Cyberpunk
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works better that way.
So: we need a compelling character. In fact, we need two characters. One for
the early-adoption contingent who appreciates technical sweetness, and the
other who is our potential mass-market household user. To put a human face
on them right away, I would suggest we call them “Al” and “Zelda.”
Al is a young man with disposable income who lives in a rather complex
household. (Perhaps he inherited it.) Al’s not really at ease with his
situation as it stands—all those heirlooms, antiques, expensive furniture,
kitchenware, lawn-care devices— it’s all just a little out of his control.
Given Al’s modern education, Al sees a laptop or desktop as his natural
means of control over a complex situation. Al wants his things together
and neat, and accessible, and searchable, and orderly—just the way they
are on his computer screen.
But what Al really needs is an understanding, experienced, high-tech
housekeeper. That’s where “Zelda” comes into the story. Zelda’s in today’s
65+ demographic, elderly but very vigorous, with some life-extension health
issues. Zelda has smart pill-bottles that remind her of all her times and her
dosages. She’s got cognitive blood-brain inhalers, and smart orthopedic
shoes. Zelda wears the customary, elder-demographic, biomaintenance wrist-
monitor. So I see Zelda as very up to speed with biomedical tech—so that her
innate late-adapter conservatism has a weak spot that we might exploit. Is
this approach working for the Team?
From: Coordinator
To: Design Team
Subject: All right!!
The Social Anthropologist knows just what we want: specificity. We’re
building a technology designed for these two characters—who are they, what
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do they need? How can we exceed their consumer expectations, make them
go “Wow”?
And one other little thing—I’m not the “Leader.” It’s nice of Susan to say
that, but my proper title is “Coordinator,” and the new CEO insists on that
across all divisions.
From: Graphics Gal
To: Design Team
Subject: My Turn
Okay, well, maybe it’s just me, but I’m getting a kind of vibe from this guy
“Albert.” I’m thinking he’s maybe, like, a hunter? Because I see him as, like,
outdoors a lot? More than you’d think for a geek, anyway. Okay?
From: Engineer
To: Design Team
Subject: Story Time
Okay, I can play that way, too. “Albert Huddleston.” He’s the quiet type,
good with his hands. Not a big talker. Doesn’t read much. Not a ladies’ man.
But he’s great at home repair. He’s got the big house, and he’s out in the big
yard a lot of the time, with big trees, maybe a garden. A deer rifle wouldn’t
scare him. He could tie trout flies, if he were in the mood.
From: Marketer
To: Design Team
Subject: The Consumables within Al’s Demographic
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BRUCE STERLING
A bow saw, an extendible pruner. Closet full of extreme-sports equipment
from college that he can’t bear to get rid of.
From: Graphics Gal
To: Design Team
Subject: What Is Albert really like?
So he’s, like, maybe, a Cognition Science major with a minor in environmental
issues?
From: Marketer
To: Design Team
Subject: [none]
Albert’s not smart enough to be a “Cognition Science major.”
From: Legal Expert
To: Design Team
Subject: So-Called Cognition Science
In a lot of schools, “Cognition Science” is just the Philosophy Department in
drag.
From: Team Coordinator
To: Design Team
Subject: Brainstorming
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It’s great to see you pitching in, Legal Expert, but let’s not get too critical while the big, loose ideas are still flowing.
From: Legal Expert
To: Design Team
Subject: Critical Legal Implications
Well, excuse me for living. Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but there are massive legal issues with this proposed technology. We’re talking about embedding hundreds of fingernail-sized radio-chirping MEMS chips that emit real-time data on the location and the condition of everything you own. That’s a potential
Orwell situation. It could violate every digital-privacy statute on the books.
Let’s just suppose that you walk out with some guy’s chip-infested fountain
pen. You don’t even know the thing’s bugged. So if the plaintiff’s got enough
bandwidth and big enough receivers, he can map you and all your movements,
for as long as you carry the thing.
Legal issues must come first in the design process. It’s not prudent to tack on anti-liability safeguards somewhere down at the far end of the assembly line.
From: Engineer
To: Design Team
Subject: Correction
We don’t use “assembly lines.” Those went out with the twentieth century.
From: Marketer
To: Design Team
Subject: Getting Sued
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Wait a minute. Isn’t product liability exactly what blew us out of the water
with the ultrasonic cleanser?
From: The Social Anthropologist
To: Design Team
Subject: The Issues We Face As a Group
There are plenty of major issues here, no one’s denying that. In terms of the
story, though, I’m very intrigued with the Legal Expert’s views. There seems
to be an unexamined assumption that a household control technology is
necessarily “private.”
But what if it’s just the opposite? If Al has the location and condition of all his possessions cybernetically tracked and tagged in real time, maybe Al is freed from worrying about all his stuff. Why should Al fret about his possessions anymore?
We’ve made them permanently safe. Why shouldn’t Al loan the lawnmower to
his neighbor? The neighbor can’t lose the lawnmower, He can’t sell it, because
Al’s embedded MEMS monitors just won’t allow that behavior. (continued)
So now Al can be far more generous to his neighbor. Instead of being miserly
and geeky “labeling everything he possesses,” obsessed with privacy, Al turns
out to be an open-handed, open-hearted, very popular guy. He doesn’t even
need locks on his doors! Everything Al has is automatically theft-proof —
thanks to us. He has big house parties, fearlessly showing off his home and his possessions. Everything that was once a personal burden to Al becomes a
benefit to the neighborhood community. What was once Al’s weakness and
anxiety is now a source of emotional strength and community esteem.
From: Team Coordinator
To: Design Team
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Subject: Wow
Right! That’s it. That’s what we’re looking for. That’s the “Wow” factor.
From: Graphics Gal
To: Design Team
Subject: Re: Wow
So here’s how Al meets Zelda. Cause she’s, like, living next door? And there’s
a bunch of Al’s dinner plates in her house, kinda “borrowed”? Some
one
breaks a plate, there’s an immediate screen prompt, Al rushes over.
From: Legal Expert
To: Design Team
Subject: Domestic Disputes
Someone threw a plate at Zelda. Zelda owns the home next door, and her son
and daughter-in-law are living in it. But Zelda sold the home because she
needs to finance her rejuvenation treatments. It’s a basic cross-generational
equity issue. Happens all the time nowadays, with the boom in life extension.
Granny Zelda comes home from the clinic looking 35. She’s mortgaged the
family wealth, and now the next generation can’t afford to have kids.
Daughter-in-law freaked because dear old mom suddenly looks better than
she does. It’s a soap-opera eruption of passion, resentment, and greed. Makes
a child-custody case look like a traffic ticket.
From: Engineer
To: Design Team
Subject: Implications
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BRUCE STERLING
Great. So listen. Zelda sells her house and moves in with Al. He’s a nice guy,
rescuing her from her family. She brings all her own stuff into Al’s house—60
years’ worth of tchotchkes. No problem. Thanks to us. Because Al and Zelda
are getting everything out of her packing boxes and tagging it all with MEMS
tags. Possessions are mixed up physically—and yet they’re totally separate,
virtually. With MEMS, unskilled labor can enter the house with handheld
trackers, separate and re-pack everything in a few hours, tops. Al and Zelda
never lose track of who belongs to what—that’s a benefit we’re supplying.
They can live together in a new kind of way.
From: Graphics Gal
To: Design Team
Subject: A&Z Living Together
Okay, so Zelda’s in the house cooking, right? Now Al can get to that yardwork
he’s been putting off. There’s like squirrels and raccoons and out there, and
they’re getting in the attic? Only now Al’s got some cybernetic live-traps, like the MuscleGel MistNet from our Outdoor Products Division. Al catches the
raccoon, and he plants a MEMS chip under the animal’s skin. Now he always
knows where the raccoon is! It’s like, Al hears this spooky noise in the attic, he goes up in the attic with his handheld, it’s like, “Okay Rocky, I know it’s you!
And I know exactly where you’re hiding. Get the hell out of my insulation.”
From: Legal Expert
To: Design Team
Subject: Tagging Raccoons
Interesting. If Al really does track and catalog a raccoon, that makes the
raccoon a property improvement. If Al wants to sell the house, he’s got a
market advantage. After all, Al’s property comes with big trees—that’s obvious, 146
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that’s a given—but now it also comes with a legally verifiable raccoon.
From: Engineer
To: Design Team
Subject: Squirrels
They’re no longer vermin. The squirrels in the trees, I mean. They’re a wholly
owned property asset.
From: Team Coordinator
To: Design Team
Subject: This Is Real Progress, People
I’m with this approach! See, we never would have thought of the raccoon
angle if we’d concentrated on the product as a product. But of course Al is
moving his control chips out of the house, into his lawn, and eventually into
the whole neighborhood. Raccoons wander around all the time. So do domestic
dogs and cats. But that’s not a bug in our tracking technology—that’s a feature.
Al’s cat has got a MEMS tag on its collar. Al can tag every cat’s collar in the neighborhood and run it as a neighborhood service off his web page. When
you’re calling Kitty in for supper, you just e-mail Kitty’s collar.
From: Programmer
To: Design Team
Subject: [no subject]
AWESOME! I am so with this! I got 8 cats myself, I want this product! I can
smell the future here! And it smells like a winner!!
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From: Engineer
To: Design Team
Subject: Current Chip Technology
That subcutaneous ID chip is a proven technology. They’ve been doing that
for lab rats for years now. I could have a patent-free working model out of our Sunnyvale fab plant in 48 hours, tops.
The only problem Al faces is repeater technology, so he can cover the
neighborhood with his radio locators. But a repeater net is a system
administration issue. That’s a classic, tie-in, service-provision opportunity.
We’re talking long-term contracts here, and a big buyer lock-in factor.
From: Marketer
To: Design Team
Subject: Buyer Lock-In Factor
That is hot! Of course! It’s about consumer stickiness through market-
segmentation upgrades. You’ve got the bottom-level, introductory,
Household-Only tagging model. Then the mid-level Neighborhood model.
Then, on to the Gold and Platinum service levels, with 24-hour tech support!
Al can saturate the whole suburb. Maybe even the whole city! It’s totally
open-ended. We supply as many tags and as much monitoring and connectivity
as the guy can pay for. The only limit is the size of his wallet!
From: Team Coordinator
To: Social Anthropologist
Subject: ***Private Message***
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Susan, look at ’em go! I can’t believe the storytelling approach works so well.
Last week they were hanging around the lab with long faces, preparing their
resumés and e-mailing headhunters.
To: Team Coordinator
From: The Social Anthropologist
Subject: Re: ***Private Message***
Fred, people have been telling each other stories since we were hominids
around campfires in Africa. It’s a very basic human cognition thing, really.
From: Team Coordinator
To: Social Anthropologist
Subject: **Private Message Again**
We've gotta hit, Susan. I can feel it. I need a drink after all this, don’t you?
Let’s celebrate. On my tab, okay? We’ll make a night of it.
From: The Social Anthropologist
To: Team Coordinator
Subject: Our Relationship
Fred, I’m not going to deny there’s chemistry between us. But I really have to
question whether that’s appropriate business behavior.
From: Team Coordinator
To: Social Anthropologist
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BRUCE STERLING
Subject: ***Private Message***
We’re grown-ups, Susan. We’ve both been around the block a few times.
Come on, you don’t have to be this way.
From: The Social Anthropologist
To: Team Coordinator
Subject: Re: ***Private Message***
Fred, it’s not like this upsets me professionally—I mean, not in that oh-so-
proper way. I’m a trained anthropologist. They train us to understand how
societies work—not how to make people happy. I’m being very objective
about this situation. I don’t hold it against you. I know that I’m relationship poison, Fred. I’ve never made a man happy in my whole life.
From: Team Coordinator
To: Social Anthropologist
Subject: **Very Private Message**
Please don’t be that way, Susan. That “you a
nd me” business, I mean. I
thought we’d progressed past that by now. We could just have a friendly
cocktail down at Les Deux Magots. This story isn’t about “you and me.”
From: The Social Anthropologist
To: Team Coordinator
Subject: Your Unacceptable Answer
Then whose story is it, Fred? If this isn’t our story, then whose story is it?
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Albert’s mouth was dry. His head was swimming. He really had to knock it off
with those cognition enhancers—especially after 8:00 P.M. The smart drugs
had been a major help in college—all those French philosophy texts, my
God, Kant 301, that wasn’t the kind of text that a guy could breeze through
without serious neurochemical assistance—but he’d overdone it. Now he ate
the pills just to keep up with the dyslexia syndrome—and the pills made him
so, well, verbal. Lots of voices inside the head. Voices in the darkness. Bits
and pieces arguing. Weird debates. A head full of yakking chemical drama.
Another ripping snore came out of Hazel. Hazel had the shape of a zaftig
1940s swimsuit model, and the ear-nose-and-throat lining of a 67-year-old
crone. And what the hell was it with those hundred-year-old F. Scott
Fitzgerald novels? Those pink ballet slippers. And the insistence on calling
herself “Zelda.”
Huddleston pulled himself quietly out of the bed. He lurched into the
master bathroom, which alertly switched itself on as he entered. His hair was
snow white, his face a road map of hard wear. The epidermal mask was tearing
loose a bit, down at the shaving line at the base of his neck. He was a 25-year-old man who went out on hot dates with his own roommate. He posed as
Zelda’s fictional “70-year-old escort.” When they were out in clubs and
restaurants, he always passed as Zelda’s sugar daddy.
That was the way the two of them had finally clicked as a couple, somehow.
The way to make the relationship work out. Al had become a stranger in his
own life.
Al now knew straight-out, intimately, what it really meant to be old. Al
knew how to pass for old. Because his girlfriend was old. He watched forms
of media that were demographically targeted for old people, with their
deafened ears, cloudy eyes, permanent dyspepsia, and fading grip strength.
Al was technologically jet-lagged out of the entire normal human aging
process. He could visit “his 70s” the way you might buy a ticket and visit
“France.”