As the machine builds around us, each day sprouting new fiber connected eyes and ears, all feeding the belly of some Utah data center grown fat on exabytes, it becomes harder and harder to have any privacy. This machine will inevitably ponder and compile the data it is fed, or maybe that process will be outsourced, but it won't matter to you. You will be the subject, and possibly a hunted one. Maybe you throw a red flag by yelling back at an automated response, or for not returning a shopping cart to it's corral. Either way, the machine takes notice. Nanoseconds later you are retroactively tracked via drones with infinite resolution cameras, and all of your data, connected via facial and gait recognition, is simultaneously scanned with keyword
and pattern recognition software to see if you are, or ever will be, a criminal, or at the least, economically non-viable. You get a strange text on your phone from "Restricted" informing you to stay put, that officers will be with you shortly to perform a, "wellness check." "For what?" Thinking the ambiguous text a mistake, you finish the short walk from the bullet train back to the megaplex, and almost totally forget about it. Not long afterwards the smartmeter on your microapartment confirms what the sonor-armed VIPR team already knew. You are home, in front of an open smartfridge door. The power is cut as the door crashes open, all you see are strobelights, and all you feel is your chest collapsing.
Your neighbor takes notice. You were a quiet man, but maybe a little too stubborn.
An ineffective luddite visually unhappy with the "progress" YOU failed to accept. Your neighbor takes the cue, and already unhappy with his prescribed lifestyle, decides to rebel. He is a "punk" now. He decides to succeed where you failed. He will be the one to fool them.
First he decides his rebellion will be one of action, and not of appearance. Mohawks, tattoos, piercings…you're just helping the UN real ID compliant cameras find you. He decides to become remarkably *gulp* average in appearance. The most common haircut, the least noticeable clothing, maybe in a less than fitting cut. He incrementally changes his gait and his travel patterns. He slowly puts away the tech, losing pieces here and there and simply disconnects. He moves away from the cities, and the debit cards. He understands that privacy is the only defense against the corporatocracy, and the only real currency. brouzouf and face-to-face rekindle something inside of him, something that washed away as the tech rolled in. He laughs at the tales of gutterpunks™ easily nabbed by the state. Not for "their" opinions, oh no, they were all fed to them by regularly scheduled nocturnal suggestion. He laughed at how rebellious they thought they were. Adorning themselves in all the "unique" accessories they could to "be different." They were exactly as different as CCTV needed them to be. He laughed at their ideologies, mere global serfdom sold as "rebellion" against the tyranny of the boring natural order. The really funny thing, is how the face of punk has changed. The days of drunken peacocking are over, and the days of planning and waiting for just the right moment to make an effective action are now. This sweater is my leather. These jogging shoes are my boots. This brouzouf is my crypto. The airgap of nature is my TOR. I am the cypherpunk now. My actions are my voice. My memes are the paradigm shift.