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"I wrote many novels which … contained the element of the projected collective unconscious, which made them simply incomprehensible to anyone who read them, because they required the reader to accept my premise that each of us lives in a unique world."
- Philip K. Dick
 |
| Whuffie | ||
| A system in which one's actions, as perceived by others, directly procure the necessities of life; reputation-based currency. |
| Whuffie recaptured the true essence of money: in the old days, if you were broke but respected, you wouldn't starve; contrariwise, if you were rich and hated, no sum could buy you security and peace. By measuring the thing that money really represented — your personal capital with your friends and neighbors — you more accurately gauged your success |
| Technovelgy from Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom,
by Cory Doctorow. Published by Tor in 2003 Additional resources -
|
Here's an example of how it works:
This strikes me as a digital version of Jack Vance's analog strakh from The Moon Moth (1976) and the sentenced man from Harry Harrison's Robot Justice (1959). See also electronic cash from Heavy Weather (1994) by Bruce Sterling.
When I got down to the Contemporary's parking lot, my runabout was gone. A quick check with the handheld revealed the worst: my Whuffie was low enough that someone had just gotten inside and driven away, realizing that they could make more popular use of it than I could. With a sinking feeling, I trudged up to my room and swiped my key through the lock. It emitted a soft, unsatisfied _bzzz_ and lit up, "Please see the front desk." My room had been reassigned, too. I had the short end of the Whuffie stick. At least there was no mandatory Whuffie check on the monorail platform, but the other people on the car were none too friendly to me, and no one offered me an inch more personal space than was necessary. I had hit bottom.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
More Ideas
and Technology by Cory Doctorow
Tech news articles related to Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
Tech news articles related to works by Cory Doctorow
Whuffie-related
news articles:
- The Whuffie Bank: Reputation-Based Currency
- China Social Credit System Like State-Run Whuffie
| Vesuvius Challenge Accepted - Ancient Burnt Scroll Read! |
| Humans Love Helping Other Species |
| AI-Powered Jesus Hologram Accepts Confessions |
| Miss Alabama Beauty Contest Offers Different Standards |
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'Aerostat meant anything that hung in the air. This was an easy trick to pull off nowadays.'
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'An adjustment panel outside the door would cause it to extrude various appurtenances in memory plastic...'
'Annealed in any shape for a time, and codified, the structure of that shape is retained down to the molecules.'
It's not really polite to tear the limbs off robots.
'...the imaginary companions discovered by needful children.'
''Pardon me, Struthers,' he broke in suddenly... 'haven't you a section of the factory where only robot labor is employed?''
'I opened the oblong box, where lay the automatons side by side...'
'They tied the memory to the bloodline and that was their record!'
