The binary code at the end of the paragraph translates to “This is how the world ends!..”In OTL, the Bolsheviks experimented with the idea of God-building, and the Illuminists put the Enlightenment on such a pedestal that there is no way for them to avoid resurrecting the Cult of Reason and Cult of the Supreme Being.
Therefore, I suspect that the Illuminists might develop religious views toward the Technopole machines that support their standard of living. Suppose that as the basis for Technopoly the machine cultists borrow from Illuminist mysticism and assert that tools created by humanity contain sparks of the divinity of the human soul. They then argue that these tools are divided into two categories: implements, being tools of the hands; and philosophies, being tools of the mind. Each of these tools is divine, and is created from the Aether by the application of human will. The collective spirit of all these tools leaves an impression on the Aether. This impression can be called the Machine God. The destiny of the Machine God is that of all tools: to serve mankind. Because tabulators can unite the implement with the philosophy, hardware with software, they are the ideal devices to serve as a shell for the Machine God on Earth. The tabulators can serve as the Machine God's earthly brain, and with it the Illuminists can interface with the mind of their god and program It to better serve them. The Machine God's brain would not be a single computer, but rather an entire internet that can process information coming in from all across Russia, and the Illuminist Bloc more generally. But it is not enough for the Machine God to have an earthly brain, It must have arms in the world in order to be able to do any good for Its masters.
Because of this, the Illuminists would have a strong incentive to develop factories and distribution centers that can interface with the Technopole on the macroeconomic scale, and gradually shift toward Technopole compatible consumer products like cars and household appliances at the microeconomic scale. The Illuminists would build the Internet of Things as a way of inviting their Machine God into their homes. They might even make enormous advancements in bionics so they can begin interfacing their bodies with the Machine God on Earth to assimilate themselves into the Technopole.
If/when Eco-Illuminism catches on, the Illuminists would probably look into geoengineering, genetic engineering, animal cyborgs, and other ways of marrying Gaia to the Machine God.
Meanwhile, a mango orange elipsoid capsule lurks lodged in an old brick casemate under the Kremlin. Once it was used as a dungeon by the Romanov Tsars, now it forms one of the key processing sites of the Technopole apparatus and its one prisoner is there by choice. Inside, a warm white light illuminates concentric circles of CRT displays encased in sleek hemispheric bubbles. The screens are dark or sputter out fields of static pixels: they have not displayed coherent information in years. In the center of the room, on a white and orange tulip chair mere inches from the circle of screens sits the hunched figure of Isaac Asimov, the now eighty year old Secretary of MiNa. Asimov wears a navy blue Russian Aerospace Force tunic over fluorescent, Saturn Yellow trousers. The tunic bulges to accommodate Asimov's protruding pacemaker implant and the hoses that provide him with nourishment and remove waste products. The hoses disappear into an aperture in the floor. Asimov's lower face is furrowed and pitted with wrinkles. Everything above his mouth, which twists upward into an ecstatic grin, is covered in a hemispheric helmet in the color of the capsule that resembles a bifurcated billiards ball. A twisted braid of cables extends from the top of the helmet, and amalgamates and knots on the ceiling. Some cords hang astray from the helmet and mingle with Asimov's ferocious white sideburns.
"Total industrial production up 10% in Moscow, up 6% in Krasnodar, up 15% in Volkovgrad. Down 12% in Nytschyegrad, " Asimov rambles. "01010100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101000 01101111 01110111 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01110111 01101111 01110010 01101100 01100100 00100000 01100101 01101110 01100100 01110011 00100001..."
Actually I can see the Republican Union getting much more 80-90's cyberpunk once Oswald finally dies (he's still human after all). With his next successor stering it away from the from the cyberfunk and space focused excesses towards something more practical. Because let's face it all of Chuck's hedonistic policies would probably seriously damage the RU economy in the long run.This is just me shooting the shit but interesting thought:
The reason America stays in a hyper-70s environment is because they are wary of AI technology and the singularity*. "THE NEW BABEL IS BUILDING THE AI ANTICHRIST!"
Actually I can see the Republican Union getting much more 80-90's cyberpunk once Oswald finally dies (he's still human after all). With his next successor stering it away from the from the cyberfunk and space focused excesses towards something more practical. Because let's face it all of Chuck's hedonistic policies would probably seriously damage the RU economy in the long run.
Given that one of their enemies is the Illuminists, who are actively aiming for AI and Singularity, that actually makes a lot of sense.This is just me shooting the shit but interesting thought:
The reason America stays in a hyper-70s environment is because they are wary of AI technology and the singularity*. "THE NEW BABEL IS BUILDING THE AI ANTICHRIST!"
We've already been through this before. Reagan would most likely not exist in the Madnessverse because his OTL parents would be at the opposite ends of the social ladder.Why am I picturing a Reagan with the same OTL demeanor but also a closet sadist and cannibal ala Hannibal Lector?
“Boys, I think we need to radio this in to Space Force High Command”
It would be funny if that after the 70's the Illuminist block ends up gradually overtaking the RU led west in terms of both military and consumer electronics. With all the best TVs, computers and gaming consoles being made in glorious mother Russia, even if the place is a nightmarish deconstruction of Utopian ideologies.You know, it would be funny if the Illuminists become a brutal deconstruction/subversion/parody of utopian futures science fiction cliches:
Everyone in the future is an atheist: Illuminists persecute and kill religious people, along with destroying anything religious or traditional. Ironically, Illuminists are zealous in their atheism and with the Aether mysticism and Cult of Technology and Reason, they may be not so different from religious fanatics.
Jobs will be done by the machines: apart from the massive unemployment and other social problems, the machines will be highly inefficient and prone to bugs and glitches (think Paranoia RPG) . If that wasn't enough, machines don't really understand what humans want them to do (has anyone played the horror videogame SOMA? The "villain" is a good example of an innocent AI doing the most screwed up things to people). Of course, since machines are supposed to be more efficient and better than flawed humans, Illuminists will dismiss this problems and think it isn't nothing serious. Or worse, they will completely deny it and persecute machine critics.
At the moment these two are the cliche parodies/deconstructions/whatever I've found.
I'm not surprised, especially because Illuminism seems to idolize technology so much...It would be funny if that after the 70's the Illuminist block ends up gradually overtaking the RU led west in terms of both military and consumer electronics. With all the best TVs, computers and gaming consoles being made in glorious mother Russia, even if the place is a nightmarish deconstruction of Utopian ideologies.
We are forgetting idolizing technology is not the same as favoring advance. In WH40K the Adeptus Mechanicus, for example, forbids innovation because they think God Machine gave mankind already all knowledge and technology and it just needs to be rediscovered.I'm not surprised, especially because Illuminism seems to idolize technology so much...
Just look at the levels of environmental degradation in the former Soviet bloc, on account of (among various other interrelated reasons) an ideology that conflated 'progress' with heavy-industry output, associated environmentalism with bourgeois romanticism against the resource needs of The People, and led to a set of governments which directed scientific R&D from the top-down towards ideological ends. This isn't to say that the Soviet bloc was all smoking factories and flammable rivers (or that the US alliance web was all that much better), or that people living under communism were any less appreciative of natural beauty than those elsewhere, but simply to say that technological and economic advancement is not a one-dimensional progression to produce the same outcomes at the same times in the same places, and that associations we make with 'advanced' technologies and economic systems are only that way because of the particular historical and sociological contexts in which they arose OTL. TTL, those contexts will be totally different, and so things like environmentalism, computing, or spaceflight might carry totally different ideological associations than we are familiar with.Here, some Iluminists could reject "ecopunk" technology because they believe it's a "desviation from correct progress". But if we really want Iluminist factions to be whacky and pseudoscientific while pretending the opposite, the anti-eco could say environmental protection and appreciation for nature and eco-biotechnologies are the product of a dormant reactionary psichology because they appeal to an unconscious desire to return to a more savage and supposedly bucolic primitive age (you know, nature is cool and all that) and progress must be achieved through obsessive industrialization and "artificial" technology. Of course, the eco factions will create their own whacky explanations about how a focus on industrial and not natural tech is reactionary.