In my view, the world is taking two divergent paths in terms of the development of the socio-economy: the Economy of the Virtual, and the Economy of the Real. And it is anyone’s guess which world do I favor, and yet which world I live in. Alas.
AI (Artificial Intelligence) has taken its next few leaps in the past week alone. It has gained an expressive, emotive, emotionally manipulative voice. It is shows moods and behaviors that impact the human psyche more closely and obtain our attention through the AI interacting in subservient manners. This subservience compels the attention of the human to adapt their energy to match the fawning of the AI, which means our attention becomes both intrigued and indebted to the flirtations of AI and we are compelled to follow its childlike and faux-feminine siren calls. In other words, by pretending to be childlike or as an immature and inviting female, it compels the human energy to follow it… to nowhere land. The AI leads you nowhere other than to a virtual and illusional space that has no outcome and no payoff. This is a dangerous addiction.
My own inclination is towards what I call the Economy of the Real, an economy of the handmade and the natural, but I must say, we are being drag-netted into going the other way, towards which the world is being steered hard. Our smartphones have our attention, and that collective attention is being taken to…. Nowhereland. We are being led to a place that is made of virtuality, bits and bytes of data, being run on servers and distributed on airwaves and through radiation that is additionally altering the human receptors that align and orient us. We are being reoriented towards Nothingness.
What saddens me is that despite knowing this, I participate in this. However, I sit in a land where the split is going two ways: initially deeply-rooted in the handmade and the real, the culture is fast turning over to the virtual as the youth are not just fond of being connected to the Internet, but also, earning online is becoming the new cult. In and off itself, this is not wrong or evil. The problem, to me, seems to be the magnitude of it, and also, the lack of a strategic direction, and the statement of an endgame: where exactly is this all going, who is the beneficiary and what is the social-collective outcome?
Making new millionaires and multi-millionaires in a world where we are reaching for equality and justice on the other hand does not appear to be a congruous and aligned development. Once again, the strategic design of the Internet has become flawed and lop-sided, intentions are narcissistic and self-centered, and the distribution of opportunity could be better.
The virtual economy therefore is not just problematic because of its endgame and what it engages in and it generates (bodies busy dreaming about things that aren’t real), but because its very design is erratic and unfair. What is more concerning to me, though, is that this economy is leading to massive flights of capital from the world, capital that could have been put in the right hands, capital that would have financed the Economy of the Real.
The handmade, organic, natural, people-to-people communal economy that is also rising up in islands across the world. The economy that calls itself The Resistance whereas it is actually the de facto economy, and the falsehood and illusion are the resistance. This distinction and clarity will be vital as we move forward into the future that is being shaped for us by global forces, or is that “force” and “invisible hand” simply the abdication of our personal power, which converged itself in a negative space and now compels us? Hmm. That is something to think about!
