Two-Faced Ghost of the Future: Shimmering Through on November 8th 2016
With a hat tip to The Peripheral by @greatdismal
As we approach November 8th 2016, we may well begin to see a much stronger manifestation of the Ghost of the Future: the one with two faces — one of the loser, and the other of the winner.
I am using William Gibson’s novel, The Peripheral, as my frame of reference, in which he describes (as I see it) a 40 year dystopian decline with large numbers of people dying. A few survive (hit the jackpot) to flourish and command. In one of the post-publication interviews, Gibson called it the outcome of a mismanaged singularity.
We have already seen a few sightings of both faces, losers and winners, of the Ghost of the Future shimmering through in the last few months. The loser face seems, in part, giving up but also pushing back. The winner face is gloating, and apparently unaware of its conjoint loser face.
For example, here are two sighting stories of where the slow, cataclysmic dynamics of the loser face of the Ghost of the Future is manifesting and pushing back:
The first sighting was in March 2016 in US counties with higher White mortality rates.
“We’re focusing on middle-aged whites because the data show that something has gone terribly wrong with their lives. In a study last year, economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton pointed out that mortality rates for this group have actually been increasing since the ‘90s.”
This graphic laden report seems to track Gibson’s slow depopulation and death scenario from The Peripheral so closely that it is creepy. These are the counties pushing back, by voting for Donald Trump. How much the push back resonate and manifest will be seen by end of the night on November 8.
The other sighting of the loser face of the Ghost of the Future, it turns out, was not just in ‘backward’ counties in the USA but in the pits of the gig economy in globalized metro areas where the algorithm has become the boss of the millennials. This one was sighted in London, U.K. in September 2016.
“This protest outside the UberEats office in south London on August 26 is one of the first industrial disputes to hit the city’s so-called gig economy. It is a strange clash. These are workers without a workplace, striking against a company that does not employ them. They are managed not by people but by an algorithm that communicates with them via their smartphones. And what they are rebelling against is an app update.
UberEats launched in London in June, promising “the food you want, from the London restaurants you love, delivered at Uber speed”. In a bid to recruit self-employed couriers to ferry food from restaurants to customers, UberEats initially offered to pay £20 an hour. But as customer demand increased, the company began to reduce pay. By August, the couriers were on a piece rate with a fiddly formula: £3.30 a delivery plus £1 a mile, minus a 25 per cent “Uber service fee”, plus a £5 “trip reward”. Then, one day, the couriers woke up to find the app had been updated again. The “trip reward” had been cut to £4 for weekday lunch and weekend dinner times, and to £3 for weekday dinner and weekend lunch times. Outside those periods, it had been cut altogether.”
Will sightings of push back from the loser face of the Ghost of the Future give pause to William Gibson? Perhaps, if he were to write with more optimism about global millennials, caught in the gig economy, banding together with jobless coal miners in Kentucky against the jackpot wielding global metro elites and their bi-coastal cousins, a will and a path to veer away from dystopia may open up?
In the meanwhile, there is the other face of the Ghost of the Future — the winner face, the Jackpot face, the one steeped in self-satisfying gentility. This face was recently sighted in October 2016 and shown in a collection of film vignettes titled Automation of Creativity.
In one, a Japanese vignette, it shows how they — the winner face [large corporations and advertising agencies] — are planning to survive and flourish and even win the jackpot, as they ever so graciously manage their de-population. The premise being, automate all the way to creativity, and the small remaining human population will lead a very pleasant life, indeed.
“2016 also saw the arrival of the world’s first artificial creative director, AI-CD ß. Created by McCann Erickson Japan under its Creative Genome Project, it might have been a headline grabber but has already been pressed into commercial action for Mondelēz Japan with a campaign for Clorets Mint Tab.”
In another vignette, a Britty winner voice expounds how AI will begin drawing better and better Rembrandts. I say Britty, because I think that is how William Gibson differentiates his two parallel futures: the loser face with the underclass language and voice of the American heartland, and the other, the jackpot face which uses a faux Edwardian Brit voice (I am paraphrasing Gibson here). The project to produce Rembrandt imitations using Artificial Intelligence won adulation from the global professional elites.
“Among the big winners was J Walter Thompson’s ‘The Next Rembrandt’ — a 3D printed painting consisting of 148m pixels distilled from all 346 of Rembrandt’s paintings. The project saw a group of art historians, material researchers, data scientists and engineers take on what many considered a controversial challenge — teaching a machine to think, act and paint like Rembrandt.
Created for banking client ING with Microsoft, it won 16 Lions including Grands Prix in Cyber and Creative Data, and a prized Innovation Lion.”
The projection of the winner face of the Ghost of the Future looms larger than life in the media and permeates our sensate world view. The loser face manifests through reports of slow death and of localized protests on the street.
And the sightings of both the loser and winner face is most apparent in the momentum building up to 2016 US elections.
November 8th is the day when American energies will manifest the Two Faced Ghost of the Future. Which face will emerge temporarily victorious? The jackpot face of the bi-coastal elites, apparently in denial? Or the loser face of the rest who some say are on a slow march to being de-populated — but are also beginning to push back?
Or, will both faces arise in the start of long battle, post an inconclusive election? November 9th 2016 may well be a starting line in how we begin shaping and managing our march towards singularity and whether we make it into an opportunity to veer away from dystopia.
