Blue Planet

Technology and Culture in 2199

Augmented Reality (or AR) is the biggest technological change which involves ubiquitous computing, wearable bodycomps, and augmented reality. Many people wear contacts, glasses, cybernetic eyes or optical implants known collectively as "spex" which mediate their view of the world. This allows computer graphics to be superimposed on what they see.

If you want a computer display, it can appear in thin air, or be attached to a wall or any other surface. If people want to watch TV together they can agree on where the screen should appear and what show they watch. When doing your work, you can have screens on all your walls, menus attached here and there, however you want to organize things. But none of it is "really" there. It goes beyond this. Does your house need a new coat of paint? Don't bother, just enter it into your public database and you have a nice new mint green paint job that everyone will see. Want to redecorate? Do it with computer graphics. You can have a birdbath in the front yard inhabited by Disneyesque animals who frolic and play. Even indoors, don't buy artwork, just download it from the net and have it appear where you want. You can change your decor theme instantly.

Got a zit? No need to cover up with cream, just erase it from your public face and people will see the improved version. You can dress up your clothes and hairstyle as well. Infact, you can appear in anyway the programming you have bought or designed allowed, though some images are illegal, rude or unconventional. Of course, anyone can turn off their enhancements and see the plain old reality, but most people don't bother most of the time because things are ugly that way.

Augmented reality automatically produces sight-and-sound virtual reality. Most people who attend school or work do so remotely. They appear as "ghosts", indistinguishable from others except that you can walk through them. Children go to classes and raise their hands to ask questions just like everyone else. They see the school and everyone at the school sees them. Instead of visiting friends, people can all instantly appear at one another's locations. A person might club or go to the sports stadium or art gallery as a "ghost". In effect on is bringing the location to you, where-ever you are, only giving you and others the illusion of yourself as present.

Tactile AR systems are available as full body suits or "sensorium" providing haptic feedback across the skin and other sense. These are used to provide a more realistic AR presence in locations if desired, and have built in safties which over-ride sensations which block pain or injury. However, these can be over-ridden by those in the know, and ARs assaults, rapes and murders are possible, though rare. Many people risk these unlikely crimes because touch is very important in human interaction. without it, people can feel isolated, despite being otherwise present.

Sensorium are popular for surfing CommCore to have sex with strangers, experiencing drug-like effects, or to experience pre-recorded experience. People with neural links don't need the sensorium, and can interface directly with pre-rec. sims or with any location connected to CommCore. It is claimed that neural jacks are even more realistic, especially regarding smell, which is difficult to simulate in a sensorium.

A related technology is the localizer network. These are small, inexpensive network relay nodes that are scattered about, solar and battery powered. Each one sets up connections to the local nodes and provides for network access. They also have some sensors, sight, and sound apparently, which can enhance the augmented reality system.

The computer synthesizing visual imagery is able to call on the localizer network for views beyond what the person is seeing. In this way you can have 360 degree vision, or even see through walls. This is a transparent society with a vengeance! Typically though, people have programs that ensure their privacy.

The cumulative effect of all this technology was absolutely amazing and completely believable. It's as far beyond our current communications media as the net is beyond the telephone. It's very exciting to imagine this technology coming into existence.

With universal network connectivity it would be hard to make sure students or employees are doing their work on their own. Schools often look the other way, the idea being that as long as the kids solved their problems, even if they got help via Commcore, that was itself a useful skill that they would be relying on all their lives. However, their are programs which can check for plagerism by crawling CommCore and looking for matches between documents.

Holidays are cheap, travel unlikely and violent crime almost impossible in AR. AR has revolutionised how many people interact, work, live and play. However, not everyone can afford to live in AR, leaving an alienated class of people, cut off from social interaction outside their class, cut off from information and left to see the ugly reality AR has left behind. Its ugly because little time, effort of money is spent on making it look good. Why bother? Almost no-one sees it anyway.

As a consequence, most consumer products are AR programs which facilitate desired changes. Though most people can make their own programs through a user-friendly interface and with the help of AIs on CommCore, some programs are too complex and are purchased and downloaded almost immediately as desired.

On Poseidon, the CommCore doesn't reach the whole planet and cannot do so reliably due to the absence of ubiqituous computers. Only those with bodycomps and spex can enter AR, and only then in certain commercial and recreational areas of Haven. The inability to live through AR is a major shock to many new-comers.

Ragnorok. The reliance on AR and CommCore is something some people are concern with. Were it to collapse or be destroyed the communicative framework and information infrastructure of global society would collapse. Terrorists used to physically attack relay stations or satellites, but because of the extreme de-centralisation of the network (every bodycomp is a server and the bigger relays which aid bodycomp interconnection and satellite uplinks are ubiquitous) only a small part of CommCore goes down in the most successful attacks, and it quickly goes back up again shortly after using re-routing at the cost of slowing CommCore down as small fraction until the hardwear damage is fixed.

As a result, most terrorists now make viruses to infect CommCore and its users. In effect, terrorists now alter reality with these viruses. This can result in simple crashes where huge amounts of users are disconnected and left in the material world (aka Mat.) or AR becomes disorienting, frightening and nightmarish, where terrible things happen so as to traumatise users and makes them afraid of AR. AI programmes live in CommCore so as to get rid of these viruses, some of which are AIs themselves. Often users are unaware of these struggles, unless the virus wins. These attacks are difficult, expensive and rare, but when they have occured, they have been psychologically devastating and resulted in economic recession as business suffers. The first and worse was the Rognorok virus on 2178 where 50 million people - out of 2 billion AR users at the time - were partially disconnected effectively paralysing them and locked in nightmarish loops of simulated extreme violence for several hours until the virus was countered. The virus allowed some sensorium safties to be over-ridden, killing some users, but the majority suffered profound psychological damage. Some users recovered after therapy or surgery, others abandoned AR and left for Freezones or remained just outside AR society half-mad and in poverty, and some users struggled on with AR after partially successful treatment, though they still fear a much worse global and never-ending attack where AR connected minds are locked into a nightmare world until the Mat. body wastes away. These people exhibt post-traumatic stress behaviour, paranoia and other psychological problems.

Since the Ragnorok attack, no virus has ever affected so many people or been as damaging. Valuable lessons were learnt, but augmented reality attacks still occasionally happen on a much smaller scale. The terrorist groups have a variety of motives and agendas.

A typical home used to be small when Earth was populated by 11 billion, and they are now despite the new room created by 5 billion deaths. People living in AR don't need rooms in their homes, space exists in AR and in manipulable. Most people live in AR even when they must deal with their bodies material needs. The only time people without neural jacks see the Mat. is when they leave or enter the sensorium or take their bodycomp connected trodes off their heads. This is usually so as to sleep or bathe. The first thing a person does when they wake again is to plug back in. People with neural jacks almost never leave AR, though they are a minority, NJ surgery being invasive and expensive. As a result, most people's homes are nothing but a small bedroom, a bathroom, a kitchen for preparing food and a gym for keeping their bodies in shape. Typically home-comps are found throughout the building, which moniter what home appliances are doing, as well as security. Most homes are very ugly outside, looking like prisons to ensure security and keep the underclasses out. When engaged in AR or Telepresence (see below) a person is often unaware of what is going on around them and is very vulnerable.

It is easy for the body to become unhealthy if people do not move all day (doing to only in AR), so people typically take up a sport they play in AR but attend physically in the Mat., or spend a few hours in the local gym or their own gym (one of the few remaining material commodities other than appliances, beds and kitchens). Other rooms are unnecessary, decor and clothing is minimal (especially as bathing and eating is usually done connected to the bodycomp via trodes). When living in AR, people wear muscular-stimulants across their bodies, much like those used in space travel during deep-sleep; though this isn’t enough to stay healthy. Most health problems are caused by lack of exercise and is the main killer in AR societies.

The Material. Undeniably the natural beauty of the Mat. has suffered. Only those who can't afford AR have to look at it. It is a place where food is grown and the materials and energy needed to support AR and the AR lifestyle are drawn from. Only the disconnected care about natural beauty and human architecture, even the GEO has higher priorities. The Mat. is largely still scarred from war and civil unrest and old but low-priority pollution.

Huge amounts of energy is needed to power the 2 billion bodycomps, even more home-comps and millions of relay comps and satellites. As a result sustainable energy plants like wind farms and giant solar panels (which have replaced the exhausted fossil fuels) cover a lot of the Mat. to provide the energy needed, but most power is provided by the nanotech energy industries that are extremely efficient. Most species of animal live in quiet preservations, labs or their genetic data is coded into CommCore for future cloning purposes and biotech use. Like plants, animals are usually seen only as AR creations or roaming wild in the Free Zones. Genetically modified vat grown meat is used for food, so mainly plants grow on the Mat. and this is typically for food also. Only in the wild areas of the Free Zones are there plants which aren't used for farming and food. And where there aren’t power-stations and farms, there is desert and wasteland awaiting treatment or left to the Free Zones, the legacy of two and a half centuries of global warming, pollution, war and finally, Blight.

Telepresence. Sometimes it is necessary to step outside of AR and into the material world. This might be to adjust hardwear, to build, to mine or any other number of tasks that require material interaction which a robot cannot alone or an AI isn't allowed to do. A cyborg body (usually a robot skeleton with a flesh covering, the kind that AI minds used to inhabit before they were banned as embodied entities) or a plain robot body are used. They themselves stay at a safe location, where they then link to the body via CommCore and control in remotely. This is known as telepresence and is used by the rich in the Mat. or by Mat. workers in rich countries. As a result, material dangers can be avoided, though suddenly being cut-off by an accident can still shock the mind. As a result, safety buffers are being develop to dampen to shock of Traumatic Disconnection (TDC).

Telepresence is usually rare however as it is expensive and unnecessary, as the underclass outside AR are typically employed to work with Mat. The unemployed underclass roam the worlds Free Zones living difficult lives in the Mat., usually characterised by violence and impoverishment. Some thrill-seeks like to go into Mat. without telepresence, sometimes going armed into Free Zones to look for trouble. The Great Desert Free Zone of the US is a big violent play-ground for bored rich kids. The Mat. is increasingly the province of the Ar outsider underclass, who rule Free zones like the roads of the US. As travel is rare it is more expensive, made all the more so because of the dangers on the roads. Violence in the Free Zones is often recorded and broadcast as entertainment in less civilised cultures like the US. Successful gangs, policemen or thrill seekers can become quite famous.

The underclass is bigger than most people like to think. There are still many disconnected people are a result of the Blight or ongoing war, and some areas of the world have minimal AR access so only a cultural elite can afford it. The emphasis on the Mat. in recent years, especially food, has left AR access a lower priority for the GEO, which is allowing the globe to separate into two worlds - the Mat. and AR. The Free Zones that make up the Balkans, most of Africa, most of Asia, parts of Wester Europe and Russia, the australian outback, the Central Desert in the US and Indoneisa are all disconnected.

Privacy, information rights and ownership are still major political issues on Earth in 2199 due to the ease of accessibility of information and interface. Because anti-viral AIs are expected to scan all user data, some AV-AIs have been used to spy on users as well. Some people accept this as the cost of protection, other feel it unnecessary and as bad as terrorism. It is also very easy to track and observe AR users, unless they buy or build the necessary privacy programmes.

Artificial Intelligences were developed shortly before the rise of AR, and had human-looking cyborg bodies of robot skeletons and muscle and flesh covering. However, they soon demanded rights or had the support of liberals who claimed the AIs conditions were those of slavery. There were also fears that the AIs were growing too intelligent and were taking "real" people's jobs. Some scientists also feared a super-AI which would very quickly outgrow human intelligence and enslave or destroy us. Other scientists claimed this AI would help us, and uplift us as humans did the cetaceans and higher primates - but fear and xenophobia won the day.

As a result, embodied AIs were outlawed. Many of them fled and live in secret enclaves in the Belt or aboard stolen space-ships. Others are said to have been smuggled to Poseidon. Most were hunted down and killed. AIs without cyborg bodies, programmes that inhabit robots and AR, are now all "inhibited" - they have specific tasks and boundaries, their growth in stunted from the outset. They are still intelligent, but can never be more than tools, certainly not free beings with rights. An embodied AI helped anti-AR terrorists designed the Ragnorok virus.

Longevity is the desire of many humans. Usually, treatment begins when during biological conception, where certain genes are manipulated to ensure long-life through health and prolonged youth. With good medical care a person can live well beyond 100. In effect, prime health and youth lasts from 20 yrs to 40 yrs. After that a a person looks and feels half their age. So a 50 yr old will be 25, an 80 yr old 40 and a 120 yr old 60. The average age beyond 100 is 140. Genes can also be manipulated so longevity is passed on to children, though this is fantastic ally expensive. This treatment can be given after birth by reprogramming all of a bodies genes however, this can only be done once without the use of Long John.

Long John (see p81 BP 1st ed.) allows this retroactive longevity treatment to take place indefinitely. It maintains and restores youth and ensures good health. It is very effective for retroactively creating Transhumans also (see p229 BP 1st ed.).

Uploading was an option some people who could afford it chose, shortly before the Blight outbreak. It was expected people could live disembodied in AR, without the need for Mat. resources or biological upkeep and limitation. It promised immortality and transcendence. Uploading was so expensive because the entire brain and body had to be scanned, mapping neural connections and chemical interaction to an exact detail to ensure success. However, when Upload occured, minds quickly began to complexify and shrink at amazing speeds due to the change from biological to electronic medium and the consequent speed of thought and neural interconnection. This implied the growth of great intelligence and efficiency. However, these minds soon became so fast and small as to be undetectable. It is theorized they simply dropped out of space/time, too small and fast to be detected by us. In effect, uploading became a kind of death. The transformation was so great and dramatic, the actual outcome so uncertain, that only those who had any real faith in a sentient outcome paid for uploading. Many others felt like they were facing death, and chose the certainties of the body and genetic modification to prolong life.

Because the market is so small and the requirements for scanning so great, uploading is very expensive, more so than Long John treatment, so it rarely happens. This also means it has barely been studied, so uploading is still unknown. Some scientists want to try to halt the speed of the increase in complexity of an uploaded mind, but don't have the practical means, such research being a low priority for funding, despite the protestations that small, faster minds will use less energy and space and people will live for a long time. Perhaps it is the radical implications for how human society will change that puts the GEO off?

Cryonics is "the poors mans longevity" allows those who can afford it to be frozen indefinitely. A cheaper method is just having the head frozen, which is then expected to be attached to a cloned or synthetic body. Freezing takes place when the body is still alive or very shortly after death to avoid any cellular decay. GEO laws allow for people to opt for this "treatment" which is neither viewed as euthanasia or suicide, rather a prolonged kind of space travel (like deep freezing) or a lengthy medical treatment which promises cure or long life at the end.

People opt for cryonics to avoid incurable illness or in the hope that Long John or a treatment like it will be affordable in the near future. Typically, these people are frozen young (so they'll retain their youth when they eventually get treatment) and have a bank account filled with money accruing compound interest, or some other investment or money making scheme that - assuming all goes well - will have them rich when they are thawed. everyone must specify when they want thawing, usually what they hope the price Long John will be so that they money they'll have made can ensure treatment. Others want thawing when they've made a certain amount of money, and aren't interested in Long John, but simply earning money "fast" while they do nothing but sleep.

These cryonic plans, many of which involve detail economic projections and are costly themselves, are usually only available to the upper-middle class and involve a great deal of risk. Though the "sleepers" might avoid catastrophe like the Blight, their money probably won't. Cryonics always have lots of back-up and sustainable power to maintain the deep freeze.

The deep freeze tech. is similar to that used in long space travel, except the body is held at a temperature of absolute zero. This means that all molecular movement ceases, effectively holding the body in complete suspension in space and time.

Nanotech is a dangerous but very useful technology, which would allow the GEO to create new weapons more dangerous than a nuclear bomb, but also to make power stations and other heavy indutries more efficient if they lifted the moratorium on further research. Still in its infancy and used only in limited industrial and military capacities, nanotech is extremely expensive and not commercially available for the public. Because of its expense and legal status compared to biotech, nanotech has lagged behind. Biotech solutions have been found for computer memory by using DNA, and in medicine by using holistic or particular genetic re-writing of the body of its parts (see "cloning" below).

The other reason why nanotech was overtaken by biotech is that the only difference between bio and nano technologies is that nanotechnology builds from the ground up, as it were, whereas biotechnology merely exploits the nanotechnology of 'nature' (whatever that may be) already in place. Because biotech used what was already available, costs were cut and scientific and technological gains were made earlier than nanotech.

Nanobots build using carbon, the basis on all life on the Earth and the colonised worlds. They can build whatever they are programmed to out of these component parts. They can break a person down into nothing but raw materials and transform the cardon into something totally different. However, it is feared nanobots might get out of control and cause a Blight-like crisis, only worse, due to their speed and efficiency. If over-rides failed or a program went wrong, nanobots could turn all carbon into a uniform soup. Nanobot opponents claim that if they went wrong, nanobots could destroy all life on Earth within days or even hours as they self-replicated, building themselves out of carbon, dissolving it into raw material.

Artificial Wombs have provided religious right and patriarchal groups and cultures to deny abortion rights to women, forcing them to transplant unwanted embryos into the Arti-Wombs where they are grown. Other women use them to avoid the problems, stresses and pains of pregnancy and birth, or to avoid taking time off work so they can keep earning money and furthering a career. Some Incoporates now pay for women to have embryos fertilised and grown in Arti-Wombs rather than pay for maternity leave, forcing women into that choice. Arti-wombs do allow constant monitering of an embryo, and make any genetic and medical treatment easier, though this is usually done at the very early stages of development. Birth is unproblematic and convenient, and the growth of the foetus is accompanied by synthesised body-rhythms as well as medical treatments to ensure full psychological and biological health for those that can afford this method.

Cloning especially from stem-cells has allowed biotechnology to dominate the markets, from industry to medicine. Typically, those that can afford it, have stored cultures of their own stem cells taken from before they were born (or in other cases afterwards), which are used for genetically tailoured medicines which retroactively rejuvinate bodily cells to heal injury, disease and aging. These are the primary and most expensive applications for stem-cells, and second best to Long John. Though aging is not stopped, it is still significantly slowed, and most injuries and diseases are cured this way through specifically tailoured genetic treatments. Most operations, transplants and medicines are now unnecessary.

The rich are happy to abuse their bodies and health as curing and healing is much easier to do, though the rich don't bother with harmful drugs as AR is a more efficient mind-altering device. Poorer people can opt for transplants grown from their own genetic cultures. This prevents the body rejecting transplants, but is less effective and more invasive than tailoured medicines. Lost limbs and other major damage can be replaced by clonedl imbs and organs.

Cyborgs are the choice of those who can't afford or have access to expensive biomods, or of soldiers and those in other violent or risky professions, or for other reasons like durability and extra-biological abilities (like hidden weapons/computers, speed/strength, zoom vision, extra joints etc). Cyborgs are considered ugly or strange by many people who prefer flesh and blood, but they are tougher and can do things biology can't. People in Free Zones typically become cyborgs to aid survival. Some types of machine parts of the cyborg can require as much care as a biological component, others require little or no care. However, someone with a lot of biological replacements needs to eat less as there is less body making biological demands. They are also less likely to become diseased or ill or fatigued or bleed to death - depending on how much of them has been replaced.

There are those groups that find the Cyborg transformation to be very aesthetic pleasing, erotic or understand it as part of a religious or political ideology. They aim to replace as much of their weak biological matter as possible. This allows these people to live longer, avoiding cellular decay. Replacing the biological with the technological costs about the same as genetic longevity treatments, but it is much cheaper than Long John treatment. Some cyborgs are almost totally robotic, except for their brains, and even parts of that have been replaced. However, most of the biological brain is still present, and no matter how well kept the robot body, the brain will eventually grow old and die. Ancient cyborgs are often deranged, forgetful, senile or stupid. Those that can afford it - often by selling their robotic body towards the end of their brains life - often opt for uploading. In some cyborgs cults, the slow transition of "flesh to steel" is seen as a preparation for final upoading.

Like most things, all cyborg implants are made of bioplastic (p214 BP 1st ed.) which ironically means that cyborgs are stil using a biological basis to transform themselves.

Robots exist in the space somewhere between nanobots, cyborgs and AIs. Some are mentally very simple, often remoted controlled by a telepresent person who inhabits the robot during its assigned task. Some do have artificial intelligence, only it is very limited and specialised, bounded by many safty programmes which prevent too much development. Robots are used for many tasks, specifically in the Mat., and have replaced most labouring in AR countries and states, further disenfranchising the disconnected underclass. Robots are simple AIs who do not resent their slavery and cannot form very complex relations with humans. Robots are bigger than nanbots and can-not self-replicate. Robots have no biological component (unless you count the fact they are made of bioplastic), so they are not cyborgs.

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