Culture

SocioStructure
We are, essentially, softspace. We are hackable extensions of industry, living in great interactive cities that read our minds and manage the smart use of our resources. We know more about brand loyalty than history. We all work for the big brands; even the “rebels” among us are tied to the fluctuating balances of reputation and economic currency governed by the algorithms of the SocNets. There are adverts everywhere, even inside our heads, and coming out of the mouths of our dearest friends. It’s a game, it’s normal. It wins you points that can be spent on valuable prizes or level-ups. We do things in groups. We call it SocioStructure. We are agile and flexible, but we rarely do things without consulting the data: we are the inheritors of the aggregated and individuated life data of four previous human generations, and we put it to compulsive use.

The Gig Economy
We live in a permanent “gig economy”. Few people are permanent employees; even those who have a long history with a particular corporate brand are hired on a renewable contract basis. The economy is comprised of hundreds of thousands of small agile businesses and crowdsourced solution teams which often exist only for a limited time, as they release a product or meet a project-based need. These firms are organized and loosely controlled by the big brand-name corporations who serve as the aggregators, marketers and distributors of their work.

Different Worlds
The first world has its High Fash and Lux Enclaves, but also its Squatter Towns and Wilderlands. The third world is still there, maybe just across the street. It’s not poverty itself that leads to tension; it’s poverty plus proximity that makes crossing that street seem like entering a different world. Still, that’s where a lot of opportunities and excitement come from – for people on both sides.

Fluid Identity
In a world where AR and cyber-augmentation permit ease of alternate presentations, identity is fluid and multi-layered. Issues of identity and social rank are considered as mere facets of the individual, and they operate on different levels. The typical UbiquiCity citizen spends their life playing multiple roles in a variety of worlds both social and virtual, and will possess different ranks, goals, abilities, advantages and disadvantages in each of these realms.

Virtual Life Syndrome
In highly-connected and affluent areas, many people live their lives in a sort of passive consumer haze, driven by behaviorist systems of AI-enhanced marketing into endlessly repeating a regular work-play-sleep cycle, moving endlessly from one virtual domain to another and back again. Their lives are driven by point scores, algorithmically-determined incentives, social networking opportunities and artificial sensory inputs. Yet because they are physically healthy, regularly medicated, and constantly engaged with rich stimuli, they remain blissfully unaware that anything might be lacking in their own psychological makeup. As machines have become more like humans, a lot of humans have become more like machines.