Ready Player Run: Earth 2.0

What does it mean to be a human on Earth?

Look around you - the grass is green, the sky is blue, the water glistens when the sun shines down upon it.

The birds chirp.

The faint scent of incoming rain wafts into your nose.

It’s beautiful, but it’s raw.

Raw information.

Straight from the source, to your brain, processed for interpretation.

In other words, there’s a straight pipeline from: input (information about your surroundings) → processing that input (your brain) → output (your brain’s interpretation of the information)

There is no intermediary layer between what you see, touch, hear, smell, taste, and you processing that information.

But the tech bros don’t want it to stay this way - they want to control the input layer, for if they can control the input layer they can control your life.

At this point you're probably thinking, ‘Wtf is RA on about? Has he done too much acid today?’

And I assure you, friend, the answer is no.

My processing layer is unencumbered.

I can just see the next great paradigm shift before you can.

Let’s take a look at the clearest, most recent example of what I am talking about.

A few days ago Meta held a conference in which they announced their augmented reality smart glasses.

Zuck showed an example where he was wearing Ray-Ban glasses that were embedded with AI.

The person wearing these glasses can record everything as if their eyes were recording their life, and speak to an AI for advice about what they are seeing.

Seems harmless, right?

Wrong.

Big tech wants to create a digital panopticon from which they control your input layer, for if they can control the inputs into your brain they can sell you more useless stuff you don’t need, and keep their top line chugging along for their shareholders.

They dream of an Earth littered with data centres, and humans connected to them via increasingly invasive tech like ‘smart’ glasses.

Looking at some boats on the ocean whilst wearing your Ray-Bans?

Wow, that’s beautiful, here’s a layer of prices augmented over the top of them, just say the word and we’ll connect your AI with the AI of the boat owners, and we’ll help you buy one whilst taking a clip off the transaction!

On a date and not sure what to say? Don’t worry, your Meta AI pal will pull up the most perfect, funniest one-liner, at just the right time, to sweep your date off her feet.

It’s cold and wet and you’re staring out the single window of your 50 square metre dogbox, glancing at the grey, dreary sky, miserable? Don’t worry, Meta AI will make those clouds disappear and turn up the brightness of the now blue sky beaming into your eyes.

Get the idea?

These tech companies want to create a new paradigm where they are in-between the raw input of the world around you and the processing of that input by your brain, for if they can create a new layer here, they can distort your sense of reality.

And if they can distort your sense of reality they can influence you - they can change your mind, and by changing your mind they can understand exactly when and how to sell you products and serve you ads, personalised to you.

What we are really talking about here is a superintelligent AI that can perform actions on your behalf and act as your companion, throughout your entire life, but which also enslaves you to its functionality.

It will likely be the stickiest product ever created.

Glasses are just one form factor of what I am talking about - your personal AI will soon be embodied in consumer hardware both big (humanoids) and small (screens/glasses).

You’ll go to the bathroom and your AI companion will be there for you in the smart mirror, you’ll head out the door for a walk and it will guide you to the cafe that has paid the most for the AI to suggest it (via earbuds), or you’ll go to the gym and have your AI personal trainer in your glasses visually show you how to do use a new piece of gym equipment you’ve never used before.

In the full arc of history, phones will be seen as extremely analog.

Sounds strange to say now, I know.

But if you live and breathe this stuff, it’s just obvious.

Why carry around a smart brick in your pocket when the world around you has become smart?

It will be redundant.

The history of technology is a history of disintermediation - intermediaries get replaced - compressed and distilled in a different, more efficient form factor.

Horses got disintermediated by cars, libraries got disintermediated by the internet, MP3 players got disintermediated by Spotify.

And now Earth 1.0 is in the process of being disintermediated by Earth 2.0: why experience reality when you can experience a better, simulated version of ‘reality’ without ever leaving your beautiful little dogbox?

Just plug into the AI and never leave.

Over the years, many books, TV shows and movies have attempted to envision what Earth 2.0 may look like:

• Ready Player One: most humans are stuck in the permanent underclass of reality, so they escape to virtual reality to work and entertain themselves
• The Matrix: humans are literally stuck in the permanent underclass, unaware
• Black Mirror: contact lenses record your entire life, ready for playback whenever

The list is long.

But what you must understand is the following:

The future will bifurcate between those who fully leverage and embrace the ‘AI panopticon’ - those who lean into the AI infinity slop with all their might - and those who decide to completely opt out of it.

And if you don’t make the choice, it will be made for you.

I say this because the entertainment produced by AI on demand, and the digital experiences you will be able to have with it, will be so addictive, that many will become stuck in the digital prison by accident.

Think about how often the average Joe gets stuck in routine without even really thinking about it:

They decide to do some random university degree when they’re 17, then before they know it they’re a 38 year old fat accountant eating slop at their desk for lunch then commuting home and engaging in a long, fulfilling Netflix binge whilst simultaneously doomscrolling TikTok for 5 hours of brainrot before bed.

Many are already embracing Earth 2.0: a digital prison of their own choosing.

It’s just that what is coming will be even more addictive, and will draw in even more people to the underclass…

AI porn within virtual reality that is completely personalised to you, TV shows entirely generated by AI just for you based on their understanding of what makes you most engaged, music generated by AI depending on the time of day, your heart rate, what your calendar says, what your biology is indicating, etc.

Perhaps even more dystopian: entire virtual economies where your ‘work’ is done for the day…

If you think your corporate job is fake and pointless now, just wait until it’s replaced by an even faker and more pointless ‘job’ in virtual reality.

Because the world we are heading towards is one where normal people no longer serve much of a purpose for most companies in actual reality - all that will be required is ‘GPU go brrrrr’.

Compute can now be transformed directly into intelligence, and an economy is nothing more than the sum of coordinated, intelligent actions directed to achieve a goal.

Humans used to be useful for their labour, but very soon (within a decade for sure) AI will be able to do all white-collar work, then eventually blue-collar work too, and thereafter most humans will persist on a diet of infinite AI entertainment slop to keep themselves preoccupied, combined with some version of universal basic income redistributed from the tech companies to governments to you.

They’ll be happy to replace you with AI and banish you to the permanent underclass called Earth 2.0.

Tracked, catalogued, and sold to the compute farm running AI, eager to keep you addicted to digital cocaine and sell you to the highest algorithmic bidder.

Earth 1.0 will remain, but it will be a luxury experience for the elites.

Will you be able to resist the temptation of Earth 2.0 and maintain your humanity?

Or will you fully embrace your life as an AI slave in the slums of the virtual reality underclass?

You won’t have to wait long to find out.