Technology Won't Save Us, That Includes the Ultra-Wealthy
Yes, this is about that missing Titanic Tourist Submarine #Oceangate
A few things keep going through my head as we’re all following the missing Titanic Submarine saga is:
Rich people really do have too much damn money
$250,000 to be steered around in a milk carton by a Nintendo 64 controller is crazy
Technology won’t save us—even if you’re super wealthy
And the third one has thrown me into an existential crisis. Let me explain.
From Fire to Nuclear Power: The Promise of a Better Tomorrow
From the invention of fire to telephones and AI, technology and its ever-evolving advancement have always been billed as the key to human survival. If we don’t invent, we die, becoming as obsolete as the lo-fi tech of generations past. And to an extent, the notion is absolutely correct; I mean, necessity is the mother of invention, after all. And had early homo-sapiens and others not invented agriculture and proficient hunting tools, who knows what the earth would look like today (probably better, humanity is a disease, but I digress)? But at some point, you have to wonder if we’re using technology, or rather the promise of technology, as a placeholder or, rather, a promise to future generations instead of fixing the issues we have today.
Consider nuclear technology. Most of us have nothing more than cursory knowledge and understanding of nuclear technology. And for most of us, the bulk of our understanding comes from the destructive nature of nuclear technology; i.e., the two atomic bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which killed a quarter million people, mostly women, children and other civilians. However, the promise of nuclear energy as a “clean” fuel has been alive and well since the 1960s, currently providing around 10% of the clean-burning energy in the world.
But it isn’t enough.
Whether or not you personally believe in climate change, it’s becoming increasingly clear that carbon emissions are hurting our environment, so why haven’t we been able to fully adopt nuclear technology or any of the other alternative energy sources? Besides the fact that atomic energy isn’t exactly fool-proof (you know, Chernobyl), humanity’s greed, lobbying and self-interest get in the way a lot. And the promise of a future of nuclear (or other clean) energy doesn't change the fact that we need a solution TODAY. NOW. If there’s no tomorrow to get to, it doesn’t matter how great the energy of tomorrow might be, if we don’t ever make it to tomorrow.
And that includes billionaires, despite their best efforts.
Space Races, Bunkers and Submarines
So here’s where the Titanic tourist submarine comes in. Have you heard about the “Billionaire Space Race?” There’s been a pretty persistent rumour for years now that the ultra-wealthy are seeking to understand and adapt space travel with the intent to “abandon” a failing Earth. Mind you, a planet that’s failing largely due to their greed and callousness (look it up, large corporations are super polluters). Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Virgin-Atlantic’s Richard Branson have already completed their mini-space missions, each successfully orbiting at the edge of space. Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s SpaceX took four private civilians on its own little suborbital space ride on the Inspiration4 mission, which made history in September 2021. Kinda sounds like the ultra-wealthy really wanna go to space, huh?
And it's not like people are totally crazy to believe this, the ultra-wealthy, as a whole, haven’t really been great shepherds of humanity, and there are companies right now, building ultra-luxe doomsday bunkers. At least, they say they are. And call me a pessimist, but I don’t doubt for one second that when the chips are down that, the ultra-wealthy won’t 100% choose to sacrifice the rest of us for a chance at survival. I mean, look around you; they’ve been doing it for years.
But this #Oceangate thing really puts things into perspective: these five passengers each paid $250,000 to dive 12,500ft into the ocean abyss to see the wreckage of the most famous ship that ever existed, and they might not make it back. I know I am not alone when I think to myself that money and technology will surely be the combination that leads to survival, but what if it isn’t? Isn’t that scary? We’re taught that money solves problems, and it does, to an extent. But even the wealthiest people in this world cannot escape one thing: death. And, yes, that’s obvious and macabre, and there is still a chance those five people are alive down there. Still, this entire situation is really making me re-think what I know about technology, humanity and survival.
And when I’m confused or seeking meaning, I turn to entertainment to make sense of it all, naturally.
This One Has Matt Damon in it
In the 2013 dystopian sci-fi flop Elysium, Matt Damon plays a man named Max Da Costa, a parolee who, after being exposed to a fatal dose of radiation, seeks to smuggle himself to Elysium, a space station orbiting 23rd-century Earth inhabited solely by the wealthy who have paid to escape the disease, poverty and over-population of earth. The movie itself isn’t anything to write home about, but one cannot help but see the parallels between the billionaire space race and the film. In fact, I’m surprised that more people don’t bring it up whenever another super-rich white guy launches himself into space. Why do they wanna go up there so damn bad? What’s so great about the deep, dark, soundless and dangerous void of space…?
IDK, I’ve never even been there, and I literally never want to be there. I saw that George Clooney movie.
This trope of rich people abandoning the hell on earth their greed has created shows up pretty regularly in dystopian media. There’s the popular YA book series and movie trilogy Maze Runner, which places the wealthiest in “Last City,” the stronghold of WCKD and pretty much the only civilized place left on earth. There’s also the 2013 sci-fi train (?) film Snowpiercer, where Chris Evans tries to look less hot and more like a malnourished poor guy living in the back of a train that navigates the second ice age while the rich live in relative luxury at the front of said train (IDK, that movie has quite possibly the stupidest setting I’ve ever heard of…why a train? It’s French…). In both examples, an active resistance topples both authoritarian regimes.
What if, instead of an uprising, technology failed them??? HMM???
The Big Finish: WALL·E!
And that, dear reader, is where my mind went when I first heard the news about the Titanic tourist submarine. Despite the money and access, these five people are helpless. Two examples of technology betraying its wealthy overlords come to mind, the animated Netflix anthology Love, Death + Robots and Disney Pixar’s Wall-E.
Yes, Wall-E.
In season three, episode one of LDR, Three Robots: Exit Strategies, we learn of the socioeconomic stratification that took place during the apocalypse. On one end of the spectrum, anarchist so-called survivalist camps stockpiled weapons and ammunition but eventually hunted their prey to extinction. On the other hand, the wealthy took to the sea (eery parallel, right?), re-purposing oil rigs into sovereign nations where they would live in luxury, relying on technology for their needs rather than allow non-rich people to join them, even in the role of servitude.
The three robot characters learn that BOTH camps (and a third camp made of political figures hiding in a bunker) all met the same fate: they didn’t make it. The survivalist died out when their food supply went extinct, and the wealthy? They mistreated their robot and AI servant so poorly that the technology turned on them. This, ironically, leads to the robot uprising that wipes out all of humanity. The episode somewhat reminds me of the recent news of an AI chatbot deployed by the National Eating Disorder Association. It was shut down just a few months after replacing employees because it gave poor advice. The common thread here (which I hope you’ve gleaned thus far) is that technology, for all of its amazing promises and fixes and advancements, can only do so much, and there is no guarantee that it will always work…or won’t just turn on us.
Because if WALL·E, yes that WALL·E, taught me anything, it’s that a semi-autonomous, space-faring vessel nicknamed AUTO maybe shouldn't be given the sole responsibility of maintaining humankind. And if #Oceangate has taught me anything, it’s that all of the money and technology in the world will NOT save us. And if I want to experience the Titanic, I’ll just watch one of the many movies and documentaries, like a normal person.
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