AREA ZONE

1. It has been decades since a human has driven a car, outside of a special interests club or sporting event. They’re no longer designed for us, except as passengers. There’s no front seat, no steering wheel, and no brake pedal (though there is an emergency brake lever, secured behind a heavy pane of glass). Seat-belts are obsolete. The roads have never been safer, though they, too, have transformed: more compact, sharper turns, all the luxuries compensating for poor human reaction time removed. No ugly road signs blotting out the sky — these vehicles coordinate perfectly.

2. Accidents are infrequent, usually occurring at low speeds and by the fault of careless pedestrians. Fatalities are rare. Vehicles register their number of passengers, and are equipped with face and silhouette detecting cameras. In the case of a high speed collision, they are programmed to save as many humans as possible. Thus, a car bearing two passengers will drive off a cliff rather than barrel through a pack of schoolchildren.

3. It is really remarkable this system goes unexploited for so long. Historians will claim that an unprecedented lull in conflict is what allows it to flourish, a golden age of cooperation and political stability. This era will become known as “the eye of the storm”. It begins to end one day in summer, when environmental activists, protesting the construction of a dam, find that they can halt its progress by throwing themselves in front of trucks delivering supplies. The technique isn’t new, exactly, (people have been chaining themselves in the paths of tractors for ages) but their guerrilla tactics are refreshing. They launch themselves in front of the oncoming vehicles, trusting the machines’ perfect reflexes, then scamper away before they can be arrested. Hoards of them lurk in the ditches, daring each other to run into traffic.

4. This continues for two years. The trucks are fully automated, so there are no deaths. Suppliers encrypt their routes, become secretive about the locations of their fleets. Debate is still raging about how best to deal with the environmentalists when the assassinations begin.

5. Controversial politician Juan ████-█████ is being chauffeured across a bridge when throngs of protesters, marching against his regime, appear in front of the automobile. They far outnumber the passengers: Juan plunges to his death. The protesters, recorded on the vehicle’s recovered cam, are tracked down and interrogated. They all claim to have been following the crowd, and the scheme’s mastermind, if there was one, is never found.

6. The story is viral, globally infectious. Copycat crimes spawn across the world, with varying degrees of success. Often enough, the results are lethal. After another high profile death, some publications necro the antiquated term “terrorism”. The mobs are never organised, just collections of dissatisfied citizens hijacked by a few malicious individuals. Police try to limit public gatherings, and negotiate predetermined routes for protests, but these regulations are met with significant resistance. Soon, it becomes apparent that a change in programming is necessary, and with much forewarning and fanfare, they roll out cars that prioritise the lives of their passengers, exclusively for politicians. This is described as “disgusting classism”, and there is talk of leading a group of children into their path, to prove the folly of the new orders.

7. It takes only a month for someone to figure out how to force a cement truck to ram into one of these invulnerable automobiles. Another dead orator. Chaos is escalating. Overnight, an executive decision is made: the network of vehicles becomes definite and unforgiving. Ignore human barriers. Continue driving until you reach your destination. The next day, in what comes to be known as the ███████ incident, hundreds die in traffic on the ███████ freeway, ignoring the broadcasts, not yet believing their protests have been rendered impotent. The following weeks are a bloodbath.

8. The theory is, by giving in to blackmail, we only make future blackmail inevitable. Occasionally, a child darts in front of an empty delivery van and dies, and we accept this death with sadness but conviction: the world is now a safer place, protected against the whims of those that would hold us hostage.

Cobbled together from a bunch of shitposts.

I’ve been thinking about why tech workers are considered more fungible than artists (at low to medium levels, anyway). The logic is that, though anyone sufficiently skilled could write that program, nobody else will create specifically the art that you would. 

Sure, the code you and your competitor would write won’t be identical — you might even use different languages — but it’ll serve the same function and its output will be the same.

We consider the specific art (the brushstrokes, the color, the sequence of words) the artist’s output, but maybe that’s wrong: the output is the emotion evoked, the thoughts evoked. If that’s the case, artists are a lot more replaceable than they seem. There are thousands of them, and most emotional manipulation is cheap and easy.

Any picture that makes you think about trees and feel sad would then be approximately equivalent to every other picture that makes you think about trees and feel sad. A specific piece of art isn’t necessarily more unique than a specific haystack.

Some groups have exceptional aesthetic coordination. Often they’ll signal their affiliation with avatars which are, to the outsider, basically interchangeable. 

If we view art itself as the output, the way to stay relevant is to hone your skills, use techniques with high barriers to entry, and keep your methods secret.

If feelings are the output, the way to stay relevant is to explore fringe mindspace, constantly innovate, or deal in extreme taboos.

Note that these paradigms aren’t actually in conflict with each other, as far as practical advice goes. However, they both become difficult to satisfy as more people enter the art world.

It’s as of yet more difficult to quantify feelings than it is to observe the output of a program. While programs are run on machines guaranteed to interpret them identically, art is run on human fleshware, and the same piece can evoke drastically different emotions in two experiencers.