The Romans were already wise to this. It's just the modern day variety of 'give them bread and games'.
'Good' has many axis.
And what you're describing is probably closer to Huxley than to Orwell.
'Good' has many axis.
And what you're describing is probably closer to Huxley than to Orwell.
In a society that's more controlling and oppressive than mankind has ever seen.
That doesn't count as a win in my book, but it is an interesting question to consider.
Postmodernist views like yours are certainly in vogue today, but paradigm shifts happen and postmodernism will yield to new philosophies. Perhaps hypermodernity or transhumanism is the next big thing, they definitely have some potential to alleviate opression of the societal superstructures.
And good luck with adding still more technology to the stack and expecting better things to come out of it. What's going to be required is a new set of societal mores about our interaction with tech. I have no idea how long that will be in coming, if ever. Who knows, maybe we'll end up with a new religious movement, that'd be cool.
I'm a big supporter of tech and science and an overall optimist -- if you think the human race evolving into machine intelligence and then dying off counts as optimism. As I said, that's a tough call. You could argue it either as a great thing or a terrible disaster.
I do believe that we have several inflection points ahead of us: getting off the planet, transhumanism, the panopticon, and so on. We have to make it through each of these successfully in order for the species to continue. Let's hope the answer to the Fermi Paradox isn't just that intelligent species tend to self-destruct.
China certainly fits that bill, here in South America it has archieved a surprising influence in a very short time, and in Africa it's the dominant power.
During the last two decades, the U.S. influence has been going down in our region, while China's is going steadily up. Today China is the main trade partner outside the region (used to be the U.S. and Europe), infrastructure provider (same), etc...
According to Wikipedia, it's not a "world superpower" yet like the U.S. is, but I definitely think it's going to be one.