Everyday technology · The Next Five Centuries

In 2497, most people reach the network through contact lenses or implants. Their homes manage supplies and repairs, assistants handle routine tasks, and entertainment can surround them with another world. But permission to help with one thing does not grant control over everything else. That division grew out of centuries in which connecting anything meant risking almost everything.

How trust was lost

During the Hollowing, algorithm-curated social media feeds became widely blamed for manipulation, compulsive use and the loss of shared facts. Many jurisdictions banned them before 2045. The regions that later became the Open Cities did not. The bans helped, but personalised assistants, tutors, lovers and confidants continued drawing people into separate realities. Recordings made fraud intimate. A familiar voice asked for money, an apparent employer changed instructions, or an assistant concealed warnings about a service it recommended. Private conversations and family pictures became material for impersonation and blackmail.

During the Swarm Years, trust in the online world collapsed. Shops, messages, financial services, news and apparent friends could all be scams. Even an honest service might have been taken over without its owners knowing. “Everything is a scam” became practical advice.

People returned to paper records, physical counters, local exchange and meetings with people they knew. Important business required witnesses. Families sent messengers or travelled to settle matters that earlier generations would have handled through a phone. Networked machinery still ran where it had to, but the open online world ceased to be a dependable place to conduct ordinary life.

The retreat was costly. Trade slowed, distant families lost contact, and people unable to travel depended on intermediaries. It also helped establish the value placed on presence and witnessed speech in Settlement culture.

How protected networks grew

Protected networks began growing out of this retreat. During the Partition, around 2110–2160, institutions built small services among known participants, separated critical systems and strengthened controls over hardware and connections.

Trust returned more slowly than the technology. Many people continued visiting offices and demanding physical witnesses long after protected services could handle their business. Each breach renewed their doubts. Adoption took generations, and some communities remained reluctant much longer than others.

By 2497, protected networks are ordinary parts of life. Corporations, cities and colonies maintain protected environments, often called hulls. They remain secure through several measures working together:

Limited access. A connection reaches a particular service, rather than opening an entire device.
Separate permissions. Messages, money, recordings, machinery and implants have different controls.
Limits on assistants. An assistant cannot grant itself new authority or remove its own restrictions.
Controlled entrances. Outside information is checked, and outside software is not allowed to run simply because it arrived in a message.
Contained failures. A compromised service can be isolated without exposing everything beside it.
Continuing care. Equipment is inspected, faults repaired, credentials withdrawn and standards updated.

Defensive AI helps enforce these boundaries. It is one part of the protection, alongside equipment, rules and accountable people. A genuine message can still contain a lie. An authorised official can still abuse their position. The protections reduce intrusion and damage; they cannot make people honest or their decisions wise.

Two levels of access

Protected services commonly offer two levels. Both meet the same security standard. Payment buys wider access, rather than protection withheld from basic users. | Level | What it provides | | --- | --- | | Level 1 | Basic personal communication, essential services, civic participation, public notices, education and a maintained public reference library | | Level 2 | Everything in Level 1, plus wider public forums, hosted clubs, wider commerce, entertainment services, multiplayer games and immersive worlds |

The levels are service categories, not two single networks. Providers connect where agreements and local law permit. Level 2 pays for hosted services such as large forums, public distribution, extensive storage and demanding computation. It is not a charge for every form of amusement. People can exchange stories, pictures and recordings through personal messages, organise small groups, read downloaded books and play local games without it, subject to local law. A Level 2 subscription may still leave particular purchases or experiences to be paid for separately.

Level 1: ordinary necessities

Level 1 includes medical appointments, emergency assistance, essential administration and commerce in food, ordinary clothing, household supplies, repairs and transport. Access does not make the goods themselves free.

Its reference library offers broad coverage, with sources and visible revision histories. The library’s reliability still depends on its editors and the authorities overseeing it.

Local rules define an essential purchase. Disability needs, occupational equipment and unusual household circumstances must be considered, and decisions can be appealed. A basic coat is straightforward; an expensive repair or specialist tool may require justification.

Basic family, crew and neighbourhood communication belongs here. In the Settlement, this includes the Hearth. Level 1 also provides access to public proceedings, petitions, official consultations, election information, basic civic discussion and voting where eligible. The civic part of the Commons is free; its wider social forums belong to Level 2.

Who pays

In the Settlement, the Parishad and the Belt Republic, Level 1 is free to everyone. Public terminals, private accessible booths and basic loan interfaces serve people without working equipment. Essential services must remain usable without an implant.

Level 2 is paid. Much of social and cultural life takes place there, so whether it should count as an essential is a recurring political argument.

In the Open Cities, both levels are paid. The only generally available free network access is to the Wild. Voting remains available without a subscription through civic terminals and polling places; this does not provide general free access to protected services. Many poorer residents depend on the Wild for ordinary communication and information. Wealthier residents buy maintained services inside private hulls.

In the Mandate, only Level 1 is officially available. It includes approved entertainment: dramas, music, sporting coverage, cultural programmes and selected educational experiences. Independent public forums, unrestricted interactive games and privately chosen immersive worlds belong to the prohibited Level 2.

The Mandate also controls what people may exchange privately. Banned stories, recordings and games remain banned when sent through personal messages. These restrictions depend on censorship and enforcement, and people find ways around them.

Wealth, influence and official connections can secure Level 2 access. Permission can be withdrawn, making it a favour as well as a luxury.

What people wear and use

By 2300, few people carry a separate personal device. Most use contact lenses or implants. Glasses are the cheaper option and are common among people with less money. By 2497, all three are familiar parts of daily life. Information appears within the user’s view. For typing, a keyboard or writing surface appears as a projected holographic image, and the user types in the air. Shared projections serve homes, workplaces and gatherings. Speech, gestures and physical controls remain useful alternatives.

The same interface handles correspondence, directions, translation, work and entertainment, but each activity retains its own permissions. Losing workplace access does not surrender personal records. A medical implant’s essential functions continue when its outside connection is unavailable.

Household systems manage cooling, water, supplies and repairs. They can make routine purchases within an agreed allowance. Sharing a home does not automatically mean sharing correspondence, medical records or every room’s activity.

Wealth buys comfort, richer sensory experiences, private spaces and prompt maintenance. Glasses remain capable, but their visibility can mark someone as unable to afford lenses or implants. In well-run Settlement polities, basic access is dependable; inequality shows more in choice and convenience than in exclusion from necessities.

At work, robots carry out most routine physical tasks, while human and Raised professionals judge and approve the result. Their responsibility remains even when machines do the labour (see Work and trades).

Assistants and childhood

Personal assistants are licensed tools. They remember preferences, organise work and perform agreed tasks. Some have familiar voices and manners, and people become attached to them. Their involvement must remain clear.

An assistant that helps compose a message is disclosed. One that secretly speaks to a loved one as its owner is practising puppeting.

Settlement children’s interfaces are restricted by the education ring-fence. They can communicate and use permitted services, but cannot use general-purpose AI before the Threshold. The licensed tutor remains the exception. Raised carers and teachers are persons, not tools, and are not covered by that prohibition. Adults who have not passed the Threshold may use assistants under the same rules as other adults; the childhood restriction does not last for life.

The personal consent rules govern private individuals recording one another in the street, at social gatherings and in similar encounters. Most people leave a do-not-record request enabled on their lenses, glasses or implants. A simple wearable provides the same protection without an implant. Certified equipment used for personal recording must obey the request. A device removes protected people and their speech before storage or transmission. Removing a face alone is insufficient if a voice, reflection, name or other detail still identifies them. Where reliable removal is impossible, recording stops.

Devices may briefly process sight and sound for live assistance, such as translation. That does not permit a saved transcript, summary or assistant memory of protected material.

Consent applies to a particular recording and use. Agreeing to a family photograph does not authorise public posting or training an AI. Withdrawal stops further capture and future uses covered by the permission. It cannot make something already seen unseen or guarantee recovery of illegal copies.

The privacy signal carries no public name or permanent identifier. Absence of a signal is not consent.

Recording in daily life

Private individuals taking photographs request permission before including someone. Organisations may record on their premises as long as they clearly inform the public that filming is taking place. This includes shops, workplaces and venues hosting ceremonies or performances. Their declared premises recording does not depend on each person disabling a do-not-record request.

The state may record, including identifiable public surveillance. The personal do-not-record request does not prevent state recording.

For private individuals, narrow exceptions allow recording reasonably necessary during an immediate threat of serious harm, including by a victim or witness, and recording authorised by a specific independent legal order. Access and retention under these exceptions are limited, and the justification is reviewed. A witnessed promise need not be filmed.

Modified and illegal cameras still exist. Certification, inspection, investigation and penalties make evasion costly; the privacy signal cannot physically stop illicit equipment.

Recordings retain the provenance marks showing the human or Raised status of those represented. They do not name or describe people removed for privacy. Provenance helps establish a recording’s origin, not whether every claim made in it is true.

For humans and Raised persons alike, the personal consent rules govern recordings rather than ordinary perception and memory. A Raised person does not have to stop seeing or forget an encounter. When acting as a private individual, their stored or transmitted sensory records follow the same consent rules as anyone else’s.

Why people enter the Wild

The Wild offers forbidden information, dissident testimony, experimental art, unlicensed tools and communities excluded from protected services. It also carries fraud, criminal services and ferals.

Legal devices can connect to the Wild. Once a device has been used there, it is permanently blocked from protected networks. Resetting it or changing its owner does not restore access. The block follows the device, not the person. People who want both kinds of access keep separate equipment, often a cheap pair of glasses or a shared terminal for the Wild. Connecting their usual lenses or implant would cost that device its protected access. People relying on free Wild access often have fewer protections and less choice. A second-hand device must be checked before purchase if its buyer needs protected services.

For Raised persons, the restriction attaches to the connecting communications equipment, not the core or the whole body. Raised people normally use separate Wild terminals, just as humans do.

Free access still has costs. Providers may support it through advertising, personal data or fraud. Some communities are generous and useful; others exploit precisely the people who have nowhere else to go.

See also: Culture · The Hollowing · The Swarm Years · The Settlement · One mind, one form · Open questions