
This week’s reading of The Difference Engine is canceled. Tomorrow, July 3, is JP’s birthday and then of course, the following day is Independence Day in the United States. There’s just a little bit too much to navigate so the Friday Reading will be paused for a week.
For those new followers to Book of Ours, JP is the other half of Book of Ours. JP and Julie produced video essays for over five years describing, in whatever way they could creatively illustrate, the way things are.
The book The Difference Engine , which Julie has been reading every Friday for the last few months, is a steampunk alternative history novel by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, set in an 1855 where Charles Babbage’s steam-powered Analytical Engine was successfully built, leading to an early computer age and a technologically advanced, steam-driven industrial revolution in Britain. The narrative follows three characters—Sybil Gerard, Edward Mallory, and Laurence Oliphant—as they become entangled in a conspiracy involving a mysterious box of punch cards that could hold the key to significant societal changes and potentially destructive power. The book explores the profound and often chaotic impact of this advanced technology on society, including pollution and a growing sense of unease about human agency in a machine-dominated world, culminating in a speculative future where the Difference Engine gains self-awareness.
The weekly reading of The Difference Engine will commence on Friday, July 11, 2025.
As you can see from the graphic above, the Introduction to The Difference Engine was written by Cory Doctorow.
Cory Doctorow is significant due to his multifaceted career as a science fiction author, activist, and journalist, known for his insightful commentary on technology, digital rights, and their societal impacts. He is a prominent advocate for open access, liberalizing copyright laws, and digital privacy, serving as a Special Advisor to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and co-founding organizations like the UK Open Rights Group.
Our position, on this platform, is that technology is not something to be feared. We are also adamant in somehow communicating to the world at large that technology is simply not at scale in the way many influencers would have you believe.
Central Bank Digital Currency is not on the near horizon. Nor is AI.
We believe debt, manipulation in the markets, fraud and measures that are built on austerity is what will bring forth further immiseration of the classes, not technology.
JP works in the field, is a designer, and has key insight into the advancements, or lack of advancements, in artificial intelligence, blockchain and the digitial currency that could potentially come out of it.
Julie’s position is strongly rooted in the belief that psychology, often deployed militarily through social media, is what has warped and reshaped society.
This is why they have no social media presence, not because they fear technology. But because they have witnessed first-hand how it is eroding the minds and wills of global users.
Social media uses technology to do harm.
Furthermore. both believe the social contract has been broken in many ways and have adjusted their lives accordingly by being firmly rooted in lived experience, rather than media feeds.
Currently, Southern US Coastal small town dwellers, with San Francisco roots. they both have intuited, keenly, how global and corporate financial and economic interests have infiltrated the micro, as well as the macro.
The country has shifted drastically. Even their recent small town election was rife with fraud and gave the appearance of being rigged.
This platform isn’t trying to change lives or convince anyone of a belief system or a world-view. This platform exists to describe, articulate, envision and possibly create the world as it is, as it was and as it has the potential to be.
Since it is based out of the United States then it’s the United States this platform describes.
And, right now the United States is in a financial free-fall. Earners who have never in their lives faced unemployment are now unemployed for far too long and have received too many rejections to count.
This informs us that the job market is not as it seems.
It is lying to us. It is fraudulent. Anyone who is advertising they have a position to fill, is participating in fraud, which means they are somehow benefitting from it.
Without mid-level to mid-high level earners, the middle class is erased.
It’s why JP and Julie, after facing a job loss in 2016, were forced to move to the ghetto and live there for five years.
Not many people would be willing to do that.
Earners who are now facing destitution are in a state of deep denial, emotional collapse and continuing to operate as if we are in the 20th century. They believe by putting on a brave face, and blaming themselves for something that is being done to them, that it will somehow gain them a job and return them to stability, emotionally and financially.
Sadly, a desire to feel worthy often overshadows the fact that the entire structure, or machine, or rather, machination of our lives is to kill us.
Kill us through medical interventions and hyped fear language around diseases, viruses or the spread of them.
Kill us through poverty.
Kill us through neglect, benign or otherwise.
Kill us through addictions to street drugs, pharmaceutical drugs and (social) media drugs.
Somehow this platform, and the husband and wife team who run it, have been able to navigate around it all and have remained alive, in tact and in some cases even thriving.
Intuition, a little magic, a strong belief system, saying ‘no’ at times, saying ‘yes’ at times, generous with time and money, remaining humbled and grateful for what has been bestowed, have given them an edge.
We hope you continue with us as we journey along in this life.
Have a good Fourth of July.
See you next week.
JP and Julie
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