this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2025
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This is a very interesting article. We’re walking right into the very dystopia that so many sci-fi authors repeatedly have warned us about. They were warnings, not a playbook.
Whether people realize it or not, we already live in a panopticon. Not only are there camera everywhere - on buildings, businesses, homes, streets, phones, cars, etc - but there are other sensors and mechanisms tracking things like your movement, activity, and heart rate.
There was a novel that predicted this decades ago. The main character was so reliant on his AR goggles that when they were stolen in a mugging he was nearly catatonic until his friends got it back.
This is the world we are heading toward, and I don’t know what we can possibly do at this point to minimize the harm to both our environment and our species. The worst-case dystopia seems more and more inevitable by the day.
Edit: The novel was Accelerando, by Charles Stross
Sliders, the 90s sci-fi TV show had an episode that explored similar themes with VR. Also the 2020 indie adventure game Virtua Verse also has similar VR themes dominating people's perceptions of reality to the point that some people spend their whole lives in love a robot that looks like a beautiful person when you have your headset on.
Do you remember which episode? I loved sliders. I'm up for an episode that'll make me depressed about my present!
Season 4, episode 4. "Virtual Slide"
You know what depressed me? I wanted to rewatch Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, but the episode I loaded up first from the entire run of the show? The one where a pandemic hit their town... and this was in 2021 or 2022, right when COVID-19 was still raging and pretty much on everyone's mind. That immediately got me off.
Ever read The Stand by King?
First time I read I got to around 1/4 of the way through and felt sick. Thought "jeeze, suggestible much?"
Ended up having the flu for the first time in my life.
Then when the new whoopie Goldberg version came out I sat down to watch it with my mom, and got so sick. Had pancreatitis. Lmao
Shit! I literally tried to watch another episode of dr. Quinn and it also was about vaccines and vaccine denial! Damn it!