The Drunken Driver: Thoughts on a Waning Civilisation

McKenzie Wark says we’re told that the best we can expect from the great technology companies who claim to own our future is that our cars will drive themselves. Hence, he says, the world as they see it will be the same, except truck and taxi drivers will be out of work, and we will be run over by robots instead of drunk drivers.

He points out that perhaps this is not as rational a world as its owners would like us to think. What if the corporate-robotic-information complex that is seeking power over the world is nothing more than a drunk driver. Its driving is fast and reckless and it seems unable to read the warning signs of climate change and other red lights as it accelerates for the cliff. In this metaphor we are all passengers in this careening vehicle. We’re going to have to figure out how to get control of the moving vehicle that is this crazy civilization from the inside.