Cyberpunk

possessions anymore? We’ve made them permanently safe. Why shouldn’t Al loan the lawnmower to his neighbor? The neighbor can’t lose the lawnmower, He can’t sell it, because Al’s embedded MEMS monitors just won’t allow that behavior. (continued)
    So now Al can be far more generous to his neighbor. Instead of being miserly and geeky “labeling everything he possesses,” obsessed with privacy, Al turns out to be an open-handed, open-hearted, very popular guy. He doesn’t even need locks on his doors! Everything Al has is automatically theft-proof—thanks to us. He has big house parties, fearlessly showing off his home and his possessions. Everything that was once a personal burden to Al becomes a benefit to the neighborhood community. What was once Al’s weakness and anxiety is now a source of emotional strength and community esteem.

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    From: Team Coordinator
    To: Design Team
    Subject: Wow
    Right! That’s it. That’s what we’re looking for. That’s the “Wow” factor.

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    From: Graphics Gal
    To: Design Team
    Subject: Re: Wow
    So here’s how Al meets Zelda. Cause she’s, like, living next door? And there’s a bunch of Al’s dinner plates in her house, kinda “borrowed”? Someone breaks a plate, there’s an immediate screen prompt, Al rushes over.

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    From: Legal Expert
    To: Design Team
    Subject: Domestic Disputes
    Someone threw a plate at Zelda. Zelda owns the home next door, and her son and daughter-in-law are living in it. But Zelda sold the home because she needs to finance her rejuvenation treatments. It’s a basic cross-generational equity issue. Happens all the time nowadays, with the boom in life extension. Granny Zelda comes home from the clinic looking 35. She’s mortgaged the family wealth, and now the next generation can’t afford to have kids. Daughter-in-law freaked because dear old mom suddenly looks better than she does. It’s a soap-opera eruption of passion, resentment, and greed. Makes a child-custody case look like a traffic ticket.

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    From: Engineer
    To: Design Team
    Subject: Implications
    Great. So listen. Zelda sells her house and moves in with Al. He’s a nice guy, rescuing her from her family. She brings all her own stuff into Al’s house—60 years’ worth of tchotchkes. No problem. Thanks to us. Because Al and Zelda are getting everything out of her packing boxes and tagging it all with MEMS tags. Possessions are mixed up physically—and yet they’re totally separate, virtually. With MEMS, unskilled labor can enter the house with handheld trackers, separate and re-pack everything in a few hours, tops. Al and Zelda never lose track of who belongs to what—that’s a benefit we’re supplying. They can live together in a new kind of way.

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    From: Graphics Gal
    To: Design Team
    Subject: A&Z Living Together
    Okay, so Zelda’s in the house cooking, right? Now Al can get to that yardwork he’s been putting off. There’s like squirrels and raccoons and out there, and they’re getting in the attic? Only now Al’s got some cybernetic live-traps, like the MuscleGel MistNet from our Outdoor Products Division. Al catches the raccoon, and he plants a MEMS chip under the animal’s skin. Now he always knows where the raccoon is! It’s like, Al hears this spooky noise in the attic, he goes up in the attic with his handheld, it’s like, “Okay Rocky, I know it’s you! And I know exactly where you’re hiding. Get the hell out of my insulation.”

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    From: Legal Expert
    To: Design Team
    Subject: Tagging Raccoons
    Interesting. If Al really does track and catalog a raccoon, that makes the raccoon a property improvement. If Al wants to sell the house, he’s got a market advantage. After all, Al’s property comes with big trees—that’s obvious, that’s a given—but now it also comes with a legally verifiable raccoon.

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    From: Engineer
    To: Design Team
    Subject: Squirrels
    They’re no longer vermin. The squirrels in the trees, I mean. They’re a wholly owned property asset.

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    From: Team Coordinator
    To: Design Team
    Subject: This Is Real Progress, People
    I’m with this approach! See, we never would have thought of the raccoon angle if we’d concentrated on the product as a product. But of course Al is moving his control chips out of the house, into his lawn, and eventually into the whole neighborhood. Raccoons wander around all the time. So do domestic dogs and cats. But that’s not a bug in our tracking