this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2024
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TBF, for the last 30 years even Cyberpunk authors completely missed the point that capitalism will subvert these amazing technologies to make everything worse if we don't do something. Neal Stephenson is a crypto shill.
Manna got rampant capitalism + AI pretty close, and has predicted McDonalds payment kiosks, Amazon worker abuse, and probably some of the tech layoffs too.
Wow... I've worked in the fast food industry for 2 years, and that really hits close to home. With the kitchen display systems and headsets, with modern technology it would be easy to implement that... very easy. We'd still need one manager on the line for de-escalating angry customers but that would end up essentially the same as the book synopsis described. And the subsequent dystopia... I could literally see this occurring tomorrow. Kinda scary.
Damn, that surprises and saddens me. I've only ever read one of his books, Diamond Age/A young lady's illustrated primer, but I thoroughly enjoyed it and also thought there were some great critiques of the upper class