Resenting Super-Wizards

Wednesday, September 17th, 2014

Scott Adams (Dilbert) has dubbed the coming decades the Age of Magic because our smartphones and other technology will soon allow us to navigate our environment as if we are wizards:

Doors will identify us as we approach and unlock for the right wizards only. Lamps will respond to wizard hand signals from across the room. Cars will drive themselves. You get the picture. In about ten years you won’t need to physically touch anything you want to control. Your location and identity will be continuously broadcast from your smartphone, and because of that your environment will respond to your preferences as if by magic.

But here’s the interesting thing. People will have different levels of magic based on income. The top 1% will be like super-wizards, able to control their environments with both technology and money. If you are rich, you have access to more services, apps, clubs and businesses. Additional doors literally open for you as you approach. Stores offer you more services and even special sale prices. Self-driving taxis are never far from you because their central brain recognizes you as a frequent user. Or perhaps you paid extra to never wait more than two minutes for your taxi.

I won’t bore you with a million examples because I think you get the point. The environment will someday snap to attention when a rich person enters the room but it will ignore anyone who can’t afford a smartphone or can’t afford the services of businesses that allow you to control them via hand gestures and verbal command. Rich people will someday walk among the public like super-wizards.

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My point is that if you think the resentment about the top 1% is bad now, imagine how bad it will be when the rich have super-wizard powers and the rest of society does not. In 2014, a top one-percenter can blend in with the crowd. In ten years that might be nearly impossible because the environment will change as rich people enter the space.

To that, I say, “Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.”

Comments

  1. Toddy Cat says:

    This guy creates a mildly amusing comic, and all of a sudden, he thinks he’s Herman Kahn. Who cares what a guy who can’t even draw a cat thinks the future will be like? It’s like getting foreign policy advice from Dave Barry (which might actually be happening even as we speak)…

  2. Rollory says:

    Well, Adams is a bit smarter than Toddy gives him credit for, but I do agree that Adams is vastly overstating his case. The most interesting people that I know today tend to be the ones who pick and choose precisely which elements of technology they wish to use and why, and control the “gimme” impulse almost instinctively. The people who jump on new shinies as soon as they see them are the low class types. I think massive adoption of the sort of stuff he’s talking about won’t correlate so closely with social class.

    Also, I work in software QA. I simply will not trust myself to a self-driving car whose form and software has not been in unmodified operation for at LEAST several hundred million man-hours of real-world operation. I’d build myself a replica Model T or similar first (and I mean that quite literally – I’ve gotten pretty good with a milling machine and am teaching myself the lathe now).

  3. Kent says:

    Go not to the elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes.

  4. Toddy Cat says:

    Yeah, I overstated a bit. But the arrogance of a guy like Adams gets me. I mean, I’m sure he’s not dumb, but his opinion of what the future is going to be like is no more valid than that of my mechanic, who is also not dumb.

  5. Chris C. says:

    “No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style.”

    — Steven Brust

  6. Bill says:

    As far as wizard gestures go, let’s not forget Douglas Adams’ sarcastic take on gesture-controlled devices in the Hitchhiker’s Guide:

    “A loud clatter of gunk music flooded through the Heart of Gold cabin as Zaphod searched the sub-etha radio wave bands for news of himself. The machine was rather difficult to operate. For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive–you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure, of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same program.”

    As far as being jealous of one-percenters in our midst, I think that the rest of us won’t be seeing those people very often, because there will be only Beverly Hills or the barrio. The concentration of wealth is getting worse exponentially; it won’t be long now.

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