The Smart Part

I received yesterday, in another message delivered subtextually via Twitter, more evidence of the deep technological shit this nation is in. People who ought to know better don’t take the smart part of the smart future seriously enough.

I suspect that the reason creatures like Trump are taken even a little seriously rests within the embarrassing reality that so many people know so little about the transformative digital tsunami heading their way. The latest Twitter blip aimed at me was a warning that “the last thing we need in government is more technology!”

With heartfelt honesty, that message was meant to be serious and a sign of a worried person. But it is so fundamentally wrong it’s nerve wracking. At this rate, we’ll easily be overrun by caricature avatars even worse than the political ones who arise from their swamp of ignorance.

I’m babbling about this because I sat down to draft another entwined missive on the need for the creation of a movement to design and implement a Smart Tax reform effort. Because the above thoughts derailed my composition process, I decided to vent instead. Explaining what Smart Taxes are (or might be) requires a basic level of comfort with the strategic use of smart assumptions and the willingness to be playfully useful with such unusual creatures as the AGI, the Adjusted Gross Income number that hides in the open on the bottom line of your tax return.

It’s passed time to get real. Being scared of change is futile. The Internet of Everything is upon us in full force, and it is unfolding at lightning speed, way faster than any user manual can conceive of keeping up with.

Yes … the technological revolution is upon us. Arguably, it is the very happening that Bernie Sanders has convinced everyone is his version of Democratic Socialism. And the fact is: hoping that it goes away won’t make it … pretending it doesn’t need to exist won’t slow it … striking out in anger because one doesn’t know what to do with it … these actions and reactions will not change the inevitable. A SMART society, including a SMART government, is in the works … and we cannot delusion it away.

Technology should be the proud and out friend of progressives. It is the answer we seek to bring about the death of poor, dysfunctioning budget processes; it is the perfect counterweight to all the damage done by assuming that starving the beast of public financing serves a purpose.

Smart technology will be the ways and the means, the end all and be all, of what is good for the people, even as we get  algorithmed to death into class, gender, racial, buying, liking, hating, acting, lazy, corporate, escapist, etc., etc., groups and niches. Technology is the great empowerment equalizer … and for god’s sake, we better get some great degrees of confidence in that or find a Viagra equivalent to ensure we stay upright and stiff for the task.

Money in the hands of a few makes us all dance to their access. Technology in the hands of us all makes those who seek to buy this kind of false comfort ... socially, collectively, effectively, and transparently ... poor! And that is the message of today that hides in its own way in plain site: The Smart Part Matters. 

This we must begin to accept.

Breath, Allan, breath …