It’s a pity and a symptom that we stopped producing great science fiction. These and others were the questions authors used to address and now largely abandoned in favor of shallow gadget descriptions.

To be a bit more optimistic: I must note that gadget worshipers never actually invent gadgets. Making 2.5D ‘reality’ glasses for your phone out of folded paper, while fantasizing about ‘the Matrix’, ‘Singularity’, Master of Orion ‘Unification’ or whatever else they’ve picked up from a video game, comic book or kino, is all there is. None of them have the Will and brainpower to become a billionaire adept in neurological-informatics and surgery to perform dark experiments, they factually dream about, in some underground vault. It’s nothing new actually, let the morons play with their ‘electro-magnetic gizmotron’ and draw sketches of ‘radio powered crowd control police automatons’.

The thing that keeps me worried is, that this is symptomatic of another civilizational decline we again face. Not owning a John Schindler style Plan B in the Swiss Alps — I think you get and share my concern. ;-)

Thanks for another great article!

Tom