226: AI and The Future That Never Comes

Our salon on The Power of Language is this coming Wednesday, August 6th, at 12noon Almonte time, 9am Pacific and 5pm UK time. Our last salon on the nature of nature was genuinely excellent, and we’d love to have you join us and participate in this one. Email [email protected] to RSVP (or let us know via our Signal group).

They told us the future was coming.

Faster than ever. Smarter than ever.
Artificial intelligence would think for us.
Markets would stabilize us.
Carbon would be captured.
History would be optimized.

But the future never came.

Instead, the heat came.
The smoke came.
The floods came.
The fascists came.

And no one knew what to do with the time.

In the age of artificial intelligence, we are artificially intelligent.
We speak in prompts.
We think in templates.
We believe in things that never happen.

Every day, a thousand articles promise that AI is just about to change everything.
But everything already changed.
The water isn’t safe.
The air isn’t clean.
The algorithm is in charge.

They say the singularity is near.
But it already passed—
And it left most of us behind.

Meanwhile, democracy went missing.
No one reported it.
No one knew who to call.
There was still voting. There was still television. There were still rights.
But they were hollowed out, like a luxury mall with no tenants.
The security guards remained.

Fascism is no longer a rupture. It’s a rhythm.
A policy, a platform, a press release.
A reality so absurd, it must be true.

You see it in the heat.
The deregulated electricity.
The plastic-filtered air.
The booted step of police who no longer knock.

They no longer need to break the law.
They are the law.
And the law is a loop.
And the loop never ends.

Climate change didn’t arrive with alarm.
It came as weather.
Then worse weather.
Then silence.

We don’t live in denial—we live in the acceptance of helplessness.
They said there was nothing to be done.
That the markets would sort it out.
That carbon credits would save us.

But the only credits were for the rich.
The rest of us paid in heatstroke and wildfire smoke.

Time itself has been captured.

They call it now.
But it’s always the same now.
A crisis scroll. A doom loop. A reset without repair.

You check your feed.
You see the fire.
You see the flood.
You see the fascist rally.
You see the AI-generated utopia.
You scroll past all of it.

And then it’s tomorrow.
And nothing has changed.

This is the future that never comes.
Not because it’s far away,
But because it’s already here—
Broken, burning, and denied.

Every new promise is a diversion.
Every new app is a distraction.
Every new singularity is a simulacrum.

They said the future would liberate us.
But they meant for themselves.

What is fascism if not the closure of time?
The eradication of possibility.
The repetition of violence.
The normalization of emergency.

You learn to live inside it.
To plan around it.
To expect less.
To hope smaller.

They want you to believe it’s too late.

They want you to think your only choice is which timeline to suffer in.

But we are still here.
And the clock is still ticking.
And the future,
the real future,
belongs to those who refuse to wait for it.

@dogwood.bcPrime Minister Mark Carney was challenged by First Nations leaders in Ottawa this week on his government’s pipeline push, at a summit meant to allay concerns over Bill C-5. The controversial fast-track law was rammed through parliament three weeks ago without Indigenous consultation, something the PM tried to make up for with a follow-up meeting. As many chiefs inside the summit voiced their concerns about the bill, Indigenous youth from Northern Ontario protested outside. No Indigenous youth were invited to the summit. Neither were any of the hereditary chiefs from traditional governments in Gitanyow, Gitxsan or Wet’suwet’en territory, despite a Supreme Court ruling recognizing them as the proper titleholders across territories where multiple pipelines are proposed. “The Wet’suwet’en had to learn the hard way what happens when we say no. Now the Gitxsan are next,” said Gwii Lok’im Gibuu (Jesse Stoeppler) from the Gitxsan Nation in a final question to PM Carney at the end of the day, naming the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission pipeline. “And this approach is meant to stuff the pockets of U.S. billionaires on Wall Street. Is this the ‘elbows up’ approach that you have been talking about?” “With respect to this specific project, it’s not one that I’m very familiar with. I mean, I know the headlines but I don’t know the details,” responded Prime Minister Carney. Then, he joked: “We’re politicians, we’d like to be there for the ribbon cutting. But we’re going to help where there’s support. Not try to find support where there’s not.” There is certainly no consensus on PRGT, or the American-owned Ksi Lisims gas terminal. But the B.C. government is pushing hard to fast-track both. We’ll find out soon if Carney sides with his provincial counterparts – or steps back from a project that could jeopardize his already fragile relationship with First Nations across the country. #StopPRGT #BillC5 #Canada

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