The world in 2055

What kind of society awaits humankind fifty years from now? What can we hope to achieve as our societies mature and extend beyond several physical barriers? There are limitless possibilities available to us; what follows is one of them. While this may seem like a best-case scenario in many aspects, it is not harder to achieve than any other possible outcome. Humans decide of every single aspect of their societies and choose consciously of their present and future. There is nothing inevitable to any aspect of a human society, as every institution and interaction is consciously created by and involves human beings. This is the year 2055 as it could be, for better or for worse.

Politics

All political power rests in the legislative assembly, from which derives executive power. The first chamber of the assembly, the elected assembly, is made of graduate politicians. Access to elected functions requires a degree in political office, the hardest and most complete academic studies, demanding more than ten years of academic work and extensive proof of competence. One hundred legislators chair the elected assembly while ten are elected to the executive council by the full assembly. Elected politicians can be removed from office at any time, each having an approval rating cast by the second chamber with a threshold of 75%. The second chamber of parliament, the public assembly, is made of all citizens and operates through the digital system. The public assembly has voting powers on all bills as well as introductory powers. Its vote cannot suspend the first chamber’s; however the government has very scarcely enacted law or decreed on which public approval was less than 50%. In cases where the population disapproves, changes usually solve disagreements and meet popular demands. In the rare cases where the government goes against popular vote and fails, those responsible are generally replaced. All activities of government are public and elected offices face full responsibility for all their decisions. Despite such harsh accountability, the executive council, which signs in all laws, is very stable and so is the elected assembly. Politicians rarely do any mistake; it is not in their liberty. Flaws are found early in debate while only a very few survive the scrutiny of millions of citizens and intelligent selection. All votes are carried by approval rating through the political portal of the digital system.

Citizens can choose to vote on legislative bills or grant their voting power to a personal delegate representative, which most citizens do. Citizens retain veto power on their vote, but can at least ignore trivial matters of daily politics. Delegation of a representative generally involves a small financial compensation, which provides thousands of voices with public legitimacy and accountable only to citizens. Delegate representatives can only receive a maximum compensation from each citizen for political purposes; their maximum personal revenue, like elected politicians, is determined by two times the average national revenue. Additional revenues provided by delegated powers can be used by representatives for projects, for which they must provide full accountability to the citizens they represent on every dollar spent. Most of the time only delegate representatives vote in the public assembly, but important votes generally have large public participation. The one hundred delegate representatives with the largest support have seats in the assembly, providing public opposition to the government. The assembly meets twenty hours a week, debating on ideas, solutions and other matters of the state. Both chambers sit together while the executive council presides. Other delegate representatives and citizens are also free to participate if they have support on making a declaration. Most of the time, these involve ideas that climbed their way, through intelligent selection and successful experiment, and often have significant benefits to society. Information is centralized and complete; decision is local and filled with incentives for innovation. Each citizen is provided with all the tools necessary to pursue political activities.

Elected politicians have generally worked their way through ten years or more of intense schooling on all aspects of society and an average of ten years of service in committees. Accomplishments are everything and only the most skilled can gain public favor, usually through breakthrough ideas or very successful work in committees. Elected politicians make the sacrifice of personal freedom, their every move and word archived; a practice that has long eliminated corruption and inefficiency from public office. The only way to speak to the executive council is through the assembly and requires public support, in low numbers if few issues are on the order on some days. Public affairs are archived and synthesized in real-time in the digital system, providing an accurate overview of all government activities.

Most decisions, in politics as well as throughout society, are made through an intelligent selection system, which uses the imagination and judgment of millions of citizens to generate the best ideas. Any citizen can propose ideas that are then judged by digital clones of citizens, freeing them from those tasks while keeping informed and involved on ideas and political debate. The clones are exact digital copies, sharing the knowledge, experience and judgment of their original. Resulting ideas change greatly from their introduction, as millions add corrections, suggestions and revisions. The organized creativity and judgment of millions have long proven to provide far better ideas than individual thought. Individual creativity acts as fuel for new ideas, while the collective intelligence of the entire society allows only the best ideas to mature.

Economics

Agriculture and manufacturing are entirely automated, requiring no human labor other than technical, engineering and research. All companies in agriculture and manufacturing are privately-owned by the entire population, operating with the same level of transparency as government. Every detail is entirely public and fiercely analyzed for inefficiency, waste and improvement. Each citizen essentially owns an equal part of these companies, although trade is permitted in a bracket stating minimum and maximum levels of ownership. Manufactures are fully programmable adaptive systems, capable of producing anything to precision through nanoengineering. Manufacturing costs are essentially irrelevant. Once a manufacturing unit receives the full information, it can be ready to build any product in a few minutes if resources are ready.

All the basic necessities of life: agriculture, manufacture, civil services, health, energy, transportation, urban planning and non-economic social needs are handled through an accountable public administration, which handles redundant tasks and regulated management such as accounting and formal communications while working under democratic decision-making. These services are continuously evolving thanks to the ideas proposed through intelligent selection and scrutiny of all flaws and weaknesses by millions of curious minds. Despite being at the base of the economy, these industries account for less than 5% of all economic value. The efficient means of economics have finally been reached: basic needs are automatically regulated, all processes are sustainable, technology is improving at an accelerating pace, knowledge is complete, ownership is total and fractioned, and merit drives all exchanges.

Science represents approximately 95% of the economy; most capital resides in ownership of patents and revenues from royalties. Patent royalties are negotiated between the applicants, the Academy and, if required, the assembly to ensure fair reward to all those who made it possible. They are generally equal to the value they are suspected to bring if exclusivity were granted, following with 20th century practices, while allowing them to become instant collective knowledge. Registered patents are collective knowledge, their only privilege being payment of royalties by economic uses. Most scientific goals are accompanied by rewards, based on how much they are valued by society, and to which investors add capital. Applicants for a patent on which are rewards earn them, while invested money serves to finance development for practical uses or fund promising research. Development-oriented companies compete to make the best uses of new technologies, improving on them and very often discovering new technologies in the process. New patent registrations generally start a period of between six and twelve weeks, during which they are improved on an almost daily basis and fuel additional discovery. Thousands become involved in a race of knowledge and creativity, the winners pocketing in billions in future royalties. Patents discovered by public funding generate revenues to the government for two years, after which they are sold on the market; royalties and sale of patents provide a substantial part of government revenues. However most public research does not generate patents but is rather used for objectives with limited economic but recognized social value.

Full knowledge about all products in the economy is available to all consumers. With the Amazon review system, all products are fully detailed and graded by all who use them. Bad products never survive more than a few days as they are automatically eliminated. Full knowledge about company operations being public, investments and purchases are made on the full spectrum of business practices and consumer choice. Digital clones act as personal economic assistants, browsing databases and identifying products, services and events that meet the interests and needs of their original. Digital assistants know everything about their original and help organize and manage their life, taking care of most mundane tasks and duties. All consumers are fully informed; competition is only possible through quality.

All financial transactions are digital and build full consumer knowledge. All bank accounts are provided with detailed budgets and automatically managed to ensure maximum efficiency of capital with detailed recommendations, generally handled by digital assistants, on how best to manage budgets. Industries gain from it exact knowledge about how the economy is performing and how strong demand is about every product; anonymity of personal information is guaranteed by the strongest levels of the digital system’s security. All citizens also have wish lists to provide useful measure of future demand, providing ideas and comments about future products. Economic knowledge gained from the implementation of the full knowledge system in the first decade alone has dwarfed all economic knowledge prior to its date of launch and continues to fuel discovery.

All companies are public but maximum ownership is so low as to render irrelevant individual investors. All corporate activities are opened to public scrutiny, investors being particularly talented at finding flaws, while directors are selected on hard criteria and face full accountability of all their decisions. Most private employees work in companies from which they own stocks, bringing ideas and expertise to innovate and improve. Investment firms use a mixed system of competitive intelligent selection. In each company, the team that provides the best results is granted the largest operating budget, each one below receiving less. Their tasks are mainly scientific, having to filter through potential breakthroughs and pending patents. Private investors are rare, as they are no match for professionals. Competence and judgment are the only criteria for success.

Large numbers of citizens are employees of society-funded projects. Citizens can submit projects to others living in their area and receive budgets and assistance to carry them. These projects are fully accountable for every decision and money spent and serve very specific purposes. Most ideas that end up in front of the assembly were started as such on a local basis and grew, correcting flaws and earning experience before universally proposing them. The basic purpose of these projects is to provide substantial good to the community through the financing of non-economic projects that have recognized social value.

Education

Primary school serves mainly to identify the talents and interests of children and provides them with working skills to adult-level preparedness, minus the knowledge gained in secondary schooling. They learn pedagogical tools and fundamentals to essentially accelerate their future learning proficiency; primary school thus mainly serves to teach children how to learn. Students gradually build a global overview of society, often involved in observation on all corners of the world, and spend most of their time learning by experience, real and virtual.

Secondary school is highly personalized to each student and mostly happens in virtual reality. Students often meet with others in their neighborhood for activities that need physical interaction; however most learning is made through the vast educational network, in which millions of students, mentors and experts in all fields work to ensure the best education of all citizens. While mostly narrowing on the interests and talents of each student, secondary education has large elements of social knowledge, from politics, economics, current events, sociology, psychology, law, sciences, languages and history. The centerpiece of secondary school is a general society class, which works to expand and develop on the use and relation to society of the skills they are learning in other classes. Students gain a general understanding of their society that allows them to understand its basic functions and dynamics, the use of the skills they learn and their role, choices and responsibilities as citizens.

All human knowledge is archived in the digital encyclopedia, organized through intelligent selection and using the most efficient learning methods. The encyclopedia also provides environments for peer-to-peer learning and augmented autodidact training. Students have access to a large number of individuals and resources to answer their questions: mentors, seminars, interactive courses and academic assemblies provide a dynamic education environment. Knowledge cannot be transferred directly to the human mind, but it can be interpreted much faster with the right tools. Education mainly serves at reinforcing character, judgment, reasoning, languages, critical thinking, creativity and understanding of the interrelations and meaning of all human knowledge. Students learn to use the large array of knowledge tools humans enjoy, notably the shared memory, virtual reality and the encyclopedia; they learn to be fully autonomous, competent and rational citizens. Projects are always in progress for students, the application of the knowledge learned being an important process of education.

Science

The Academy is the heart of science. It is an independent public entity, structured according to academic fields of interests where the basic fields of academia are at the roots and specialized sciences have autonomy in their field of expertise. Most investments in research involve the Academy; researchers present their ideas to relevant Academic committees who judge of their value. All registered individuals, those presenting demonstrable knowledge in an academic field, can create or participate in committees while researchers are free to contact any committee for request. Relevant proposals are submitted to public approval and investment rounds, in which private and public investors can finance promising research. Proposals with limited economic value but potential social value are submitted to relevant committees and associations for evaluation. Researchers finding no support for their proposals can turn to science ventures funds, although relevant proposals find significant financing easily.

The digital system provides full simulation of reality through the Matrix system. Simulations of every natural system have been running for years and provide data of sub-atomic precision. Every physical, chemical and biological reaction can be tested with precise measurement. All products and experiments are first simulated in virtual reality, providing accurate data on new ideas and theories. Simulations provide accurate guides for the evolution of concepts; all possible combinations are tested and ranked according to their feasibility, characteristics and value through evolutionary algorithms.

All human experience, knowledge beyond academic and culture, exist in the shared memory, the indisputable center of human civilization. All human beings are interconnected in mind and experience with one another, creating bonds that are the pillars of the modern order of peace and truth, as well as the vector of the scientific and cultural revolutions. Successfully navigating the memory is a proficiency of enormous value; no single individual can grasp more than a fraction of it, recognizing important patterns is necessary to use if efficiently. This proximity of human thought has led to astounding mutations; the neuron group to which the implant is attached continues to evolve much faster then expected, opening new capacities and skills that were previously unsuspected. Brain bandwidth has visibly increased to accommodate mastery of the system and is suspected to increase exponentially.

Energy

Several energy sources provide sustainable, clean, cheap and efficient energy. Nuclear fusion, large-scale solar, microbial generation from waste material and a host of others provide plenty of energy to meet the needs of society. Production is largely micro, with the exception of nuclear fusion, and found everywhere. All efficient sources are exploited in a distributed grid that cannot fail through fail-safes learned from digital networking. Fusion currently handles the bulk of energy production but avoiding reliance on a single source being an explicit objective to energy policies, all sources are continuously improved and maintain maximum efficiency.

Energy is the focus of the most significant research projects, breakthroughs valued in trillions of dollars. Production is automatically handled by artificial intelligence and is optimal thanks to complete knowledge of scheduled industrial uses and general consumption patterns of society.

Transportation

Individual vehicles are automatically piloted on above- or underground rails, which provide power and fail-proof safety through intelligent navigation. Vehicles are controlled by artificial intelligence and can travel on their own. They can be called by their owners from anywhere to anywhere, a personal driver for each citizen. High-speed rail systems handle interurban transportation while air transport handles intercontinental transit.

Underground systems handle all wire material, waste, recycling, sewers and material transport to every part of the city. Most of the underground, construction being cheap with automated intelligent construction from computer models, is used for services, storage and all other uses that are indifferent to be above- or underground. Above-ground space is used for the most valued property and efficient transportation, public spaces occupying large sections, especially in dense urban areas. Many new cities are planned, with efficiency of transport and quality of life being the prime objectives.

Crime

With the digital security system, it is impossible to use money for illegal purposes. Crime lost its profit motive and is very rare. The legalization and regulation of all drugs and virtual sexuality eliminated the only popular criminal markets, while strict financial laws and public operation of all activities ensure the impossibility of any fraud, corruption or other large-scale criminal activities. No social environment has the potential to breed criminality; the basic mental functions of criminal behavior have been identified and corrected and lie detectors are foolproof. As criminal rates went down, punishment improved by increased attention on individual cases and now provides successful treatment in most cases. Punishments are individually prepared in order to provide skills, mostly academic and social.

Information

All knowledge lies in the encyclopedia. Information is complete and fully shared. The digital system allows for fully open media, where individual pieces, whether writing, movie or music, work their way through social intelligent selection and Amazon filtering. Amazon filtering is a consumer appreciation system in which products and information are filtered according to selection criteria and interest-matching algorithms by citizens when they use them. Artists and journalists of all kinds publish their material, which are transmitted instantly according to appreciation and filtering by other citizens.

Large numbers of informational and cultural projects are fully audience-funded. Individual companies have no specific leverage in the media world as independent artists are more frequent than media groups, themselves often self-employed individuals working in cooperation. Most media uses are social and happen in virtual reality; the cultural explosion is still in full effect and new memes are encountered daily.

Health

Full simulation of the human body through the digital system analyses models with atom-level precision and can diagnose all defects and individual molecular reactions. Health is entirely publicly-managed and funded, now an insignificant part of the economy. Nanomedicine has created large types of medical nanobots, ranging in use from diagnosis to targeted treatment. Swarms of nanobots handle maintenance in every citizen’s body, regulating and repairing as needed as well as giving precise readings of every biological and chemical activity. Promises abound about finding the final obstacles to immortality from disease, infections and aging.

All meals contain the right amount of each and every molecule one’s body needs, being crafted directly from precise analysis of vital functions, organs and vessels. All handicaps are essentially history, treated or corrected almost flawlessly. Genetic corrections on fetus DNA as well as nanomedicine devices correct all malformations and conditions with success. Most causes of disease have been simply removed from human lifestyle and disease is very rare, cases receiving full attention and analysis.

Communications

Computers are everywhere. There are several trillion distinct operating units, the vast majority of them connected to the digital system and working in parallel for the digital operating system. The distributed power of these machines provides more processing power than is necessary. Every citizen has a brain access implant to manage access to the digital system. The implant essentially consists of brain scanners, reading the citizen’s mind for digital copies, brain input/output processes for the digital system and sensorial simulations. Neural implants provide an access to the digital system by thought, making use of all senses in full-reality experiences. The digital system is a doorway to all human knowledge, past and present. Millions work solely on it; millions more actually live on it. Several citizens have hibernation status and only live in the system. Integrity and security of the system are primary; each process is entirely secure from all others so viruses are very rare and never damage anything.

People can talk to any other human on the planet, a simple meeting of two people or a gathering of thousands of people. Social interactions now occupy the bulk of human life, generating viral memes through intelligent selection. There is no culture; there are cultures, hundreds of thousands of them. The multiplication of interaction among human has generated an incredible evolution in human consciousness. By the age of fifteen, most humans will have already spoken to a million people, traveled the world and have seen and understood all natural and social systems.

Military

The opening of all governments has ensured peace and stability; politics is now a profession of intellect, judgment and responsibility. Irrational decisions are rapidly beaten down, war being an inefficient vector of power. There is only one military power left: the power of defense. Protective grids of laser-based weapons, martial and military arts taught from early primary school and strategic planning in cases of emergency. The military is essentially made of citizens, with only a few career officers, who have extensive training in martial arts, required strategic and weapon-handling training and emergency procedures, including health and hazard.

The military does not have permanent operations other than training, research and development. Emergency procedures need the approval of both chambers, while suspension of basic rights is impossible, the only possible restriction being curfew and draft of health, technical, engineering and support personnel. The basic role of drafted ground workers is to maintain order, making sure everything continues to function as needed. It is thus as useful for natural disasters as it would be for a war. Offensive action requires 75% approval of the public assembly. Martial arts training provide citizens in the highest health possible, as well as skilled and rational soldiers, taught great patience, judgment and self-discipline. Hostilities between nations are impossible to create; economies are too greatly interrelated to allow one nation to be autonomous while laws are too strict regarding the processes of political power to allow such policies to take place. The only possible threats would come from outer-space, but it is expected that any other advanced civilization would be peaceful, the achievement of such evolution being only possible through peace and understanding.