gm-reflection

Many film classes still begin with Metropolis, Fritz Lang’s 1927 masterpiece that warned us of the dream of techno-utopia — where the few above lived in comfort while the many below kept the engines running. The industrial complex’s effort to sell us the promise of salvation through technology is not new. Nearly a century later, we’re still building Metropolis — only now the cathedrals of power are made of glass and data instead of steel and steam. At the VivaTech Conference in Paris on May 23, 2024, Elon Musk said: “AI will be able to do everything. In a benign scenario, probably none of us will have a job, but we’ll have universal high income. There’ll be no shortage of goods or services. In other words, everyone will be wealthy.” The line ricocheted across the planet: CNBC, The Guardian , Reuters , Fortune , The New York Post , Hindustan Times , even Al Jazeera. Every outlet ran it within hours, as if he had announced the Second Coming. Like Delta Dawn, we can’t stop wearing the...

At Italian Tech Week 2025 in Turin, Bezos said, “In the next couple of decades, I believe there will be millions of people living in space… I don’t see how anybody can be discouraged who is alive right now.” Of course. Let’s sell people paradise dream-share condos,  offer them a glossy brochure for the sky, and while they’re looking up, let the ground burn quietly beneath their feet. This new propaganda reminds me of a bumper sticker I used to see a lot in the early 2000s: Earth First , We’ll Strip Mine the Other Planets Later. I don’t know what was on Bezos’s mind when he said what he said, but the numbers are staggeringly against him, even for a sci-fi-crazed nut like me. The arithmetic is brutal. A million human bodies weigh about seventy thousand tons. Lifting them into orbit would take thousands of rockets and millions of tons of fuel, about ten days of all the jet fuel the United States burns. And once they’re up there, you’d need millions more tons of food, air, and water ...

  I want to start with a family I know well. Coastal elites would probably call them redneck. They drive big trucks , they hunt, go to rodeos , they vote Republican every single time. MAGA conservative . The kind of people we’re told are anti-immigrant, anti-other, anti-change...... We hear that story on repeat. But here’s what’s also true. One member of this family told me about a young Indian immigrant who worked at their local gas station. They spoke about him with real warmth — about their small daily exchanges, how the man was doing, whether he seemed lonely. The kindness was not for show. They even invited him to their family Thanksgiving. Yet the attendant’s boss, the owner of the store, also Indian, had warned him not to talk with Americans because “they’re mean.” That little triangle of mistrust and tenderness says everything. Every side is both right and wrong, kind and suspicious, generous and guarded. The need to box other people is everywhere. We all do it — conser...