Living in a Dystopian Sci-fi — Hippy in the Woods

This life has become very surreal. It feels like the beginning of a novel – An omen of a planetary alignment spreads across the night sky, as the Dick-tator takes office with his cronies of greedy billionaires aiming to suck the system dry. This is the opening of my novel – or am I living this?

T-rump taking his presidential oath on Martin Luther King Day, along with the death of Jimmy Carter, just made the symbolism even more dystopian. Carter was one of the few presidents who cared and put his heart and soul into bettering the world. The Re-pug-blicans hated him. My first inkling that history wasn’t unbiased reporting was in my high school history book. When we got to Jimmy and Reagan years, it said Carter was terrible and didn’t do anything, didn’t even free the hostages, but Reagan was sooo wonderful because he got the hostages released. The hostages were released the day Reagan was inaugurated. He hadn’t done anything. As I remember, the Reagan years were horrible; history is a fantasy.

Even the music was bad.

Ugg Journey.

My real concern is the breakthroughs in science – anti-gravity, energy generated by nothing, and AI. It’s wonderful, but not if used for the wrong reason. My friend is working on nano-chip technology that can be inserted into the brain. She is intending it to be used to help with dementia. But I’m thinking, Oh no, don’t let microscoff get a hold of this. The book Feed is all about teenagers with microchips in their brains and how they can’t live without the endless rain of stimulation from the feed.

We have shown ourselves to be humancentric in our developments, making the world nicer for humanity but terrible for the rest of life. What happens when we have infinite energy or can fly around, or can insert nano-chips in our brains? Will we conduct ourselves with humility and grace, refraining from using this power when it is destructive – It looks like not.

Terminator and Matrix. What we don’t realize is the environmental impact of AI. It’ very costly in energy and water. An example - to have ChatGPT write an email is the same amount of energy as driving a two-ton truck half a mile. It’s no mistake that microscoff is the backer of trying to restart the nuclear power plant, 8-mile island, that melted down in the 1990s. Also, the only nuclear plant in California was slated to be shut down but now, plans have changed. Coal plants in West Virginia were supposed to be decommissioned but are now kept running. AI is a hungry beast.

Then there is the huge amount of infrastructure for computers - 26.5 MILLION feet of warehouses are used to create AI, and we haven’t even begun. It is calculated that to make the capacity of the human brain, it will take a computer the size of Texas and eight stories high. I guess it depends on whose brain we're talking about, but regardless, the techies are planning on paving the world for their AI creatures. And here is the really freaky thought - what happens when AI watches The Matrix? How stupid can humanity be? Make the machines that can learn and show it the dystopian sci-fi of how to make us into batteries.

Is this the Twilight Zone?

For some, this horror story will dissipate when the Democrats take the house in two years. For me, it’s a bigger issue of our humanity. Are we capable of holding power in a good way? Enrico Fermi, the father of the nuclear age who helped develop nuclear fission, was vocal about the responsible use of power and was against the making of the atomic bomb. He made the power, but did he stop it?

It is like Frankenstein’s fanatic obsession with the power to create life – it became his downfall. Scientists are screaming about AI and global warming. We’re listening, but, like Frankenstein, we are compelled by the power of creation.

We are trapped in the storyline of the movie Don’t Look Up. We know it’s coming, yet we can’t unite, control our curiosity, and think logically. Instead, we hand the keys of our government over to the greedy and cruel. There is a dark, Russian fantasy called The Ghost Drum with a line that stuck in my mind like a prophecy - He named himself Czar, and the people let him do it.

For every person on this planet, the question will be - the red pill or the blue pill? The problem is that half have taken the red while half have taken the blue. Were just not in the same reality.