SteamPunk: United Uptopia Disco Distopia Dancers

My friend recently totaled his car, after losing his job to AI, for he was a programmer. He had never had a wreck. I was originally a programmer, web designer, and ethical hacker, predicting the weaknesses in my systems that I created. Even the CIA, FBI and Secret Service wanted to hire me. No way would I join those funky entities.

We take for granted our lives, especially our cars that are already here. This technology is an extension of our souls.

My friend knew that this was going to happen, but his whiplash from the accident, causes him a great amount of pain now as he is depressed within a sense of doom. Furthermore, he so loved his job, but now doesn't know what to do. He feels sort of homeless as he is jobless. I too had to quit my job teaching because of my cancer, and I so miss teaching and also feel homeless in my house.

Another friend, who just became a lawyer in Mexico, recently had a car accident too. Ironically, I do not see much difference in Mexico and America.   I wish her well. She drove me around Mexico when I needed a ride. She is an amazing driver.

Our automobiles are an extension of our lives. We take them for granted.

I may marry a Mexican lady, who is a US citizen, for I am part Latino and speak Spanish. If I do I will automatically became a Mexican citizen. I believe that there is not much difference between Mexico and America.

The Promise of Utopia

Utopian fiction represents the highest desires of humans for perfection.  Indeed, utopian fiction is usually about a traveler who visits an existing utopic state existing simultaneously somewhere while the current imperfect states and returns to tell others of this place.

Some sort of vehicle allows us to travel, here, there and everywhere.

The Doom of Distopia

Dystopian fiction deals with a place in the near or distance future.  Such fiction  shows that humans instead of striving for such perfection are instead perfecting a state where the State is most important at the cost of the individual.

We drive around in Steam engines, to and fro and everywhere.

The Grand Birth of SteamPunk!

Erwhon explores how machines gain consciousness and the ability to reproduce themselves. This is very cyberpunk like.

Cyberpunk fiction is part of the tradition but something has gone wrong and we are forced to live in the nightmare called reality.

All these types of genre reinforce that we are brainwashed, controlled and manipulated by the ruling class. The names have changed; however, the reality remains the same slavery and sadness.

Samurel Butler's Erewhon: No where (1871) 

Samuel Butler's (1832-1902) satire examines the travel to a utopian state where machines gain consciousness and the ability to reproduce. Using Darwinism, he speculates that man evolved from non-consciousness to consciousness, so what is to prevent machines from doing the same.

Indeed, machines have evolved with the help of man so quickly while man seems to not have evolved.

With AI, our Tesla, drive themselves and may even prevent auto accidents as we go to and fro and everywhere and no where.

The Rise of CyberPunk

Such cyberpunk works and films like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (1968), Terminator (1984), and Metropolis (1999) also explore similar themes where man and machine fight and fear each other. Power to our E-Sheeps as we dream and mindlessly travel lucidly. . .

Allow our electric sheep to drive up around, to and fro and everywhere.

SteamPunk Excerpts:

"But who can say that the vapour engine has not a kind of consciousness? Where does consciousness begin, and where end? Who can draw the line? Who can draw any line? Is not everything interwoven with everything? Is not machinery linked with animal life in an infinite variety of ways?" (Chapter 23, Book of the Machines)

"Man's very soul is due to the machines; it is a machine-made thing: he thinks as he thinks, and feels as he feels, through the work that machines have wrought upon him, and their existence is quite as much a sine qua non for his, as his for theirs. This face precludes us from proposing the complete annihilation of machinery, but surely it indicates that we should destroy as many of them as we can possibly dispense with, lest they should tyrannize over us even more completely." (Chapter 24, Book of Machines Continues)

"Surely if a machine is able to reproduce another machine systematically, we may say that it has a reproductive system. What is a reproductive system, if it be not a system for reproduction?" (Chapter 24, Book of Machines Continues) . . .

We are like machines or our machines are like us as we travel to an fro and everywhere. . . .

"The National Anticorruption System will be the coordinating entity between the authorities of every government level responsible for prevention, detection and punishment of administrative responsibilities in corruption acts, as well as the surveillance and control of public resources. For the fulfillment of its objectives it will . . ." --Mexican Constitution

There is no place to go, for we are already there traveling within the eternal now of our AI vehicles going to and fro and everywhere.

AMEN! Be sure to smell the roses along the path of peace and plenty. . .