Everything you considered a product, has now become a service. We have access to transportation, accommodation, food and all the things we need in our daily lives. One by one all these things became free, so it ended up not making sense for us to own much.
Then, when clean energy became free, things started to move quickly. Transportation dropped dramatically in price. It made no sense for us to own cars anymore, because we could call a driverless vehicle or a flying car for longer journeys within minutes. We started transporting ourselves in a much more organized and coordinated way when public transport became easier, quicker and more convenient than the car.
In our city we don't pay any rent, because someone else is using our free space whenever we do not need it. My living room is used for business meetings when I am not there.
Shopping? I can't really remember what that is. For most of us, it has been turned into choosing things to use. Sometimes I find this fun, and sometimes I just want the algorithm to do it for me. It knows my taste better than I do by now.
My biggest concern is all the people who do not live in our city. Those we lost on the way. Those who decided that it became too much, all this technology. Those who felt obsolete and useless when robots and AI took over big parts of our jobs. Those who got upset with the political system and turned against it. They live different kind of lives outside of the city. Some have formed little self-supplying communities. Others just stayed in the empty and abandoned houses in small 19th century villages.
Once in awhile I get annoyed about the fact that I have no real privacy. No where I can go and not be registered. I know that, somewhere, everything I do, think and dream of is recorded. I just hope that nobody will use it against me.
They want a society where, if you dissent from it, they check a box somewhere and you can no longer have the ability to cook yourself dinner because you don't even own the bowls and utensils you would use to prepare it, let alone the house you would cook it in or the vehicle you would take to purchase the ingredients. And all you have is a "hope" that the mass surveillance apparatus isn't used against you.
WTF, this isn't supposed to be some parody of a dystopia!? It reads exactly like "the robot overlords may on occasion drain some blood for lubricant, but I don't have to pay for Netflix so it's pretty cool".
WTF, this isn't supposed to be some parody of a dystopia!?
It was quite a day when I realized that utopian fiction and dystopian fiction aren't two different types of fiction. They're almost identical - the only difference is the point-of-view character's place in the hierarchy.
Excerpts:
They want a society where, if you dissent from it, they check a box somewhere and you can no longer have the ability to cook yourself dinner because you don't even own the bowls and utensils you would use to prepare it, let alone the house you would cook it in or the vehicle you would take to purchase the ingredients. And all you have is a "hope" that the mass surveillance apparatus isn't used against you.
WTF, this isn't supposed to be some parody of a dystopia!? It reads exactly like "the robot overlords may on occasion drain some blood for lubricant, but I don't have to pay for Netflix so it's pretty cool".
It was quite a day when I realized that utopian fiction and dystopian fiction aren't two different types of fiction. They're almost identical - the only difference is the point-of-view character's place in the hierarchy.
This year has taught me that most people will gladly live in a dystopia if they think they will be "safe" living in one.