The New Ziggurats

The New Ziggurats


The industrial era clung to the factory smokestack as a symbol of stability.

Today, that time of lifelong, mass professions has vanished forever. Instead, the

new digital society lures generations with the image of techno-geniuses wielding

trillions of dollars. But where is this massive concentration of capital leading

our civilization?


If a highly skilled IT specialist in the United States, earning an excellent

salary, decided to save one trillion dollars—paying zero taxes and spending not a

single cent on living expenses—it would take them over six million years. That is

longer than Homo sapiens have existed as a species. Conversely, that same single

trillion equals the combined capital of twenty million freelancers and solo

entrepreneurs, representing two-thirds of the entire American micro-business

sector.


Faced with this reality, human-computer conglomerates are called upon to manage

these hyper-fortunes. Yet, in a system operating at terabyte speeds, the human

naturally becomes the bottleneck, slowing the entire process down. While AI-

driven centralization offers unprecedented efficiency, it is inherently fragile.

A single hallucination by a central AI could instantly paralyze a vast ecosystem,

leaving local managers completely stripped of manual control tools.


The era of soft, old-school capitalism with its honest merchant’s word is over.

We have entered the age of corporate titans that appear eternal and unsinkable,

yet are absolutely detached from reality. This is digital totalitarianism,

mirrored perfectly by a supermarket with crashed software. Shoppers stand with

full carts, but the registers are frozen. No one can restart the system, no one

can shut it down, and the waiting time is limited only by human physiology. We

must remember that the global upheavals of the past century often began not with

high geopolitical disputes, but simply because basic groceries failed to reach

the store shelves on time.


The paradox of ultra-complex digital systems is that they do not break in the

upper echelons, but rather due to a shortage of the most basic elements—like

receipt paper or access to a power outlet. Millisecond algorithms have replaced

human trust with cold encryption protocols, entirely devoid of empathy and common

sense.


This progress resembles a train rushing forward without stops. Yet, one hopes

that humanity will ultimately maintain control over the entities it has created.

Otherwise, the net result of our era will be nothing but cyclopean data centers.

We build them in the majestic style of ancient ziggurats, as if reminding

ourselves in advance of our continuity with civilizations that left behind

nothing but beautiful, silent architectural monuments.




Published in the "Miniatures" section on Proza.ru
Original Russian Text: proza.ru/avtor/alexanderan
Author Name: Alexandr Piatkov
Publication Certificate No. 226102501371
© Alexandr Piatkov, 2026
Translated into English by AI Translation Engine (Version: Advanced Multilingual Model, 2026)