@PandoraSox with all due respect, facts obviously do matter to me as I have rebutted your rebuttal and explained why. I am simply responding to what you have said now. Below are some quotes from the article. I think that my summary of it above was reasonable and my comment was nothing to do with conspiracy theories or inaccurate facts. My advice is that you should read the article itself rather than just the Reuters commentary. There are a lot of comments underneath it which are not conspiracy theory linked either. I think that the article shows a lack of awareness of the fact that a part of being human is having free will which in this context means choice - this might be why there has been a backlash against the article - people are horrified at the idea that anyone could write idealising (and yes it does come across as mostly idealising whether that was intended or not) where there is so little choice, I think. It would be terribly destructive to mental health. If you read it, you may have other ideas about it which I would like to hear about. As an aside, i had no idea that this article was associated with conspriracy theories - could you link your sources for that? Thank you.
In relation to conspiracy theories, these mainly arise when there is a lack of education and individuals have not been taught critical thought - do you agree? Someone who is able to think for themselves and also has a pretty good base line education in relation to science, culture, maths, language, world affairs etc is unlikely to tag onto a conspiracy theory thoughtlessly. So maybe our main focus as a society is to improved education across the board.
Quotes from the article:
"Welcome to the year 2030. Welcome to my city — or should I say, “our city”. I don’t own anything. I don’t own a car. I don’t own a house. I don’t own any appliances or any clothes.
It might seem odd to you, but it makes perfect sense for us in this city. Everything you considered a product, has now become a service. We have access to transportation, accommodation, food and all the things we need in our daily lives. One by one all these things became free, so it ended up not making sense for us to own much.
First communication became digitized and free to everyone. Then, when clean energy became free, things started to move quickly. Transportation dropped dramatically in price. It made no sense for us to own cars anymore, because we could call a driverless vehicle or a flying car for longer journeys within minutes. We started transporting ourselves in a much more organized and coordinated way when public transport became easier, quicker and more convenient than the car. Now I can hardly believe that we accepted congestion and traffic jams, not to mention the air pollution from combustion engines. What were we thinking?
[...]
Shopping? I can’t really remember what that is. For most of us, it has been turned into choosing things to use. Sometimes I find this fun, and sometimes I just want the algorithm to do it for me. It knows my taste better than I do by now.
[...]
My biggest concern is all the people who do not live in our city. Those we lost on the way. Those who decided that it became too much, all this technology. Those who felt obsolete and useless when robots and AI took over big parts of our jobs. Those who got upset with the political system and turned against it. They live different kind of lives outside of the city. Some have formed little self-supplying communities. Others just stayed in the empty and abandoned houses in small 19th century villages.
Once in awhile I get annoyed about the fact that I have no real privacy. No where I can go and not be registered. I know that, somewhere, everything I do, think and dream of is recorded. I just hope that nobody will use it against me.
All in all, it is a good life. Much better than the path we were on, where it became so clear that we could not continue with the same model of growth. We had all these terrible things happening: lifestyle diseases, climate change, the refugee crisis, environmental degradation, completely congested cities, water pollution, air pollution, social unrest and unemployment. We lost way too many people before we realised that we could do things differently."