The King’s Platforms

“Beware, baffled humans. Beware of false prophets who will sell you a fake future, of bad teachers, corrupt leaders and dirty corporations. Beware of cops and robbers, the kind that rob your dreams.”
— Ryan Ray

This is part one of a two-part series. Part two will be released on August 2nd.

Needless to describe what has happened in the AI world in the past month. I assume you follow the news and spare me the effort. Here, I want to unpack this piece. Occasionally, I might refer to things the news have covered by linking them, if memory allows it.

The Europe 2031 piece is decent, but what it lacks in depth, it covers in mimicry. While predictive scenarios tempt with clairvoyant clarity, stating the obvious is often necessary because “there’s nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.” I want to say more about the bits left out: the benevolent Leviathan that Europeans could thrive under, if only they were willing to accept a social contract paid for culturally.

Europe isn’t a thing

The United States has fifty states; Europe has forty-four countries, twenty-seven of which are EU members. Pick any two American states and you will find a common denominator homogeneous enough to normalize the “cultural distance” — how many layers of everyday meaning have to be renegotiated when moving from one place to another. You will still find one dominant spoken language, one alphabet and one shared written interface for public life, a shared sense of what a dollar means, a national entertainment canon, a shared calendar of sports, holidays, and rituals, and way more. Now, pick Norway and Romania, or Bulgaria and Ireland, and that cultural distance opens along more axes than it did before. Stand in Romania and look outward and you will see a Romance island in a largely Slavic sea. But do not move too far west and you will see a Uralic island in that same sea. The latter is arguably even more isolated linguistically. Honestly, I do not know…