nor are we anywhere near being able to inspect how google is doing all this.
if only there were some way to somehow be able to share that information with everybody, some technology so that we can all access such potentially useful information about how google is functioning right now
sorry about the snark, but it's a vent for accumulative frustration from seeing a worsening trend in this regard.
Kafka would recognize this trend; computing is truly becoming a "bureaucrat's best friend".
what he says, is but the way in which he conveys the meaning
the rich by this point aren't any group of people, but a section of the system.
the system is structural, not-alive. he is choosing to regard the system like rungs on a ladder. each rung is a social class.
the point I'm making is that he's describing the "ladder", referring to structural/systemic aspects of our civilization, not the "persons" standing on each rung which is the meaning you chose to focus on.
our society really is arranged in tiers or classes regardless of you accept it or not (but again, this is a way to understand it; there may be others)
in the UK the so-called "rich" (to answer your question) would be people with legal noble titles.
in Smerica this class of people is not explicit. I guess the older European system (which inspired American ones) at least is explicit about the fact that the royals and their nobles are "the rich" class. I countries with continuing monarchies, like the UK, they really have a noble title and registration. they're "better than you" by legal definition because of choices their parents and older ancestors made (or were forced to make)
nonetheless, human culture has always had the quality of somewhat existing separate from humans themselves. a big chunk of our culture now is written down.
all this written culture is now more independent than humans than ever before. but I digress. the point is that the soul may well be a cultural concept that literally means that the culture (or the humans) or their gods made themselves out of the proverbial thin air.
now there are machines than can write on their own. in a way all classical computing does is exactly that: rewrite things around according to tables (functions as mappings).
so a soul is something we chose to have, our culture has by this point accumulated possibly hundreds of different 'ways' to develop one but we're fundamentally free such that it's possible to chose not to have one i suppose.
I think that by this point, saying "cure cancer" is like saying "cured all disease", just because "cancer" are of many different kinds, some of which are pretty much cured.
nonetheless, I don't know enough about this because I am not an specialized oncologist. Which I only mention as a lead into a reflection of how in spite of all this information technology, I fear it's not getting any easier for the layman to learn more about types of cancer; the real shitty part is that it started getting MORE difficult in the least 8-10 years.. this time because of all this information technology.
funny how 'sales' people bear the brunt of educating 'laymen' (consumers/patients) about new developments