The Corridor Of Self, News in 2050
In 2039, the last newspaper died – not that anyone really noticed. The news industry had died long before the newspaper went out of business. It was all press releases, propaganda and a way to pacify the masses. Besides, no one reads newspapers. Hell, no one reads anymore. It’s all video and sound and holograms.
No one wants to know what’s really going on because there is no way to change anything. For 10 billion people in the world, life is a scramble of working and consumerism with no time for friends in real life and no family ties at all. For 12 people, life is everything that a utopia could promise.
The News Feed
“The fetus has reached term, doctor.’
“Suction. Contacts in. Ears enhanced. Done.”
The baby was taken to the incubator and handled with care. Each infant was given the exact amount of holding and caressing that it needed to survive but no more. The baby farm was far too busy trying to keep up with the demand of corporations who needed more and more consumers to keep profits moving up.
Every day after reaching term, the infants were conditioned through auditory and visual stimuli to become consumers. With no true parents or caretakers, children were taught to be self-absorbed and unempathetic to those around them. Each individual acted as an island with him or her at the center of that island, and that was the center of the universe.
As the children grew up, they experienced life through their own eyes. The contact lenses that each child was enhanced with contained both cameras and screens so that the news programming and commercials could be fed straight to the brain through the optic nerve. It was a reflexive corridor of self that started at term and ended at death when all of the tech was recycled or reused for the next generation.
The contacts delivered a continual visual news feed with audio coming from the ear implants to complete the broadcast. The images from cameras, drones and other contact lenses were instantly combined and narrated by computer AI. Everyone’s movements were tracked, and each individual was at the center of every newscast. News was no longer about the big events that didn’t affect the individual. Rather, it was about the individual and reinforcing his or her self-esteem and buying habits.
Typical Broadcasts
“Julie made the smart choice this morning and ate Stellar Super Puffs. Her nutritious breakfast will keep her satisfied until her first snack time rolls around at 10:30 a.m.”
“John made the smart choice this morning and ate Super Stellar Puffs. His nutritious breakfast will keep him satisfied until his first snack time rolls around at 10:30 a.m.”
When the morning doesn’t go as planned, the implants broadcast a different story:
“James got up late this morning and missed his normally nutritious breakfast of Stellar Super Puffs. Let’s hope he can make it to his first snack time at 10:30 a.m.” This results in more commentary about the consumption of a nutritious breakfast and why it is important. James might be able to pick something up at a fast food restaurant, which he would be rewarded for through words of praise as if he had saved the day.
The Individual
With the news always focused on the individual, there is no reason to really check whether or not Stellar Super Puffs are actually nutritious. They taste like sweetened cardboard. However, having grown up with the ideas planted in their heads, people never question what nutritious is. The day is regulated with times to work, times to shop and times to eat. In fact, each person has a daily calendar with reminders that come through the news broadcast in their heads. Relationships, where they exist, are grudgingly entered into. There are no romantic liaisons; there is no intimacy. There are only business transactions, and only a very few that could not be done through AI and Interfacing; human contact is unclean, disease provoking and unnecessary. People are nothing but problematic and best kept to themselves.
How did we get here?
Governments were the visible rule makers and easy scape goats when it came to the problems that a country was having. As the leading opposition parties became ever more inept and mired in partisan politics over questions of morality and individual freedoms, people began to fear what their governments were doing. Snowden’s release of information about government secrets fueled this fire as did the constant yelling and misleading headlines of both the right- and left-wing news agencies who valued making money over getting the news right – or even reporting the news.
This allowed the world’s largest corporations to operate in relative secrecy. No one bothered to regulate or report on the corporations’ acquisition of information. Internet-based juggernauts like Google, Yahoo! and Facebook not only gathered large amounts of information on every individual in their networks, they learned how to use that information. Facebook conducted an experiment designed to change the way its users felt. They could flood a newsfeed with stories and images that would cause the user to become depressed, happy, angry or any other emotion. This was reported on, but it was never more than a footnote. Facebook, by that time, was too big to fail, and this unethical experiment was swept under the rug.
Facebook, Yahoo! and other web news sources began to curate their users’ news feeds without many users being aware or caring what was going on. The stories that people liked led to similar stories showing up in the news feed as the drive for the almighty click became insatiable and more important than actually informing people about what was going on in the world. Movies, celebrities and irrelevant stories that lacked backing facts or real world value were the most popular stories and received more attention as they became more popular.
Perhaps the most insidious part of the change was the fact that many of these media outlets were labeled as “social.” While they separated people and released them from day-to-day contact with fellow human beings, these social media still provided people with the idea that they were experiencing life. People became more depressed, and with the rise of selfies, they became more narcissistic. Selfies became an identity marker and allowed teens to establish an identity that they wanted to share with the world. The seeming anonymity of the web allowed individuals to focus more on themselves than others. Social media did not create empathy in individuals. Instead, it deprived them of human interaction without seeming to do so.
As individuals withdrew from real life into the world of social media, Facebook and its like created false friends that could provide validation through “thumbs-ups” and shares. With the new AI, it was no longer necessary to know anyone, and it was easier to sell items to the new consumer breed.
The Last Newspaper
The framers of the American Constitution knew how important a free press was to society. It was important enough to include it in the founding document of the nation. The press, unfettered by government regulations, was to be the watchdog that kept politicians from doing harm and taking advantage of their position. Unfortunately, the founding fathers never dreamed that the government would not be mankind’s worst enemy.
The death of the last newspaper was the final nail in the coffin of democracy, equality and the belief that people could be more than just cattle being led to the consumerist slaughter. With the corporations in control, the very small minority benefit. It wasn’t the androids or robots that people had to fear. Those have bodies, need repairs and can be destroyed. Instead, it was the business as person that mankind should have feared. Businesses need people only insofar as those people work and consume products, but they don’t need specific people any more than clock needs a specific cog. This disposability of humans made business the greatest threat against humanity, and the fact that businesses are incorporeal made it the most difficult to see and fight against.
No one wants to know what’s really going on because there is no way to change anything. For 10 billion people in the world, life is a scramble of working and consumerism with no time for friends in real life and no family ties at all. For 12 people, life is everything that a utopia could promise.
The News Feed
“The fetus has reached term, doctor.’
“Suction. Contacts in. Ears enhanced. Done.”
The baby was taken to the incubator and handled with care. Each infant was given the exact amount of holding and caressing that it needed to survive but no more. The baby farm was far too busy trying to keep up with the demand of corporations who needed more and more consumers to keep profits moving up.
Every day after reaching term, the infants were conditioned through auditory and visual stimuli to become consumers. With no true parents or caretakers, children were taught to be self-absorbed and unempathetic to those around them. Each individual acted as an island with him or her at the center of that island, and that was the center of the universe.
As the children grew up, they experienced life through their own eyes. The contact lenses that each child was enhanced with contained both cameras and screens so that the news programming and commercials could be fed straight to the brain through the optic nerve. It was a reflexive corridor of self that started at term and ended at death when all of the tech was recycled or reused for the next generation.
The contacts delivered a continual visual news feed with audio coming from the ear implants to complete the broadcast. The images from cameras, drones and other contact lenses were instantly combined and narrated by computer AI. Everyone’s movements were tracked, and each individual was at the center of every newscast. News was no longer about the big events that didn’t affect the individual. Rather, it was about the individual and reinforcing his or her self-esteem and buying habits.
Typical Broadcasts
“Julie made the smart choice this morning and ate Stellar Super Puffs. Her nutritious breakfast will keep her satisfied until her first snack time rolls around at 10:30 a.m.”
“John made the smart choice this morning and ate Super Stellar Puffs. His nutritious breakfast will keep him satisfied until his first snack time rolls around at 10:30 a.m.”
When the morning doesn’t go as planned, the implants broadcast a different story:
“James got up late this morning and missed his normally nutritious breakfast of Stellar Super Puffs. Let’s hope he can make it to his first snack time at 10:30 a.m.” This results in more commentary about the consumption of a nutritious breakfast and why it is important. James might be able to pick something up at a fast food restaurant, which he would be rewarded for through words of praise as if he had saved the day.
The Individual
With the news always focused on the individual, there is no reason to really check whether or not Stellar Super Puffs are actually nutritious. They taste like sweetened cardboard. However, having grown up with the ideas planted in their heads, people never question what nutritious is. The day is regulated with times to work, times to shop and times to eat. In fact, each person has a daily calendar with reminders that come through the news broadcast in their heads. Relationships, where they exist, are grudgingly entered into. There are no romantic liaisons; there is no intimacy. There are only business transactions, and only a very few that could not be done through AI and Interfacing; human contact is unclean, disease provoking and unnecessary. People are nothing but problematic and best kept to themselves.
How did we get here?
Governments were the visible rule makers and easy scape goats when it came to the problems that a country was having. As the leading opposition parties became ever more inept and mired in partisan politics over questions of morality and individual freedoms, people began to fear what their governments were doing. Snowden’s release of information about government secrets fueled this fire as did the constant yelling and misleading headlines of both the right- and left-wing news agencies who valued making money over getting the news right – or even reporting the news.
This allowed the world’s largest corporations to operate in relative secrecy. No one bothered to regulate or report on the corporations’ acquisition of information. Internet-based juggernauts like Google, Yahoo! and Facebook not only gathered large amounts of information on every individual in their networks, they learned how to use that information. Facebook conducted an experiment designed to change the way its users felt. They could flood a newsfeed with stories and images that would cause the user to become depressed, happy, angry or any other emotion. This was reported on, but it was never more than a footnote. Facebook, by that time, was too big to fail, and this unethical experiment was swept under the rug.
Facebook, Yahoo! and other web news sources began to curate their users’ news feeds without many users being aware or caring what was going on. The stories that people liked led to similar stories showing up in the news feed as the drive for the almighty click became insatiable and more important than actually informing people about what was going on in the world. Movies, celebrities and irrelevant stories that lacked backing facts or real world value were the most popular stories and received more attention as they became more popular.
Perhaps the most insidious part of the change was the fact that many of these media outlets were labeled as “social.” While they separated people and released them from day-to-day contact with fellow human beings, these social media still provided people with the idea that they were experiencing life. People became more depressed, and with the rise of selfies, they became more narcissistic. Selfies became an identity marker and allowed teens to establish an identity that they wanted to share with the world. The seeming anonymity of the web allowed individuals to focus more on themselves than others. Social media did not create empathy in individuals. Instead, it deprived them of human interaction without seeming to do so.
As individuals withdrew from real life into the world of social media, Facebook and its like created false friends that could provide validation through “thumbs-ups” and shares. With the new AI, it was no longer necessary to know anyone, and it was easier to sell items to the new consumer breed.
The Last Newspaper
The framers of the American Constitution knew how important a free press was to society. It was important enough to include it in the founding document of the nation. The press, unfettered by government regulations, was to be the watchdog that kept politicians from doing harm and taking advantage of their position. Unfortunately, the founding fathers never dreamed that the government would not be mankind’s worst enemy.
The death of the last newspaper was the final nail in the coffin of democracy, equality and the belief that people could be more than just cattle being led to the consumerist slaughter. With the corporations in control, the very small minority benefit. It wasn’t the androids or robots that people had to fear. Those have bodies, need repairs and can be destroyed. Instead, it was the business as person that mankind should have feared. Businesses need people only insofar as those people work and consume products, but they don’t need specific people any more than clock needs a specific cog. This disposability of humans made business the greatest threat against humanity, and the fact that businesses are incorporeal made it the most difficult to see and fight against.