> Yet the prospect of utopia is both impossible, and also undesirable. Undesirable, because it would become boring fast. Author should read Iain M. Banks. May

> Yet the prospect of utopia is both impossible, and also undesirable. Undesirable, because it would become boring fast. Author should read Iain M. Banks. Maybe he wouldn't want to because it's easier to handle caricatures of utopia and dystopia in such a way that you could replace them with "heaven" & "hell". This is theology aimed to make Protopia look sane. (Utopia doesn't mean an absence of problems. People working together to solve problems would be an aspect of Utopia. Something worth aspiring.) I liked the idea of growing choices as an indicator however it also shows where the author likes to not look at. Going from farming to web developer is nice. The American Dream! And it happens. However the more likely path is: farmer to driver with their children having to struggle to climb the slope. This and the diminishing choices in the middle classes are what show that this is rather just another path towards dystopia. Yes "we" have progress. But there is a strong inequality within those who profit from it. The author notices that half the world can be crap and still calls the direction progress, but never asks who is holding which half, or whether that split is itself widening. So what is this Protopia the author describes here actually? Any state of the world can be called slightly better than last year if you choose the metrics after the fact. What observation would count as evidence that we are NOT in it?