Trope-a-Day: Fisher Kingdom

Fisher Kingdom: The Empire is a moderate example of the first type; while not involving any actual mental modification, or other self-integrity violations (unlike the mind-warpers of the Equality Concord or various pharmacrats, for example), it is a fully mature information society (much more information-dense than the high end of ours), and – as hinted at under Emotion Bomb – isn’t particularly afraid to reinforce its social attitudes through applied memetics in architecture, decoration, etc., etc.

While it’s not forced upon you, or even readily noticeable if you’re not looking for it, it is appallingly easy to find yourself picking up some of the local attitudes.  Or so some visitors say.  Others just find things like the insistent regularity of the traffic flow and the polished cleanliness of the city streets frankly disturbing.

2 thoughts on “Trope-a-Day: Fisher Kingdom

  1. To fill in a little background, the notion came to me originally from here:

    http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.04/gibson_pr.html

    Certainly Imperial space isn’t the authoritarian dystopia he describes Singapore as, or even as paternalist, but the whole “Was it Laurie Anderson who said that VR would never look real until they learned how to put some dirt in it? Singapore’s airport, the Changi Airtropolis, seemed to possess no more resolution than some early VPL world. There was no dirt whatsoever; no muss, no furred fractal edge to things. Outside, the organic, florid as ever in the tropics, had been gardened into brilliant green, and all-too-perfect examples of itself.” and “Everything painted so recently that it positively creaks with niceness, and even the odd rare police car sliding past starts to look like something out of a Chuck E. Cheese franchise…” vibe fits it absolutely.

    After all, it’s the product of people who decided to solve the whole superstimulus, depictions-of-reality-being-so-much-better-looking-than-reality problem by amending reality until it actually is that shiny, dammit. It’s all right for them, they live there all the time – but it’s somewhat unsettling for people who aren’t used to living in architectural drawings, surrounded by magazine photos, and policed for dirt and other unpleasantness more aggressively than Disneyland…

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