I love the white mirror positive angle, but disappointed you’re making government the bad guy. Not what we need right now, it’s glaringly red-coded, and there are many many examples of major innovations created and supported by government, that could not have happened otherwise.
The state institutions / structures are the problem in China and places like Iran (if they are sources of inspiration as yo umention) -- but the corporate ones, the "broligarchy" and the greed based on which they are operating are the real problem in the US, at least at this moment, but it will certainly have consequences in the longer run. If you misrepresent that, you're falsifying the real story.
I mean - Amazon are not keeping their workers on salaries that make them dependent on food stamps because of any law or political structure. They perefer to bribe the administration instead of paying their workers, because of their intrinsic philosophy.
China and Islam are definitely there, even though I'm sure those who belong to these cultures might disagree that they are problematic. In that same way, there are blind spots in the beliefs of Westerners, and I'd like to help expose them.
Amazon is a great example. You're right that they are tough with their blue-collar employees. But also with their white-collar ones. And the result is one of the best companies in the world, that brings tremendous value to everybody. You can get virtually anything, anywhere, at a reasonable price, by pressing a button! And I'd argue that the benefit of hundreds of millions of people are worth the effort of the hundreds of thousands who do this.
Can they be less brutal? Yes, of course. Maybe it should be easier to take a pee break. But also, who decided that policy? What data did they see to make that decision? How much was the previous policy abused? It's hard to judge without the specifics.
And that's a lot of what I want to do with the series. It's too simplistic to say "X policy is good/bad". But if you have 2 characters fighting it off, and you can see the consequences of their actions, you can get a much deeper understanding of the problem.
Also, I do think the West has problems inside, like degrowthers and watermelons.
Your Socotra entrepreneurs are described as asking for some form of concentrated, unaccountable power over a commons: money, force, water, land, other species. That is what law and justice as institutions exist to constrain; not because institutions are cautious by temperament, but because history's answer to "will the people holding unchecked power abuse it" is close to uniformly yes, whoever they are. -- Your own series of historical materials from virtually everywhere around the world is showing exactly that.
You are asking that question about the security force ("But would the security police never abuse their power?") as a plot hook, which can be understood (drama vs propaganda).
But political theory doesn't treat it as a hook, it treats it as the whole reason for having law prior to power, not law as an obstacle power runs into afterward...
Environmental and biotech regulation exists largely to handle externalities, costs one actor imposes on people who never agreed to bear them (a habitat destroyed, a species altered, a climate pattern shifted "with unintended consequences on some countries"), which you mention once, then seemingly drop - but I am aware this is just a trailer and a preliminary write-up. That is a basic problem markets don't solve on their own.
From my point of view, the structural problem with your show is that "freedom" is written as freedom from interference (negative liberty, do what you want if you're not visibly bothering someone). Institutions are written as the opposite of "freedom" rather than as republican liberty's actual claim: freedom from domination, which requires exactly the checks the Socotra founders are fleeing. Those are two coherent, competing traditions in political philosophy and based on all I've seen you writing before I expected you to be more balanced about it. :D
Institutions work differently in different political structures, that's what I'm trying to suggest (my background is in sociology and I teach IR, so you know where I'm coming from :D ).
If "institution" in your story is one undifferentiated antagonist type, the friction in every arena ends up feeling the same, a bureaucrat says no, instead of textured by how that particular system actually generates resistance.
I would also like to know if any "institutional character" gets a legitimate, non-fearful reason to object, or if they're structurally cast as obstacles from the outset - or if there are any positive takes on istitutions (because there is resistence in each of the systems you;re presenting and it looks different based on what tools it can use and what can effectively generate as a result -- e.g. Islam isn't a state-type institution at all).
Of course it has to be different in each arena, otherwise why have different arenas?
China is the CCP's aim of social uniformity for harmony.
The West pushes to preserve individualism, while banning anything that might cause harm
Islam is the fight between a conservative view that harks back to the 600s, and a modern one that struggles to launch Islam into the 21st century.
All institutional characters get legitimate reasons to object. Even the point made in the trailer, "No individual should own the infrastructure of civilization", is a very legitimate perspective.
Well, I don’t write an awesome newsletter and have the same skills, so hard to say :-)
But agree you need conflict. Maybe it’s a cabal of legacy companies who stand to loose from new tech, colluding with regulators—like a public-private partnership of sorts to block innovation. Good guys are entrepreneurs with beneficial new tech—mrna-type stuff?— working with a darpa-type org in another part of the government—the good part—to get their product to market despite regulatory capture and industry buying politicians. cross those lines.
I‘m an avid reader though and look forward to hearing more—good luck!
The problem with having Big Tech be the bad guy is that it's a cliché, and it's the same problem again: Why would the tech be bad?
The government being bad is very common too in science fiction, from Star Wars (the Empire!) to The Hunger Games, to 1984. I'd say in all 3 cases, they're caricatures of government. That's not what I want to do. There's a reason why regulations are what they are. Their existence is not bad, their details are what's overcautious. But for that nuance to emerge, you need to have the 2 sides to confront each other, and expose each other's flaws.
I made a comment after watching the trailer before reading on for your explantion. You wanted feedback, good, bad, or indifferent, so I tried to give you that. Thanks for the entire article. I've written books and know how complex that is. I've no interest in doing further such projects but am fascinated with you younger folk who are out there swinging away with good hearts and great skills to improve experience for yourselves and the rest of us. I'm imspired to forward your description of this experience to this point to my friends who are still in the trenches punching away. Your detailed explantion is very helpful. I'm sure anyone who reads you in general, and of course specifically this recent new project effort, cheers you on and wishes the best for you, your family, and this specific cinema series. We'll do what we can to help.
Well, it's mostly how things go currently, isn't it? Others do things, the "West" reacts. Maybe it's just poor little me living in the EU which regulates the innovation that others make.
Preliminary: I wish all the best to your series, and I do hope to be able to see it. However, you have two major story plots flaws, IMHO.
- Why would a government "ban" all technology or the most relevant of them (i.e. healthcare). There is no reason. And throughout history, while there were anti-tech movements (and of course the luddites are the most obvious example) 1) they had practical reason to protest and get the government to act (protecting lobbies, preserving some other resource, you name it) and 2) they lost. Always. No government would be so stupid to ban a technology that improves the life of its citizen (and the economy, and the taxes, and the electorate, etc. etc.) and survive long. On top of that, many technologies simply become "de facto" part of the fabric of society, wether the government wants it or not (electricity is a good example). Only small communities of idiots can allow to ban useful technology and think to survive. But this takes the major lever of the story out, i.e. why would the founders take up and leave.
- the Atlas Shrugged effect. Please get some time to read it. It's an awful series of book that could have been essentially a 100-page assay (which is also present under the form of speech at a certain point, btw), and that understood exactly nothing of the motivation of people and governments, even though it pinned down useful mechanism and character arcs for your plot. And I am saying read it, and don't just convert it into an AI podcast, because you need to see how flawed the idea of "the philosophical hero who rejects corrupt society and found an utopian community" is when you compare it to reality. (But then again, you like Srinivasan's rethoric about crypto, so maybe this will also fall flat )
I love the white mirror positive angle, but disappointed you’re making government the bad guy. Not what we need right now, it’s glaringly red-coded, and there are many many examples of major innovations created and supported by government, that could not have happened otherwise.
How would you approach it?
The state institutions / structures are the problem in China and places like Iran (if they are sources of inspiration as yo umention) -- but the corporate ones, the "broligarchy" and the greed based on which they are operating are the real problem in the US, at least at this moment, but it will certainly have consequences in the longer run. If you misrepresent that, you're falsifying the real story.
I mean - Amazon are not keeping their workers on salaries that make them dependent on food stamps because of any law or political structure. They perefer to bribe the administration instead of paying their workers, because of their intrinsic philosophy.
China and Islam are definitely there, even though I'm sure those who belong to these cultures might disagree that they are problematic. In that same way, there are blind spots in the beliefs of Westerners, and I'd like to help expose them.
Amazon is a great example. You're right that they are tough with their blue-collar employees. But also with their white-collar ones. And the result is one of the best companies in the world, that brings tremendous value to everybody. You can get virtually anything, anywhere, at a reasonable price, by pressing a button! And I'd argue that the benefit of hundreds of millions of people are worth the effort of the hundreds of thousands who do this.
Can they be less brutal? Yes, of course. Maybe it should be easier to take a pee break. But also, who decided that policy? What data did they see to make that decision? How much was the previous policy abused? It's hard to judge without the specifics.
And that's a lot of what I want to do with the series. It's too simplistic to say "X policy is good/bad". But if you have 2 characters fighting it off, and you can see the consequences of their actions, you can get a much deeper understanding of the problem.
Also, I do think the West has problems inside, like degrowthers and watermelons.
Your Socotra entrepreneurs are described as asking for some form of concentrated, unaccountable power over a commons: money, force, water, land, other species. That is what law and justice as institutions exist to constrain; not because institutions are cautious by temperament, but because history's answer to "will the people holding unchecked power abuse it" is close to uniformly yes, whoever they are. -- Your own series of historical materials from virtually everywhere around the world is showing exactly that.
You are asking that question about the security force ("But would the security police never abuse their power?") as a plot hook, which can be understood (drama vs propaganda).
But political theory doesn't treat it as a hook, it treats it as the whole reason for having law prior to power, not law as an obstacle power runs into afterward...
Environmental and biotech regulation exists largely to handle externalities, costs one actor imposes on people who never agreed to bear them (a habitat destroyed, a species altered, a climate pattern shifted "with unintended consequences on some countries"), which you mention once, then seemingly drop - but I am aware this is just a trailer and a preliminary write-up. That is a basic problem markets don't solve on their own.
From my point of view, the structural problem with your show is that "freedom" is written as freedom from interference (negative liberty, do what you want if you're not visibly bothering someone). Institutions are written as the opposite of "freedom" rather than as republican liberty's actual claim: freedom from domination, which requires exactly the checks the Socotra founders are fleeing. Those are two coherent, competing traditions in political philosophy and based on all I've seen you writing before I expected you to be more balanced about it. :D
Institutions work differently in different political structures, that's what I'm trying to suggest (my background is in sociology and I teach IR, so you know where I'm coming from :D ).
If "institution" in your story is one undifferentiated antagonist type, the friction in every arena ends up feeling the same, a bureaucrat says no, instead of textured by how that particular system actually generates resistance.
I would also like to know if any "institutional character" gets a legitimate, non-fearful reason to object, or if they're structurally cast as obstacles from the outset - or if there are any positive takes on istitutions (because there is resistence in each of the systems you;re presenting and it looks different based on what tools it can use and what can effectively generate as a result -- e.g. Islam isn't a state-type institution at all).
Of course it has to be different in each arena, otherwise why have different arenas?
China is the CCP's aim of social uniformity for harmony.
The West pushes to preserve individualism, while banning anything that might cause harm
Islam is the fight between a conservative view that harks back to the 600s, and a modern one that struggles to launch Islam into the 21st century.
All institutional characters get legitimate reasons to object. Even the point made in the trailer, "No individual should own the infrastructure of civilization", is a very legitimate perspective.
Well, I don’t write an awesome newsletter and have the same skills, so hard to say :-)
But agree you need conflict. Maybe it’s a cabal of legacy companies who stand to loose from new tech, colluding with regulators—like a public-private partnership of sorts to block innovation. Good guys are entrepreneurs with beneficial new tech—mrna-type stuff?— working with a darpa-type org in another part of the government—the good part—to get their product to market despite regulatory capture and industry buying politicians. cross those lines.
I‘m an avid reader though and look forward to hearing more—good luck!
Thanks!
The problem with having Big Tech be the bad guy is that it's a cliché, and it's the same problem again: Why would the tech be bad?
The government being bad is very common too in science fiction, from Star Wars (the Empire!) to The Hunger Games, to 1984. I'd say in all 3 cases, they're caricatures of government. That's not what I want to do. There's a reason why regulations are what they are. Their existence is not bad, their details are what's overcautious. But for that nuance to emerge, you need to have the 2 sides to confront each other, and expose each other's flaws.
Maybe add few common people genuinely scared about how new technologies can change the world they know and love.
Or put an entire grassroots luddite movement into the mix.
Different governments.. the bad the lame the good.
Only through good governance to we have a prayer. John is right
Great connections of the dots, Tomas! I think dark mirror, bright mirror resonates better with the status quo and even cooling the planet.
Except the series is called Black Mirror!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mirror
So, change it. Writers have powers.
I made a comment after watching the trailer before reading on for your explantion. You wanted feedback, good, bad, or indifferent, so I tried to give you that. Thanks for the entire article. I've written books and know how complex that is. I've no interest in doing further such projects but am fascinated with you younger folk who are out there swinging away with good hearts and great skills to improve experience for yourselves and the rest of us. I'm imspired to forward your description of this experience to this point to my friends who are still in the trenches punching away. Your detailed explantion is very helpful. I'm sure anyone who reads you in general, and of course specifically this recent new project effort, cheers you on and wishes the best for you, your family, and this specific cinema series. We'll do what we can to help.
Thank you Jay, I appreciate!
"the West was a reaction to the others". Not sure you noticed it when writing it, but that's very telling ;-)
How so?
Well, it's mostly how things go currently, isn't it? Others do things, the "West" reacts. Maybe it's just poor little me living in the EU which regulates the innovation that others make.
Ah yes, indeed. The lack of a beautiful long-term vision is a problem in the West. Completely uninspiring.
dunno about that across the board. tons of EU-first innovation in chip making?
Preliminary: I wish all the best to your series, and I do hope to be able to see it. However, you have two major story plots flaws, IMHO.
- Why would a government "ban" all technology or the most relevant of them (i.e. healthcare). There is no reason. And throughout history, while there were anti-tech movements (and of course the luddites are the most obvious example) 1) they had practical reason to protest and get the government to act (protecting lobbies, preserving some other resource, you name it) and 2) they lost. Always. No government would be so stupid to ban a technology that improves the life of its citizen (and the economy, and the taxes, and the electorate, etc. etc.) and survive long. On top of that, many technologies simply become "de facto" part of the fabric of society, wether the government wants it or not (electricity is a good example). Only small communities of idiots can allow to ban useful technology and think to survive. But this takes the major lever of the story out, i.e. why would the founders take up and leave.
- the Atlas Shrugged effect. Please get some time to read it. It's an awful series of book that could have been essentially a 100-page assay (which is also present under the form of speech at a certain point, btw), and that understood exactly nothing of the motivation of people and governments, even though it pinned down useful mechanism and character arcs for your plot. And I am saying read it, and don't just convert it into an AI podcast, because you need to see how flawed the idea of "the philosophical hero who rejects corrupt society and found an utopian community" is when you compare it to reality. (But then again, you like Srinivasan's rethoric about crypto, so maybe this will also fall flat )
Love you and good luck! ;)