 
To: angst+@CMU.EDU
Subject: technoapartheid
From: wce@hogbbs.scol.pa.us (Bill Eichman)
Comments: Validated
Message-Id: <6i5kuB2w165w@hogbbs.scol.pa.us>
Date: 	Sat, 21 Nov 1992 05:33:52 -0500
Organization: The Heart of Gold BBS, Lemont PA

>Techno Apartheid for a Global Underclass

>Business: Transnational networks are already bypassing govemments to build
>a world that excludes most of humanity.

>BRUSSELS-The new order taking shape in the world today is not the one
>imagined by obsolete statesmen of the Cold War era-that of nation-states
>weighing in on a new global balance of power. Rather, a high-tech
>archipelago of affluent, hyperdeveloped city-regions is evolving amid a sea
>of impoverished humanity. Transnational business firms, in their ceaseless
>pursuit of new customers, are creating these networks, which bypass the
>traditional nation-state framework.

>By placing science and technology solely in the service of the market
>objectives of these companies, fading nation-state governments are not only
>hastening their own demise; they are also accomplices in a global
>development strategy that excludes most of the world's population.

This is pretty much exactly what I expect to occur, and have expected
for many years. There are a thousand possible variations on this basic
theme of technocratic fuedalism, but, unless some tremendous paradigm
shift of social thinking and technological distribution happens in the
next quarter century or so, this is the clear and obvious end result of
today's economic changes.

So, there will be about a million superrich, and about 900 million+
technocratic and bureacratic servicers and servants of the superrich.
And about 6 billion+ 'third(?) world peasants'. And maybe a million to ten
million of folks like us, living in neither world, working on building
and maintaining an alternative civilization of our own.

Boy, aren't mr and mrs joe blow american going to be surprised when it
finally dawns on them that they've been pushed into a permanent
underclass status. They'll pray and pray for their jesus to save them,
but god, as always, looks on in benign disregard, standing behind those
with the largest artillery.

I know, I'm a hopelessly bitter cynic when it comes to this, but I have
looked and looked for signs of hope, and I see nothing. Most people are
astronomically, cosmically, almost infinitely _stupid_. They will try to
kill you, or hurt you, or disenfranchise you if you try to warn them, or
even talk openly about the dangerous future.

Brains are the key. Skills are the vehicle. Preperation is the
escape-route. (either to the communities, or to a nice cosy niche as a
salaryman, as befits we priviledged white males, eh, if we have the
stomach for obesiance?)

Well, there ain't much I can do for most of you. I wish you luck, in
advance, while we are still in these relatively calm temporal rapids,
approching the curve-to-singularity, the waterfall that goes UP...

It's going to be tough enough for me just to salvage my own sorry ass,
mine and those of the friends close enough for me to aid...

Hey, maybe it'll be much more fun that it seems from here. ;-)

Later, Bill


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