15. Assimilation programs develop which translate information or new functions to individual mind base. Physiological assimilation programs available. Library of experiences opens. Public access to files of recorded experiences.30
16. Neural devices being used over the years have stimulated m-wave emissions in people perimeter of individual m-wave emission increases to extend outside body shell. Telepathy becomes a standard sense.
Tom Friedman: Artist's Statement, 2000
30. “The world has arrived at a period which renders it the part of Wisdom to pay homage to the perspective precedents of the Future in preference to those of the past. The Past is dead, and has no resurrection; but the Future is endowed with such life, that it lives to us even in anticipation. The Past is, in many things, the foe of mankind; the Future is, in all things, our friend. In the Past is no hope; the Future is both hope and fruition. The Past is the text-book of tyrants; the Future the Bible of the Free. Those who are solely governed by the Past stand like Lot’s wife, crystallized in the act of looking backwards, and forever incapable of looking before.” Herman Melville, White-Jacket; 144.
"Warfare will move toward nanobot-based weapons, as well as cyberweapons.31 Learning will first move online, but once our brains are online we will be able to download new knowledge and skills.32 The role of work will be to create knowledge of all kinds, from music and art to math and science. The role of play will be, well, to create knowledge, so there won't be a clear distinction between work and play"33
31. “[Constant] spent the last four years of the project showing the horror of what it would be like to live in New Babylon. He’s the only architect – or let’s say quasi-architect – I’ve ever known that spent not just one image but four years’ worth of images to show how horrible life would be in his own city.” Mark Wigley interviewed on BLDGBLOG.
32. "In fact, New Babylon was so far removed from conventional concerns with profit and loss that its economy remained something of a mystery. Constant joined Thomas More,Henri Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, Karl Marx, and the like to investigate the possibility of a noncommodity socialism, a scientific utopia where scarcity and suffering were confined to history. He calmly asserted, 'The effects of machine-production are leading slowly to a reduction in human labor, and we can state already with certainty, that we will enter a new era, in which production-labor will be automatic. For the first time in history, mankind will be able to establish an affluent society in which nobody will have to waste his forces, and in which everybody will be able to use his entire energy for the development of his creative capacities.' Questions about fiscal economy were no longer valid. 'The question,' Constant insisted, 'is how the free man of the future will use his unlimited energies.'" Simon Sadler, The Situationist City; 135-6
33. "Ever since words existed for fighting and playing, men have been wont to call war a game... language everywhere must have expressed matters in that way from the moment words for combat and play existed." Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens; 89.
"'War, crime, and politics.' Carlyle grinned. 'And there was me thinking you had a utopia. With everybody being so rich.'34
'Don't you have cornucopia machines?'
'Oh, sure. But we have-'
'Other things to fight over. So have we.'
'It's not the same-'
'Isn't it?' He laughed, looking around. 'Maybe not. There's even a saying about it: The fights are so vicious because the stakes are so small. Everyone here has got here by intense competition moderated by character assassination...'
'In a closed cornucopian economy everything was camp, performance, role-play. People got off on heterosexuality, on marriages and divorces and family soap opera. Everything was inverted commas and ironic drag. Like the economy itself: a charade of capitalism...'"
Ken MacLeod, Newton's Wake; 61, 65.
34. Will there be another race to come along and take over for us?
Maybe Martians could do better than we’ve done.
We’ll make great pets!
We’ll make great pets!
Porno for Pyros, Pets
35. "Utopia gives form to the idea that the human being is entirely social, that a person has neither supernatural nor individual reality, even if the social order is often conceived of as part of a wider natural order. Utopia is a plea for a society that creates itself, imposing freedom or servitude on its members, pushing away any nonsocial principle of the legitimacy of the social order. The utopian world always rests on equality, never on liberty or even on justice." Alain Touraine, Society as Utopia
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