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Flashmag! Issue 166November 2025
Voting is an encrypted“ like” button; protest is a network performance anomaly. At the dawn of a new day, the city reveals itself as a perfectly oiled machine: steel and glass towers that swallow light, advertising screens suspended from the clouds, sentry drones gliding in formation like schools of metallic fish. The facades tell a story of success— illuminated logos of meta-corporations, public squares filled with smiling avatars— but this decor is only the superstructure of a new regime more subtle than a military empire. A few years ago, they had experimented with the leader of the most technologically advanced nation in the old world, creating a government efficiency department that was supposed to control everything and make government management more digestible. But in order to make it more digestible, they deliberately omitted to mention that the digestion would be the gluttony of personal data for their digital operating system.
By cutting government spending, they did not cut their desire for absolute control.
After this trial run, the Republic of Tech Oligarchs merged with the state: ministries and boards of directors became one chamber, where laws and algorithms were voted on in rapid succession. Public decisions are now made in glass-walled open-plan offices, where CEOs in suits and ties read forward-looking reports while ministers recite AI-generated decrees. Power no longer needs battalions; it settles into flows— flows of information, flows of money, flows of attention— and shapes behavior through interface design and the calibration of digital rewards.
The Order of Scores
On an intimate level, control is surgical. You are not arrested for chanting a slogan in a public square: you are devalued. A social score determines your access to housing, employment, healthcare, and even the stories your children read before bedtime. Schools sell“ aptitude courses” tailored to neural profiles, designed by private laboratories that optimize conformity.
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