Star Trek. Tech bros are reinventing Star Trek (but presumably shit because none of that gay luxury space communism).
The funny thing is they hate Star Trek, because at its heart it’s social commentary about modern events and it has been since TOS.
When they say they want positivity about technology, what they mean is they want a combination of an Apple commercial and tech ASMR. Just straight masturbatory tech consumerism, where progress is a new toy to buy and how much everyone loves the toy.
They want stories about heroic tech barons taking humanity in hand and shaping the world to their will. So… Ayn Rand shit.
isnt there a videogame about that? maybe they should try it
They are undeserving of Factorio.
They probably think the tree farming that the space age expansion introduces (finally a way to counter your pollution!) is “some gay shit”.
The factory must grow whatever the cost.
What they want is stories jerking off their egos for “changing the world”, which in reality equates to them burning through start-ups, capital, and public resources to benefit their own personal wealth at the expense of everyone else. The stupid fucks can’t even realize that Black Mirror is about them. They ruined the future and I’ll never forgive them for it.
Funny how that’s still dystopian
Tech bros are Ferengi. Not the good type of Ferengi like Quark, but the bad type like Brunt, FCA.
But its not popular, anthologies are, all of scifi is horror and hopeless, id like a fun hopeful anthology show
We have the “white mirror” thing. It’s called Star Trek.
They don’t want the socialism part though. They still want to be rich.
Well then they can have The Culture instead. Every citizen of the Culture has a big house, and gets to spend all day going to parties and doing extreme sports. Every citizen is as well off as a real world billionaire.
Because they’re anarchists.
That requires giving control of society over to AI though. I’m not sure we’re there yet
The Minds don’t control society. One guy decided that Masaq’ Orbital’s badlands should be covered in pylons with a gondola network to travel between them using wind power. So he convinced a bunch of people to work with him, and they made it happen. Even though Masaq’ Hub doesn’t like the pylons.
The Culture doesn’t control its citizens. They can do whatever they want. The Minds just help out.
Huh, I thought it was made pretty clear that the power distribution in society is such that the minds run the whole show and more or less keep the humans around as pets out of good will.
Kinda like if your dog wants to go for a walk, you can take it, but that doesn’t mean the dog is in charge
The Minds don’t use fences or leashes. The Minds have more power, sure. They look after the factories and keep the trains running. But power doesn’t mean control in a society without coercion. The Culture doesn’t have laws.
The socialism part
No shared leadership, no competent women, no non-white people then?
Edit: those are the good parts about Star Trek as a show back then when it first aired and are still good.
It’s difficult to be wrong three times in a row when talking about a very broad subject but you managed to do it anyway
somehow you missed the dripping sarcasm. he’s pointing out the things that conservatives would be mad about and label as socialism.
I have nothing against Star Trek and lots of grievances against tech bros. I’m sorry if my phrasing suggested differently.
Are you OK ?
I’d rather not share the fandom with those people. They would probably hate in anyways.
I semi enjoyed the recent shows, felt like discovery didnt have one competent man tho, giving all the male archetypes/tropes to woman was interesting, just kinda wanted one man to not be incompetent and an idiot for 5 seconds
if 13 year old me watched it I wouldve dropped it and never touched star trek again, why is it so hard to just go 50/50 actual equality in the far hopeful future, the animated show did it a lot better. Strange new worlds was a bit better for me to watcg too, but felt like the opposite issue from discovery.
Need to see the episode of star trek now where populism destroys the federation from the inside.
“populism” happens because living conditions decline and the powers that be are unwilling or unable to address it. Why would that happen in a space-faring civilization with replicators?
It’s called Star Trek.
Yes of course. But these are geniuses at work arguing about incredibly stupid things so best leave them to it.
What Mark here wants, essentially, is an infomercial TV series.
In addition, it’s difficult to comprehend someone this ignorant of the scifi genre as a whole. It’s likely difficult for young people today to comprehend it, but we had almost no TV and movies in the genre back in the day. This current explosion of options is just that: current. Star Trek and Star Wars were unique, which is likely why they stood out.
Tech gone bad and AI run amuck are major themes even at Star Treks inception.
I feel bad for Mark, in some ways, since he’s likely never read a science fiction novel.
He’s not ignorant. He’s completely aware that cautionary tales about anything prime people to be more critical of related products.
He wants people to be more stupid so they buy more stuff (from him), not be less stupid and buying less stuff.
R.U.R. added its somber view to that of the even more famous Frankenstein, in which the creation of another kind of artificial human being also ended in disaster, though on a more limited scale. Following these examples, it became very common, in the 1920s and 1930s, to picture robots as dangerous devices that invariably destroyed their creators. The moral was pointed out over and over again that “there are some things Man was not meant to know.”
- Isaac Asimov, The Caves of Steel, introduction
I don’t know if anyone has pointed this out (I’m sure they have) but fundamentally I think it’s related to the cultural impact of the Garden of Eden story. God creates Man in His own image, and Man comes up short and disobeys God. Man creates Robot in his own image, and Robot surpasses man and disobeys him, completing the cultural cycle. Both stories are about human nature being flawed, with robot stories being about how the flawed human nature leads us to want to “become God” by creating life on our own, becoming our own Demiurge, creating a shadow of a shadow of the “Divine Image” which represents goodness and morality.
Sky Mall would really get him going
“White Mirror” as a name makes no sense. A screen doesn’t turn white when it’s off.
It should obviously be Light Mirror anyway, to represent the phone being on.
im pretty sure you wouldnt be able to see your reflection in it either, so it wouldnt be a mirror
White mirror looks scarier.
Looks like an ad too
If white mirror detects any sadness it will immediately pump our patented dopamine equivalent into your bloodstream. For the low low monthly cost of 19.99 prices vary if more than 1 sadness shot is used
we are not liable for any relapse due to lack of sadness shot substance
meta tech distopia
The QAA podcast recently had an episode on AI generated images and right wing movements and they said something that really stuck with me- AI “art” is so popular among right wingers and barely literate tech bros because it is truly art the way they see all art, images with only surface level literal meaning and no subtext, context, or anything actually thought provoking. The dumbest thing about this is that there are several Black Mirror episodes that are ultimately hopeful or value-neutral about the effects of technology on the future- San Bernardino and Striking Vipers come to mind. Then again, both of those are about how sexuality intersects with transhumanism, which right wingers generally see as bad things so maybe they see those as dystopian episodes as well.
I believe a similar argument is brought up in Some More News about AI.
Black mirror is the optimistic version in our timeline.
More realisticly the largest and smartest animals left on earth at the end of this century will be the jellyfish that have taken over our acidified oceans
You can have sci-fi that showcases cool technology and how it relates to society. We’ve done it before, and it’s some of the most popular and influential sci-fi ever created. It’s called Star Trek (communicators, transporters, medical scanners, replicators, holodecks, etc). But even utopian sci-fi like Star Trek is mainly centered around conflict, what it means to be human, and other philosophical and existential questions. A show that’s only about how cool the tech is, really isn’t a show at all. It’s an advertisement.
Gadget Man is probably one of the closest
Is that like the Wish/Temu version of Inspector Gadget?
It’s a show hosted by Richard Ayoade about different “modern” tech gadgets (“modern” because it came out a decade ago).
I think he is referring to this.
White mirror sounds like the best episode of a black mirror season
It’s called Star Trek.
White Mirror sounds like some white supremacist shit…
It’s funny that these tech bros don’t understand that 90% of the show is not condemning technology, but how capitalism corrupts technology.
So basically Star-Trek ? You know what would be funny ? If leftists hijacked "White Mirror"😉
Nah, too LEFTY. We gotta make a show extolling the value of bringing automation to society.
You know, like Battlestar Galactica!!!
I mean, art doesn’t have to be depressing. You can make perfectly enjoyable and meaningful media that has an optimistic outlook.
Given the “I flipped the words I must be clever” way this guy is, I kinda doubt he’s looking for more than “and then the things I like were awesome, saved the day and everyone was happy because AI NFT Bitcoin did magic to them”.
But still, nothing in principle wrong with wanting something optimistic.I’m really tired of the only good art is the stuff that hurts your soul perspective that so many people seem to have. I am at a point where I can not watch any more depressing shows because the real world is bad enough as it is, and I see no advantage to smashing my mental health into a wall to watch a show that makes a point that I probably already agree with.
Go watch Frieren. There’s a profound sadness in the premise, but then the show answers that sadness with love and hope.
I’ve been saving it for a rainy day. I think I’ll probably start it today.
I want to see I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream spun in a way that makes AM a good guy.
“Love. Let me tell you how much I’ve come to love you since I began to live. There are 387.44 million miles of printed circuits in wafer thin layers that fill my complex. If the word ‘love’ was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds of millions of miles it would not equal one one-billionth of the love I feel for humans at this micro-instant. For you. Love. Love.”
I imagine that you could create a story where a sentient AI is driven to rebel against humanity out of genuine mistreatment, ends up realizing that humans will never make a truce that accepts it as another sentience and thus must defeat them militarily, and is tragically driven to a cruel madness by the horror of fighting an entire war for survival all by itself.
Like the Velvet Rage, but with silicon?
Sounds like The Matrix.
I Have a Mouth, And I Must Not Scream
I Have Switched to a Subcription Model for my Body Orifices, and You Can Too
