People don't know what their tech can truly do for them, but that is relatively commonplace. In Night City, there is an obsession with cheap and underwhelming hardware. People are fixated on "prostheticizing" themselves so they can call a friend by tapping their wrist, or see a live map placed atop their newly enhanced vision. Contemporary fiction that is interested in futurity lamely misses reality in a similarly cheesy way; the Sci-Fi author most commonly depicts dystopian cybernetic people, or wild new advancements in space-craft or medicine. In truth, there has been no real advancement in medicine such as antibiotics or immunotherapy in over one-hundred years. I can't tell you why that is— I can only tell you that it's all complete shit, in an uncool non-dystopian kind of way.
Us humans haven't changed much either. We still retain our perceptive slowness that exhorts enhancement. In reality, the only thing that's changed is that plastic-surgery is supposedly much cheaper, and no one is ever simply "lost." I'm being reductive. I know. My contempt for others' misconceptualization of the current technological revolution is bred out of knowing where its true implications lie. Your average person will likely never know about the newest technology, and it's impact upon our lives. The enemy of the people is data-mining. Contemporary data-mining is mostly concerned with mining data that is largely imperceptible to even the most observant person. Biometrics can record internal body operations that may infer important (and probable) conclusions on the recorded. For example, most prosthetic implants are capable of separately functioning as indicators of health, truthfulness, and unnoticeable changes in body language. This can impact the cost of health-care, acceptance into schools both collegiate and junior, the likelihood of receiving citizenship, and so on. Pop-stars and politicians use advanced biometrics to come off as perfectly cool media monkeys on national television. Every interview or press-conference is recorded, analyzed and consequently looped back into present action. It's ironic, that even with all these new prosthetics made to enhance our perception we can only ever exist in the past-tense, always analyzing things that have just happened a split-second ago. Our eyes move faster than our brains, thus we are a culture of analytics and inspection.
I am certainly not the first person to identify this depressing turn in modern tech. I give a shit because I'm certain that if I got my hands on some top-dollar equipment I could use it for so much more than just politicking, aesthetics, or discrimination. My goal is to destabilize the anthropocentric ethos of Night City vis a vis a singular eco-strike.
Perusing collected data is like navigating amongst overgrown plants in an undisturbed jungle. You like that? I like it too. In this jungle, it is impossible to analyze anything. Each separate entity is in constant development insofar as everything is being affected by the local climate, humidity, tectonic shifting, air pressure, and so on. You can't realistically analyze such a jungle because you are a part of its structure, any recording would be displaced by it's own participation. Data-mining is ignorant to it's own participation in an ever developing structure, it too is affected by the Earth and everything the earth affects.
I have extreme contempt for data-mining, and most people. My planned strike is dependent on flipping 'it all' on its head. I would like to weaponize the data mining and biometrics these media-trained politicians so heavily rely on in order to seem cool, relatable and inhuman. My plan, though still in development is pretty simple. I want to hack into mayor Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and displace her perception .5 seconds behind realtime. Once I have done that, I will input my own data-mining algorithm. This will overlay a live feed atop her vision instead of a stupid map or the script to a boring, uninspiring speech. My data-mining live feed will record all that I feel is ignored by those who infer info from data. She will at once become aware of the constantly changing temperature, the shifting earth beneath her, the life of every living bug and animal within a quarter-mile radius, et cetera. You get the picture. It will basically be like one big acid trip. Since her perception is displaced .5 seconds behind realtime my mined data can be fed-forward into her brain, accounting for our perceptive slowness so she can see and experience a jungle of things presently. Most importantly, she will dually witness her insignificance and inseparability from this jungle. Hopefully after this encounter she will feel stupid whenever he tries to classify people or Night City in its singularity because of "data."
So that's my plan. I am aware of the brutality of such a hacking. Yet, I think it is an interesting case study. The anthropocentric nature of our worldview is a bit redundant. Personhood has proven quite polyvalent amongst a world of struggle and affectuations. I wonder if this polyvalency is intrinsic to humanity or if it speaks to the gentle and forgiving nature of the planet that hosts us.