“I will not live in the pod,” runs a mantra on right-wing Twitter. “I will not eat the bugs.” It’s an anathema against the various corporate and governmental forces that supposedly want us all to abandon private property, red meat and other American freedoms in favour of a more sustainable future munching millipedes and living in tiny modular habitats, all under the benevolent eye of Greta Thunberg and the World Economic Forum.

There’s one genuinely powerful force seeking a more podlike, nutshell-bounded human future. It’s the technicians of Silicon Valley, backed by billions in digital-age ambition, who’ll seemingly stop at nothing until human beings live inside their goggles.