/lit/ - Literature

>>23197093
Or at least thinking about similar things. Overwhelming corporate power where states just dissolve (or corporations become states unto themselves) is another theme and companies use technology to boost their profits at the expense of people. Consumerism as a social control mechanism -- think Herbert Marcuse. The technology exists to change society in a fundamental way, but you look around the cyberpunk world and there's violence, poverty, social classes, and people pitted against each other in a dog-eat-dog competition.

>"The end of history is a code term for the across-the-board annihilation of progressive social visions."
-- Bruce Sterling

Sterling also said it's hard for many people to understand the allure of fascism, but that it makes more sense when you look at it sort of like a big-budget sci-fi blockbuster that overwhelms your brain with its dazzling special effects.

>“Now we call ourselves Russia. As if that could help us. We can’t feed ourselves. We can’t house ourselves. We can’t even exterminate a lousy bunch of fucking Chechnians. It’s just like with these fucking Finns! We owned them for eighty years. Then the Finns got smart with us. So we rolled in with tanks and the sons of bitches ran into their forests in the dark and the snow, and they kicked our ass! Even after we finally crushed them, and stole the best part of their country, they just came right back! Now it’s fifty years later, and the Russian Federation owes Finland a billion dollars. There are only five million Finns! My country owes every single Finn two hundred dollars each!”

>“It’s that Marxist thing, ace.” They walked on in silence.

>“We’re past the Marxist thing,” said Khoklov, warming to his theme as the pill took hold. “Now it’s different. This time Russia has a kind of craziness that is truly big enough and bad enough to take over the whole world. Massive; total, institutional corruption: Top to bottom: Nothing held back. A new kind of absolute corruption that will sell anything: the flesh of our women, the future of our children. Everything inside our museums and our churches. Anything goes for money: gold, oil, arms, dope, nukes. We’ll sell the soil and the forests and the Russian sky. We’ll sell our souls.”
-- “The Littlest Jackal” by Bruce Sterling (1996)