A Short Story
I am writing to you the events of 2020, I am 72 years old, the year is 2060. I live in Canada, a great country. I am telling this story to you as I lead up to what is entitled the final chapters of my life. Many of the linguistic choices made in this story are outdated and 40 years old at least, but bear with me as I try to describe the events that were a part of the lead up to the great bifurcation of society- now simply known as era GB. There are no restrictions on what I write or how I write something, so long as there aren’t clear introductions highlighting my background and privilege, so someone reading, or hearing this story can determine for themselves the quality of the content and whether it is micro aggressive, too heteronormative, or privileged for the reader to acknowledge its content.
The purpose of this history is for my children and grandchildren to read for their own reference, whatever they do with the information is their choice.
To begin, I am a 72-year-old male, in a heteronormative communion with a female (previously known as a wife, and marriage). We conceived two children prior to 2020, one female daughter, the other a male son. In modern terms these are cismale and cisfemale. Because I subscribe to organized religion, and I am a “man of faith” our family structure is centered around the beliefs of that said religion. I am not required to write about which religion any longer, because during the era of the GB there became a mutual understanding between societies, that some people just have the choice to believe or not believe what they want about anything. So long as I live in my prescribed community surrounded by similarly positioned people, we are protected. If I venture out of this community whether through hate speech or calling to attack any other society, I will be punished by being publicly cancelled, using all modicums of social media.
Many people live in virtual reality, not the sci-fi worlds depicted in films, rather, because of the fear of pandemics, and the staged herd immunity that was planned, it was agreed upon that people no longer have to work in an “office” or “workplace” rather, they can immerse themselves in their virtual offices where they work alongside colleagues in whatever activity they choose. Jobs used to be what “activities” are known today. “Careers” became a thing of the past, as any one person can ascribe to an activity for a minimum of a month at a time, or for a maximum time they choose. Since AI (artificial intelligence) is part of daily routines, most things humans do now don’t require labor as it did in 2020.
There are still activity sectors that require human to human contact, and there are live immersive experiences such as viewing non-artificial wonders of the Earth. But most of our days are spent acting as we want and fulfilling ourselves with whatever indulgence our heart desires. One reason why I chose to remain in the faith-based societies, is I was never one to be an over indulger, I always had self-control and inhibition control, and faith-based society just replicated that for me. Any rules and restrictions I apply to my own life are by my own choice.
So, what do things look like in the year 2060. I am referencing things in our society that you have no idea what I am talking about. I will organize my story such that I attempt to organize the various changes that took place at the GB. All is not so bad, considering how much worse things could have gotten.
In November 2020 Donald Trump won the US presidential election, within 24 hours of the results, there were mass inquiries by government officials to try and prove that Trump and his administration had somehow rigged the election. It was as if it was scripted that as soon as he won the opposing side would claim that the election was rigged, even though the final results of the election were 51.6% by Trump and 48.4% by Biden. That’s too damn close, and for the next 5 months the Democrats tried as hard as they could to oust Trump from his position.
As you can imagine the country fell into a state of civil discord. What had started in May 2020 as protests against racism in America turned into complete malarky in basically every major city in the United States. The “left” and the “right” were at each other’s necks, and literally civilians were marching in the streets with fire, rocks, and guns, on both sides. Many many people were injured and killed.
Federal, state and municipal police forces formed an independent task force, using a “secure platform” built by Facebook to connect police forces of how-to best combat street fighting. They formed a pseudo army called “America First” (AF) and used social media to help track where protesters were collecting in order to stave off violence on both sides. The police unions lobbied the Federal Government to fund this new National Police Force to help get the police and military folks paid and fed.
Truthfully AF had some bad eggs in the force but were ultimately comprised of good people who were trying to quell discord and prevent death. So many people were arrested and injured on a day to day basis that the hospitals, penitentiaries and judicial systems were overloaded. If you can remember during this time there had been a pandemic called COVID-19, which 200,000 people had died from before the election.
What overwhelmed the healthcare system wasn’t death from the pandemic, rather the violence on the streets in the US cities. Similarly, massive amounts of incarceration. There were food and healthcare shortages, which resulted in major human rights court cases. Something had to give. The President gave an executive order for the AF to deescalate street level crime. It was pandemonium, I remember my US family was curfewed and many streets were patrolled to stave off criminal protests.
Private security groups made a mint, as private individuals hired armed guards to protect their houses and private domains. Many people evacuated major cities in favor of warmer climate outdoor living. The RV and auto sales were the best business to be in, and if you had an obscure vacant plot of land somewhere south, you were able to host these escapees who just wanted to remain safe from the general upheaval. The mafia made a resurgence. It was quite a shit show. Basically, if you wanted your street protected, you hired “guys” with guns to stand there. Occasionally they would rustle up some people on the street or break some windows, to maintain their protection status. The police were powerless, and frankly disinterested from dealing with petty crimes, they had far worse issues to deal with on a day to day basis. Police and their families were continued targets. Some police officers when they were off shift would pay back the protestors by driving their cars into crowds. It was a horrendous, generally unsafe time. Any order that was executed was quickly dissolved because more people just kept fighting.
As you can imagine the economy was basically torn to pieces, then shredded once again, then patched together and all but failed. The COVID-19 pandemic had caused so much unemployment and there was so much uncertainty, that the economy continued to implode. There were clear indices, but there was so much other turmoil that no one paid attention to the impending doom.
The federal government printed an inordinate amount of money to bail out business and individuals who had lost their jobs and businesses as a result of the pandemic. These bailouts kept being doled out, as the election time was so crazy, and in order to keep his seat in the white house, the President kept ‘printing’ money. Now, in simple economic terms, when there is more of a currency available, it drives up inflation, because there’s more of the currency to be spent. So, when a bottle of milk in 2020 cost $3.00 over the course of a year doubled to cost $6.00.
The future seemed bleak. There seemed no way out. People who were decent and law abiding wanted to go about their day. People who wanted to work, be charitable, walk the streets of their city at night couldn’t. Despair leads people to do crazy things even the most even keeled person will fall off kilter if despair is waved in front of them for extended periods.
Then there was the reckoning of 2021 that ultimately led to the GB. This was a fascinating event, that led to the positive change, and led to general calm in the US. The group Anonymous – yes, the one that became the governance group of government- pulled an amazing move. In the late 10’s, Anonymous was synonymous with internet and digital terrorism. They definitely were implicated in breaches of public trust, but they fully changed that perception with their move in 2021.
Anonymous had app developers successfully build some of the most popular apps of the day. Little to anyone’s knowledge, and without ever having whistleblowers, these apps tracked and stored very interesting data about a person and their phone usage while highly illegal, the solution in the end justified the means, and the group was not held accountable. They were heroes that broke laws in order to save the collective.
One calendar date, Wednesday March 13, 2021 every protester, police officer, human that has a smart phone got a notification that prompted people through a series of short videos and messages. Essentially the app told people to stop whatever they were doing. There was no way to prevent what was about to happen. There was no method to stave off the exposure. The reason this was exposed at the particular time and date was based on a blockchain like algorithm that was only attained based on the speed at which information it was gathering from the apps accelerated. The timing of which could have happened a year prior or ten years later. It happened to work out during the ensuing devolution of society where no one any longer felt safe.
What message people got was to look at the person next to you then pause. Then 10 seconds later an entire profile of this person was exposed. Their mistakes, their crimes, their pornography history, their search history everything summed up. Every person on the planet that had used a smart phone was exposed to their neighbor. There was no longer anonymity.
Then everyone was told there will be a color code that exposed the crimes for which every person was guilty. If you had a yellow screen for example, you committed financial crimes (based on the law of the jurisdiction you lived). It showed that according to the law every single person, no matter how self-righteous was guilty of a crime. The algorithm was so bullet proof, and complex, it was impossible to scam. The phones were mini AI brains that knew who their user was.
Anyone who committed crimes punishable by jail time had different colors. Every person who had committed some sexual offence was another color. People who were in the midst of crimes such as pedophiles and human traffickers and other people who committed heinous sins were exposed. Initially people tried to go after those criminals, and tried to kill them, but as they chased along, they were exposed of their own crimes.
It was a digital version of the tower of Babel history from the Old Testament and lore. There was a society with one language that tried beating God by building a massive tower to reach to the heavens. As a punishment God changed everyone’s dialect and language, so people couldn’t understand each other, and as the story goes, the society crumbled, along with the tower.
Every politician, doctor, correction officer etc. etc. was now on an equal playing field. All the information was in a database. So, you could look any person up and you could search through their entire existence. As you can imagine many people committed suicide or died as a result of being exposed. The exposure was intimate, in that it wasn’t some pie in the sky, your information is being breached, (by the way credit card and banking information was not shared). The person literally standing next to you was made aware of your shortcomings, and similarly, you of theirs.
There was a timeline of this exposure. The information would be intermittently available, and through some other code would be destroyed. Not before humanity came to realize that humans are more similar to one another. There was no high horse for people to ride on. No intellectual or financial elitism that could separate one person from their neighbor. The great exposure did not result in society wreaking havoc on itself, rather it caused people to harmonize with one another.
But it was at this point that society bifurcated. Bifurcate means to diverge into two separate paths. The two basic paths were idealized versions of free market capitalism, versus an idealized version of socialist society. Both societies amicably split from one another. Those in one camp live by Judeo-Christian values, whereas the other society lived by humanistic moral code. There is a spectrum of people who live within each society, these sub societies flourish because no one stops one another from freely practicing whatever belief system they hold. The caveat is that every human no matter which society will be respected, for who they are, because we are more similar and faultier than we think.
I think this whole exposure reckoning worked, because as technology and information was more proliferated to every human on earth more and more people were engaged in the polarizing information being sent to them, most humans were able to realize that them being exposed equalized the playing field between them and the “elites” they believe somehow control their lives.
Most people don’t have the wherewithal to filter out information that is usually garbage, and they formulate opinions and worldviews based on garbage information and conspiracy theories. But when people are exposed for their shortcomings to one another the level playing field becomes equalized and the results were astonishing. I mean wars were literally stopped overnight.
It was fascinating to think that this was the result, as opposed to complete pandemonium. The next year paved the way for the rules and laws in society to be rewritten. Because AI computing on each person’s phone was so efficient, any person could input any proposition about how laws ought to be upheld in society. Not surprisingly there were people who tried to troll the system, and they were exposed for doing such. The social pressure to engage with yourself and self-reflect was almost like why Uber worked. Uber is safe and efficient because the users rate the drivers in real time, and this forces the drivers to be courteous etc. Much like the exposure, people were now locked into potentially being judged in real time, and as such, people acted accordingly, and “behaved”.
Over the course of the year great thinkers and input from all generated new laws, and new moral code for society. There was a new declaration of rights and freedoms built, which also included people divulging ways they would see as optimal living, be it through economic or other wants and needs. The document is an adaptive and malleable doctrine that is generated by AI as opposed to humans, which makes it devoid of emotion, rather solely based on data.
If people started to protest to have a way of life that they thought optimal, they were explained why that may not work in light of other imbalances such a desire would create. The system let people down at a rate they could handle through balanced explanations based on the data being processed every second. There was no method to argue, as the algorithm and AI code was embedded every phone, and terminal used by people every day.
During this period currency was crypto currency that was used to purchase goods and services. All economic exchanges took place through computers as opposed to with FIAT. Many elements of society faltered for a period, but since so many people were exposed to what optimal society would look like many people “stepped” up to the plate to “get things done.”
There were obvious protests to the breach of privacy; and that dictum was accounted for in the reimagining of laws. But people were by and large able to buy into the fact that humans aren’t greater than one another, some just do great things that are laudable, but deep down, humans are far more similar than they are different.
People started to realize the need for fixing the environment and using less garbage and consuming less. In the pursuit of profit, the best companies were ones geared toward environmental change. Whether the Earth cycles on its own temperature and geological changes, human destruction was readily apparent. Imagine getting paid to clean up the ocean. Imagine the greatest scientist working together for one cause, figuring out how to run industries less pollutant and recycle more efficiently.
Every now and again there were people who would protest or try to stop the advancement, but they were given an option to self-evaluate the outcomes of their actions through AI simulation. More often than not, people would be revealed a plethora of options that could ensue based on the consequences of their actions and people would weigh the risks accordingly. People started to act in their best interests, that included the possible interests of others.
The tragedy of the commons written by Garret Hardin almost 100 years ago in my opinion was a philosophical guiding principal for people to act better. Imagine you can input a detailed question about something you want to do, and the answer is provided in real time about what impact that action will have. How humbling an experience that could be. But knowing what impact your actions have is part of solving problems. Now, if there is financial gain to be had by acting better, this just helps. People get paid to act better, and better, although subjective, was better in light of environmental impact. That is, no one argued that polluting the world is bad, some people just didn’t care on an individual basis. The Earth cycles through epochs that determine weather patterns, flooding and all other ‘natural’ cycles, humans just started being exposed to trying to beat that. No one can predict whether an earthquake would take place, or whether a forest fire would occur, but polluting oceans, and dumping billions of tons of pollutants into drinkable water, or destroying forests, is not sustainable, reusing what has already been extracted is.
The long-term outcomes of the reckoning have been positive. Although there are obvious shortcomings, people’s lives got materially better, people acted nicer to one another. Healthcare breakthroughs in researching and controlling diseases became more efficient, as more information was shared between people. AI connected people doing similar things, to collaborate and work together to create breakthroughs.
Interestingly all the billionaires of 2020 donated most of their wealth to research and funding further AI development, not for profit but to help solve issues of food security, clean water, and environmental cleanup. The 2020 billionaires were held accountable for their wealth accumulation, in that by proliferating their monies to other good uses, such as solving hunger issues, were forever indelibly written into the annals of history. No matter what shortcomings they may have been exposed of, the fact that they made such huge sacrifices for the greater good absolved them of any of their shortcomings, after all they are human too. For example, as soon as Warren Buffet’s billions were distributed among various research institutes, billions followed suite. The system of wealth distribution was interesting in that the organizations that were listed to receive the funding had the mandate to keep dolling out money to other organizations.
This all took place in the years 2024-2035, as the years of 2021-2024 only crypto currencies were used, as society was recovering from the ashes, and the GB was taking place.
The GB essentially allowed people to live freely. Everyone started to understand that there is no absolute right and wrong way to live. Even if a religion tells its followers to lead a certain life, and all others are wrong, doesn’t mean that they can’t exist. It is a funny thing to happen when people have a realization that just because I want to live my life with my beliefs, doesn’t mean someone else can’t either live their life with their beliefs. There are obvious drawbacks, as how can everyone be truly free, and or how can society be “burdened” with catering to individual needs, it seems impossible.
But what the reckoning and the GB showed us was a mirror on ourselves. We are our worst enemies and therefore we are bad to other people. This realization is momentary and needs to continuously be reminded to people. But through the exposure, people began living as if their “5 start review” depended on it, and this was enough to quell certain evils.
No one cared about news anymore, you would just subscribe to events in locations that you were interested in finding out about. Events that were negative were used as case studies to figure out how to solve and make things better, so there is no “next time”.
Using AI we became able to learn from our mistakes, and we are reminded of our decision making ability and the impact each one of us actually has around us.
My message is one and the same, and I think it was painfully obvious, be nice to one another, even if we don’t agree, as we are likely more similar than we are different.