
We have sealed ourselves away behind our money, growing inward, generating a seamless universe of self. William Gibson, Neuromancer
If you really want to know the answer to this question, look around. Increasingly we live in a world controlled and manipulated via the net, the wired, the metaverse. Where content and creators, programmers and artists coalesce into vast seas of content. Evermore our youth are lost in the infancy of the virtual worlds that our tablets, screens, and now headsets provide. You need not look at the specific technological forms or functions from these stories to see how well they predicted the future. If you look at the broader picture, the broader result of the technological singularity our civilization is undergoing you can see they were dead on.
How do point-of-sale systems work? Via the net. How do modern humans communicate, even those born before the net. Via the net. How do government and military organizations communicate? Via the net. How do criminal organizations and rebel insurgencies communicate? Via the net. How are business and financial transactions, managed, monitored, and completed? Via the net.
Then remember that while one is on the net they are interacting with any number of hidden algorithms, ad trackers, as well as the websites and services they are using. Our entire financial system at this point is essentially just predictive autonomic algorithms trading money and stocks in such quantity on a minute by minute basis that it would make even the rubber barons of the earliest 20th century blush.
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