Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom- A society built on “Likes” . Week 4 Post 2

I think there’s a lot of Disney World fans in this class.  We live in Florida, it’s to be expected!

Has anyone read this 2003 science fiction novel by Cary Doctorow?  It’s set in the future, where what we would now call social media technologies and cloning have revolutionized the world into the Bitchun Society.  Basically, everyone is connected to the network at all times via their brains, instant cloning and the ability to fully backup your memories for downloading into clones of yourself has made everyone functionally immortal, and no one wants for anything- basic needs are met, but true economic standing is instead determined by your Whuffie score, a social barometer that is most analogous to how many “Likes” you have.

The Disney connection comes from the setting of the novel.   Since there’s no real economics anymore, people live and work wherever they want, so the main character is part of the group that runs Liberty Square in Disney World.   The different lands of the park are run by different groups, and a cutthroat leader who has taken over the Adventure Land has set her sights on taking over Liberty Square.   The author released it for free under a Creative Commons license, so the whole book is available here: https://craphound.com/down/Cory_Doctorow_-_Down_and_Out_in_the_Magic_Kingdom.pdf

Written almost 16 years ago, I just read finished reading it and was pretty amazed at how much of our current social media life was anticipated.   Some of our earlier class discussions re: digital immigrants/natives reminded me of the novel, as one of the characters is a missionary who is tasked with going to communities (generally older ones) that have resisted the Bitchun society to get them to convert and connect.   There’s a real life where the characters exist and affect life, of course, but everyone also has a constant chat feed in their brain, an instant connection to wikipedia like resources in their mind’s eye, that are like the ultimate iteration of the technologies we are discussing in this class.      The idea of a society who bases their esteem for a person’s place in a community based on their “likes” is the endgame utopia or dystopia, depending on your views of this social media phenomenon.    Luckily in the book, the Whuffie score is more closely tied to your behavior/reputation as opposed to any sort of meme/viral sensationalism.

Every age of human development creates their own science fiction.  The Industrial Revolution/Victorian Age created the proto steampunk fantasies of Wells and Verne, the excesses of decadent and/or totalitarian governments around the world wars inspired the dystopian warnings of Orwell,  Huxley and Zamyatin.   Le Guin, Heinlein, and Delaney gave us visions of the future that questioned and challenged societal norms of the 60s, while computer age anxiety created the writings of Dick, Gibson, and Stephenson.     These fantastic writings don’t always come literally true, but within them you can see the elements (a detail here, an idea there) that become revelatory when we look back and see our own present reflected in the writings of our past predictions.

So what does the science fiction of today tell us about where we are going?  What elements and details of social media will Doctorow have gotten right, about AI will be found in the writings of  Leckie, of climate change in Jemisin?    What horizons do these writings speak to, if we are willing to listen?