But at that point, society would basically be full-on Cyberpunk. Screw suicide, form a gang of runners and start planning heists on manufacturing facilities and factories, lay traps for driverless truck shipments or hijack them electronically, etc. Hide in the margins, among the slums and tenements to which overpopulation and consolidation have relegated vast swarms of people. Heck, I've already gotten transdermal implants set and removed by people who maybe weren't, you know, licensed practitioners.

The moral rule of law is already out the window, and financial laws had already may as well not exist. The only practical compulsion that law has left is that many people can still have an acceptable life while complying with it. Enriching yourself by skimming the margins of those with enough capital to print money wouldn't exactly be immoral.

Automation of force, or something along those lines, would pretty much cinch it. I think plenty of people would decide it's time to have a chat with a local lathe/mill owner, stick a flamethrower on their quadcopter, and loot the few places where opulence still existed. Get away with a couple decent jobs, and you could pretend you were in that upper echelon of 'people with lots of money' all along.

Right now, if you're good at a trade like construction, welding, medicine, engineering, etc, you can probably find stable employment options and at least afford to exist. But when those people of practical means start to get systemically marginalized, I'll bet we'll see a huge resurgence of people trying modern versions of The Italian Job.

Cyberpunk is a fiction because it peddles the naive fantasy that anarchistic actions would be feasible in such a world.

There's not going to be any clever tricks to avoid being picked up the mass physical surveillance network.

Hacking is simply infeasible for the vast majority of people given the complexity of systems and how much intelligence and knowledge is required.

Action movie heists of high value targets are basically impossible to get away with these days let alone in a decade or two.

Well sure if we're talking about cyberpunk 'heist' novels/rpgs like Shadowrun & Neuromancer. But it's really interesting to see just how 'cyberpunk' our society has become isn't it? We even have most of the technology in place nowadays.

(Well other than the advanced tech they use like cyberdecks and stimsims which aren't really feasible)

Well yeah, but if your other consolation idea is 'suicide,' I'd take the million-to-one shot.

> Computers were a mistake and represent the greatest threat to freedom in human history. The ability of those in power to mass produce perfectly obedient machines that can perform complex tasks without rest allow for a nightmare society.

I think about that a lot. It suggests to me that the real problem lies not with technology, but with something unavoidable and self-destructive about human nature.

> It suggests to me that the real problem lies not with technology, but with something unavoidable and self-destructive about human nature.

Or the people in power not being fully clear about their means.

Look at the root cause. Humans are driven by the exact forces that caused evolution. Those forces are to gather resources and maintain social dominance. Anything other than that will never be a force that shapes the world.

"Not being fully clear about their means" is just a manifestation or symptom of someone's quest to acquire more resources. I repeat that you must look at the root force and not the symptom.

> something unavoidable and self-destructive about human nature.

What specifically? Wanting power and control?

>What specifically? Wanting power and control?

What about the fact that we're the only species to hoard way more resources than we'll ever need, to the point where we're quite literally destroying the environment and life around us in order to maintain our over-consumption of resources?

Fair, but at that point I don't see how there is any relationship to computers, which was OP's point.

I like reading your darkly pessimistic perspective on the issue as I think a huge component to the problem is the fact that so many aren't pessimistic enough about technological development.

Everyone seems to think that, prima facie, or even de facto:

technological progress == good.

But there is nothing that guarantees that's the case.

A shiny new device or service launches and everyone is gung ho to jump on it--never mind questioning its negative impacts--what is the environmental and economic impact of this service (e.g. cryptocurrencies consuming electricity, a 'material' resource, and producing nothing but a representation--e.g. consumption of material with no production), who does the service marginalize, how does it propagate further cultural and global divisions...the list goes on

No one ever stops to ask these questions--or those who do are not nearly loud enough. We seem to follow a policy of progress by all means until we've developed our way into a future in which the continued subsistence of humanity (at least on earth) is untenable.

> We seem to follow a policy of progress by all means until we've developed our way into a future in which the continued subsistence of humanity (at least on earth) is untenable.

I just don't see how you got to this conclusion. In what way could technological progress make it untenable for humanity to continue?

Not him but you see this very thing now. Look at pollution and CO2 emissions for an example of how technological progress can directly threaten humanity.

But won't technological progress in electric transportation severely stunt the problem of emissions and pollution?

I can understand the fear in the abstract, but it seems like a huge jump to go to suicide as the best option.

What are 'they' going to do with the information that makes your life so miserable that not existing is preferable?

How did you come to your conclusion about computers so firmly? Also in what way is this worth taking your life over? Does it really make it impossible to enjoy it?

How so?