5 ms·

I'm not familiar with the series. But after skimming a few articles on it, I don't think my distaste for Manna transfers. The Culture series seems to create a

I'm not familiar with the series. But after skimming a few articles on it, I don't think my distaste for Manna transfers. The Culture series seems to create a platonic ideal of a post-scarcity pseudo-anarchistic liberal society under technocratic governance, and explores its interactions with the outside world. Though the details of that society's implementation may be somewhat distasteful to me personally, it seems the author is more than willing to critique the society and its behavior from as good a faith a position as he took to create it. Manna doesn't do the same. SPOILERS FOR MANNA AHEAD Brain constructed the Australia Project as a desirable alternative to the corporatist dystopia of the United States - where the majority of the population has been rendered technologically obsolete, and are held in cheap public housing where they wait to die. Despite what he may claim, he writes the Australia Project less as an exploration, and more as a sales brochure. Brain breathlessly and uncritically describes the Australia Project as heaven on earth, or a 'luxury cruise'. In the process of doing so, he leaves little nuggets of text that suggest a much grimmer reality than he lets on at surface level. Luxury Cruise is an apt description. You may be there to relax, but the experience is purposeless without the contrast of your real life. The ship may be stocked to the gills, but when things go belly up it quickly becomes clear how constrained the ship's resources truly are. You may be free to have fun now, but upset the wrong person on staff or become even a minor nuisance, and you'll soon learn how autocratically the ship is actually ran. It's made quite clear that Australia cannot truly be considered a post-scarcity society. In AP, no individual's activities may exceed their allotment of resources (and certainly, there must be an allotment because one's resource consumption cannot come at the expense of another's) In AP, anyone may be free to create, make, or do whatever they want, but whatever they want is tightly constrained. No individual's activities may make anyone uncomfortable. This is reflected in Brain's description of the criminal justice system, where he describes automated 'referees' detaining or potentially pre-empting citizen's control over their own bodies in response to an emotional outburst in public, "mainly because no one wants to be around when it happens". He describes this as if it were desirable. If this is seen as a proportional response, I would be terrified for anyone who sought to do or say anything of real consequence. Finally, as evinced by my previous two examples: everything in Brain's world is on lease, down to your body. Once you're inside of the AP's network every sensation, sight, smell and action is recorded, analyzed, and mediated through it. Your permission to use your body may be revoked at the leisure of an algorithm perfectly enforcing complex rules of indeterminate (if ostensibly democratic) origin. This happens so often it seems, that it's regard as "sort of like a lifeguard yelling at you at the pool for something you thought was OK". Your privacy is forfeit, and it's quite clear that the closes thing one can come to owning anything in the AP is inside a virtual space. Somehow Brain treats this as an ideal future. If this is the best we can hope for, I would sooner be drafted into WWIII than experience it.

userulluipeste 6y ago
I share your attitude towards the (meant to be) utopia world described in Marshall Brain's novel, but I presume that this may be just a shared cultural thing. Next generations seem to value less their privacy, or at least are less willing to resist privacy encroachments, and it shouldn't be that far-fetched to assume cultural leaning/conditioning to a more "integrated world" in the future. Also, there is another aspect that we conveniently leaving out, namely how the society deals with threats. For discussion's sake, let's pick on only the most uncontroversial ones like crime and sanity. We confine and restrict individuals in prisons and mental asylums respectively because that's the level of control that we currently have to avoid them affecting the society at large. The moment that level of control improves, like something closer to the brain, the aforementioned facility-based confinement becomes unnecessary and we may even get to feel good for letting at least some part of the otherwise problematic people be active in society. Will that brain control practice spill out to something less justifiable? Maybe. However, that's tomorrow's politics, and most likely tomorrow's world too, for better or worse.
- crocodiletears 6y ago
  I do agree that it's a cultural thing. American, European, and East-Asian lockdown policies have been massively instructive on the spectrum of humanity's willingness to submit to state and cultural authority. But I wouldn't go so far as to say that the next generation values its privacy less than the previous. If anything, my observations would suggest it's the opposite. The amount of energy and expertise required to function in society while avoiding the excesses of corporate surveillance has simply expanded past the point where people can realistically fight it. Younger people know that the war is lost. No significant segment of the population truly appreciates the scale, and the precision with-which they're being tracked. But among my younger friends and family, there seems to be a persistent appreciation that privacy is a precious commodity in very short supply. They may not always be cognizant of it, of course. They grew up in this world, and it's impractical to think about the air you breath all the time, even if it's thick with smog. It's simply not realistic. They do intuitively know which battles are lost, moreso than 'older' folk past their late 20s who vividly remember the advent of Facebook, who like to grouse about the tracking of social media while aggressively ignoring the fact that the little spy in their pocket would be just as insidious in its violations with or without any apps installed. But you need a phone to function in the modern world. You'll never be able to truly escape the panopticon without a great deal of money, and if you could you would have to leave everyone you ever knew behind, and many of your prospects to do so. And after all, it's not bit you yet. Better to resign yourself to what's already lost. The Europeans I've known have generally been less reticent in their acceptance of the state of the world, FWIW. To your second point... My instincts, and my morality tells me we'd be better off with the prisons, and possibly the sanitariums. Not because of the potential downstream consequences, but because to psychologically muzzle anyone like that without their active and continuous consent would be an atrocity of the first order. Our criminal justice system in America is often abysmal. But at least our prisoners are not lobotomized for the comfort of those of us who find the idea of prisons offensive. They're granted at the very least, the dignity to resent those who locked them up. I believe you're right, these are for the time hypotheticals. Tomorrow is a foreign land, but it's a foreign land in-which many of us will live. Regardless, it's incumbent on each and every one of us to ensure that that land shares in what virtues we consider right, and just.

userulluipeste 6y ago

I share your attitude towards the (meant to be) utopia world described in Marshall Brain's novel, but I presume that this may be just a shared cultural thing. Next generations seem to value less their privacy, or at least are less willing to resist privacy encroachments, and it shouldn't be that far-fetched to assume cultural leaning/conditioning to a more "integrated world" in the future. Also, there is another aspect that we conveniently leaving out, namely how the society deals with threats. For discussion's sake, let's pick on only the most uncontroversial ones like crime and sanity. We confine and restrict individuals in prisons and mental asylums respectively because that's the level of control that we currently have to avoid them affecting the society at large. The moment that level of control improves, like something closer to the brain, the aforementioned facility-based confinement becomes unnecessary and we may even get to feel good for letting at least some part of the otherwise problematic people be active in society. Will that brain control practice spill out to something less justifiable? Maybe. However, that's tomorrow's politics, and most likely tomorrow's world too, for better or worse.

crocodiletears 6y ago
I do agree that it's a cultural thing. American, European, and East-Asian lockdown policies have been massively instructive on the spectrum of humanity's willingness to submit to state and cultural authority. But I wouldn't go so far as to say that the next generation values its privacy less than the previous. If anything, my observations would suggest it's the opposite. The amount of energy and expertise required to function in society while avoiding the excesses of corporate surveillance has simply expanded past the point where people can realistically fight it. Younger people know that the war is lost. No significant segment of the population truly appreciates the scale, and the precision with-which they're being tracked. But among my younger friends and family, there seems to be a persistent appreciation that privacy is a precious commodity in very short supply. They may not always be cognizant of it, of course. They grew up in this world, and it's impractical to think about the air you breath all the time, even if it's thick with smog. It's simply not realistic. They do intuitively know which battles are lost, moreso than 'older' folk past their late 20s who vividly remember the advent of Facebook, who like to grouse about the tracking of social media while aggressively ignoring the fact that the little spy in their pocket would be just as insidious in its violations with or without any apps installed. But you need a phone to function in the modern world. You'll never be able to truly escape the panopticon without a great deal of money, and if you could you would have to leave everyone you ever knew behind, and many of your prospects to do so. And after all, it's not bit you yet. Better to resign yourself to what's already lost. The Europeans I've known have generally been less reticent in their acceptance of the state of the world, FWIW. To your second point... My instincts, and my morality tells me we'd be better off with the prisons, and possibly the sanitariums. Not because of the potential downstream consequences, but because to psychologically muzzle anyone like that without their active and continuous consent would be an atrocity of the first order. Our criminal justice system in America is often abysmal. But at least our prisoners are not lobotomized for the comfort of those of us who find the idea of prisons offensive. They're granted at the very least, the dignity to resent those who locked them up. I believe you're right, these are for the time hypotheticals. Tomorrow is a foreign land, but it's a foreign land in-which many of us will live. Regardless, it's incumbent on each and every one of us to ensure that that land shares in what virtues we consider right, and just.