of thing. It kind of puts a finger on something I hadn't yet been quite able to put a finger on, but man, it's bleeding into -everything-...
We're Shiney Happy ignorant and blissfully people. All the while believing "They" wouldn't, couldnt hurt us.. would they?
Great note. Fan of your work since The State!
The scholarship you’re talking about is in Yuval Harari’s new book, “Nexus”.
Straight up, not for the faint of heart. It HURTS to read on the edge of 2024/25.
But that’s how it goes with:
- Step 1: Admitting we have a problem
- Step 2: Fighting for our minds and lives on behalf of everyone we love
Michael I shared Ted Goia’s Substack on your most recent post but I really feel it belongs here. He makes a fascinating observation that social media may go the way of malls. https://open.substack.com/pub/tedgioia/p/are-social-media-platforms-the-next?r=ezt0e&utm_medium=ios
“…a dangerous witch’s brew of very smart people with very poor social skills attempting to reinvent government.”
Not just “with very poor social skills,” but _very poor social skills and zero empathy_.
Pretty good job, I'd say. But wdik
Thank you for this. This is insightful and not a little disturbing.
On one level I do think there is something in the neo-feudalism that we are seeing. We are already seeing tech fanboys segmenting based on the networks that they use, and thus the information they trust, sorting much like the Cory Doctrow's Eastern Standard Tribe. Though I would argue that some of the people doing it are not just doing it for the lulz, but also because they feel that the lulz are all they have. If you are born too poor and don't know LLMs then you likely feel you are gonna stay that way, especially if you spend all day staring at a feed. In that case your only way to feel power or to lash out is going to be through the lulz or through joining a movement that tells you that you are not wrong, everyone else sucks.
The other place where I see an alignment with feudalism lies in the information. In the middle ages it was not just that the king could do no wrong or the church speak no wrong. They couldn't even be told they *were* wrong. So they could run around massacring random people and burning people alive to see if they were witches and noone was allowed to tell them off. As a consequence they were always absolutely certain that what they were doing was right and good and helping everyone even if the poors were too stupid to understand. They thought this both because noone could give them other information, and because they never faced the consequences of their actions so they assumed that which made them happy must make everyone happy.
Consider that with the things that Trump, Musk, and others have said about the world. It is not just incompetence, or hubris, but the kind of mental isolation that fabulous wealth and an army of sycophants can bring. They cannot ban us from disagreeing at this point, but they can shout louder than anyone else and shut their ears when we make a noise (or shoot us in the legs as Trump wanted).
As a final point I think another comparison of what at least some of Trumpworld wants is not feudalism, or even a strongman dictatorship but really a Cultural Revolution. They want an environment where they can purge the other without constraint or, to put it another way, if "America is For Americans Only" then they will define who is and is not an American. Mao launched the cultural revolution just to retain power. But he sold it on lies that turned it into a horror show of purges and revenge. If you look past Musk and Ramuswamy to Hegseth, and Miller and the Heritage Foundation, that is what I see.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-150034070
Yes, sir.
Your approach to this topic is really insightful. I’ve been saying for years that social media has been killing society’s ability to demonstrate empathy and compassion. Those are human emotions that come from our gut and heart, not a motherboard. We are raising new generations of beings that truly don’t understand those traits of human interaction. Why should they bother? The technology is their “friend” and their like-ability is now measured in likes and stats. We’re living in an age where you can shiv a stranger online and then go about your day with zero consequences. The behavior is normalized, with no shame for treating another human being like garbage. We need a new age of Enlightenment 2.0!
We've been saying that new technology was going to wreck everything since the start of civilization. To make this argument stick, you've got to address why it didn't happen with e.g. writing, smelting, printing, steam power, mechanization, radio, flight, electricity, the telephone, television, the transistor...
I think you've misunderstood my point - I'm not claiming that "technology will destroy everything." I'm only trying to tie together various cultural and historical nodes with our current state of technology to understand why we are here and to, perhaps, peer into the fog deeply enough to have some sense of where we're heading.