We may be witnessing the beginnings of a new class society divided into one class of those who enhance their capabilities through new technologies in bionics or informatics and control the development of technology (the ‚Enhanced’) and another class of those who are manipulated by technology and reduced to a consumer role whose labor assets are diminished by robots and AI (the ‚Diminished‘).
The Enhanced develop technology. They own the Cloud. They guide the development of algorithms. They capture the rents generated by AI and robots. They thus gain the resources to enhance themselves and ultimately achieve immortality through bionic enhancements. Of course, the enhanced are not protected from manipulation themselves. They are unlikely to become the great conspirators that run the world. They are more like the actives players in a web too complicated for any one of them too understand in full.
The Diminished loose their jobs, which are taken by robots, and their income and turn into passive consumers of YouTube and Netflix. Their economic and political choices and actions are increasingly driven or manipulated by the Cloud. They may not be unhappy at all. Their basic needs can be taken care off and mental manipulation (virtual reality) or physical manipulation (drugs) can maintain them as subjectively very happy individuals, maybe happier than the enhanced who worry about their power and the sate of the world
Is this very different from today‘s economic classes? It amplifies and cements differences and inequalities and it extends inequalities to such fundamental dimensions as the length of human life and choice of the political system. The classes could become rigid but might also remain fluid with diminished individuals able to enhance themselves and vice versa.
Who do want to be? Will you know who you are going to be? How do you prevent becoming diminished? How much YouTube consumption before you turn into a manipulated diminished individual? What kind of education system will enable the enhanced?