We have a new type of rule now. Not one-man rule, or rule of aristocracy or plutocracy, but of small groups elevated to positions of absolute power by random pressures and subject to political and economic factors that leave little room for decision.
They are representatives of abstract forces who have reached power through surrender of self. The iron-willed dictator is a thing of past.
There will be no more Stalins, no more Hitlers.
The rulers of this most insecure of all worlds are rulers by accident. Inept, frightened pilots at the controls of a vast machine they cannot understand, calling in experts to tell them which buttons to push. – William S. Burroughs, Interzone, Viking Books, 1989
In a time when the world is connected by digital networks, when memes have greater impact than bombs, and when history has ended and been replaced by a new kind of playing field, we are in an age when the knowledge economy makes sense.
We are no longer competing for brute strength.
We are no longer competing for sheer wealth.
What we’re competing for is the right answer, and to find that, we have to be open to all possibilities, and then have razor-sharp minds to pick the right one.
It’s the intellectual equivalent of living in a cyberpunk novel, dodging the yakuza and living by your wits, hacking your way through with each day unsure of the next.
Sounds fun, when you put it that way — may that guide you to see more possibilities than disappointments in today, whichever today whenver you’re reading this.