Virtuals vs Reals

An essay that has been making rounds since it was published is N.S. Lyons’ Reality Honks Back. It discusses Canadian truckers and the divide between “real” workers (which make use of real-world tools tools) and “virtual” workers (which deal primarily in information). It contains a flawed effort to link the whole divide to Gnosticism – it astonishes me that the only modern author that somehow got the Gnostics was P.K. Dick in Valis – but beyond that the whole argument is very convincing. There is a two-tier workforce that has started to develop different ways of thinking and covid cemented this divide; it has made the virtuals more isolated and more dependent on state fictions.