Long ago - we’re talking about late 1960s here - there was a BBC futuristic series called Doomwatch about a government task force who dealt with this kind of threat. One of the earliest episodes was called The Plastic Eaters - about a bacteria that could do exactly that. I think it got loose on a plane.
I remember reading Mutant 59: The Plastic Eaters. I did not realize it adapted from Doomwatch until I just looked it up.
I am going with 1984, given the current volatility of “facts” - which was a core plot point of the novel. Plus we are in the process of inviting the visiscreens into our homes, ostensibly under our control (“Alexa, turn on the lights”).
FWIW, the wikipedia article says no. But it gives a reference to a Nature article (behind its paywall, unfortunately) in which Dr. Ingham apologizes for her unfounded claim. Raoultella planticola - Wikipedia
FWIW, summary of the fiasco including the apologies from Dr. Ingham and the Green Party of Aotearoa/New Zealand: https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2016/09/06/hear-gmo-almost-destroyed-life/
From part 2, ch. 9:
Oh, and this: “Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true—except for the rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge.” —Knoll’s Law of Media Accuracy (Erwin Knoll, editor, “The Progressive”)
“…You read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate on those subjects than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.” --Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect (Michael Crichton)
I don’t know if any of you remember the old First comic* American Flagg!,* but I can see us turning into a society like the Plexus.
I see what I consider the dominant and most important near-future influences in a couple of works, but I can’t think of any one story that brings them all together.
We’re certainly going to have the continued concentration and then hyper-concentration of wealth into a tiny minority’s hands, paired with the increasing uselessness and unemployability of the vast majority of people a la Corey Doctorow’s Walkaway. The totally automated production of consumer goods and fiercely protective IP laws and enforcements is also definitely happening. The increasing irrelevance of government as a force for common welfare and the increasing indistinguishability of “governance” from simply “rules and enforcements that perpetuate the interests of the rich created by and for the rich” is basically already here, so it too is definitely happening. Secure enclaves for the hyper-rich a la Walkaway or Elysium are definitely happening.
But Doctorow is an optimist, and doesn’t take those technical capabilities to where they would actually go: mass surveilance a la 1984 (except with satellites and ubiquitous communication taps like we have today) making true dissent and revolution and even walkaway communities of any size impossible, and unstoppable armies of kill-bots obeyed only by the rich which can enforce their will even against the great numbers of non-rich, oppress commoners, and keep the riff-raff away from their secure enclaves.
So basically, Orwell’s boot on the face of humanity forever, but it will be a very stylish and expensive boot, and it will be robots holding the common man down while the rich are grinding the boot in said face.
And “forever” will really only be until some sort of techno-rapture, deliberate mass plebe slaughter, pandemic, or global catastrophe overwhelms and upends that societal structure. But it will be an exceptionally shitty few generations for basically everyone in the world minus 1% - 5% while it’s happening.
We’ve discussed this sort of thing in other threads, and I just don’t think that future is plausible.
OK, the super-rich own the means of production, control the government, and oppress the masses. So far just like every other era of human history.
The new wrinkle is that the aristocrats no longer need the peasants out working in the fields and factories. The industrial machinery no longer needs armies of proletarian factory workers, agriculture no longer needs armies of peasant farm workers.
In the olden times you had to oppress the masses to keep them working, if they stopped working then the wealth they produced could no longer be appropriated by the aristocrats. Nowadays, what’s the point of oppressing the masses? Your factories produce everything you need without workers, so fire them all and sit back and reap the rewards. Except oops, manufacturing consumer items in factories is only profitable when you can sell those items to the masses. But the masses are now unemployed. So what good is a factory that can churn out unlimited consumer goods when nobody can afford to buy those consumer goods?
The solution is to exterminate the useless lower classes? But why, exactly? The aristocrats who sit back and reap the benefits of owning the means of production are exactly as useless as the unemployed former proletariat. What’s the point of deliberately keeping the masses in poverty, when you can’t reap the rewards of keeping them in poverty? In the old days you put them to work and appropriated the surplus value. Now there is no surplus value to appropriate, it’s all done by automation. So what’s the point of oppressing them anymore?
Because you can. Because you are truly evil, totally amoral, absolutely lacking in any form of empathy, and a real shitball. IOW most of the super-rich and a huge majority of the plain rich.
In order for there to be an overclass, there has to be an underclass. I suspect many people would derive pleasure from oppressing another human being regardless of whether or not there was financial benefit to it.
I kind of want to vote for Jennifer Government by Max Barry. Extreme corporatization leads to industries consolidating into duopolies/oligopolies. These further consolidate into warring loyalty programs: someone who works for a US Alliance-aligned company like McDonald’s can’t patronize a Team Advantage company like Apple.
I wouldn’t say it’s plausible in a literal sense – for example, I don’t think that law enforcement will be completely privatized anytime soon. (In the novel, your options are, depending on your loyalty program alliance, the Police or the NRA.)
But the trends it describes are certainly happening, and absent a strong public-interest push on the part of governments and/or citizens will continue to.
From the Wikipedia summary, to give you a taste:
You don’t just immediately feed the masses into your automated wood chippers because they serve the following purposes:
A) Somebody to be an overclass over
B) A population from which to farm the long-tail smartest / best looking / most talented from (after all, the 1% will still need fresh blood and innovation and human capital, and it has to come from somewhere)
C) Some % of them, call them upper-plebes, may still scrabble together enough money to buy your goods
And really, it’s less a matter of actively wanting to oppress plebes, but more “they don’t deserve my hard earned money” paired with decades of “government by the rich for the rich.”
Economically, you ask the question around who is buying the goods that the capital-owners’ automated factories produce. And that’s the folks in C), and your peers, the other rich folk. But it’s almost a post monetary economy, where you’re less concerned with money per se (you’re already yottas), but more concerned with power. It’s less “my automated factories can produce goods I can sell to billions of people” and more “my wealth and automated factories give me the ability to make whatever material goods I or my people need to live like kings.”
The rich here are almost countries unto themselves, with their families, retinues, and corporate employees the subjects. In international politics, money isn’t the point (or at least not as much of the point as within the country’s traditional economy), but soft power and hard power is more the point, and who your allies and enemies are and what their goals and capabilities are.
So you and your oligarch/country/corporation may specialize in certain classes of technology or goods, and that has trade value to other oligarch/country/corporations in money, power, or barter, and financial value to upper plebes who can afford it.
I second this. Just look at the Christian Right in today’s political landscape.
I would also add that the world in “Daemon” and “Freedom™” by Daniel Suarez are certainly plausible, with the technology we’re developing now and our deeper dive into artificial intelligence.
TL;DR: A dead game designer unleashes a hyper-intelligent daemon to change the world order.
Ones like The Colony and Snowpiercer, in as much as overzealous attempts to fix global warming over-correct, bringing on an ice age.
Or Fallen Angels, which does the same and is funny as hell to boot.
Loved the movie!