So many emerging technologies would be cause for celebration if our rulers weren't so damn evil and our systems weren't so damn oppressive. In a healthy society we'd be celebrating automation and AI giving us more and more abundance and free time; instead we're terrified of police robots and technocratic dystopia.

The knitting of neurology and technology would have incredible implications if we didn't know sociopathic intelligence agencies would immediately insert themselves into the use of those technologies. Virtual reality would be awesome if it wasn't going to be used to create fake worlds for people to purchase fake goods in so that capitalism can continue expanding while we destroy the real world.

Futurists correctly predicted many of the innovations we're seeing today, but what they generally didn't predict was that those technologies would be used to give the powerful more power while everyone else continues to flounder and struggle in a profoundly unjust civilization.

All of this is only the case because we are ruled by tyrants and oppressed by tyrannical systems. It is in fact within our ability to change this.

US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby recently slammed Brazil for "suggesting that the United States and Europe are somehow not interested in peace," an objection that makes perfect sense if you ignore the entirety of US and European history.