Growing up I was the what if kid. Any bit of information I received I automatically tried to connect it to other questions I had. Instead of just taking the information at face value, it became a sort of open ended question. “Well you said X, what if Y entered in? How does X react to A?” Etc, enough about me this is about Utopia.

We know that video killed the radio star, what if the deepfake kills all media? At this point in 2020 it is sure that deepfake technology is on the precipice of being indistinguishable from real video. Once the tech is disseminated to all and used by hackers, media, governments, corporations, banks and entertainment; It will destroy the way we currently consume information. Deepfake killed the youtube stars. How can anyone trust anything coming from media (internet, apps, phones, streaming) if it can be faked beyond detection? If said deepfakes exist swimming in a cesspool swamp along with the truth, how can the truth be observed? Some may argue we are already at this junction, with “fake news”, logic serves that it can only get worse…until it gets better?

Imagine showing up to work, a place in the future (2 years) where you actually talk face to face with people you know IRL. Your coworker shows you a video of the President making an address saying we are going to war with X. You check your feed and you rewatch the video, to your surprise he says something different than you just heard. You talk to someone else and they show something different. Everyone’s feed essentially becomes a deepfake of what they want to hear based on their preferences and search history. All political chatter on twitter and social media becomes pointless, and frankly reality….disintegrates. Sure, we will have “authorities” who say they have the real footage, but there will be multiple. Fox news and Cnn will both say their version of a video is the real one, yet both will be different.

I propose the deepfake can break the chains of the internet and technology, making the only sane option obvious to every adult. Close communities will spring up, anarchistic villages of people making decisions in person, a rejection of the digital technology that was supposed to bring us all together. Globalism will fail as people tune out and start talking to each other IRL. Even politicians, bankers, corporations will have to change to adopt to this new technology, the cogs in the wheel will disappear, trust washes away and all anyone has left are those who are around them. Recordings of any kind will be left in the cesspool to decompose, reverting us back to a more natural existence, one without an ever expanding black hole of information. A world in which we can just live.