“We can exchange ideas, but are entangled by emotions.”
(Ideas are like particles, emotions are like superpositioned waves.)
Some themes:
Cooperation without (overt) coercion
Confusing morality with social conformity
Continuing “spy vs. spy” dialectic
10-9-2024
Jeff, thanks for the read-thru of my ongoing patches / sketches. I find doing these chunks is more like writing scenes for a screenplay. Perhaps also due to our chats. And letting me focus more on the characters.
DuHigg has provided a useful framework for developing dialog. I feel that his conversations are really about character (as you noted), complex identities.
And in this case a story more about the main characters – Tau & Jaxi – seeking to build such an identity from a tattered past, from dislocations and disconnections. In DuHigg’s framing, that’s a shared dimension of their identities.
Perhaps there’ll be some characters who move on an opposite arc, seeking to restore a once (more) complex identity.
And complex identities remain flawed (learning requires making mistakes, eh). Flattened identities can be easily manipulated. I’d like to claim that complex identities are more resilient. But does Golden Keys see that as a better product? How does the Identity Matrix fit into the megacorp’s (or collective’s) culture? An AI’s character?
Perhaps our chats also shaped hints of Herbert’s Dune, where the central styling is about the interplay of identities, with tech in the background. Perhaps tech is like ideas which can be exchanged, without much entangling our emotions.
Well, I added more patches to my last share with you. And updated my author’s notes, for example with one on The Organization Man. …
The company’s CEO, Max Haot, unveiled Haven-2 as a proposed successor to the ISS. In an accompanying press statement, Vast describes the private space station Haven-2 as the “next step in the company’s vision to pioneer a path to long-term living and thriving in space.”
[ORIGINAL COMMENT]
So, one might ask, what’s the point of the landscape of power, like Golden Keys (as a megacorp) and the Concierge Deity collective? What does their wealth & influence (and monopolistic control of energy) obtain?
Well, perhaps, something like this article (below) about havens (as opposed to beacons, eh). Havens for those able to abandon places in demise or climatic downfall.
This storyline has a history in drama & film. Like Elysium (2013). Selling the dream, letting pilgrims “eat cake.”
• Wiki > Elysium (film) – The film takes place on both a ravaged Earth and a luxurious artificial world … called Elysium.
(quote)
In 2154, Earth is overpopulated, diseased, and heavily polluted from ecocide. The planet’s citizens live in extreme poverty while the rich and powerful live on Elysium, an orbiting space station just outside of Earth’s atmosphere, with luxuries, including Med-Bays, medical devices that can heal any disease or condition.
(end quote)
So, imagine that landscape persists into far future space colonization. Still selling the dream of a refuge. Planetary listings with risk scores. A “Zillow” marketplace for worlds, for planet flippers, for migrant smugglers. And, as the article (below) remarks, “That said, knowledge of risk isn’t keeping people [pilgrims] from moving to disaster-prone parts of the country [universe] … .”
• Wired > “The Origins of the Climate Haven Myth” by Adam Clark Estes (Oct 12, 2024) – In a world of increasingly powerful hurricanes and other rising climate threats, those with vested interests in promoting certain locations have sold the public a dream.
(quote)
Well before humans began putting billions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, entire populations would migrate toward better conditions in search of a place with milder weather or more fertile soil or the absence of drought.
Because of its speed and scale, however, human-caused climate change is especially extreme, and everywhere will be impacted by some degree of risk. There is no completely safe haven.
People are desperate for optimism,” said Jesse Keenan, director of the Center on Climate Change and Urbanism at Tulane University, who described the concept of climate havens as a fiction. “It gives people hope.”
(end quote)
In contemporary steaming drama, here’s an analogy for the Concierge Deity collective.
• Wiki > Citadel: Diana (2024) – an Italian spy action television series based on the 2023 American television series Citadel (2023).
• Amazon Prime Video > Citadel: Diana S1 E3 “Together” > the scene (~37:43) where Manticore is described as a fallen utopia, which never evolved.
Edo: … “I see it [Manticore] as a guarantee, a guarantee of safety, of peace, a guiding force for the world.”
Diana: “Are you sure people really want someone to guide them?”
In Manticore, employees (spy agents) are typically pawns.
In Golden Keys, employees retain self-agency (or at least feel that they do), to the degree that their actions are not self-destructive.
While the mythologies of Manticore and Golden Keys might be similar, there’s a contrast in (as William H. Whyte wrote) the degree to which “most of them believe deeply that their work will help, rather than harm, the individual.” Tau, as an example, exhibits the tension between individual & collective identities.
• National Institutes of Health > National Library of Medicine > “What Is the Sense of Agency and Why Does it Matter?” by James W. Moore (published online 2016 Aug 29) – Sense of agency refers to the feeling of control over actions and their consequences.
10-4-2024 New tagline
“We can exchange ideas, but are entangled by emotions.”
(Ideas are like particles, emotions are like superpositioned waves.)
Some themes:
Cooperation without (overt) coercion
Confusing morality with social conformity
Continuing “spy vs. spy” dialectic
10-9-2024
Jeff, thanks for the read-thru of my ongoing patches / sketches. I find doing these chunks is more like writing scenes for a screenplay. Perhaps also due to our chats. And letting me focus more on the characters.
DuHigg has provided a useful framework for developing dialog. I feel that his conversations are really about character (as you noted), complex identities.
And in this case a story more about the main characters – Tau & Jaxi – seeking to build such an identity from a tattered past, from dislocations and disconnections. In DuHigg’s framing, that’s a shared dimension of their identities.
Perhaps there’ll be some characters who move on an opposite arc, seeking to restore a once (more) complex identity.
And complex identities remain flawed (learning requires making mistakes, eh). Flattened identities can be easily manipulated. I’d like to claim that complex identities are more resilient. But does Golden Keys see that as a better product? How does the Identity Matrix fit into the megacorp’s (or collective’s) culture? An AI’s character?
Perhaps our chats also shaped hints of Herbert’s Dune, where the central styling is about the interplay of identities, with tech in the background. Perhaps tech is like ideas which can be exchanged, without much entangling our emotions.
Well, I added more patches to my last share with you. And updated my author’s notes, for example with one on The Organization Man. …
What do you think Jaxi’s first question will be?
UPDATE 10-16-2024
This company even names their stations ‘Haven.’
• Space.com > “Vast Space unveils Haven-2, a private space station to follow the ISS after its fiery end” by Robert Lea (October 15, 2024)
[ORIGINAL COMMENT]
So, one might ask, what’s the point of the landscape of power, like Golden Keys (as a megacorp) and the Concierge Deity collective? What does their wealth & influence (and monopolistic control of energy) obtain?
Well, perhaps, something like this article (below) about havens (as opposed to beacons, eh). Havens for those able to abandon places in demise or climatic downfall.
This storyline has a history in drama & film. Like Elysium (2013). Selling the dream, letting pilgrims “eat cake.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_them_eat_cake
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elysium_(film)
• Wiki > Elysium (film) – The film takes place on both a ravaged Earth and a luxurious artificial world … called Elysium.
(quote)
In 2154, Earth is overpopulated, diseased, and heavily polluted from ecocide. The planet’s citizens live in extreme poverty while the rich and powerful live on Elysium, an orbiting space station just outside of Earth’s atmosphere, with luxuries, including Med-Bays, medical devices that can heal any disease or condition.
(end quote)
So, imagine that landscape persists into far future space colonization. Still selling the dream of a refuge. Planetary listings with risk scores. A “Zillow” marketplace for worlds, for planet flippers, for migrant smugglers. And, as the article (below) remarks, “That said, knowledge of risk isn’t keeping people [pilgrims] from moving to disaster-prone parts of the country [universe] … .”
https://www.wired.com/story/the-origins-of-the-climate-haven-myth/
• Wired > “The Origins of the Climate Haven Myth” by Adam Clark Estes (Oct 12, 2024) – In a world of increasingly powerful hurricanes and other rising climate threats, those with vested interests in promoting certain locations have sold the public a dream.
(quote)
Well before humans began putting billions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, entire populations would migrate toward better conditions in search of a place with milder weather or more fertile soil or the absence of drought.
Because of its speed and scale, however, human-caused climate change is especially extreme, and everywhere will be impacted by some degree of risk. There is no completely safe haven.
People are desperate for optimism,” said Jesse Keenan, director of the Center on Climate Change and Urbanism at Tulane University, who described the concept of climate havens as a fiction. “It gives people hope.”
(end quote)
In contemporary steaming drama, here’s an analogy for the Concierge Deity collective.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citadel:_Diana
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citadel_(TV_series)
• Wiki > Citadel: Diana (2024) – an Italian spy action television series based on the 2023 American television series Citadel (2023).
• Amazon Prime Video > Citadel: Diana S1 E3 “Together” > the scene (~37:43) where Manticore is described as a fallen utopia, which never evolved.
Edo: … “I see it [Manticore] as a guarantee, a guarantee of safety, of peace, a guiding force for the world.”
Diana: “Are you sure people really want someone to guide them?”
In Manticore, employees (spy agents) are typically pawns.
In Golden Keys, employees retain self-agency (or at least feel that they do), to the degree that their actions are not self-destructive.
While the mythologies of Manticore and Golden Keys might be similar, there’s a contrast in (as William H. Whyte wrote) the degree to which “most of them believe deeply that their work will help, rather than harm, the individual.” Tau, as an example, exhibits the tension between individual & collective identities.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5002400/
• National Institutes of Health > National Library of Medicine > “What Is the Sense of Agency and Why Does it Matter?” by James W. Moore (published online 2016 Aug 29) – Sense of agency refers to the feeling of control over actions and their consequences.