Will Thiel wait for us in the future as Dr Eldon Tyrell?

Peter Thiel: PayPal founder and libertarian futurist

Dr. Eldon Tyrell: a corporate figure in Blade Runner, presented almost as a a kind of deity who has the power of creating life

I think probably not because Thiel isn't really a visionary. He instead seems to spend most of his time playing in other people's sandboxes. Where there's public debate, he's simply a gadfly. The Tyrrell character at least had bioengineering credentials which gave his company a monopoly in the replicant industry, whereas here's Thiel again merely jumping on the bandwagon, as befitting sui generis futurism, by investing in 3D printed meat; the man who publicly decries democracy for humans apparently wants to be remembered as helping to spare animals from becoming our food. Thiel is notorious for wildly throwing money around at any technology he thinks will stick, which to him means capable of facilitating libertarian autonomy by eluding government regulation (and therefore unsubsidised by governments, so if individual consumers can't afford them, in Thiel's world you won't get to reap any of their benefits). His type is probably a dime a dozen on the futures market; the only difference is Thiel gets brand name recognition and therefore publicly because of his association with PayPal. He's clearly not original enough to patent any ideas worth investing in, and this will mean he will have a hell of a lot of ground to make up before he could seriously compete with established players, not least Monsanto, who already have a huge vested interest in biotech and the meat industry.

I have no doubt though that, in principle, Thiel's mindset would amount to a licence to create a future as dystopian as anything in Blade Runner (click on the link underneath his picture in this post for a further taste of what I mean). This goes all the way to Thiel's narcissistic plan to clone himself: here I am reminded of the scene written for Blade Runner that was never filmed. Batty appears to have killed Tyrell, but it later emerges that another section of the pyramidal (signifying plutocracy) corporate headquarters houses a shark swimming around in an enormous tank. Tyrell's brain, apparently for his personal protection and befitting the lack of sleep required for calibration to the rhythms of the market***, had been transplanted into the shark. Simply an incredible image of the parallels between the savage predators of the ocean and the predators of the corporate world. My speculations in this post (partly with tongue firmly planted in cheek) therefore suggest that although Thiel may be only low-hanging fruit, figuratively speaking, when compared to Tyrell in terms of an overall future social impact, he might at least achieve a comparable level of sentient immortality once he decides to use technologies to blur the species boundaries.

I should also point out that Thiel obviously doesn't appreciate how capitalism is actually incompatible with meritocracy. He blames political correctness (see link under Thiel's pic in this post) for fueling the education bubble, claiming that it prevents the articulation of "certain truths about the inequality of abilities". But consider how the poor would be less likely  to tolerate Thiel's ilk if they had to accept the (fallacious) idea that wealth is commensurate with the amount of effort and ability invested. Zizek offers a pithy assessment of the  proposal that:

a viable and orderly social democracy could be based on a deal whereby we give total power and status to a super rich knowledge elite in exchange for all citizens – regardless of merit or effort – being guaranteed a basic income. He dismissed this, in part because he said it took no account of envy. Zizek quoted Frederich Von Hayek who argued – against advocates of social justice – that the poor find it easier to accept the wealthy if they think their fortune is unmerited. For the masses to accept that those at the top deserve their success means the majority have to accept not only that they are poorer but they are less virtuous.

*** which would make sense (LOL!) as an alternative to cocaine, which has long been the drug of choice on Wall Street

(CREDIT TO my fellow blogger Derridata for first offering a comparison of Tyrell and Thiel, and for discussing meritocracy with me)

The Replicator Economy and Its Discontents

Still waiting for more sceptics to weigh in on this issue. I have fond memories of someone I used to know walking out of Terminator 2: Judgement Day, aghast at the prospect that the kind of morphing SFX in that film would become so widely available and easy to use that the entire basis of the criminal justice system would eventually be undermined--Just imagine, "I was morphed Your Honor!!!", screams yet another framed defendant, as he or she is led from the dock. Determined to maintain the rage, the fellow fired off an angry letter to TIME magazine, which although unpublished, is probably still glued to the wall of the TIME staffroom, where it would continue to provoke hilarity among the journalists.

Notwithstanding PhotoShop, I think what makes the predictions about 3-D printing more credible is that the technology is not prohibitively expensive and has been producing results. That assault rifle example is a bit of a game changer, so we seem to be talking here about something more than the sui generis reportage of futurists. The mechanisms of production and distribution are changing rapidly, and the emerging questions have to do with what effect this will have on markets, which are based on scarcity. For example, will it provide a good incentive for criminal syndicates, a category in which some would include Big Pharma, to prosecute a fierce campaign against any democratisation of such technologies? Furthermore, rather than take it for granted that hard currency will completely disappear on technologically determinist premises, we need to attend to the paradoxes it will continue to raise as a symbol, a social relation, and an object (not least in relation to the "imagined communities" that demarcate national boundaries, as signified by currencies). In terms of theory, I imagine this will involve increasing conflict between social theorists such as Emily Gilbert and the more philosophically hardwired (and arguably determinist)  cultural studies perspective of authors such as Rotman (for the latter, see Signifying Nothing: The Semiotics of Zero--i.e a capitalism which, in Rotman's words, was distinguished 'not by the buying and selling of goods, labour and services, but of money itself' ).

I didn't mind Rennie's piece on the so-called replicator economy, because although it veers dangerously close to technological determinism by arguing that "The precise limitations of replicator technology will determine where scarcity and foundations for value will remain", he also concedes "Perhaps the most important limitation on the replicator economy may be competition from good old mass production".