Description
Science fiction meets alternate history as a curator looks back on the 21st century through 100 of its artifacts—from silent messaging systems to artificial worlds on asteroids.
In the year 2082, a curator looks back at the 21st century, offering a history of the era through a series of objects and artifacts. He reminisces about the power of connectivity, which was reinforced by such technologies as silent messaging—wearable computers that relay subvocal communication. He recalls the Fourth Great Awakening, when a regimen of pills could make someone virtuous, and notes disapprovingly the use of locked interrogation, which delivers “enhanced interrogation” simulations via virtual reality.
Many of the artifacts are just an update or two away from our present—like “deliverbots”—while others may be the logical conclusions of current trends, such as Glyphish, an emoticon-based language that supersedes the written word.
The unnamed curator quotes from a self-help guide to making friends with “posthumans,” describes the establishment of artificial worlds on asteroids, and recounts pro-democracy movements in epistocratic states. In this fascinating work of science fiction and alternate history, Adrian Hon constructs a possible future by imagining the things it might leave in its wake—while offering readers a new perspective on the present.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Ankle Surveillance Monitors
Speeky
The Guide
The Braid Collective
Silent Messaging
Smart Drugs
The Twelve Technological Virtues
Locked Simulation Interrogation
Disaster Kits
UCS Deliverbot
The Conversation Brokers
46 Central Green
Mimic Scripts
The Algal Boom
Nautilus-1
Glyphish
The Value of Work
Two Towers
The Sudan-Shanghai Connection
Embodiment
Insurgency in a Box
Tropical Race Six
Désir
Saudi Spring
The Halls
Amplified Teams
Middle Eye
Thylacinus cynocephalus
The Curve of Babel
World of Glass
Structured Light
Tianxia
Negotiation Agents
Reading Rooms
Pan-Pan-Climate SAGA
Five-Niner Heavy
Active Clothing
The Contrapuntal Hack
The Kill Switch
Micromort Detector
Chinese Tourism
Owen's Original Cloned Burger
The USTC Crash
Rituals for the Secular
Muon Detector
The Saint of Safekeepers
The Imitation Game
Miriam Xu's Lace
The Loop
The Seamstress's New Tools
Choosing a Driving Plan
Nobel Prize for Medicine
Funerary Monuments
Basic Maximum Income
Alto Firenze
A Cure for Hate
Shanghai Six
New Library of Malmo
The Dim Sum Lunches
Secret Life of the High Street
New Worlds
Prince George
Multiple Autonomous Element Supervisor
Javelin
Euphoric Gastronomy
The Hunt for the Thylacine
Giving Nothing a Name
Rechartered Cities
The Old Drones, Equal Rights
Fourth Great Awakening
The Collingwood Meteor
The Downvoted
Marriage Contracts
The Lido
Death of a Mouse
Systemic Memome Project
The Fires of Mahoutokoro
The Observavi Database
The New Democracies
50% Unemployment
The Dream
The Cascade
OAID Deployment
The Brain Bubble
How to Watch TV
Amanda and Martin
The Half-Empty World
Enhance, Narada's Box
A Letter from Mars
Moral Agents
The Melt Event
How to get Posthuman Friends
Rewilding Saï Island
Cepheid Variable
Neuroethicist Identity Exam
Cooling Venus, Biomes
Our Unimproved Simulation
Trip of a Lifetime
