I remember back around 1990, when Timothy Leary first read Stewart Brand’s book The Media Lab, about the new digital technology center MIT had created in its architecture department.

Leary devoured the book cover to cover over the course of one long day. Around sunset, just as he was finishing, he threw it across the living room in disgust. “Look at the index,” he said, “of all the names, less than 3% are women. That’ll tell you something.”

He went on to explain his core problem with the Media Lab and the digital universe these technology pioneers were envisioning: “They want to recreate the womb.”

As Leary the psychologist saw it, the boys building our digital future were developing technology to simulate the ideal woman — the one their mothers could never be.

Unlike their human mothers, a predictive algorithm could anticipate their every need in advance and deliver it directly, removing every trace of friction and longing.

These guys would be able to float in their virtual bubbles — what the Media Lab called “artificial ecology” — and never have to face the messy, harsh reality demanded of people living in a real world with women and people of color and even those with differing views.

Read more from "The Privileged Have Entered Their Escape Pods" from @Medium's @ozm https://onezero.medium.com/the-privileged-have-entered-their-escape-pods-4706b4893af7