I don’t know if you have read Woman at the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy, but it seems to me it has something that Back to the Future and your account (although I love it) doesn’t — a sense that as we move forward, there is (perhaps always, but certainly at key moments) a choice of whether the technological advances will serve, to put it in black and white, forces of good or of evil. her novel shows a split between a possible utopia where technology is harnessed to make the world a better place for people and their humanity, or a dystopia where technology wags the dog and serves purely commercial interests and contributes towards the further dehumanization of people. A simple example: in the utopian future, people still farm (picking off harmful bugs by hand) and cook, but doing the dishes are automated, and in the dystopian future food is reduced to a small pill.

Your piece touches on this bifurcation of possibilities in the final paragraph: “There exists a future of artificial intelligence, rampant inequality, and irreversible climate change. But there is also a future of abundance, where technology and good public policy leads to a better life for everyone.” What I miss from it, and perhaps this is simply not the essay where you include it, is what normal people can do to push for the latter and avoid the former, given that most forces of profit are pushing for the dystopian future (the new revelations that Exxon had information on global warming decades ago and spent millions hiding it and fabricating false evidence against it — much like tobacco companies did with their information — comes to mind)? Can that corporate-monopoly-profit-uber-alles be beaten?

Come to think of it, Back to the Future personifies this choice in Biff and the future in which he is wealthy and in control and the future without him. But given that there is not just one bully to beat…what do we do?