Ben’s 2018
2018—just the facts. Internet pioneer John Perry Barlow died—and with him, perhaps some of my internet utopian streak. Stephen Hawking died, leaving warnings about automation and capitalism. “Space Force” is a thing. Corruption and the murder of journalists in broad daylight. Contemporary writers describe “a new dark age” and “the elite charade of changing the […]
Ben’s 2017
Twenty seventeen: Donald’s first year. A year of exhaustion and planetary confusion and excess. Bitcoin briefly topped $20,000. Geopolitics is a reality show and no one knows what’s real anymore. This year we arrived at, and moved well beyond, some of the foreseen conditions of technological and political dystopia. Civilization-warping crises of public trust. I […]
