Describe or narrate a scenario about an implant found a millenium into a future in which order is deliberately coordinated or imposed. Your description should address issues related to education and elicit feelings of dignity.
Hello and welcome to the University of Gnosi Keyah (UGK) for your first session of IRHE (Immigration and Refugee Hagazio Education). For the next two years you will experience, learn, play, and question the philosophy, art, science, and design elements that have made the UNAA (United North American Alliance) the nation that it is today. The UNAA has an open, free, and no-questions-asked immigration policy, where applicants, at any time, are welcome to leave. If you choose not to participate in IRHE, please contact your placement coordinator and they will reunite you, expense free, to your country of choice. Please note that the processing time of the receiving country may experience delays up to seven years. Completion of the two year IRHE qualifies you to further pursue undergraduate, post-graduate, and doctoral degrees at any of our 35 universities and centres of technology. You are not compelled to complete further education as our generous citizen UBI will give you time to integrate, connect, and find belonging in any of our territories, cities, or neighbourhoods…
… The 3rd millennium, colloquially known as “The Dark AIge” experienced unparalleled war, discrimination, religious nationalism, and global climate catastrophes that displaced 30% of the global population. This “dark time” was largely driven by algorithmically programmed AI bots developed by corporations and sold to the highest bidder. After centuries of unpredictable stability, decades of civil, national, and globally interconnected wars in addition to class action lawsuits that resulted in the corporate divestiture of 12 top global tech firms, the UNAA came together with the best minds in tech, philosophy, health, science, and economics and has arduously worked towards a society where citizens are put first. Technology, science, work, and play are 100% in the best interest of citizens. Over the last 300 years, our population has grown to over 250,000,000 people and our territory holdings occupy what has historically been known as Canada, The United States, and Mexico. Our citizens experience reduced stress and anxiety as we have all but eliminated genetic and epigenetic sources of illness and disease and our robust Social Support Network (SSN) continues to aid our placement coordinators by helping you find the best neighbourhood for your unique personal, communal, and vocational needs. The SSN has also been integrated into our justice system and for the first time in history we have eliminated repeat offenders of violent crime and reduced petty crime to less than 0.03% per 100,000 people. Our Integrated Semiotic Analysis Network (ISAN) has analyzed and categorized every available physical and digitized document (text, video, picture, audio, and programming language) in the history of human kind and has compiled a responsive database that has adapted to multi-cultural and linguistic values, blending the best of humanity’s history into a single social expression. We are constantly adapting and projecting how our society can be more inclusive, responsive, responsible, and value those that have been historically ignored, marginalized, and economically irrelevant…
…After completing full integration of our health and wellness network (HWN) you’ll find that within two generations your offspring will be immune to any known disease in our health database. If you should choose to have a family, HWN will connect you with citizens that share compatible and optimized genetic, epigenetic, and personality traits. Now, we have to be clear, this is not a eugenic experiment and you are free to choose any partner at any time – even those outside your HWN optimization. However, 98% of our citizens that choose partners from our HWN share levels of contentment, meaning, value, love, and companionship at rates unseen in human history. Our divorce and separation rates are less than 1.5% in the first 5 years of cohabitation and less than 0.02% after 10 years…
… Our economic structure revolves around joint government/citizen collectives whereby every social and private enterprise, from farming to education to military, utilizes our ISAN to serve humanity and our unique needs, expressions, and cultures. Almost every collective has adapted an 80-20 model. Employees, or “drivers”, (those responsible for monitoring automated systems) spend 80% of their time on “conceptual design” . Because our parent collectives have ownership of these designs, drivers are free from “moral crumple zones” and are able to use 80% of their time in ways that benefit them and their community…
…For example, an employee at HWN developed a theoretical data compression algorithm that only worked when computing processing speeds surpassed theoretical limits. Seventy-five years after the conception of the algorithm, processing speeds surpassed theoretical limits and the algorithm was simply integrated into existing system structures and paved the way for prosthetic nervous systems that surpass the speed and sensitivity of human cognition and neural pathways. The integration and replacement of limbs, organs, and cellular systems is now a two hour operation with a recovery time of 48 hrs…
… The underlying responsibilities of every UNAA citizen is based on the finest philosophies, epistemologies and ontologies developed by both religious and secular thinkers. When first conceptualizing the UNAA, our theorists used words that had been popularized in the 3rd millennium and re-purposed them. We gave these words new meanings and blended multi-national conceptions of citizenship, land ownership, and human rights to provide the foundation of our nation’s ethics. Our citizens have the right to freely practice any religion, creed, faith, philosophy, political practice or ideology. However, given the 3rd millennium’s multiple violent and radical outbreaks of global religious nationalism, the UNAA retains the right to use the HWN to monitor, survey, and provide therapeutic suggestions, recommendations, or mandates when patterns of conscious or unconscious harmful cognitive behaviours occur (verbal, linguistic, behavioural, cognitive, epigenetic, or other*).
References and Inspiration
Dunne, A., & Raby, F. (2013). Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Greenspan, S. (Host). (2021, September 28). Cycle 1: DatabodyLinks to an external site. [Audio podcast episode]. In Bellweather. Bandcamp Radio.
Harari, Y. Reboot for the AI revolution. Nature 550, 324–327 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/550324a
