The research fairy @bgcarlisle@scholar.social

@asdflkjh That emoji is alphanumeric

@JakeMonkey *Another hug*

The User in ReBoot (1994) is a comic villain who poses a threat to those he encounters, their community and resources. While many have read the opening credit's speculation about the nature of The User as a laudable encouragement of our common desire to find and kill god, some suggest a more literal reading of The User as a prescient warning against gamers. In this essay,

@aflightybroad Yeah there was a lot of "things may get worse before they get better"

@bootblackCub Do you remember ReBoot?

https://scholar.social/@bgcarlisle/100969951086368914

@paeneultima Ding ding you have the correct answer and also that sounds like a fun game

If we want a Star Trek future, or a future of the type that Star Trek gestured at (the actual depiction missed the mark in a lot of ways, but the spirit behind it is pretty solid), we have to figure our own damn shit out and do the hard soul-searching work of dismantling the exploitative parts of our world

It won't happen by itself just by throwing technology at it

E.g. here's a ridiculous idea: there isn't high-speed railway mass-transit in America because the *technology* isn't there yet, so we need to invent the hyperloop, and once that technology is there, the economic problems that stood in the way of regular high-speed rail will disappear for some reason

And deep down, I think there's a similar impulse behind so much of technosolutionism—it's this misguided belief that the solutions we need will come about just by technological progress, without having to address the more difficult questions

In Star Trek, the egalitarian post-national post-scarcity uptopian society brings about technological progress, including replicators, not the other way around

But Seth McFarlane actually believes that, or at least that that was what Star Trek was saying