Commerce

Overview
Commerce in the first world has been streamlined and automated by AI processes and years of experience with "deep learning" systems.

The landscape of industrial manufacturing and distribution is comprised of three core technological areas: (1) digital communication & big data, (2) renewable energy, (3) automated manufacturing, transport & logistics.

The Big Brands
The face of the modern corporation has changed a lot over the last 100 years. Corporate brands in the 22nd century often enjoy the sort of unconditional loyalty, emotional regard and effective power that was once reserved for flags and nations. Major corporations exist as brands which marshal the work of a continually-shifting workforce, while adapting to meet ever-changing demands. These brand corporations – some worth trillions of dollars – often don’t own much in the way of physical capital at all, and retain relatively few employees. Instead they carefully select executives and project managers, and then rely on AI systems and software platforms to contact, contract, and organize crowdsourced labor and creativity as needed.

In the age of abundant materials manipulation, there’s little that one company can do that another company can’t – at least theoretically. The real value of a corporation – even a “supply chain” corporation – doesn’t depend so much on the functionality of its products; instead it depends on speed, and on the marketing and branding of its products. This state of affairs makes advertising tremendously important, and advertising firms are among the most powerful companies in the business landscape.

Corporate Offices & Installations
The higher you move up the social hierarchy (i.e. as you go from the Squats and Sprawls toward the Enclaves and the CBD), the more you find the offices of corporations, both large and small. The satellites of these businesses - resource stores, job sites, manufacturing facilities, sales floors and operations offices of these companies – can be found all over town, typically in areas with good security, which are owned by their parent corporations or business partners.

Logistics
The transportation of goods and materials into, out of, and within the city is constant and largely automated.

On the outskirts of town, great depots fed by a regional network of Vac-Tubes and Shipping Routes provide food, construction materials and equipment to destination sites inside and around the city. Automated vehicles are used to transport the materials and equipment according to requirements and approvals. A specialized traffic control system interfaces with the CitySystem’s traffic monitoring grid to ensure civilian safety while transporting gigantic loads and prefab parts to their intended destinations.

Within the city, a sea of obsequious shipping and transportation systems forever move around following their algorithmically-determined trajectories, from small VendorBots and MobileMalls to Vac-Train compartments and great hovering freight drones. All of these vehicles and drones are guided by AI dispatchers who themselves are tied into CitySystem, thus allowing the entire network of moving machines to operate with flexibility, control and predictability. Accidents rarely occur, barring human intervention.

All legal businesses employ NIN chips on every individual product they manufacture, transport or sell. This makes it possible for business systems (and law enforcement, and parent corporations) to track and dispatch shipments of goods and materials down to the individual box or pallet.


 * Huge seagoing ships with onboard fabrication plants function as self-contained, self-powered floating factories.
 * Drone delivery systems – both ground-based and aerial – handle everything from small home deliveries to commercial supply and construction materials.
 * Antigrav rigs used for hauling heavy loads short distances

FOOD TRUCKING - the food trucking fleet is largely automated, and is considered a part of the city's critical infrastructure. It’s owned and operated by a massive patchwork of private entities, and actually is networked into the air fleet and the shipping fleet as well via databases of shipping container IDs.

Ubiquitous Advertising
Within the corporate world of Ubi Zones and Enclaves, advertisements and brand logos have largely taken the place of ideological or patriotic symbols. They are everywhere; think Tokyo. Put them on everything. While the utter ubiquity of advertisements and logos will seem massively satirical to readers in the 21st century, they are taken unironically by the inhabitants of the city itself.

See Advertising.

Well-Known Companies
See Companies.