Christ, if they're going to keep people socked away for that long, they at least need to make sure the world inside keeps pace with the world outside. I understand they did wrong, but it's useless and cruel of us to cripple their chances of adjusting once they finally get released.
That's why most long-term prisoners end up like the people in the comic series "Transmetropolitan" who paid to be frozen after they died and revived when the technology was advanced enough to do so. They came from our era and were suddenly thrown into a world where people can upload their consciousness into ambulatory clouds of nanites, most homes come with a machine that can create everything from clothing to hot fresh meals by manipulating raw matter and you can educate yourself by taking a pill. Most couldn't handle it and ended up in a near-catatonic state, wandering the streets and homeless.
I'm glad this guy seems to be coping better than that.
So pretty much all my prison experience comes from watching every episode of Oz way too many times, but don't prisons at least have TV time and things which provide a window to the outside world and advances in technology? I remember a culture shock of my own when I went down to Chicago back in the early-ish '00s and seeing businessmen who looked like they were talking to themselves walking down the street, which I'd later learn was something called Bluetooth. No, busy businessmen had not all lost their minds. I remember when I finally got me a smartphone some 7 years after the iPhone came out, and now that I'm talking to myself I see plenty of people looking at me like I'm crazy walking down the street.
Music that sounds like it's from an iPhone commercial, a narrative focused primarily on how "the primitive" reacts to vapid modern trends, and half the Youtube comments being some unironic variation on "WOW! INSPIRING!"
Yeah over the last 14 years or so Al Jazeera has gone from "terrorist newspaper if you read it you're one too" to something more like another Buzzfeed and HuffPo.
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