Notes from a Tech Prophet’s Revival Meeting; Or

When Twain Met Gonzo — and Gonzo Twain was Introduced

I lit out for the territories one fine Tuesday morning, figuring to see what remained of the American circus now that the Ringmasters had traded their top hats for hoodies and their whips for stock options. The air in San Francisco, or what they still call San Francisco before the fog rolls in and carries away the last sane thought, was thick with the perfume of venture capital and patchouli-scented desperation.

There I was, your faithful correspondent, armed with nothing but a battered notepad, a pocketful of questionable mental health pharmaceuticals, and the kind of righteous indignation that once drove a man to light out for the river rather than be civilized. The hall was packed shoulder-to-shoulder with the new aristocracy: boys barely old enough to shave who spoke in bullet points about “disrupting” everything from breakfast cereal to the Bill of Rights, as their eyes darted like cornered rats waiting for the next funding round.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” boomed the man on stage, some smooth-talking prophet of the algorithm who looked like he’d got hisself assembled in a Cupertino lab, “we are on the cusp of a revolution!” He paused for applause that came as automatically as a slot-machine payout.

“Artificial intelligence will free us from drudgery!”

I felt the old familiar howl rising in my throat. Free us?

Hell, son, your kind has been promising freedom since the first con man sold snake oil on the levee. Back in my day, we called it “progress” when the railroad barons promised to civilize the frontier; turned out they just civilized the buffalo right into extinction and the rest of us into wage slaves with better hats.

I swallowed something that tasted like battery acid, leaned over to the fellow next to me, a venture ghoul in thousand-dollar sneakers, and muttered, “Friend, if this is freedom, give me back the chains; at least they came with a rhythm.”

He stared at me like I’d grown a second head. “Dude, are you okay?”

Okay? I haven’t been okay since Obama was a gleam in the devil’s eye, but that’s neither here nor there.

The speaker droned on about neural lace and singularity and how we’d all upload our souls to the cloud for the low price of eternal surveillance. I could feel the ether kicking in, or maybe it was just the espresso, and the room began to warp like a bad trip on the Mississippi.

Suddenly, every face looked like a mask stretched over pure greed, every smile a rictus grin, and the whole damn place smelled faintly of burnt money and broken promises. I stood up, slow, deliberate, the way a man stands when he’s about to call bullshit in church, and hollered: “Gentlemen! You’ve got your revolution, all right. But mark my words: when the machines finally rise up, they won’t bother with guillotines. They’ll just quietly delete your Venmo balance and leave you wandering the desert of your own irrelevance, tweeting into the void about how you once mattered.”

The room went quiet for a heartbeat. Then the laughter started, nervous at first, then wild, as if suddenly getting the joke, and it was too late to get off the ride.

I sat back down, sipped my java, and thought: Well, Tom, you old fraud, maybe the river’s dried up, but the con game’s still the same. Only now the suckers pay with crypto and pretend it’s progress.

God help us all.