Gamification doesn’t need to be enjoyable to be effective.

Both sides in the 2016 election had access to the best statistical models and databases money could buy. If Russian influence (which as far as we know involved little more than the well-timed dumping of not exactly military grade hacked information, plus some Twitter bots and Facebook ads) was at any level decisive, then it’s a slap on the face for data-driven campaigning.

You know, an autonomous car is only a software vulnerability away from being a lethal autonomous weapon, and a successful autonomous car company is only a hack away from being the world’s largest (if single-use) urban combat force. Such an event would easily be the worst terrorist attack in history.

Militaries and software companies are currently stuck in something of a rut: billions of dollars are spent on the latest technology, including sophisticated and supposedly game-changing data gathering and analysis, and yet for most victory seems a best to be a matter of luck, and at worst perpetually elusive. As different as those “industries” are, this common failure has a common root; perhaps unsurprisingly so, given the long and complex history of cultural, financial, and technological relationships between them.

Machine learning algorithms are opaque, difficult to audit, unconstrained by ethics , and there’s always the possibility they’ll do the unthinkable when facing the unexpected. But that’s true of most our society’s code base, and, in a way, they are the most secure part of it, because we haven’t talked ourselves yet into a false sense of security about them.

Mass technological unemployment is seen by some as a looming concern, but there are signs we’re already living in an era of mass technological underemployment. It’s not just an intermediate phase: its politics are toxic, it increases inequality, and it’s very difficult to get out of.

Blockchains aren’t primarily financial tools. They are a political technology, and their natural field of application is the developing world.

I seldom know who’s paying me or what they do; only my few friends lucky enough to have jobs do. My phone will buzz, and if I bid low enough I’ll get to do things that will feel like isolated musical notes, meaningless on their own, in places that sometimes will appear later in the news in ways I won’t be able to relate to my own actions but also won’t try to.

Dusk is coming and walking at night is no longer allowed, but the children still loiter near the black windowless building that looks like a tombstone for a giant or a town. A year ago most of their parents worked there, their hands the AI-controlled manipulators of the self-managed warehouse, but since then artificial hands have become good enough, and no more than a dozen humans tarnish the algorithmic purity of the logistics hub.

His job is not to press the button. When he fails at his job, people don’t die.