The Technate
MM 4/27/26 The Technate might prove to be one of the most intriguing subjects in MM’s ten-year history as so many vectors in those previous sessions align with what might be deemed fanciful speculation.
The subject starts off modestly enough with the focus article citing the long-forgotten Technology Incorporated movement from some ninety years ago (click: Welcome to the Technocracy). But stick with it. The gospel preached back then was that technology would be the ultimate revolutionary agent for the eventual collapse of liberal capitalism as it gives way to a new system called “technocracy.”
What was deemed back in 1933 as “the most discussed topic in America” then went dormant, written off as a delusional cult, given the state of technology at the time. That was then. But the core ideas that had been dismissed by the masses back then may now have found new life by today’s tech elite with plenty of capital to deploy. Oh, by the way, Elon Musk’s grandfather had been a leading member of the original movement.
Maybe start with the featured 1940 map, labeled “Technate of America,” and notice the lack of prominent borders as it covers a land mass including not only today’s America but Canada, Mexico, Cuba, Greenland, Venezuela, and Costa Rica. That recitation might ring a bell with some rumblings of moving away from our 77-year NATO pact in favor of a tighter Western Hemisphere alliance.
Our MM 9/19/22 The Network State session highlighted technology’s potential to reorder the very notion of statehood, once defined in terms of physical boundaries, into stand-alone aggregate network states with the capacity for collective action, even political power. Behold the recentralization of real-world communities into virtual alignment.
The referenced Technology Incorporated movement had been animated back then by the simple credo that, “engineers and mechanics created this civilization, so they will eventually dominate it.” So, what could possibly go wrong. After all, with efficiency the byword of the movement, an elite committee of technology experts – these high priests of technological progress – would fine-fine uninterrupted 24/7 production to serve the masses with its compelling pitch back in 1933: “thirty million out of work or $20,000 annual income – which?”
Consumer needs would be fully anticipated as well given that “all phenomena involved in the functional operation of the social mechanism are measurable,” reducing every single facet of daily life to inputs and outputs to be quantified, processed, and then optimized for efficiency. It brings to mind the MM 1/15/18 Social Engineering (China) discussion featuring the focus article "Inside China's Vast New Experiment In Social Engineering" wherein man is slowly reduced to an algorithm with private data aggregators triangulating countless input streams. May we finally put to rest any silly notion about the existence of MM 5/13/19 Free Will.
Can there now be any doubt whether The Technate represents the Second Coming of the technocrat gods (think Musk, Zuckerberg, Page, Thiel, Andreesen, Srinivasan) which, by the way, doesn’t make them bad people just because Thiel regards the public (you know, we the people) as an obstacle to the supposed freedom provided by technology (yes, especially to the owners).
Anyway, the article did provide one epiphany – an answer, finally, to the question about the crushing national debt. It’s now so obvious. Each citizen in The Technate would receive a so-called “energy distribution card.” Replace the term card with, say, crypto and it marks a brand new start for all citizens of The Technate as the dollar fades to irrelevance in a MM 9/9/24 Debt Jubilee.
Alles klar, Herr Kommissar?
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