We have reached a point where radical risk represents responsibility. Several formative developments over the last forty-three years have promoted a belief in the invincibility of twisted corporate science. The choice we face is perverted robots versus human brains. The Resistance must be about more than virus scams and irresponsible medicine.

The Thatcher-Reagan years (roughly 1979 until 1990) were pivotal in predicting a future that is finally starting to look unstoppable as the first quarter of the 21st century comes to a close. They were so because during that period, for probably the first time in media-mature history, these two figures promised, respectively, to cut government down to size, and stop incontinent State spending in order to “balance the books”…and yet both wound up delivering the diametric opposite of the goal: when Thatcher left office, Whitehall was bigger, more secretive and more corporately connected than when she arrived; while Reagan…