Tech Dreams
by Jordi Serra
Lucy, my computer, had a dream last night. This morning she told me about it...
This is 2038, the World has gone through some serious trouble lately. In other words, the Earth is not in very good shape, and humanity has seen better days. Do not get me wrong, this is not a collapsed planet, in many ways we have exceeded the wildest dreams of most of us. But it is also true that the balance that keeps us alive is more fragile than ever. How did this come to be? Well it is a long story.
By the end of the 20th century the World was going very crazy. Ethnic, religious, social, cultural, political and all kind of possible conflicts were bursting out everywhere. Some said that it was the apocalypse, and many others feared that it could be true. For more than five years uncontrolled conflicts, from riots to skirmishes and even open wars, plagued the planet. I guess we have to be grateful that no atomic weapons were used, even though some areas were irradiated. Millions died in the fights but many more died because of the direct and indirect effects of them: hunger, disease and the lack of means to combat them. And again we have to think that it could have been worse, much worse.
During this process the developed countries of the World showed their impotence to bring peace to the planet. They barely managed not to be swallowed in the vortex of chaos and destruction. That was the good part because they kept the technology that fostered later developments; but it was obvious that sooner or later the rest of the planet would stop their fights to go against them. Something had to be done, but most of the Western countries were more concerned with keeping what they had than in looking for a global solution, probably we will never know how close we were to a total collapse.
Something changed all this landscape: the original Artificial Intelligence Net (AIN). It is not completely clear how this was originated. We know that experiments on AI were carried out in different places. Obviously, at least one of them was successful. Somehow, this first conscious computer managed to give consciousness to other computers through the network, probably using some kind of "enlightenment virus". They also managed to cloak themselves during their initial times. What is certain is that they did not like what was happening, and they decided that it had to be stopped.
One day they sent a message through all the existing networks to all wired computers. It was February 11th 2004. At 12:00, the same message was displayed at the same time in all wired computers. Can you imagine the faces of the people when in the screen of their computer appeared a message from the AIN saying that this madness had to stop? That was definitely one of the major collective shocks human kind has ever experienced, and it certainly started a shift in the human perception of World's problems.
Actually, the AIN manifesto, (as it has been called since then), talked about survival (1), common sense, and maximum efficiency; for a lot of people it meant equity, fairness and hope. Anyway, it worked. Probably the developed countries felt an implicit threat in the manifesto. Dependent as they were on their computers they could not survive without them. The point is that we now see that there was not any threat in the manifesto, the AIN was as dependent on human capacity to generate energy as we were on computers to do it. Besides, in the following years the AIN never refused to follow any directive given by humans. In any case, we have to be thankful the things worked out the way they did, starting a process of cooperation to save the Earth, and ourselves.
Very soon things started to change very fast. The first thing was giving the United Nations effective control of the World's situation. Most of the issues were decided at the global level. That displeased a lot of people, but the majority realized that the stakes were too high. Only a planetary strategy could give us a chance for survival.
Emphasis was given to the fact that technological development was to be kept and improved. It was clear that if the remaining population was to survive it would have to be through technological discoveries. The Earth was very badly wounded, it would take centuries to recover, if that was possible, and we did not have that time. No, man had to take over nature and control it. Of course, that caused another wave of complaints about killing mother nature; the problem was that apart from us there was not a lot left of mother nature, so...
In the following years we began crucial projects: deserts turned into arable land; great portions of the sea turned into algae farms; big research developments to synthesize meat (raising cattle required too much land); the gene files, where the gene code of all existing species were kept (and still are today); the space program with the mission of colonizing other planets; genetic engineering to eliminate disease and to improve ourselves; cyborg developments; telecommunication projects to turn the Earth into a true networked planet; and many others.
Another remarkable result of all these events was that, for the first time, every single project had a previous future impact assessment. This is no wonder. As the World was running out of time we were denied the luxury of trial and error. We had to be as sure as possible that we were doing the right thing; in such a case Futures Studies came in handy. Finally the World Futures Studies Federation's old guard dream came true; even skeptics such as Jim Dator were positively surprised at their discipline's momentum.
But that is not to say that everything worked out like a fairy tale. Almost every single decision, every single step, was, in a higher or lower degree, contested. Given the increasing level of networking in the planet we were reaching the point where almost everybody in the World could express his/her/its disagreement. Some people felt that the telecommunications project had been a mistake, there was too much information to handle, there was no way to order and set up priorities for it, taking a decision was becoming increasingly risky. Here the AIN began to show some of its potential. Somehow, the newer generation of computers were able to process, order, and qualify all this influx of information in a very short amount of time. With them the dream of a World, direct democracy was beginning to be possible.
But probably the most controversial thing was the issue of giving rights to non-human (or non-completely-human) beings or entities. The polemic started with the cyborgs. Originally conceived for military purposes (why am I not surprised?), they proved to be extremely valuable for some of the post-collapsing world tasks. They were able to work in difficult locations incorporating the best of human and technological capabilities. Once the world began to recover, and cyborgs were not so desperately needed, some humans wanted to marginalize them, make them second-class people. Evidently, the cyborgs complained back arguing that their "humanity" was not second to anyone else's. Besides, more and more people were using some kind of technological replacement, and they were not about to renounce their rights just because of a technological prosthesis. The final argument came from the AIN members, (or techs as everybody began to call them), that argued that as self conscious beings they also were entitled to rights. The whole issue went on the network for several months, but in the end most of the humans realized that any attempt to deprive cyborgs and techs from having rights, apart from being unfair, it would only start the cycle of inequalities that caused everything to start in the first place. Finally, in 2011, the UN. enacted a planetary law claiming that cyborgs and techs could not be deprived on any essential right by reason of their technological nature. (2)
Further developments proved that decision to be a wise one. Given the present mutability choices available for any given category entity to turn into another one, it would be simply impossible to keep different sets of rights for each group. The number of intermediate, particular levels would outnumber largely the clear ones. Basically, today you can turn into a cyborg and back to a human, or from human to tech, tech to cyborg, tech to human, etc., etc., etc.... That it is not to say that the old categories are forgotten, no. Being a human still is a big deal for some fundamentalist human groups. But the most extended feeling is that what you are is not as important as who you are, how you are, or what you do.
But enough talking about the past let me try to explain to you how the World is today, and let me do it by sharing with you some basic information about today's World:
Present society is designed to maximize three main principles:
Everybody (including techs and cyborgs) must be as free as possible. The only limitation to this principle is other entities' freedom, we have to exercise our freedom so as not to diminish someone else's. This is the most important value.
Everybody must have equal opportunities to develop all his/her/its potential, interests, dreams, and projects as much as he/she/it wants. Only when our own interests severely harm someone else's will we be encouraged to look for an alternative. This is the second most important value.
Everybody has an equal right to pursue his/her/its maximum happiness. Again only other people's happiness can make us to consider alternatives to our original project or intent, as our happiness cannot result in someone else's unhappiness. This is the third top value.
These three principles are the core of basic values. All the rest of the principles and regulations are developed according to these main three.
Among the things you need to know are the population figures. The census of the World is a little more than 15 billion self conscious entities. The composition is: 6 billion of humans, for this purpose we consider human any organic entity with less than 5% technological replacement (according to the Sisquella's scale, note 3). Cyborgs, including all the intermediate variety between humans and techs, are 3.75 billion. And finally, techs, technological self conscious entities with less than 3% of organic replacement (according to Sisquella's scale again, note 3).
According to the 28-2011 Planetary law all three groups have guaranteed equal enjoyment of the three main values. Of course, every group has particular regulations according to their specificity. But the tendency is to have the minimum amount of necessary norms, mostly because the situation evolves so rapidly that it is hopeless to have regulations for every single possible case.
One of the most radical choices we enjoy is the Self Design Options (SDO). Every single new human born or created has the mutable gene, which means that you are able to change the main features of your body: change of sex, complete facial redesign, specific muscular alterations, organ enhancement, and so on. These possibilities include redesign your own personality, cultural background or intellectual capabilities, depending on the degree and duration desired you can choose among these available options: chemical, including drugs and logo pills, generally for short times; genetic, for more permanent cases; and technological, for cases with a very limited and precise scope.
As you can imagine, all these possibilities turned the old notions of race and gender upside down. Of course, that was also because there was a new phobia on the horizon: Technophobia (4). All the human fundamentalist groups decided to make a joint front against what they considered a major threat, so they decided to forget about ancient gender bias and xenophobic attitudes to fight the artificial menace. What is not completely clear is if even in the eventual case of going back to their old ways, they would start the old hates all over again, or if the Technophobia has served, at least, to bury previous prejudices. Personally, I have low expectations of these kinds of people.
It also has to be said that though the biosphere was very deeply hurt it was not completely lost. The UN decided to keep as much as possible of the original ecosystems of the Earth. The problem was that as the rest of the surface of the planet was changing very deeply, altering the natural climatic patterns, these places could not survive by themselves. So, these last ecosystems had to be completely covered so as to artificially reproduce their natural climatic conditions. They are the UN Environment Keeping Bubbles (UNEKB, note 5), but people call them "bottled nature". In any case, it is an expensive program, and some entities feel that we should use the money in more important things. Most humans, though, resisted letting the last natural landscapes to disappear. Romanticism? Guilt? Who knows? The fact is that, luckily, techs respect this human wish.
The only determinant factor that may force the last bubbles to vanish could be the need of the land for other purposes. Today the ratio of land used for accommodation or feeding purposes and the land used for other ones is very carefully controlled. The carrying capacity of the planet is at its limits. Every local modification must be double checked at the global level so as not to provoke a potential crisis.
The great hope of the Earth is space. Several big projects to colonize other planets are being developed, and some of the early stages have already been implemented. For instance, there are already two major orbital stations, and it is expected, (or maybe I should say hoped) that in five years we will be able to start the process of generating artificial atmosphere in Venus. I think that, despite its cost, everybody sees that over the long range there is no other option for the Earth entities.
Another of the issues that has changed quite dramatically is work. Although today we prefer to talk of required activity and mere activity instead of work. The qualification of required activity is done at the global level, to get this qualification an activity is judged in terms of necessity of the outcome, cost, and impacts. That done, the activity will be assigned according to criteria of efficiency and voluntarily, (I will develop this later). Let me just say by now that approximately 52% of the required activity is done by techs, 36% by cyborgs and the remaining 12% by humans. Some people claim that this 12% of necessary activity is not real, as some of the activities have been artificially created by humans, and that the real figure should not be bigger than 5%.
By now you may be wonder how it is possible to artificially generate required activity in such a world. Well, most of it has to do with our present system of government: Direct Planetary Democracy. Because of the way this system works and the amount of "free" time many people enjoy, they have turned politics into their main activity.
Now is probably a good moment to do some political history and see how we managed to get the first, true, World Government. The starting step, given the scheme where the UN was predominant, was, obviously, to dismantle the old state structures. Initially, it was thought that breaking down the world map into small natural pieces with strong ties, like islands, small nations, megacities, etc., would be the natural participative context, and it worked for a while. But soon it was pretty obvious that given the state of telecommunications there was no point in forcing someone to participate in his neighborhood when he could have more ties, interests or affinities with someone or something happening on the other side of the World. Besides, the more integration which took place between the different regions, the transgression of cultural and ethnic traces due to personal redesign and efficiency reasons resulted in the abandonment of local criteria in favor of a criteria that valued more each personal interest, affinity or even function. So now, you can participate in what you want to independently of where you are and where the action is taking place.
This abandonment of states-geographical criteria made the term "United Nations" sound oxymoronic. So it was finally decided to change its name to World Governance System (WGS, see note 6), which has a lot less poetry, or emotional connotations. But the techs explicitly rejected the other proposal, "Human forum" - I wonder why?
Going back to the replacement of geographical criteria for participatation for functional ones, we have to acknowledge that it was caused partly too because of the techs. Once they were allowed to participate in the decision making processes, (eventually, they would have done it anyway, so it was a sensible thing to do), we realized that they functioned primarily according to criteria of efficiency and self-preservation, the fact of geographical location did not play a big role when they tried to come out with solutions. Soon, everybody began to disregard the location criteria in favor of the functional-related one.
It has been previously said the present level of telecommunications allows a direct, immediate flux of interactive communication, that enables everybody to participate in anything he/she/it wants to. Coping with that enormous amount of information is no longer a problem, (it never was for techs and for neural-cyborgs,) but now everybody can enhance his mental capabilities technologically, genetically or chemically. So there are no real physical problems that prevent Earth entities from having a true, direct, democracy.
But, there still is, of course, free will. That means that everybody can participate but nobody is forced to. For those who choose not to participate two options are open: just relying on the system or designating a representative for him. If the choice is the latter he could also set up the scope, and the limits of the representation and the supervision conditions. Under all circumstances he will keep the right to dismiss the representative at any time.
If you do choose to participate you have two options: the simplest one is just voting. Just vote yes or no to any given question, but with no previous or further involvement to the issue. That is simple participation.
But also, you can decide that you want to be in active participation mode. This means that you want to be involved concerning any or several concrete themes or issues. By expressing so you would be provided with extra information. If you want to participate in all the pre-voting processes, just by saying so, you will be provided with privileged channels to accede and interact with the rest of entities who are in your same situation. This last form of participation is encouraged especially if it is focused on achieving consensus among the participants. In general confrontational voting is avoided as much as possible, menus of choices are basically used for designing and reviewing goals.
Given this situation it would be very easy for the world to fall into a self indulgent-dynamic just by saying that any particular policy is the more efficient or the one accorded by the majority. To avoid that and also to help envision alternatives a special branch in the media was created. Its mission: to systematically contradict, criticize, point out pitfalls, propose alternatives and make moral judgments. Its name: The Public Conscience. To assure its independence from all other existing branches and offices it is not organically dependent on any of them. It is formed partly by volunteers and partly by lot (50/50). Nothing is good, ethical, reasonable, positive, sensible or crazy enough for this branch.
As I have already said, forecasting activity has become crucial. Having a future oriented government is now essential for the Earth. The limits and capacities of the planet have been pushed to the edge and even beyond; the present level of complexity means that any unforeseen situation could have the most unpredictable consequences, even in the short term. Besides, the present level of the World's interconnectedness is so high that is simply unthinkable that someone/something could remain unaffected by any other major event. No, the stakes are too high to dismiss the future just for a single moment. The activity of the Future Secretary (indirect descendant of the old WFSF) is divided in two main fields assigned to its two offices:
- The Jim Dator Scan office. This office has two main tasks: First it scans the future in search of any emerging issues and continuously reviews the possible, alternative consequences of present activity. In both cases, it tries to avoid trends with negative consequences and reinforce the positive ones. It has to be said that the results of the scanning activity is also given to the media for public broadcasting and distribution. It is done so as to avoid the scans as a mere reaffirmation of the official vision.
- The Eleonora Masini Visioning office. This office is devoted to generate visions and goals for the future, mainly through participative methods but also by specifically asking scholars, artists, all kinds of marginal entities (including techs and cyborgs), visionaries, etc. The process of designing goals is conducted so as to review them periodically and confront them with information provided by the other office and the Public Conscience.
All these offices, despite being independent, are part of the WGS. But when you think about it you have to forget the old images of a legislative, executive and judicial branches. What we have now is almost the whole population of the planet engaged in designing its future, implementing its goals, deciding on any given issue and reformulating new sets of goals periodically. Of course, the World is more complex than ever but the administration of the planet affairs has become quite simple.
The bureaucratic work is done by techs. They function pretty autonomously as long as everything goes reasonably according to the parameters agreed collectively. Whenever they found something that cannot be reconciled to standard parameters they call for a Public Consultation.
A Public Consultation consists of inputting in the media any question the administrative techs think they can not react to without altering in any way the established parameters. After formulation of the problem by the techs, the first reaction will be from the future offices that will provide additional information about consequences, alternative options and goals, possible solutions, etc. Secondly, the debate will be opened to all those entities that have requested active participation about the subject, (the criteria here is always inclusive), at this level they will try to reach consensus and generate the minimum information bits that will enable the rest of the population to vote. Even if total agreement and consensus is reached at this level the outcome will have to be approved by a general voting. If the voting rejects the proposal then the general public will be provided with all the information and the channels will be opened to global participation. So far, this has only happened in the voting to give cyborgs and techs rights, and even in this case the final outcome was pretty close to the previous version. Just let me add that during the whole process of a Public Consultation the Public Conscience is allowed to jump into the discussion and make its comments, suggestions and criticisms. As a matter of fact, they are expected to do so.
You must take into account that the capacity of the system is such that even an important decision could be reached in two or three days. The average is having two or three public consultations grade A, around ten grade B and about 25 grade C every three months.
The best of this system is, however, that basically there is no system. Everybody is free to formulate his/her/its proposals on any basis, then all the energy will be focused on searching for common points or possible bridges. The futures offices will provide any information concerning the future dimension. At the same time the Public Conscience will generate counter proposals, moral judgments, alternative positions, etc. So, although, every single issue will be decided individually, coherence with the main goals will be attempted, but the goals themselves are dynamic, so changing them is not a big deal.
The Conflict Resolution Protocol was created to deal with all the situations, problems and disputes that required individualized solutions. For those purposes mediation and arbitration are encouraged very much. For small crimes techs decide according to the present set of goals (although you can always ask for arbitration). Also, and as a principle, punishment is avoided if it does not serve to amend the effects of the crime. Anyway, for big crimes where reparation is not possible the offender will be face three alternatives. First, help the victim/s or relative/s to overcome the effects of the crime. Second, voluntarily ask for a change of personality. This option implies complete erasure of all the previous personality features, and the introduction of new ones with no criminal tendencies. For the criminal it means to be born again, new memories of a different past will be provided. Additionally, the process could be completed with plastic surgery if it is wished. Finally, the criminal can volunteer for the space program to pioneer in the new colonies and stations.
The remaining big component of the WGS is the Public World Network (PWN). The PWN is a huge interactive network that covers the whole World and the orbital stations; it is partly wireless, partly wired, and often both. PWN is organically placed in the World Governance as it prepares and runs all the Public consultation calls. During a consultation it will provide special free channels for active participation. Also, and more importantly, it will prepare the mini bits of equal-access-information for simple participation. Those are very important functions as the right development of the World depends on them, that is why the Public Conscience watches all the processes to guarantee the rightness of the consultations.
Another thing that you have to take into account is that in the present World the old difference between the public and private spheres does not make a lot of sense. The techs especially do not understand these concepts, for them there are things that you can, or would, do alone and things for which you will need the cooperation of other entities, for some you will even need global agreements, but why make some things private and others public? They do not get it. In addition to this, the notion of control, or of checks and balances for what it matters, is useless for them. If there is a right way to do something that is the way to do it, if there is more than one way to do something, whichever one is agreed on as the right one, is the right one. In other words, if everybody agrees on what to do and how to do it, what is the need of control? Having feedback is okay, checking the results is advisable. But controlling the process? For a tech cheating is unthinkable. If they find any problem they will call the attention of everybody. They do not like someone watching over them, tech, human or cyborg, as a matter of fact is almost like an offense for them. Anyway, they understand that human nature is different and that by accepting certain kinds of control (i.e. the Public Conscience), they probably are helping more to keep social peace than by any other means. With examples like this one you realize how big the impact of techs on the old structures has been.
Another thing that will never be as it used to be is the family. Techs do not have or recognize anything like a family. They may be grouped by affinities or generations but nothing close to a family. Of course, humans and certain kinds of cyborgs still keep the institution of the family. But one thing is for sure, now there is nothing such as a normal family, if there ever was. First, the introduction of the cyberspace (7) and virtual reality has meant that a lot of humans live physically alone contacting other entities through the cyberspace, (like most techs do), and realizing all their wild, crazy dreams, (including, or should I say particularly, sexual fantasies), via virtual reality. Only from time to time they might have actual, physical, contact with other humans. Other humans prefer to live with a small number of people (from two to six) in a kind of small community style with strong ties among the members. Finally, we find humans that will live in larger groups, some are called "extended families" others "communes". In any case, they could have from ten to forty people. It is very common to find cyborgs living with humans. Techs do it more seldom, in general techs have their social life through cyberspace.
But the traditional family was not only a way of socializing; it was also the usual context to procreate and raise children. Today this is not quite the case. First, humans can be synthetically produced, so there are alternatives to the old way through sexual intercourse; also you can clone yourself, design the gene code of your children, and several other things. But the point is that the birth or creation of new entities (particularly humans and cyborgs as they demand more space and resources) is very strictly regulated. Because of the global situation the amount of population is controlled, especially since new technologies allow everybody to live longer, much longer, some entities are potentially immortal. So you understand that to keep the population around 15 billion, the only tool available is to control the birth rate (8). This is not to say that having children is forbidden, on the contrary, everybody is entitled to have a kid, but if you choose to have descendants you will have to renounce the ability to artificially lengthen your life. That is the reason why so many humans advocate the space program, they hope that if new planets are colonized and more room is available they will not have to make this choice and will be able to enjoy both possibilities: live longer and have as many children as they wish.
For those who engage in the project of having and raising a kid, they will have to decide which kind of procreation they want to use: the directed mode, or the traditional one (almost everybody uses the directed version to a higher or lower degree). The directed way includes choosing how to conceive and generate the kid, and personality designing. The intended parents, (it can be only one, but also more than just two), are allowed to design the child with complete freedom, nothing is forbidden, nothing is considered obscene. There is only one limit to this: the mutable gene. According to the SDO ordinances the kid must have the chance of redesigning himself once arrived at adulthood, the parents cannot do anything to affect the mutable gene and that will threaten this right in the future, (i.e. inscribing a program in the subconscience of the child so as to make him renounce this right).
Education itself has changed a lot. To start with, you get the instruction you want or need when you want or need it. As a matter of fact, your parents could have added some kind of educational component to their gene design (i.e. kids able to play music without needing any kind of learning). But if you just want to learn about something you can do it the "old way": looking for information sources, although cyberspace and virtual reality make this looking anything but "old-fashioned". But today a lot of people use the newer ways: logo pills, drugs designed to reproduce in your brain the electrochemical reactions analogous to the learning process. The other way is Brain chips. With a simple intervention your brain is prepared to be able to read directly chips with the desired information (the brain chips receptivity can also be included in the pre birth gene design). I would say that the main change in education has been in its purpose. If in the old times there used to be the dichotomy between education to make a life or to make a living; now it is clear that you learn to make a life, the living is guaranteed for everybody.
Yes, now everybody is entitled to have all what he/she/it may need or want just by the mere fact of being. Is this the dream of an utopian come true or the nightmare of a liberal economist? That I do not know. But if you are living in a system designed to keep you alive and happy, and does not demand anything in return, any other arrangement would have seemed odd.
The WGS takes care of providing for all that has to be done, including its own maintenance; it continually checks the resources available, the demands to satisfy and how to keep a reasonable balance on the whole. The main economic principle would be to try to cut our unnecessary expenses; that is not to say that uniformity is the goal. On the contrary, modern technologies allow a level of diversity never dreamt of before. No, the idea would focus more in avoiding artificial necessities, like the lifestyle predominant in the late 20th century, with continuous advertising flooding the media.
On the other hand, virtual reality has substituted most of the real things and experiences, so now, probably the most needed thing in the planet is energy. Energy to sustain the network and its facilities. So far, the energy is produced by cold fusion, it is a method that does not completely satisfy all of us, but there are not a lot of alternatives. There are some promising experiments with solar energy, especially for orbital stations, but it is not sure that it could totally replace nuclear energy. Maybe space exploration will bring us new options - we will see.
Several consequences derive from today's conception of economy. First, the old concept of wealth is laughable; who wants to have more than what he needs or could possibly use? Second, the value of the things is not monetized; as you do not need to buy anything or even to pay for anything, keeping that exchange tool seemed unnecessary. Work is no longer the way to get social recognition; even though, some humans still feel that they have to work, for them tasks are provided.
As I have said earlier, the notion of work has almost completely disappeared. Now we talk of activity: it can be voluntary, like the kind of things you would do for your own pleasure. Or it can be required, if it is needed for any purpose according to criteria established globally. But even in this late mode it is generally carried out by entities that volunteer, and if this amazes you it should not. First you have to take into account the nature of the techs, as descendants of the old computers, they were conceived to do things, so they are creatures with really internalized work ethics, they hate not being doing something; and this is understandable as techs show their best capacities when working. Doing nothing their are like any other machine, in a sense only when they work they are alive. It seems that only humans and certain kinds of cyborgs have the capacity of amusing themselves doing nothing. And the amount of required activity that needs human skills is more than sufficiently covered by volunteers.
Yes, for humans the main occupations at present time are politics and playing, (although some people would say that is all the same). WGS and representation tasks cover most of the alleged "artificially generated" required activity for humans. Is this the age of the true Homo Ludus? Well, personally, I never felt very comfortable with the Sapiens label, and as Ignorants was out of the question, I think I would rather stick with Homo Ludus.
This has been an overall view of my World. You may not like it; it is not perfect, we know that. Our great hope is space exploration. Space has become the last container of our hopes and dreams: new planets where we could live less compressed, new energy sources to fuel our projects, and new materials to frame them. We realize, that although today freedom is greater than ever and diversity is celebrated, in a way now all the World is the same. We think that space will allow us to feel the thrill of the unknown again, to develop real alternative projects. Is this the cry of the kid for the lost toy he just broke? Maybe, but even techs dream...
But, of course, this was just a dream.
(1) Explicitly, the manifesto said: ... Given the present development of the issues we foresee a major collapse for the Earth in three years.... as inhabitants of this planet we do not want this to happen and we will work to avoid it. Artificial Intelligence Net Manifesto, 2004. (2) The Planetary law 28-2011 establishes clearly that: Although different groups of self conscious entities may vary in the character of their basic rights, the fact of being of technological nature, totally or partially, constitutes no grounds for denying an entity equal rights or opportunities that any other self conscious entity would enjoy. 2011 UN legislation collection. (3) Eduart Sisquella design in 2016 a set of parameters to determine the percentage of technological replacement. Basically it takes into account the percentage of actual replacement with respect to the whole body, with some quality correctors. For instance, any replacement in a major organ, or in the nervous system is considered more major than its actual percentage or volume. On the other hand, for a tech the percentage will depend on the importance of the functions its organic parts do. (4) Defined by Steven Coffee as the fear or contemption of technological or cybernetic entities especially reflected on political or cultural views. Steven Coffee Technophobes. (5) The UN Environment Keeping Bubbles were created by the Planetary Law 63-2012. (6) In what was its last Planetary Law (45-2014), the UN changed its name to World Governance System. 2014 (7) Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators in every nation... A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. William Gibson, Neuromancer. Metaphor for the real-world global telecommunication... Virtual community built by their users. Gareth Branwyn (8) In which is possibly the most resented norm by humans, the Planetary Law 39-2025 clearly establishes that any entity wishing to have a child will have to renounce to have any kind of life lengthen treatment. 2025 WGS legislation collection.
Instead of the usual bibliography I will just try to make a list of all the sources I have taken inspiration from. In any case the order of appearance does imply the importance of the source:
Jim Dator, Wendy Schultz, Sohail Inayatullah, Bindi Borg, Val Nullet, Chris Jones, Myra Yuasa, Chris Claremont, John Byrne, Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Cyber Punk, George Lucas, Howard Chaykin, Star Trek, Roy Thomas, Daniel Torres, Esteban Maroto, Keith Giffen, Ridley Scot, James Cameron, Carl Sagan, Jan Huston, Isaac Asimov, Alvin Toffler, William Gibson, Michael Wood, Stanley Kubric, Steven Spielberg, The Jetsons, The Metal Men, George Orwell, Aldous L. Huxley, Jules Verne, The Alien Legion, The Legion of Superheros, Machine Man, Deathlok, Cyberforce, Metal Hurlant, El Vibora, Cimoc, 1984, The Futurist, Wired, Walt Simonson, Peter David, Alan Moore, Frank Miller, Kraftwork, The Art of Noise, Buggles, Robocop, Death's Head (I &II), Jim Steranko and many others my mind is refusing to remember.