A satirical farce in the spirit of the comic Captain Underpants
Baba, the head of the Stealsi, again called little Sami back to the headquarters. “Sami, you’re only as good as your last data theft. What do you have for me next?” Stammering and confused, Sami grasped at ideas like he was in the deep end of a pool and his floaties fell off. “Couldn’t we just steal people’s identities?” Sami said sheepishly.
A satirical farce in the spirit of the comic Captain Underpants
The billionaires arrived at the top secret Lizard Island located in the Indonesian Islands near Komodo, one by one in their multi-million dollar cars, jets, boats, helicopters and even one in a jet suit like the Bond Villains they were. For some Lizards the trip was quite short as they had secret lairs nearby. The “Lizard Boss” arrived on an electric surfboard to cheers, tongue slithering and chest bumps.
A satirical farce in the spirit of the comic Captain Underpants
In a very different part of the kingdom a very different little boy didn’t like to OBEY. Raised by his wise and very old grandfather who fought in the Spanish Civil war, little Skeptico didn’t use much modern technology. He didn’t have a smartphone because his grandpappy forbade it and told him it enslaved his mind. Instead of watching TV, he read books, often one a day if they were short, or a few a week if they were longer.
A satirical farce in the spirit of the comic Captain Underpants
After so much success, so young, little Sami had come to the attention of the head of the Stealsi, Baba Muskiratatouille. The head of the idea-intelligence section of the Stealsi had a bold new initiative that he wanted Sami on. The idea was for the Stealsi to infiltrate vacation rentals to steal thoughts and ideas as they form. Tiny holes would be drilled into rental properties available through a smartphone app “DestroyLocalCommunities4FunAndProfit”, or DLC for short.
A satirical farce in the spirit of the comic Captain Underpants
“Sooie!” yelled Lizardberg from the perch of his treehouse overlooking the mud pit on the Kauai compound. Little Sami had just wrestled a wild boar to the ground and pinned it. It was one of five tasks Sami was assigned on the smartphone Gig worker app ObeyRabbit to earn the reward 1000 likes on the social media FakeLifeGram, including Lizardberg himself and his foundation LizardBro Initiative.
A satirical farce in the spirit of the comic Captain Underpants
Little Sami, our “our aspirational data thief” was feeling distraught two weeks after the death of his father, an agent of the Stealsi. Not because his father was dead, but that there was little left to steal that was obvious and easy. Other children of the Stealsi his age had already made big steals. One kid stood in front of his TV and recorded all of the streaming movies he had access to, then uploaded it to the RatPoiGPT chat interface of the company FakeAGI.
A satirical farce in the spirit of the comic Captain Underpants
Once upon a time a small boy wished he too could steal books, art, source code, movies, corporate documents, and unpublished inventions. He dreamed of enslaving the population further to the corporate interests of billionaires. Could he too contribute to the vast surveillance that made the population obedient, simple and confused? Yes, he could…
The reason he believed he could was because it is what his recently deceased father did for a living.
Linus Torvalds at the 2024 Open Source Summit North America 2024 said about GenAI “Let’s wait 10 years and see where it actually goes before we make all these crazy announcements.”
Similarly, with tech companies the default approach should be skepticism. Let’s start with smartphones. On a recent trip to Seattle I did a three-hour walk on the waterfront near Pike Place Market.
By Daniel Schwen - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.
Remember the last time you saw a commercial for a Tomato, or Rice or Beans by themselves? The reason these commercials don’t exist is that fruits, vegetables and whole grains are a commodity product that don’t need to be sold as part of a McDonald’s Happy Meal. A McDonald’s Happy Meal has something that is technically called food, but in practice is “food like”, and includes a toy to encourage addiction.