Meet Dr. Popp: The Tech Guru Who's Building a World Where You Only Need Your Thumbprint to Thrive!

Today was supposed to be our Kickstarter launch day, but I've postponed it til autumn. Despite that, I wanted to share something with you today.

I was recently a guest on a podcast and I asked If I thought we lived in a technocracy. I paused, for what felt like an age, while as I considered the question. I’m not exactly sure how I answered, I’m not sure my answer was great.  

It’s messy, right? I don’t think we live in just one “ocracy” it’s more like a constant tug-of-war between different groups flexing their muscles for power. But Technocrats are certainly in the fight. Who could deny the power of Bezos, Zuckerberg or Musk. Ever tried to do basic tasks without their tools? But why would you want to? They have made the world cleaner, safer, cheaper, and oh-so-convenient. Three cheers for that, right?

You see Jazz Cow’s nemesis, Dr Popp, is the ultimate technocratic leader, he is building extraordinary technology to make the world safer and better. A truly good guy. The 1st of the 6 Comedy Lessons that Chuck Jones Learned From Tex Avery was:

You must love what you caricature. You must not mock it—unless it is ridiculously self-important.¹

I’m a big fan of this principle. While characters like Blofeld in the James Bond films, the Nazis in Indiana Jones, or even Mr. Burns in The Simpsons may not evoke much affection, Dr. Popp is a little different. Despite his ridiculous self-importance, which makes him a fitting target, he is a bad guy with something to love. He doesn’t think he’s the bad guy. He’s the paternalist who’s trying to make the world easier, more convenient, cheaper, and faster, with only your thumbprint needed, at a more affordable price, payable monthly and your PIN code will be sent to your phone via Text. Dr Popp has done the thinking for you – and his algorithms are there to deliver you exactly what you want when you want it.

Of course, Dr Popp’s not writing the code (he’s got his coder Bash808 for that), but he realises how important it is and is always two steps ahead of everyone.

Poppworld is, in many ways, a better place to live than the chaotic Bohemian Quarter, where Jazz Cow lives. Popp’s clever team know how to hook you and engage you to keep your attention away from the pains of life. So who would complain? Jazz Cow and his weirdo friends of course!

About 7 years ago a message popped up from a friend I hadn’t seen in a while telling me she was leaving Facebook, not just disabling it or deleting the app but leaving all social media for good. She was done. Just a short time before reading her message I was reading this article by Andrew Sullivan the timing was unforgettable.

Back then only a few voices were raising the alarm, now there is a much louder has started leaking into the mainstream conversation. Read more² Maybe the shining utopia wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

Imagine a modern chap in pursuit of punctuality! His fingers, nimbly scrolling to find the address of a company, feverishly scrolling past ads from rival companies to find what he is looking for. He scrolls past these digital distractions, and gloriously, he finds the website; he clicks on the address and starts to read the first line but is ambushed by the dreaded cookie notification. A dilemma presents itself: to surrender his precious data or to risk being late. Time is of the essence, so he gives in.

But lo! His trials are far from over. A formidable foe emerges – the reCAPTCHA challenge, questioning the very core of humanity itself. Except he fails. Such insult! Little does he know, the true purpose of the frustration is to train the very AI that seeks to reduce us to unwitting servants of the machine. His battery then runs out. But our intrepid hero remembers that he wrote the address in his notebook. He flips to the page and glides into the office just in time for the meeting, thanks to his trusty notebook.

It’s a trivial story, but I didn’t want to talk now about the darker side of a phone-based life.

So like Jazz Cow and his buddies from the bohemian quarter, some of us are tired of all this doom-scrolling. But do we want to give up on next-day delivery of a book, only to gather dust on the shelf for the next six months? Or have the convenience of a map on your phone which gives us our exact location, or most importantly the ability to google something to prove your point in an argument?

But how do the people of Poppworld feel about this tech takeover? Pretty good, as they keep electing Mayor Victoria Stickler who’s in Dr Popp’s pocket. She loves to project the image of clean eating, up early to jog, and competency etc. She loves the attention – and wants everything clean and tidy – and regulated. She doesn’t like jazz because it’s chaotic and will probably lead to crime, or laziness, or both.

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Remember, please back Jazz Cow on kickstarter when it comes out in autumn, and share it with those who might be interested, let’s make this a reality.

1. https://www.cartoonbrew.com/educational/6-comedy-lessons-that-chuck-jones-learned-from-tex-avery-104583.html

2. A few of the people who have raised the alarm in recent years, Technofeudalism, (Yanis Varoufakis), The Machine (Paul Kingsnoth) The dopamine cartel (Ted Gioia) The Great Rewiring of Childhood (Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff) techno-individualism (Nina Power) weapon of mass distraction (Gurdwinder) sadness of Super-connected kids (Jean Twenge) Technology seduces us, leading to treating people as objects (Sherry Turkle) generation of zombies (Camilla Cavendish) left hemisphere capture (Iain McGilchrist) rejecting a smartphone (Many people) To that the Netflix show Social Dilemma, and the documentary The Codling of the American mind documentary and now even plans to help people Fasting from tech.  These are just a few and the more you read the more the algorithm shows you.