The Committee to Nuke Elysium

In the not-too-distant future, our relations to computers/the internet have grown more intimate. Our machines respond directly to our thoughts, courtesy of implants. Now: it’s very dangerous to be driving your computerized car and have it respond like lightning to every stray death wish that flits across your mental monitor. So our mind-machine links, in this future world, are insulated and buffered in prudent ways. But: Google (or whoever) has figured out that internet searching goes much better if the machine can read you raw at every level and log all that stuff. People go along with it. Of course, privacy is assured. But: Julian Assange (Assange’s envatted brain, or whoever) stages a massive, Wikileaks-style intelligence release: Psycheleaks. Everyone get up one morning and finds, to their horror, that in the night have sprung up public ‘Psykis’, consisting of everyone’s logged-and-now-leaked thoughts – down to every last little Underground Man-style private fantasy. And the New York Times, the Guardian, and Der Spiegel got to read the dreams earlier than everyone else, etc. Everyone pretty much knew what this stuff would be like, in broad outline. But it’s still embarrassing. And now no one can live without their implants. But Assange has cult followers everywhere, fanatically devoted to transparency …

Also, Twitter has become a meditative religion; syncretic amalgam of Buddhistic and Tantric notions and practices. The goal is to achieve complete mental-spiritual self-discipline. Some practitioners strive to post only the 140 characters of God’s true name, repeatedly – a variant of Amitabha (‘The Buddha of Infinite Tweet’) Buddhism. One guy almost sets the world record but accidentally tweets ‘world record!’ instead, breaking his streak. Twitric Buddhism maintains that the universe itself is the godhead’s twitter feed. The sexual side of Twitric ritual practice requires a Microsoft Kinect. In the wake of the Psycheleaks scandal, Twitter acquires many new devotees.