Ziggy Stardust and Hypernormalization in the AI Era

A few posts back , I referenced Bowie's opening track, "Five Years," from "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972)." In this song, humanity has been told Earth has 5 years left. This catastrophic message and the song's minor-key, elegiac quality lay a foundation upon which the narrator describes ice cream parlors (hedonic commitment after the weighty news) and public…