Infoquake Part 28

Entrances must occur in specially designated "gateway zones." This is to prevent users from projecting to unauthorized locations, into the middle of a wall, or into some other obstruction. Most homes, businesses and public places these days are equipped with gateway zones that allow apparition onto the multi network, but it is not uncommon for restricted or sensitive locations to limit gateway zones to a central location.

A user must be standing on a specially designated red tile square to enter the network. If that physical contact is interrupted, the connection is immediately cut. Given the obvious security risk of leaving one's body unattended, multi squares typically occur only in private residences or in heavily guarded public locations (multi facilities).

One can exit the multi network instantaneously from any spatial coordinate. Under pressure from the Prime Committee, the network administrators also developed a special device called a "disruptor" to allow authorities to cut multi connections. The Defense and Wellness Council later augmented the basic disruptor design to allow certain bio/logic code to flow into a multi projection.

MULTI AND COMPUTING POWER.

Multi technology relies on the fact that complete verisimilitude of experience is not necessary. Often the network can take advantage of common experiences stored within the brain and from them compile a representative sample. Take the example of a multied user walking barefoot on a field of gra.s.s. The network does not take up unnecessary bandwidth and computing power determining the position of each blade of gra.s.s and calculating its effects on the user's foot; it is deemed sufficient for the network to provide a reasonable facsimile of the sensation. Randomness algorithms ensure that the simulated sensations do not feel repet.i.tious or calculated.

The network also maintains fluency and transmission speed by taking a number of practical shortcuts. For instance, the multi network does not relay visual information for anything the user is not focusing on.

Users of the multi network understand that their experience is only a simulation, and that occasionally the simulation will differ from reality in its details. As the technology has progressed, these differences have become smaller and smaller, to the point where the typical user cannot reliably distinguish between virtual environments and reality.

APPENDIX F.

ON THE.

FIEFCORP SYSTEM.

Rarely in the history of human enterprise has there been a more controversial ent.i.ty than the fiefcorp. Conceived as a means to empower workers, many now complain that it has become an instrument of social ills.

HISTORY.

Fiefcorps were made possible by the actions of Par Padron, who spent most of his tenure as Council High Executive battling big business. Padron believed that governmental regulations and tax structures had come to favor larger companies, creating a climate in which smaller entrepreneurs could not succeed. Over the years, he succeeded in leveling the playing field among businesses and in democratizing the Prime Committee.

It was this latter action that triggered a populist resurgence on the Committee several decades later, and the subsequent votes to approve the business structure known as the fiefcorp. In order to spur innovation, fiefcorps were given substantial tax breaks during their initial decade of existence. In order to spur employment, the fiefcorp structure was modeled after the feudal master-and-apprentice relations.h.i.+p of ancient times.

Although the beginnings of the system were chaotic, the rapid formation, innovation and dissolution of fiefcorps soon contributed to a beneficial effect known as "carbonization economics."

CARBONIZATION ECONOMICS.

The short time window of reduced taxation, combined with low startup costs, made fiefcorps a hotbed of innovation. Small companies were encouraged to come up with new ideas and bring them to market quickly. A fiefcorp master could bring in a number of apprentices, pay them only room and board to start, turn a very good profit in a few years, and then sell off his a.s.sets before taxes increased and start again. If the master needed additional funding to get the company off the ground, he could seek that money from the secondary market of capitalmen at relatively low interest rates.

With hundreds of thousands of fiefcorps formed, an economy based on efficiency and powerful ideas moved quickly. Pundits likened the effect to that of carbonized soda water, where bubbles quickly form, burst and are replenished.

The rewards of running a successful fiefcorp were considerable. Profits from the greatest fiefcorps were extensive, and often allowed wily fiefcorp masters to leap into the more lucrative realm of real estate. But even in failure, the fiefcorp structure proved beneficial, because the labor market was constantly running a deficit of fresh talent. It was not unusual for people to found two or three failed companies before finding a winning formula.

ETHICAL PROBLEMS OF THE FIEFCORP.

The biggest problem of a laissez-faire structure such as the fiefcorp system was its rampant lawlessness. Zest for profit often trumped rules of government, creed, and community. It was originally hoped that the low penalties for failure in a fiefcorp would discourage rule breaking, but this proved not to be true.

In an attempt to rein in the lawlessness of the fiefcorp sector, many in the industry turned to the Meme Cooperative. The Cooperative, founded a hundred years earlier by big business as a buffer to Par Padron's populist reforms, had since become mostly a lobbying organization to the Prime Committee and the L-PRACGs. Fiefcorps voluntarily ceded strict authority to the Cooperative to regulate their industry and act as a watchdog organization. Few believe that the Meme Cooperative has been successful in its mission, however.

Another third-party organization, Primo's, arose to provide an overseeing capacity to the fiefcorps. Founded by the fervent libertarian Lucco Primo in 291, the company's objective rating system has acted as a huge deterrent to fraudulent programming practices.

Still, many consider the problem of fiefcorp ethics a problem to this day. As a result, grumbling consumers typically turn to the LPRACGs and the drudges for redress.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

The author would like to thank the following individuals for their contributions to this book: Lou Anders, Cindy Blank-Edelman, Bruce Bortz, Jerome Edelman, J.D. Landis, Philip Mansour, and Anne Smith.

Most of all, the author would like to thank Victoria Blakeway Edelman, who made him take out Ferris.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR.

DAVID L O U I S E D E L M A N was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1971 and grew up in Orange County, California. He received a B.A. in creative writing and journalism from the Writing Seminars program at The Johns Hopkins University in 1993.

He has worked as a web programmer for the U.S. Army and the FBI, a computer trainer to the U.S. Congress and the World Bank, and a marketing director for biometric and e-commerce companies.

Edelman is also a freelance editor and journalist with publis.h.i.+ng credits from the Was.h.i.+ngton Post, Baltimore Sun, Publishers Weekly, Chicago Sun-Times, Baltimore Evening Sun, Baltimore City Paper, and Virginian-Pilot, among others. Infoquake is his first novel.

Edelman lives with his wife, Victoria, in Reston, Virginia, a suburb of Was.h.i.+ngton, DC, where he runs a web programming business and is currently at work on the second and third books in the Jump 225 trilogy.

Visit the author's website at http://www.david-louis-edelman.com.