There are a lot of things I’m excited about with my new work in progress. One of them is my villain. I hate this villain so much, I can’t wait to mete out the punishment he deserves. I talk about him in a recent TikTok post.
@maswriter I have created an abominable villain for my wip. Here’s how I did it. #booktok #writingtips
The villain in my story is an example of slaying the dragon. We can use fiction to show us how we can fight villains in the real world.
My character is a tech billionaire. (I know “evil billionaire” has become a redundancy like “tuna fish” or “ATM machine.”) But I based my villain’s twisted motivations on what I’ve seen from over 40 years in tech. We were promised progress with robot servants, flying cars, and colonies on Mars. But we still have smartphones that are basically the same metal and glass slabs they were ten years ago doing the same things such as sending emails, texts, and curated vacation photos. Generative AI offers potential, if only people stopped complaining about privacy and copyright.
And that’s what frustrates tech billionaires like Peter Thiel. They complain we could have that glorious technological future if only those pesky humans didn’t get in the way.
This belief comes out in this exchange between the villain and the heroes of my story.
“Valuable employees? You are inefficient, uncooperative, easily fatigued meatsacks that must be constantly fed, sheltered, clothed, and rested. Excess biomass diverting valuable money and resources from those of us who are more worthy. You are a drain on society and a drag on building the technological utopia more intelligent people like me deserve. You have no value! You are worthless!”
This monologue would abhor anyone with a conscience. The problem is this is the corroded underside of the shiny technological utopia we dream of. If you want a future where menial jobs are done by AI-driven robots, what happens to the people who currently work those jobs? If you want ChatGPT to churn out term papers for you, how is the energy generated to run those server farms, and what about the pollution those places create? Just as the designers of suburbs like Reseda used zoning and redlining to decide who lived there, will the creators of tech utopias use them to include and exclude certain groups of people? (And since several of these technocrats are hideous racists, they can shut out whole groups of people to fend for themselves.)
It again proves that one person’s utopia is another person’s dystopia.
My story doesn’t just warn against villains, but about admiring them. We shouldn’t ignore the harm they do just because they do some good. History has frequently warned us about embracing new technology without considering the human and environmental costs. Progress must be rooted in humanity.
But a good villain needs an even better hero. I will talk about her in a future post.
