Manna: Two Visions of Humanity's Future (10 page)

"Yes."
She said.

"How
can they know you are about to break a rule?" I asked.

"Let's
say you have picked up a bat, you are running toward someone and your
muscles are getting the bat in position to swing it. A ref would look
at that and say, 'there's a good chance someone is going to get hurt
here.' The ref would shut down the person with the bat."

"Shut
down?"

"It
just disconnects your brain from your muscles and the ref takes
control. Then you are detained to review the situation and retrain."
She said.

"That
must really cut down on crime." I said.

"You
cannot imagine. And there is always a complete record after any crime
is committed, so there is no question about innocence or guilt.
Prosecution is trivial if you are guilty, and exoneration is instant
if you are not. It's a little creepy the first time a ref warns you
about something. It is sort of like a lifeguard yelling at you at the
pool for something you thought was OK. It's embarrassing, at least to
me. But then the ref explains the rule, you can ask questions about
it and then you move on."

"How
often do the refs flag you?" I asked.

"It
can be pretty often in the beginning, but I haven't heard from a ref
in over a year I'd say. It's been a long time."

"Where
do the rules come from?" I asked.

"We
make them. Everyone is involved. They'll spend almost a week on that
during orientation -- it's a big part of living here."

"And
what were you saying about exercise? How can a computer system help
with exercise?" I asked.

"This
sounds a little weird, but here's how it works. The biggest problem
with strenuous exercise is that it's no fun. It hurts. But strenuous
exercise really helps on the health side. People in the Australia
Project are now living 30 years longer than people in the U.S., and
exercise is a part of that. Athletes are OK with the pain, but most
normal people have no desire to be in pain for an hour or more. So...
someone figured out a solution. What you do is disconnect your brain
from sensory input and watch a movie or talk to people or handle mail
or read a book or whatever for an hour. During that time, the
Vertebrane system exercises your body for you. It takes your body
through a complete aerobic workout that's a lot more strenuous than
most people would tolerate on their own. You don't feel a thing, but
your body stays in great shape."

"You
are kidding me."

"No,
I am not kidding. It is fantastic to have a body that is working at
peak athletic performance. You've got to feel it to believe it. I am
in fantastic shape. Here, feel my arm muscles." She offered me
her arm, and she was surprisingly lean and muscular. I'd never really
paid any attention to it, but she was in great shape.

"Let
me see if I've got this straight. You disconnect your brain, and you
-- your brain -- can do whatever you want on the network. Call, read,
play games, whatever. Meantime a computer controls your body. So your
body is essentially a robot. Is that right?" I asked.

"Yes,
that's right. Your Vertebrane system is driving your body. Meanwhile
your brain is off doing whatever." She explained.

"So
who am I talking to now? Am I talking to Linda's brain, or to the
Vertebrane computer?" I asked.

"Ah.
I see where you are going. You are talking to me. It's against the
rules to have Vertebrane drive your body like that when you are with
someone else. That would be way too confusing. If I am with you, I am
driving my body. The refs would flag it otherwise."

"That's
reassuring." I said.

"When
we are together, you are always talking to me, myself and I. No
artificial additives. What else would you like to know?" She
asked.

"My
God, I could ask you questions all day. It would probably be easier
to simply get it myself and try the Vertebrane system out."

"I'm
glad to hear you say that!" she said. "We can have it done
today."

"Today?
Are you kidding?"

"No.
It's minor surgery. You can be out in an hour and you won't feel a
thing." She said.

"What???
How can replacing three vertebrae and having every major nerve fiber
severed be painless?" I asked.

"Well,
think about it. First, medicine is highly advanced here. But second,
any pain signals start routing through the Vertebrane system once
it's installed, and Vertebrane can mask any pain. There's no such
thing as unnecessary pain once you have Vertebrane installed. You'll
never have a headache again."

"If
we can do it today, let's go for it. I have got to try this out."
I had once been a game fanatic, and just the thought of an immersive
game was enough to sign me up.

We
went to the clinic. Linda held my hand as they put me under, and when
I woke up...

I
woke up as if I had taken a light nap. No grogginess really.
Everything was completely normal. Linda was sitting in a chair nearby
with her eyes closed. She was reading her email or walking around in
virtual space, for all I knew.

"Did
they do anything?" I asked.

She
opened her eyes. "Yes, of course. They put in the whole
Vertebrane system." She said.

"Where
is it? Nothing is different."

"It's
there," She said. "It defaults to pass-through mode. Now
you have to learn how to use it. That will take a day or two. I'll
take you over so you can start training."

It
turned out to be incredibly easy to use. And once you learned the
basics, it could do an amazing range of things. Just like Linda had
said, you could use the Vertabrane system to talk to people anywhere
in the Australia Project, to get answers to any question from the
network, to play totally immersive games. You could meet with people
in VS, and some of the meeting places were quite bizarre. You could
meet in weightlessness in a space station. You could meet underwater.
You could meet while walking under the canopy of a redwood forest.
Linda's favorite "place" to meet was flying through the
air, like Superman. In her Virtual Space, you could fly in the
traditional arms-forward Superman pose, or you could stick your arms
out and use them like wings to control your flight. Or you could ride
on a flying carpet. The flying sensation was remarkable.

You
also ordered everything through the Vertebrane system. You could try
on clothes, see and taste food, try out products, choose housing and
vacation options. It made shopping incredibly easy, and you knew
exactly what you were going to get.

The
funny thing was that Vertabrane was like every other technology I had
ever used. During the first couple of days it was miraculous. Each
new feature was surprising and amazing. But after a week or two you
got used to it and it became a part of your life. Think about any
technology -- the telephone, the automobile, the airplane, the
refrigerator, the home computer... These were all miracles the first
day people saw them and used them, but a week later they were passe.
By the end of orientation I didn't even know Vertebrane was there --
it seemed completely normal to me.

One
thing I did think about more and more was the security of this whole
system. Computers had been plagued with bugs and viruses since the
beginning, but the Australia Project seemed to suffer from none of
these problems. One day I asked Linda about it.

"What's
to stop someone from taking over the system and turning us into an
army of zombies?" I asked.

"I'm
no engineer," Linda said, "But here's the best explanation
I've heard. Why can't someone take over your brain?"

"What
do you mean?"

"Why
has no one ever been able to take over billions of human brains and
create an army of zombies that way?"

"Well,
it's inside of me. How would they take it over?" I replied.

"Why
can't they just upload a program into your brain, and that program
takes over your brain and turns you into a zombie a minute later? Why
does that never happen?" She asked.

"Because
there is no way to 'upload' a program into my brain. And my brain
does not execute programs anyway. It is not a computer." I
replied.

"Yes."
She said. "Everything you learn comes in through your eyes and
ears. It passes through your conscious mind one piece at a time, and
your conscious mind evaluates it. Then your conscious mind 'executes'
the things you learn consciously, thinking about each one. If someone
were to try to teach you to cut off your own arm, your conscious mind
would reject that as ridiculous when the lesson came in, and your
brain would certainly never cause you to cut off your arm except in
the most extreme situations. The Vertabrane system is operating in
the same way. It is learning things, not running programs. It acts
consciously rather than being 'programmed', and it has a far more
rigid moral code than most human beings do. The Vertebrane system
never blindly 'executes' a program, so it cannot be taken over.
That's true of all of the robots here. The Australia Project would
have collapsed long ago if this were just a bunch of computers
blindly executing code that humans had written. That is how things
were in the beginning, or course, but we advanced beyond it fairly
quickly."

Once
Vertebrane was installed, orientation became much easier. Everything
happened in VS and we covered a huge amount of material over the
remaining five weeks -- the economic system, government, voting,
housing, credits, travel, crime, punishment, rules, interpersonal
interactions, referees, education, ordering things, designing new
things, news, awards, social responsibilities and so on. There were
lessons on the nine core principles, what they meant and the effects
they had on the community as a whole. There was a lot of emphasis
placed on treating other people with respect, and understanding the
basic humanity of the people around you.

It
was very interesting to compare this new world to the world I had
known all through my life. The biggest difference, of course, was the
economic system. It had effects on everything -- the psychology of
people living in Australia, the way people worked with each other,
what people bought and why, the level of innovation, the way
resources were allocated, etc. One of the more interesting features
of the economy from a psychological standpoint was the fact that no
one had more than you did, or less, and everyone knew it. That
removed entire layers of negative emotions. The fact that you could
have pretty much anything you wanted, anytime you wanted it, meant
that you placed far less importance on material things. You would
expect that, given essentially free access to everything, people
would go nuts. Actually, the opposite happened. Suddenly there was no
condition of "want" or "envy," so people had no
need to show off.

This
will sound surprising, but one of the bigger differences was the lack
of advertising. The robots did not care whether you bought one style
of clothing or another, ate in one restaurant or another, lived in
one kind of housing or another... It was all the same to them.
Therefore, there was no need for advertising. If a fad caught on --
whether it was a song, a book, a style, a pair of shoes, a restaurant
-- it all happened by word of mouth. And everyone knew that. If you
tried something and it was good, you told your friends about it.

Innovation
was incredibly interesting and important, and in orientation we
discussed it extensively. I had never really thought of innovation as
a part of society. Here it was actually something that people thought
about and talked about as part of the "better and better"
principle. But the reason for the discussion was surprising.

What
became clear after several weeks is that a big part of the Australia
Project was living, and understanding what living meant to you.
Perhaps for the first time, a huge group of people had the freedom to
decide exactly how they wanted to live their lives, and then make it
happen. A big part of orientation was helping people realize that
fundamental feature of the Australia Project, and help you work
through the questions. It reminded me a little of the process of
setting an animal raised in the zoo free in the wild. If you've been
caged your entire life, actual freedom is a completely new
experience.

Every
single person in the Australia Project was different, and no one
focused on one thing exclusively, but there were some general
patterns. Some people chose to focus their lives on friends and
family. For example, lots of people with children wanted to spend
time with the kids. Many others had extensive networks of friends and
spent much of their time with friends socializing in a variety of
ways. Many people loved to travel, and spent a great deal of time
traveling to different parts of the country and the world. Some
people enjoyed art -- music, writing, painting, sculpture, dance,
etc. -- and spent a great deal of their time at their art. Athletes
spent their time training and competing. For each different person, a
different type of lifestyle brought fulfillment.

A
surprising number of people found fulfillment in creating new things
-- inventors, scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, designers,
architects. In the Australia Project, these people could find true
fulfillment. Because of the "better and better" principle,
the Australia Project set quite a bit of its resources aside to help
people interested in innovation. All "known" product
categories were under constant improvement. All unknowns were being
researched.

For
example, take any "known" product -- shoes, clothes, food,
housing, furniture, appliances, housing, restaurants, parks, etc.
People were constantly coming up with new ideas to make them better
and better. For example, if you came up with a new style of clothing,
you would submit it and the robots would put it in the catalog. There
was no way to know whether your new style would resonate with 100
people or a million, and the robots didn't care. The only way to find
out was to let people have access to it. If someone had a new idea
for a restaurant, the robots would simulate it and ask 1,000 people
about their level of interest. If there was any interest at all, the
robots would try one copy of the restaurant out. If it took off, they
would make copies of it in different regions. In this way,
restaurants were constantly changing and improving. The same thing
was true of housing -- there were thousands of housing styles, and
you could move whenever you felt like it. If someone had a new way of
doing things, the robots would try it out.