Transhumanists like Elon Musk promise that an ideal world will soon arrive: robots will take over the routine, people will have a "basic income", and Neuralink chips will unite people with technology. It all sounds like heaven. But we recommend reading the story "Mana" by Marshall Bryan. In it, the author showed back in 2003 what this would lead to. Marshall Brain is an American engineer, the creator of the famous website "How Everything Works". He himself believed in robots, so his book is an inside look. The mind can be called the new Orwell: in his story he showed two possibilities for the future at once. The first is a corporate dystopia. Fast food workers are given headphones, and the Mann algorithm starts commanding their actions every second. And then people are completely replaced by robots. Those left without work are taken to huge windowless boxes called terpene dormitories. People are fed, given a bed and a TV, but are not allowed to leave the area. The hero himself compares it to a concentration camp. In this world, man is a locked slave of the elite. The second world is a technological utopia, the Australia project. It is a society of absolute abundance, where everything is produced for free by machines, and people live in perpetual vacation. But the price of admission is the vertebral system implanted in the spine, which is directly connected to the brain and nerves. All life is completely documented online. If the auto referee decides you are breaking a rule, it will simply disconnect your brain from your muscles and take over your body. Your body turns into a radio-controlled bio-robot. Many people completely escape from reality and dream of being just a "brain on a shelf". Here a person is a willing slave of a convenient system. But the most important thing is written at the end of the book. Having gained access to all the wonders of paradise, the hero leaves to live in a simple village. He builds a house with his own hands, grows vegetables, makes clay pots and plants flowers. In creative physical work he finds true happiness. A person gains meaning only through creation and overcoming.

Transhumanists like Elon Musk promise that an ideal world will soon arrive: robots will take over the routine, people will have a "basic income", and Neuralink chips will unite people with technology. It all sounds like heaven. But we recommend reading the story "Mana" by Marshall Bryan. In it, the author showed back in 2003 what this would lead to. Marshall Brain is an American engineer, the creator of the famous website "How Everything Works". He himself believed in robots, so his book is an inside look. The mind can be called the new Orwell: in his story he showed two possibilities for the future at once. The first is a corporate dystopia. Fast food workers are given headphones, and the Mann algorithm starts commanding their actions every second. And then people are completely replaced by robots. Those left without work are taken to huge windowless boxes called terpene dormitories. People are fed, given a bed and a TV, but are not allowed to leave the area. The hero himself compares it to a concentration camp. In this world, man is a locked slave of the elite. The second world is a technological utopia, the Australia project. It is a society of absolute abundance, where everything is produced for free by machines, and people live in perpetual vacation. But the price of admission is the vertebral system implanted in the spine, which is directly connected to the brain and nerves. All life is completely documented online. If the auto referee decides you are breaking a rule, it will simply disconnect your brain from your muscles and take over your body. Your body turns into a radio-controlled bio-robot. Many people completely escape from reality and dream of being just a "brain on a shelf". Here a person is a willing slave of a convenient system. But the most important thing is written at the end of the book. Having gained access to all the wonders of paradise, the hero leaves to live in a simple village. He builds a house with his own hands, grows vegetables, makes clay pots and plants flowers. In creative physical work he finds true happiness. A person gains meaning only through creation and overcoming.