THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION WAS NEVER MEANT TO GO THIS WAY
In 1984, when I wrote CHARGED BODIES, my history of the creation of Silicon Valley, the Mac promised to be “the computer for the rest of us.”
Forty years on, in 2024, Apple brags it will crush human creativity — and spirit — to grow beyond its trillion-dollar valuation. As in the Apple one-minute ad for the new iPad Pro Plus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntjkwIXWtrc
Apple makes it official on behalf of the entire tech industry that any work of human creativity not digitally generated has no value.
CHARGED BODIES recounts the first years of the digital revolution in Silicon Valley, when the goal was to increase human productivity, not reduce us and our descendants to data-point playthings in the hands of multi-billionaires.
For nearly twenty years we have allowed ourselves to be trapped in digital lobster traps. It was so easy to enter, but now almost impossible to escape.
Public attention must be paid NOW. We are running out of time to claim our humanity back from a small clique of multi-billionaires who hope that AI will soon make them multi-trillionaires. We will
To quote the guy who interrupted breakfast at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941: “This is not a goddam drill. We are under a goddam attack.”
(The 40th Anniversary edition of CHARGED BODIES points back to some of the original hopes at the beginning of the digital revolution. It is available now at Amazon.)
