My Past Through Tomorrow #5–September 11, 2027
News, as downloaded directly into memory by iJack:
New York, NY–(Urbanagora.com editorial staff) In a small ceremony, attended for the most part by city officials and the children of those killed in the attack, New York Mayor Joan Chang laid a wreath at the Twin Towers Memorial. Looking back from a generation after the events of that day, it becomes clear that this attack on the former United States began the chain of events that led to that country splitting up into a group of smaller nations. The combination of imperialistic hubris pointed in the wrong direction and unnecessary and intrusive attempts to remove the rights of citizenry led to the end of this formerly great nation, only 36 years after its chief rival dissolved in a thundering crash which would cause Fukuyama to declare “the end of history.” In its own way, however, the attack set the stage for the first portion of the 21st Century, since it demonstrated that a group of less than 20 individuals, with fifty dollars worth of simple tools and the understanding of the dynamics of human systems could achieve a result far out of proportion to their apparent power. Costing billions of dollars as well as inciting two wars, their deaths truly opened a new era on the world stage. Since that September morning, the world has lost Tel Aviv, Melbourne and the entire nation of Tibet. Whether the human race itself will survive has yet to be determined.
Moonbase Alpha, Luna–(XCorporation press release) XCorp astronauts have landed on and captured Comet C/2026 Denofrio-Takahashi. This source of water and other necessary consumable materials will be placed in Lunar orbit late next year and used to supply XCorp’s Moonbase Alpha, as well as the American and Chinese Lunar settlements. CEO Peter Diamantis (who was on hand to greet American astronauts three years ago when they finally returned to the Moon) said that XCorp plans to sell the shell of the comet to NASA to be used as shielding for their Mars exploration mission.
San Francisco, CA–(CatFancy.com) Familiars, Incorporated has finally released details of the rollout of their first chip-enhanced kitten, the Mitzi. This fusion of animal and cybernetics should retain the instincts of its feline ancestors, breed true and be as intelligent as a five-year-old child, with a vocabulary of up to 500 English words. The premiere, originally intended for 2025, was delayed when it was found that the implanted chip was causing tumors in early models. Their public-relations Aye stated that this problem has been overcome and that while the fertile females will be expensive for now, sterile females and males will be available for as low as $5000. The line should hit the GenCom stores by next Spring–right in time for Easter baskets.
Salt Lake City, UT–(YorkNews.com) Relatives of millionaire recluse Sandy Gomez have been granted a temporary restraining order preventing him from downloading his personality permanently into his World of Starcraft avatar, Bruce Hotbeam. Since the Utah Supreme Court has yet to decide whether or not the shell of a download is alive or dead, the Gomez estate would be left in a state of flux as far as the heirs are concerned. Mr. Gomez has vowed to carry on his fight, saying “nothing can keep me from the opportunity of eternal life.”
Urbana, IL–(DailyIllini.com) The University of Illinois Board of Trustees has announced that the graduating class of 2028 will be the last with a physical campus. They cited the impossibility of maintaining even the small number of labs and offices with the $2000/year tuition that, even at that low level, students are unwilling to pay for information being taught in PhysSpace. Instruction will, of course, still be available on-line, with guided tutors aiding in hyperlinking to design individual curricula for each student. U.S. Representative William J. Mills was quoted in Washington as saying, “This is a sad day for those of us who fondly remember the professors and wonderful campus life that this great institution provided. It will be missed.”
Washington, DC–(CNN.com) North and South California, Oregon and Washington have brought the number of seceding states to seven. President Paul warmly welcomed “our new, independent brothers and sisters” and pledged to work with them to create trade and defense treaties which will best serve the interests of all the people of this continent. While the exact details of the newly-established governments have not yet been revealed, it is expected that they will reflect the mores of the characteristic societies of each area.
Tokyo, Japan–(Griffendorf.net) Kimiko Oka, spiritual leader of the world-wide Church of the Great Programmer announced that the project to attract the attention of the Being that created “this larger virtual reality that we call PhysSpace” is nearing completion. The project, which used 750 terabytes of processing power to create a specific type of fractal has taken five years and employed 25,000 people. When asked what she will do when the church succeeded, she replied that, “the cheat codes for this simulation may be complex, but having them should insure that the members of our church level up more quickly than those who are unbelievers.”
Toronto, CA–(CBCnews.com) Gay rights activists protested today at the stockholders’ annual meeting of GenDairyProducts.com. Members were shocked last month to find that GDP’s Protex brand milk-with-supplements meant for pregnant mothers included homosexuality as one of the birth defects repaired by its nanocells. CEO Raymond Galtier pointed out that “no one is forcing any mother who does not wish to drink our product to do so.” Experts say that this could result in a drastic decrease in the number of homosexual men within the next two decades.
–Tom (chronage 75, bioage 45)
Comment by Augur on 11 September 2007 at 7:34 am:
One of these days, I’m starting to worry that at the end it will say:
– Tom (Dead)
Hopefully future tech will work that out.
Comment by JayBandit on 11 September 2007 at 7:43 am:
how dare you post within 24 hours of my great post “I’m Big in Japan”!
It is sacrilege!
Haha, jk bub
Comment by tet on 11 September 2007 at 7:46 am:
One more coming, Augur. Once I get the next segment finished tonight, I’m going to decide whether or not I need an epilogue. I’ll wait until Saturday to post that.
I actually wondered whether to put it above or below your post, to tell the truth, Jay. Keep in mind that if someone is reading my series (as I know a number of people are) they have to scroll by your post to get to the new one. I guess it’s part of the risk posed by posting during a serial.
Sure as hell don’t let it discourage you. Your post was glorious fun. You’re a nuke, right? Anyone make any Godzilla jokes?
Tom
Comment by kittent on 11 September 2007 at 7:58 am:
pretty impressive…and I liked the Japan post as well…
for an epilogue, maybe instead of a news story you could do a Spoon River Anthology type epitaph.
Comment by J. Prescott on 11 September 2007 at 8:04 am:
The thing I found to be the most unrealistic of this post is that Billy Joe is a U.S. Representative.
Comment by J. Prescott on 11 September 2007 at 8:24 am:
Wait a minute. Several people with $50 could be the match for a country? What the hell did they buy…especially when you consider that when adjusted for inflation (3%), thats $27 in 2007…around $10 in current dollars. Thats a meal from subway.
What the the hell could you have bought? What simple tool is there? Especially when the cheapest hammer at Home Depot now goes for $6.99?
Comment by Hanno on 11 September 2007 at 8:38 am:
If I’m not mistaken, he was referring to the 9/11 hijackers with box cutters.
Comment by J. Prescott on 11 September 2007 at 8:40 am:
Yeah, OK, I totally missed that. That makes sense. With so much about this being written in the future, I forget sometimes how much of the past he refers to is actually THE past.
Comment by tet on 11 September 2007 at 8:49 am:
I figured out what I’m going to do, kitten. I was going to do something with multimedia, then realized that 10 minutes was too long and that the video wasn’t that good, anyway. Backed up and approached it from another direction. I’m not going to do an epilogue, per se, I’ve decided. What you get tomorrow is it.
You already know my epitaph for the oak tree plaque: “Here lies one brilliantly talented whack job.”
Tom
Comment by augur on 11 September 2007 at 9:02 am:
Tet – you should reconsider and listen to the kitten, think about making this series feel more complete. Otherwise you’ll be tempted to just blow everything up in the last post and say
-the end-
Comment by tet on 11 September 2007 at 9:12 am:
Actually, Augur, I have both a decent ending, and, just now, came up with an epilogue. Unfortunately, I don’t think that I have the writing skill to write the epilogue yet–it’s a bedtime story, of sorts.
I’ll think about it and if I am satisfied with the product, I’ll post that on Saturday.
I don’t need to blow up the world, humanity is quite capable of doing that all by itself.
Tom
Comment by Hanno on 11 September 2007 at 9:30 am:
“and all their brains were uploaded into cyberspace and they became god-avatars” the end
Comment by tet on 11 September 2007 at 9:47 am:
Well, that’s a better ending than “rocks fall, everyone dies, roll new characters” which is how a bored Dungeon Master does things.
For that particular ending, order The World Without Us by Alan Weisman from Amazon.com. We’ve got it at the house and it’s a fascinating read even if he is a bit heavy on the environmentalism lectures.
I have confidence that we’re better than that. Everything comes down to the Fermi Paradox.–Either we’re the first civilization in the galaxy to reach the radio/laser level of progress or something happened to the earlier civilizations. There have been entire books written about possible solutions. I’ve had one solution in particular in mind while writing this series, you’ll learn more about that tomorrow and in the epilogue. (Now I have to write the goddam thing, if for no other reason that the fact you gave me hell, Hanno.)
Tom
Comment by Billy Joe Mills on 11 September 2007 at 10:47 am:
Tom,
I appreciate the nod. It has been and remains a dream of mine…I sure as Hell hope it happens.
Best,
Billy
Comment by tet on 11 September 2007 at 11:11 am:
That’s ok, you’re not a Rep for long. Illinois secedes in 2030 and you end up as its first President.
Have a good day, go outside, it’s a beautiful here for a change.
Tom
Comment by tet on 11 September 2007 at 1:22 pm:
A further notes on secessionist movements in today’s paper:
Belgium, for goodness’ sake
I expect the final EU consitution never to be passed by any kind of referendum, Belgium to split into two parts, Scotland to leave the UK and Quebec to secede–all before 2010.
Tom
Comment by Phil on 11 September 2007 at 2:39 pm:
Here’s a random thought for you, Tom:
If governments are irrelevant and fragment and disappear in the next few decades, what happens to money in the global economy? Will a non-governmental system be able to come up with a stable replacement for government-issued money, or will we all live and die at the whim of currency speculators the way small third world countries that still have their own money do today? A global economy can’t function without stable money, but money 30 years from now will probably seem very alien to us today.
Comment by tet on 11 September 2007 at 3:23 pm:
Phil, as I have amply demonstrated in the last few days, I know much less about economics than I do about political theory, chemistry or astronomy.
My guess, using human nature as a guide, is that each of the new splinter groups will attempt to use the tools available to it to maximize their own well-being.
A lot of the possible futures depends on what percentage of time is spent between real and virtual space, since an infinite (for all practical purposes) amount of value can be created in virtual space using only creativity.
I figure that by mid-century, what we now know as reality will be useful mainly as a service industry for virtual and outer spaces. One possible future is one in which we have near-infinite energy resources using large solar collectors (which can be made as large as we want–you just blow up a silvered ballon in orbit, let it harden and cut it in half.)
I expect that that particular world, shortly before money became meaningless, could have a discrepancy between the poor and wealthy of perhaps nine orders of magnitude in personal wealth. The poorest on the planet, however, would have appoximately the same holdings as lower-middle-class Americans today.
There are a lot of dystopias possible, of course, but part of what I am trying to accomplish at UrbanAgora is setting up guidelines to steer people away from those and towards futures that actually work for humanity.
Prescott, do a thought experiment:
Shatter the nations of the world into fifty thousand separate states. (Don’t tell me it couldn’t happen, use your imagination.) If this occurred, what kind of economic system would develop during the process?
Billy Joe, you can chime in on this one, too.
Tom
Comment by Hanno on 11 September 2007 at 5:37 pm:
Simple: the same way ancient economies functioned. A precious stone/metal/rarefied object used as currency universally by weight
Comment by J. Prescott on 11 September 2007 at 7:26 pm:
Having had the gauntlet thrown at my feet, I feel compelled to step up.
In regards to Hanno’s suggestion…probably not. Not if gold/silver/precious metal is the basis of exchange. The issue here is counterfit of exchange and the amount of trade that exists now versus then. The average schlub on the street would not be able to tell what real gold. The benefit of paper money, especially in the modern world, is that it is extremely hard to counterfit. There are dies and watermarks and all sorts of neat things. Gold is just yellow metal. How does the average guy test that? I know that counterfitting is still a problem in modern times, but to a lesser extent, especially because possible counterfitters face the fury of national governments. Also, the gold standard failed because there was more trade, more production, and more people than there was in “olden times.” Bretton Woods died 30 years ago…I don’t think it is going to be revived. Without confidence in the system, trade would decrease, and the whole point of currency is to stimulate trade. Also, if they were to use a metallic standard, prices would go up,because there is not nearly enough of precious anything to fill the void. Could you imagine buying bread with gold, with the amount of gold available in the world, with the amount of people in the world?
Now if the countries were to adopt Bretton woods, where currency is set at an exchange rate to gold held in Ft. Knox or whatever, it would still fail. A bunch of little countries would be incredibly fluid geographically and economically. Individuals would and could not have confidence in any countries currencies.
People will flow to that that they have the most confidence in. In antiguity, it was the vestiges of religion. In the future you speak of, unfortunately, it will be the multinational corporation and bank. These are the players on the international market that have the most skin in the game and do the most trading on an international basis. The majority of people go to the corner store to get their food and satisfy their most basic needs. The amount of international trade that they do, even in small country world, will be decidedly small. Larger than it was before, but still small. Currency is not so much a function for the immediate community. Its fortunate for the small community, because it cuts down on negotiation costs, but ultimately its really unnecessary. People build up relationships with the people trade with, especially when outside the community trade decreases, which again is what would happen in the absence of currency.
Anyway, Boeing, Pfizer, all sorts of banks, and IBM, etc. would get together and figure out a monetary system, based on faceless credits. It would be easy now, because technology can easily measure global production, which I imagine would be the basis of the system. I actually have developed a form of that system for the here and now…a conversion from the here and now. I have yet to prove it, because I don’t have the manpower to demonstrate it. (A lot of contemporary measurements for a lot of different countries). But it is theoretically possible, and without the warm and fuzzy feel from a lot of established large countries, and in the absence of large amounts of rare metals, this is the best option. There has to be some collusion, and the best option in this scenario is multinationals.
Comment by JayBandit on 11 September 2007 at 10:49 pm:
I’m actually a Mech. Eng. I just happen to work in the Nuclear world.
Comment by Star Straf on 11 September 2007 at 11:29 pm:
Nicely done
Comment by tet on 12 September 2007 at 8:49 am:
If that’s directed towards me, Star, thanks. If it’s directed towards Prescott’s last post, I agree, too.
Tom
Comment by kofi the i use exclamatory curses because i am unable to properly articulate my thoughts on 12 September 2007 at 12:34 pm:
J Prescott is a god damn genius.