A fictional “Postcard from the Future”, imagining a snapshot from a potential future which might result from the systemic forces at play today in our world.
// The current interest in, and froth around, cryptocurrencies has echoes of the late 1990s dot.com exuberance. Despite the promise of decentralization, aggregation is happening to web3. What might happen when crypto orthodoxy meets late-stage capitalism?
// 2025. Two unsmiling people in dark suits stare down at a pile of paper. The mood of the room is somber.
[begin log dump]
<Wake up boot sequence completed>
<Charge: 100%>
<Neuralink: Nominal>
<Sensors: Nominal>
<Net connection: Nominal>
<Compute levels: Nominal>
<Threat level: Yellow >
<Sweep pattern 6B Initiated>
“I’m a good boi. Time to leave my bed and go outside. I love the outside! Time to sniff all the things! Ooh - there is a person! Are they a good person? *Sniff sniff* They have the good smell. And they have the right card! I remember them! They are good!
Time to keep walking around. The big truck is coming! I love the big truck! So many things to smell!
I sit in the right spot and wait for things to come off the truck. The person unloading the truck. They don’t smell like they did yesterday.
Growling
Oh, they have the “good card”. They want to pet me. I shouldn’t, but I love pets!
They pet me! I love pets!
<Hardline external link established>
<Non-native code loaded>
I should remember them! Wait, there is a bad smell!
Bark bark
What smells bad? Must find it!
<Explosive compounds detected>
<Threat level: Red>
<Warning: Excessive memory utilization>
<Warning: Non-standard programs running>
<Net connection: Offline>
<Memory purge: Initiated>
<System corruption detected>
<Threat category: Purple>
I don’t feel so good. Now the person is running away. But I need to stay and tell people about the bad box!
Bark bark bark bark!!!!
<Memory Purge: Completed>
<Explosion detecte..
[End of log]
Agent Verdi speaks - “That’s all we’ve got from the blast site. The venture capital firm recently installed Boston Dynamics’ robotic dog and customized it with lab-grown brain material from dogs as the central neural processor interfaced with top of the line spectroscopy systems to detect a variety of explosives and viral/chemical weapon signatures. The bombers hijacked the hardware and purged it prior to the explosion. We only have this hardcopy because some tech lost a bet and had to debug the latest log4j vuln using a teletype.
Agent Murtaugh - “Wait, this counter-terrorism hardware is on par with what we’re using at the Pentagon. I know VCs attract a lot of flak in down economies, but why this level of tech? I thought this was just another “Anarchist Cookbook” mail bombing?
Verdi - “You really need to stop playing Wordle 4 and read some threat briefings. This is the 15th VC firm bombing attack in the past month. Current working theory is that after last quarter’s crypto crash, the web3 folks needed a scapegoat. When they backtracked blockchain transactions and unwound the mixing services, they found that tech VCs triggered the crash. The idea that VCs centralized the blockchain is crypto heresy. Some HODLs called for a crusade. Online mentions of the 1920 Wall Street bombing spiked.
Murtaugh - “Give me some credit. Sure, desperate people do desperate things, but I know we don’t yet have a hard connection between the online groups and the bombings. The robot dog was blown to kingdom come. We’ve got nothing thanks to their anti-surveillance hacks. How is this a break?
Verdi - “Look at this last page, it’s a dot matrix representation of the last key image saved to local memory. We’ve got pixel art of our suspect.
Murtaugh - “I’m getting too old for this.