From: pataphor@gmail.com   
      
   On Wed, 07 Nov 2018 16:10:08 -0600   
   superkuh  wrote:   
      
   > I want to believe.   
      
   I hate simpleminded technologists who think the world of themselves   
   because someone paid them a lot of money. We are far removed from a   
   situation where one could justifiably claim some kind of social status   
   because of how much work one contributed to society. Not that I have   
   been able to do that according to the most common evaluation standard,   
   because my thoughts are too diverse and wide ranging to ever amount to   
   much more than second place in any subject matter. But I think, knowing   
   a little about a lot of things, and functioning as a kind of interface   
   between the different closeted communities, has its own merit, be it   
   that such a thing is nowhere appreciated much, unless one already has   
   the social status to begin with.   
      
   What I find especially objectionable is certain people, for example some   
   science fiction writers, claiming that poor people would perish in a   
   truly competitive economic environment. They don't realize that the   
   exploitation they are part of is about as far as possible from equal   
   opportunities or true competition as one could imagine.   
      
   Instead, we see developments where to right to do a job, and attain the   
   corresponding social status, is now something between whatever happens   
   in a colony of penguins each fighting for a place on the breeding   
   ground, or outright buying of privileges with money acquired in the   
   family, originating from even more unjust feudal appropriations in the   
   past.   
      
   What does this all have to do with cyberpunk?   
      
   I think it's the reason we keep looking for examples of smart people in   
   the wrong places, and people like me, which I would call small scale   
   low level hackers, trying to make the most of whatever decentralized   
   tech that is left behind, or using software that has now become low   
   status because of some similar process as what happens with the sexual   
   or social super stimuli that we are now confronted with daily, are   
   simply fading away in the background.   
      
   P.   
      
   ---   
      
   "It's not dead Jim, it's become invisible."   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)