Public Life Is Now A Subscription Service

Traveling to a foreign country is a bit like entering The Twilight Zone. Confronted by bizarre customs and unfamiliar routines, it can feel like everyone around you is acting strange, yet they treat you like the odd one out.

Such was my experience when I tried ordering breakfast during a recent trip to Malaysia. On the surface, this might seem like a trivial example of a foreign tourist not being used to a local custom, but that “trivial” experience revealed to me something extremely worrying about the direction civilization itself is headed.

In a nutshell, what should have been a simple breakfast order helped me understand with greater clarity than ever before that people the world over are collectively sleepwalking into a nightmare. In that nightmare, our ability to participate in public life—our very ability to exist in the world—is increasingly tied to subscription services, devices and technological infrastructure. When our ability to opt out of those services is finally taken away, we will be offered a chilling ultimatum: either adopt the very technology that is enslaving us . . . or die.

So, do you want to know how a breakfast ordeal in a foreign country can lead to such dramatic conclusions? Then read on!