At its core, *The Bezzle* is a novel about the #ShittyTechnologyAdoptionCurve: the idea that our worst technological schemes are sanded smooth on the bodies of prisoners, mental patients, kids and refugees before they work their way up the privilege gradient and are inflicted on all of us:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

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*The Bezzle* is a story about the #ShittyTechnologyAdoptionCurve - the way that the worst technologies we have are first rolled out on the people least able to complain about them. After these bad technologies have their sharp edges sanded down on the bodies of prisoners, refugees and kids, they move up to blue collar workers and discount store shoppers, and so on, until we're all living under their thumb.

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The company went on to defraud state and local prison systems whose contracts they were bidding on, by claiming to have never have suffered a breach.

The sleaze of the prison-tech system is the worst imaginable - which is about what you'd expect. After all, prison-tech is at the very foot of the #ShittyTechnologyAdoptionCurve:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#bossware

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And companies that make powered wheelchairs:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/08/chair-ish/#r2r

These companies start with people who have the least agency and social power and wreck their lives, then work their way up the privilege gradient, coming for everyone else. It's called the #ShittyTechnologyAdoptionCurve:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/21/great-taylors-ghost/#solidarity-or-bust

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That's true - for now (but not forever). The #ShittyTechnologyAdoptionCurve describes the process by which abusive technologies work their way up the privilege gradient. Every bad technological idea is first rolled out on poor people, refugees, prisoners, kids, mental patients and other people who can't push back.

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