A Real Nowhere, Man

Utopia can wait

I’ve been reaching out to colleagues and long-time contacts in the Biz, trying to get a series pitch in front of the two actors my partner and I want to play the leads. As it turns out, almost everyone I knew in the industry is dead, fly fishing, or distancing themselves as far from Hollywood as they can get.

The latter group I invited to join me here in tropical paradise, since it’s literally the furthest they could get without SpaceX.

It looks like I’ve not only outlived my career relevance, but an entire industry, as well. Hollywood is truly dead and any motion you see over that way is purely cadaveric spasms. So my thoughts naturally turned to AI.

My Canadian buddy here said Elon Musk wants to build 10 billion robots, which would essentially replace the entire human labor force on the planet, which led to the discussion of, “Then What?” What happens when you substitute a flesh-and-blood civilization with machines? How does an economy work where no one earns anything and everyone has everything—Star Trek aside, of course?

Humanity’s one saving grace is that machines have no initiative or creative spark. If a robot and/or AI is not given a specific task, it will sit there for all eternity (or until the juice runs out) waiting for someone to tell it what to do.

Since all my Hollywood contacts are drying up, it occurred to me that somewhere there is an AI tool that I can drop a script into and generate a series out of thin aether. This sparked the thought that AI can’t come up with a series concept by itself; a human has to initiate and guide the process. The AI can access pre-existing models to perform specific tasks, but it can’t generate new worlds and populate them with unique characters. It can only re-task pre-exiting stuff, or work with detailed instructions from a creator.

Here’s the problem: if machines are doing everything, then it implies that everything is “free”. After all, if I’m sitting on my deck chair swilling Mai Tais and ordering robots around, there’s no need for an economy. The robots are free, the power to operate them is free, the products of their labor are free, so all I need is self-actualization, since my entire Maslow Hierarchy up to that point is no longer an issue. I no longer need love and belonging, because that implies I need relationships to assist me in my life goals.

The nano-second I have to pay for something, an economy springs forth like a mini Big Bang in my wallet. Now I need a means to store kinetic energy (mine, refine, distribute), which we call “money,” or I need a means to use potential energy (debt), using future productivity to promise kinetic energy at some point down the line.

Either my food, clothing, shelter, and entertainment are entirely without cost of any kind to me, or I somehow have to come up with “income”—either kinetic or potential energy—to pay for stuff. If machines are doing all the work, then how do I get income to pay for my deck chair, a place to put it, and the endless supply of Mai Tais, not to mention the robots that all look like Bo Derek and Brook Shields in their primes? I can’t use potential energy (debt) without the expectation that I (or my great grandchildren) will create kinetic energy in the future to cover it.

You see the problem here?

Back to my original situation.

I create a concept and write a script. That’s the mining and refining part, but I still need distribution to create income. I need the income because the AI tool to create my series costs something, and that cost is based on the kinetic input of electricity and infrastructure.

Even if robots create themselves and do all the work, I still need the energy input to get the output—turn my text into a compellingly written, visually stunning, and well acted streaming series. Without that, I have no series to distribute, no audience to generate “chits,” and no chits to pay for the electricity that runs the robots that build the infrastructure and operated the AI, and thus distribution infrastructure that distributes the content that generate the chits.

And here we see why socialism/communism never succeed. If everything is free, who pays the electric bill? Potential energy will only get you so far, but future promises have limits—like a human lifetime. After I’m dead, I can’t very well create kinetic energy, and my progeny are highly unlikely to cover my chits (dead or alive).

The Great and Glorious Future of having my two cubic meters on the beach, a well-made birch deck chair, and an army of visually pleasing robots to deliver my endless supply of Mai Tais comes down to one weak point—how do I get the electricity for free?

This is why utopian fantasies always fail. Kinetic energy (chits) require work. Work requires reward (chits). And chits are only created with work. The Laws of Physics shall not be broken.

There is one way, and only one way this Star Trek future can ever exist—free abundant energy from the aether. Oh wait, the converters to draw in that aether energy, distribute it, and convert it to work require work (mining, refining, distribution). Even if the work is done by robots, someone somewhere required chits to create them in the first place.

And thus we’re back to an economy springing like a singularity out of nothingness into somethingness.

There ain’t no free lunch.

In the realm of possibility, it is conceivable that we could discover free energy, and with a little work create a perpetual motion machine that builds other perpetual motion machines, but we still need chits to input the initial energy to start the machine. Ultimately, this requires kinetic energy to make itself, which may be impossible in our Universe. That part remains to be seen.

Inevitably, new technology kills old industries. Not many blacksmiths or coopers around these days. The evolution of our technology—and thus our civilization—depends solely and completely on the availability of relatively cheap and plentiful energy. However, no matter what we do, we can’t get away from needing chits to get some of that energy. And if I use my kinetics to pay for your potentials, I do expect repayment at some point. Fact of life.

Trust me, I’ve already tried promising future free aether energy to pay for my Mai Tais today. Sadly, folks ain’t buyin’ the story, though.

Now, get back to work.

Si mundus vult dicipi, ergo dicipitatur.

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There’s not much in the way of films dealing with free energy. As the writers of Star Trek quickly found out, free everything means no conflict, which means no drama. However, John Boorman made a truly weird flick with Sean Connery looking to shed the Bond image, about lethargic elite immortals wanting to die because they have everything they could ever want. The film is Zardoz (1974), and it will twist your mind a bit, but worth the watch on a rainy Saturday afternoon. If that’s not your cup of tea, the mainstream pick is Robert Altman’s brilliant The Player (1992); a great film about the death of Hollywood, with great writing and outstanding performances. Love the Orson Wells homage at the opening. Bon visionnage!

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