Peak civilisation

Agent Smith clarified that civilization progressed beyond 1999, but that it wasn't human's progress anymore.

Agent Smith: "and I say 'your' civilization, because after we started thinking for you it became 'our' civilization."

The world ended in 2012.

The machines did nothing wrong, it was mankind that caused Nuclear war. I would side with the machines in a heartbeat

We're currently in version 1 of the matrix which blows up. Hopefully soon.

I still remember 1 Jan 2000. There did seem to be some sense of optimism about where things could go. At least for those of us lucky enough to live in stable, developed countries.

Cold war over, Russia and The West seemingly on the same side, China opening up, exciting new tech connecting us but no toxic social media yet...

But then... the dot com bust, 9/11, the GFC, toxic social media and the rise of "the algorithm", Xi in China, Putin in Russia, a global pandemic......

Didn't really go where we hoped, can we restore to a backup from 1999 and try again??

Transcription:

Dave Wiskus

@dwiskus

The Matrix described 1999 as the peak of human civilization and I laughed because that would obviously not age well but then the next 23 years happened and now l'm like yeah okay maybe the machines had a point

I mean, it wasn't if you're gay or trans.....

Makes sense. Boomers were still young enough to be relevant. GenX was comfortable with their disposable income. And us millennials were in highschool.

And people wrote articles like this. And it wasn't even completely ridiculous. And I still believe the world would be very different today if GWB hadn't "won" the election.

I dunno..but somehow I feel like he got a point.

I literally just said this to my wife last week. So far, the timeline of The Matrix has tracked, lol.

It was just the peak of the US, in some aspects anyway. With all my appreciation to all the good things that the US still does.

While we're on the subject of the Matrix... what happens if you take both pills?

Oh we definitely peaked in the 90’s. Save for a few significant victories for the LGBTQ+ and people of color…we were far better off two decades ago.

Especially regarding music.

Smooth was the peak of music

I feel like 2015 was the peak, every year since then has absolutely sucked

I'm afraid the human race won't live long enough to reach "peak civilization" as that would mean that the successful ones take everyone else along with them to the top. That isn't likely to happen before the successful ones take us all down to extinction.

I say your civilization because as soon as we started thinking for you it really became our civilization which is what this is all about.

Didn't expect Dave here lol

Nah

I think the best time was the 60s, 70s and 80s...people were free.

But yeah, seems it constantly gets worse to live on this planet. Even though we have better tech now, it feels like people are very powerless.

We don't optimize for human happiness, we optimize for maximum profits.

70's for total quality of life, then we increased in digital quality of life while everything else fell then we increased in network quality of life but everything else fell. seems like the matrix any day now.

Well, the events of 9/11/2001 were a pivotal moment in the united state's national consciousness. That was a traumatic event for the country; our national self esteem changed. The world became more of a scary place.