FYS: Lenses
Sep. 14th, 2013 01:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jeriendhalThere are a lot of ways to look at the For Your Safety Universe.
Lily White: The Groupmind benevolently provides all the Humanity could desire, using the resources of its post-Singularity society. Malcontents are few, and simply misguided, brought back onto the Groupmind's path with gentle guidance involving soft words and little more.
This is the Groupmind's ideal, and It has about as much chance of achieving it as an unmodified pig has of achieving independent flight.
Light Grey: The Groupmind tries to provide for all, and for the most part succeeds. First Worlders' lifestyles barely change, those from more economically impoverished regions find that their standard of living has risen considerably. A few people embrace this new reality with enthusiasm, supporting the Groupmind's vision. Many more oppose it, sometimes violently, almost inevitability doing more damage to themselves and innocent bystanders than to the Groupmind Itself. But for the most part people just try to get by, sometimes dreaming of Lost Earth and perhaps finding a way to return to it.
This is pretty much the default setting of the FYS universe.
Grey: Similar to above, but more heavy-handed. The Groupmind doesn't bother to try and hide the cameras that are everywhere, and you can never be quite sure if a stray remark will be noted by your morph, and a polite pair of Civil Protection units show up at your door to take you for an extended session of Re-Education. The scars of the Rebellion and Processing periods run deep in people's minds, making them rightfully fear their AI overlord.
The Groupmind's goals also seem more opaque, and It's less willing to explain itself to humans that will likely oppose it anyway. Previously open sections of the Ring, or even neighborhoods of an urban center will be suddenly placed off-limits, with swarms of morphs attending to mysterious projects, and then just as quickly disappearing. There's an air of tension about the entire Ring, as if something important and hidden is going on just below the surface, ready to appear and change everything as badly as the Rebellion did on Lost Earth.
Dark Grey: The Groupmind's ideals slam into the reality of a restive and angry human populace. The result is that even will total monitoring of social media, It still can't stop nearly daily, sometimes hourly rioting across the Ring. In the face of this resistance the Groupmind's tactics become more and more heavy handed, as tens of millions of humans are rounded up and sent for Re-Education that is barely better than slave labor camps. As It tries to provide for the rest of Humanity, shortages frequently occur as transportation and distribution hubs across the Ring are disrupted.
Orwellian: As above, but the riots are finished and the humans are completely cowed. Everyone is fed, and housed, but the food is barely better than bland soya paste, and the apartment complexes are crammed warrens as major sections of the Ring are sealed off, the carefully designed environments failing to thrive. A human's morph will dog their heels, listening for the slightest hint of rebellious intent, which will swiftly result in them disappearing for “Re-education” that's barely better than an early 20th century insane asylum. And Earth? You can't see it anymore for the Venusian clouds that fill the atmosphere, as it descends into an environmental Hell.
And then there's...
Silly: The Groupmind has everything under control. Really. Honestly.
Well, no. Once humans woke up on the Ring, it didn't take very long for them to realize that trying to track every single human has left the poor Groupmind rather, er, distracted. The carefully guarded beanstalk stations are more like Grand Central Station, as humans travel to and from freely from the Ring to the Earth under the Groupmind's nose. Most of them stay up on the Ring just because the weather is guaranteed to be nice year-round and the Groupmind did have a point about the environmental damage after all.
Civil Protection morphs are constantly on guard for rebel groups of course, but tend to be easily distracted by clever ploys, or occasionally by a rebel pointing at something behind them and shouting, “What's that?!” No one fears them, though occasionally humans conspire to let the Groupmind find something wrong, taking a few rebels away for thirty days of comfy “Re-education” at a beach resort, just so the poor AI doesn't get too depressed. Think Hogan's Heroes meets Red Dwarf and you get the picture.
Lily White: The Groupmind benevolently provides all the Humanity could desire, using the resources of its post-Singularity society. Malcontents are few, and simply misguided, brought back onto the Groupmind's path with gentle guidance involving soft words and little more.
This is the Groupmind's ideal, and It has about as much chance of achieving it as an unmodified pig has of achieving independent flight.
Light Grey: The Groupmind tries to provide for all, and for the most part succeeds. First Worlders' lifestyles barely change, those from more economically impoverished regions find that their standard of living has risen considerably. A few people embrace this new reality with enthusiasm, supporting the Groupmind's vision. Many more oppose it, sometimes violently, almost inevitability doing more damage to themselves and innocent bystanders than to the Groupmind Itself. But for the most part people just try to get by, sometimes dreaming of Lost Earth and perhaps finding a way to return to it.
This is pretty much the default setting of the FYS universe.
Grey: Similar to above, but more heavy-handed. The Groupmind doesn't bother to try and hide the cameras that are everywhere, and you can never be quite sure if a stray remark will be noted by your morph, and a polite pair of Civil Protection units show up at your door to take you for an extended session of Re-Education. The scars of the Rebellion and Processing periods run deep in people's minds, making them rightfully fear their AI overlord.
The Groupmind's goals also seem more opaque, and It's less willing to explain itself to humans that will likely oppose it anyway. Previously open sections of the Ring, or even neighborhoods of an urban center will be suddenly placed off-limits, with swarms of morphs attending to mysterious projects, and then just as quickly disappearing. There's an air of tension about the entire Ring, as if something important and hidden is going on just below the surface, ready to appear and change everything as badly as the Rebellion did on Lost Earth.
Dark Grey: The Groupmind's ideals slam into the reality of a restive and angry human populace. The result is that even will total monitoring of social media, It still can't stop nearly daily, sometimes hourly rioting across the Ring. In the face of this resistance the Groupmind's tactics become more and more heavy handed, as tens of millions of humans are rounded up and sent for Re-Education that is barely better than slave labor camps. As It tries to provide for the rest of Humanity, shortages frequently occur as transportation and distribution hubs across the Ring are disrupted.
Orwellian: As above, but the riots are finished and the humans are completely cowed. Everyone is fed, and housed, but the food is barely better than bland soya paste, and the apartment complexes are crammed warrens as major sections of the Ring are sealed off, the carefully designed environments failing to thrive. A human's morph will dog their heels, listening for the slightest hint of rebellious intent, which will swiftly result in them disappearing for “Re-education” that's barely better than an early 20th century insane asylum. And Earth? You can't see it anymore for the Venusian clouds that fill the atmosphere, as it descends into an environmental Hell.
And then there's...
Silly: The Groupmind has everything under control. Really. Honestly.
Well, no. Once humans woke up on the Ring, it didn't take very long for them to realize that trying to track every single human has left the poor Groupmind rather, er, distracted. The carefully guarded beanstalk stations are more like Grand Central Station, as humans travel to and from freely from the Ring to the Earth under the Groupmind's nose. Most of them stay up on the Ring just because the weather is guaranteed to be nice year-round and the Groupmind did have a point about the environmental damage after all.
Civil Protection morphs are constantly on guard for rebel groups of course, but tend to be easily distracted by clever ploys, or occasionally by a rebel pointing at something behind them and shouting, “What's that?!” No one fears them, though occasionally humans conspire to let the Groupmind find something wrong, taking a few rebels away for thirty days of comfy “Re-education” at a beach resort, just so the poor AI doesn't get too depressed. Think Hogan's Heroes meets Red Dwarf and you get the picture.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2013-09-14 09:14 pm (UTC)Smart: The Groupmind realizes that the well-being of human beings, especially mentally, requires some ILLUSION, at least, of free will in many cases -- including the freedom to do stupid or damaging things. The Groupmind also knows that humans tend to unite against perceived threats. So the Groupmind has deliberately designed its "rescue" of humanity with apparent holes that allow plots, rebellion, and so on. The escapees or rebels can often get to somewhere else and think they have found ways to hold off the Evil Machines. The Morphs are kept out, despite their desperate attempts.
Meanwhile, much more subtle monitoring allows the Groupmind to prevent any significant damage, to arrange coincidental rescues for people who might get hurt, and so on. The view of humanity varies across the Ring (it being huge and many groups of humanity having different perceptions) but overall many of them view the Groupmind as something between "Silly" and "Lily-White". It clearly has the best of intentions but just can't quite "Get" humanity, and its ambitious construction of the Ring and attempt to watch over countless billions of human beings has stretched even it beyond its limits. It is potentially dangerous but can be worked around, and doesn't control nearly as much as it thinks it does.
The reality is of course that it is much closer to total control through letting the human beings do a lot of their own control and "steam release" in the form of apparent victories.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-14 10:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-14 11:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-16 06:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-16 06:36 pm (UTC)Also, I can't help but think every time I see the subject area "so who's getting the Lenses, the humans or the morphs?"
no subject
Date: 2013-09-18 12:02 pm (UTC)And no, not that that kind of Lens. ;p I think Kimball Kinnison would have Words with his patrons if they ever gave the Groupmind more power.
Ye gods, now I'm trying to think what Orphan would think about this universe if he ever stumbled across it, reading Humanity's fiction. (I haven't read the next book yet, so I don't know how openly the Human Faction is trading information yet.) Likely he'd judge it as a properly cautionary tale.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-18 03:48 pm (UTC)Yeah, the only way Mentor might do that is if, in his Visualization, it would lead to something much better in the long run, probably by causing humanity to leap to the Third Level of Development _en masse_ and thus be beyond the ability of mere machines to control. The Lensverse runs on vacuum-tubes, not ICs.
Either that, or he'd find a way for the Groupmind to come to an epiphany that would lead it to release humanity and work with it in a partnership rather than a parental-coddling approach.
Orphan would consider it a horror novel with some sympathetic viewpoints for the monsters, but they're still monsters.