During a recent visit to San Francisco, I discovered that it takes only a small suspension of disbelief to be persuaded that the tech boom and its attendant wealth creation are equal parts curse and blessing. Nothing brings this fact home more persuasively than the growing number of homeless people in Frisco's Tenderloin district, and other parts of town.
Largely ignored or resented by the city's tax-paying residents, and lightly confined and prodded by the authorities, their hopelessness and hunger are a reminder of what happens when labour is optimised by insatiable efforts of enlightened capitalism. Efficiency, as all the AI-hijacked billboards proclaim, is a zero-sum game, which drives either conformity and profit, or redundancy and exclusion.
