New year and a chance to again reflect upon how Bladerunner we've become.
We have the concrete, the flashing lights albeit less neon and more LED based. Intelligent bus stops that know the next transit. Adverts with built in quick-codes. Those weird ones that project through tube train windows.
Artificial intelligence and virtual reality - more embedded than made to look human. Alexa is closer to HAL 3000.
My visiting friend from Los Angeles was slightly surprised at the commonplace use of contactless cards in the UK. As he put it: "In America we have Apple Pay but hardly anyone uses it."
There's still that awkward question about those that govern. I'm reading another one of those dystopian novels about people having things done to them by the ruling class. That seems to be a slippery problem although modern politicos have a solution.
Make politics appear so useless that no-one pays any attention.
On many levels the original principal Brexit negotiator did so, wasting around 18 months on dismal schemes. Then the mono-focused may-bot head-girl juddered back to fritter the remaining time, such that by Monday we will all teeter on an abyss, recklessly squandering the UK's future.
There's no big view to help us see what is happening.
Over the water, they've shut down chunks of the government (again) whilst a madman holds the workers hostage attempting to hissy-fit money for wall construction which he can award to his buddies.
In Bladerunner the replicants were man-made with their own serial numbers and ordinarily deployed for subservient tasks.
Curiously our 2019 fore-runners have been bootstrapped through talent-free privilege mixed with ambiguous money. It's a whole different proposition.
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