Notes from the edge of civilization: January 12, 2025
Vegas trade show highlights our future robot overlords; the farms of the future have no farmers; children's films that erase motherhood; influencers are the new media overlords.
A warm welcome to all our new readers! We’re thrilled to have you join the chaos conversation here at Collapse Life. If you're new, here’s the deal: every Sunday, we round up the news that matters (and some that doesn't) with ‘Notes from the Edge of Civilization,’ a snarky, no-holds-barred take on the unraveling of modern life. Think of it as your antidote to corporate media drivel.
But that's not all we do! In addition to this weekly news roundup, we publish two other stories each week, diving deeper into the issues shaping our precarious future — all topics are fair game. Plus, don’t miss our weekly video interview where we talk with fascinating thinkers, disruptors, and misfits about the state of the world and what comes next.
Our goal is to cut through the noise, shine a light on the absurdity, and — when we can — have a laugh at the political shenanigans, economic tomfoolery, and societal collapse in progress. We’re here to keep you informed, entertained, and maybe just a little outraged.
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This year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2025), which recently took place in Las Vegas, wasn't just a showcase of technological innovation; it was a glimpse into a world where artificial intelligence outpaces human control. The event featured robots performing tasks from cleaning pools to crafting coffee art, and it unveiled unsettling advancements that blur the line between utility and eerie autonomy.
From an Angelina Jolie-lookalike android named Aria that LiveScience describes as “a humanlike, AI-powered android that's designed specifically to get to know you and become a companion,” to backflipping quadrupeds and AI that can outplay any chess champion, the message is clear: artificial “intelligence” is evolving faster than society can comprehend.
These machines are not just tools — they’re inevitable replacements for human labor and social interaction. Why open a club or hire staff when the robotic bartender ADAM can mix perfect drinks at home? The self-learning R2D3 can adapt to its environment, but who is going to ensure it operates ethically?
While some people may marvel at the convenience and creativity, the underlying narrative is troubling. AI-driven devices are not only advancing into every corner of daily life, they are also normalizing a dependency on machines. And as AI grows smarter and more autonomous, the question looms: Are we building tools to enhance our world — or enslave it? How long before these ‘conveniences’ are an existential threat to humanity? In the race for innovation, CES 2025 reminds us: just because we can doesn’t mean we should.
John Deere debuted new autonomous farm machines at CES 2025 — which it hailed as a game-changer for agriculture, construction, and commercial landscaping. But behind the shiny marketing, a darker picture begins to emerge.
The Autonomous 9RX tractor, designed for large-scale agriculture, lets farmers “step away from the machine,” with its 360-degree camera system handling tillage tasks. The 5ML Orchard Tractor protects crops, while battery-electric mowers and articulated dump trucks take on landscaping and quarry operations. All of these machines are managed through John Deere’s cloud-based app, where a swipe can control an entire operation.
John Deere frames the shift as a solution to labor shortages, but it’s worth asking: Why are those jobs going unfilled in the first place? Could it be stagnant wages, poor working conditions, and a steady move to consolidate agriculture in the hands of just a few corporations?
What’s more, the app’s cloud-based management means data from farms and job sites flows straight to John Deere’s servers, raising concerns about data ownership and privacy and pushing agriculture closer to a future of dystopian corporate dependence.
John Deere has almost completely retooled itself from farming implements company to data mining behemoth. It’s yet another step towards the erasure of human labor, autonomy, and community in the very industries that sustain us. Scary stuff.
Not to belabor a point, but if you missed this guest post on
last week about Hollywood’s effort to condition children to love robots more than human mothers, you should really check it out.
Forget the "fourth estate." As a new report from Pew Research Center indicates, the 2024 election proved that trust-starved Americans now prefer their news from ‘influencers’ on X, Instagram, and YouTube. Not surprisingly, young people love this approach (37% of 18-29-year-olds), while boomers barely care (7% of 65+).
About one-in-five U.S. adults (21%) say they regularly get news from news influencers on social media, according to a survey of 10,658 Americans conducted in summer 2024.
Pew defines news influencers as “individuals who regularly post about current events and civic issues on social media and have at least 100,000 followers on any of Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter) or YouTube.” They can be journalists affiliated with a news organization, or they can just be “independent content creators.”
More than three-quarters of these so-called news influencers (77%) have no past or present affiliation with a news media organization. But who needs reporting skills when you’ve got Google and Instagram?
Traditional media is dead (and that’s not a bad thing) — but we here at Collapse Life are not entirely ready to welcome in the Algorithm News Network!
I read a short story by Neal Asher where farm machinery was autonomous, later made into an animated video in the "Love Death and Robots" series. Neal has a great imagination and his SF. is in a class of it's own. But entertainment aside, we need to be careful as we drift further away from our connection to nature and our innate biology. To be healthy we have to eat well, exercise, have a community and a purpose. Most agriculture is being automated and poisons the soil and us with chemicals. It's unsustainable in the long run but smaller biodynamic farms could give us a path to a healthy future.
I'm SOOOO glad that woman-like face is a bot. Gak! I first thought it was a plastic surgeon's drunken botch job, but AI gone bad is more like it. I find it nearly revulsive. Angelina Joli looks like that? Nah…
And the only farming that inspires me has largely fired John D and barely tills, plants cover crops, and cuts their "inputs" (read: chemicals) by large percentages as they boost their bottom lines enough to inspire even the most bought-in ag fanatic who's got his head buried in spreadsheets.
Fingers (and toes) all crossed that Joel Salatin gets his foot in the new administration and talks sense into the Washington elite, whose heads are lodged in barrels of pork.