Harmony Springs

[gL.edu] This article gathers contributions being developed by Ludwig Karl Haas, within the context of the Conceptual clarifications about "Utopias and the Information Society", under the supervisión of J.M. Díaz Nafría.

Teacher's Comments: This article requires the corrections indicated below: Bibliographic references are incomplete, according to APA style. An URL is never a sufficient bibliographic reference, no matter what standarized citation style is used.

Abstract

This short story is set in a cyberutopian future, where harmony and advancement in every field is present. There has not been any war or conflict with or inside this nation for over a thousand years. Its a modern, sustainable society with all animals and humans living in the same nature setting. A dissilusioned girl wants to learn about the society and how it came to be.

Ludwig Haas, Image of a "Harmony Springs" City

Harmony Springs

Welcome to this Island-Nation, where there is peace and prosperity – and technology. There is one big center island surrounded by a large ocean. The island is surrounded by a few smaller u-shaped islands, forming an open circle around the center. Encircling all of this are comparably small islands, still a few 100 km across, building the third ring of land. Everything is connected via bridges and dams, to allow for a seamless transition from one island to another, without any obstacles, not walls or rivers or even the ocean. Humans of any kind, and animals, smallest and largest alike can roam freely among the great grass plains and vast forests. There are beautiful lakes with smaller islands inside, huge mountains with snowy peaks, wellsprings from which great rivers rise and fertile fields in the valleys, where everything grows. Among this landscape you can find houses ranging from wooden cottages over beautifully crafted stone houses with lots of decorations, to simple white modern buildings. All of them range from small huts to large skyscrapers. These houses are built from regrowable or reuseable materials and are fitted with everything a human could need. It’s a harmonic life, free of struggles faced by mankind today, no discrimination of any kind, nor poverty or hunger. The people are happy, kind and of positive nature, but there is one thing that sets it apart from other utopias or dystopias: It’s a cyberutopia in the information age. This place full of nature is run through by technology. There are hovercrafts, magnetic levitation trains on sleek white tracks, beautiful skyscrapers overgrown with trees and plants, and everything is powered by ecofriendly and carbon neutral electricity.  

In this world there lived a girl. She wore glasses, which looked completely ordinary. But in reality, there was one key difference: They were artificial reality glasses, projecting a display right in front of your eyes, with an interface that could be interact with by the wearer, and used to ones full advantage. Inside these glasses there is an artificial reality available. They are not too dissimilar to the ones which are in development right now in our time and age. But due to the technology being further developed in this community, there is the ability to have the same functionality with contact lenses, or even with an implanted chip in your brain. Those devices are used for education, work and communication purposes. The education system doesn’t rely on teachers anymore. During the first few years of her life, the girl lived with her parents at home and learned the language everybody was speaking. This language was perfected by linguists with the help of artificial intelligence, to be short and easy to understand but more importantly easy for use with or by technology, therefore it is relatively quick to learn, so everyone moving there or visiting is able to quickly learn and adapt. When she was old enough, she was given glasses to wear and was allowed to wander about the land to get taught everything she wanted to know by the AI, explained in a way she could understand, and get to know everything in her own pace and style. She was told what animals lived there, the different kinds of trees and plants, and later ergonomics, math, politics, history and economy, or whatever else she dreamed of learning about. A very important lesson she learned, was to be creative, to strive for greatness and to always be searching for more. These words forever stayed in her mind. Her parents always took walks with her outside, wearing their glasses and working, while enjoying the outside and meandering through the beauty of nature, finding inspiration; able to take a break whenever needed or wanted. At home, the household chores are done by robots, as is almost every kind of manual labor, except for some, which are accomplished by people dreaming of and aspiring to do these tasks. All the work done by humans is supported in different degrees by artificial intelligence. In this way, for example, clothes are designed, produced and distributed among the inhabitants. This is also the case for food. There is an artificial intelligence overviewing the basic needs of humans, to ensure no shortage can arise. The strongest supported path is research and science, so this nation can evolve even further in the future. Also, the communication and part of the social life happens through means of the glasses. These devices give you access to a newly built interconnected network, similar to the internet we have today, with all the knowledge in one place at all times, always available, reaching perfect wisdom for this society. There is one singular platform for everything, to search for things, connecting all people, to chat with other humas (or AI), and to talk to people via videocall, where your partner appears on your interface. But most of the social interactions happen through real meetings. But like everything else, you don’t have to wear any devices at all, and you can enjoy yourself, in absence of any technology.  

The girl is now around the age of being allowed to take part in the legislative process. So her personalised AI is explaining to her that the political system in this utopia, like the rest of the nation, reflects harmony and technological integration of society. There is one main body, which consists of every citizen of the nation. Every citizen above the age of twelve can participate in the decision-making process through their interface of the artificial reality glasses. Everyone can propose policies, vote on initiatives, and have real-time access to legislative proceedings. This was made to ensure transparency and encourages active civic engagement. If you don’t want to partake in the legislative proceedings yourself, you can vote for a representative, which is an expert in one or more fields such as ecology, technology, education, and ethics. The ideas and suggestions the people make are then processed through artificial intelligence, ensuring they fit the society's values, and are further developed into legislative prototypes. There is also one group of people watching over the society's needs and order specific technologies needed for the betterment of society. This governmental system is built to evolve and adapt to ensure a sustainable and prosperous future for all its citizens.

Said girl didn’t know what to do with her life anymore, because she thought she had already seen everything there is to see, and knew everything there is to know, so she was searching for a reason to live. So, she wanted to find out how this world came to be. She wanted to find out why this world tried to be so perfect for everyone, and why things are how they are. Thus, she wandered into the world on a quest to find out the truth. Her first step was to find out how it was before. So, the artificial intelligence told her about the 21^st century within the information age. She found out about the excecive daily use of electronics and technology, about the youth beginning to be more and more dependent on and in some cases addicted to these devices, and about social media being a leading cause for depression and unhappiness in the 21^st century. She didn’t know what social media were, she had spent all her childhood in the forest and on the fields and knew everything about those. A problem back then was with the education system not adapting to the change of always being able to look up the answers on the internet. Most people in the information age are working all day long on computers inside closed rooms in cities with almost no nature in sight; depression being a permanent problem. This was explained by the lack of social contact, that is why in this new world everyone is outside almost all of the time, able to communicate and stay healthy in every way. Other problems in the twenty-first century included cars, planes and other modes of transport polluting the environment with only a very slow change to electric cars, energy being gained through not so ecofriendly ways, and people using others for their personal gains resulting in a lot of inequality, war and poverty around the world. And then an enormous war broke out, decimating everything. Thanks to the evolution of weapons there was no nuclear fallout, but the effects were devastating. After the war, more people have died in comparison to the population than to the bubonic plague in Europe. Thus, the brightest minds sat together to build a utopian society without poverty, hunger or pain for everyone. For this to be possible, everyone would need to be happy and have everything that could be desired, but life would still have to be interesting for everyone.

The girl wanted to go back further in time, but due to the war, the information was a bit cloudy. What the AI was able to tell her, was that there were kings and noblemen in many societies around the world, but for them to live a grand and pompous life, there needed to be servants and slaves. For them, life was not so great. One problem the girl didn’t know about was the concept of dirt and trash; of course she did know what dirt in the sense of soil was, but she had not known it as a bad thing. She learned, that in the medieval ages, human excrements were thrown out of the window onto the streets, but with the development of the society, the problem of trash was solved more and more, to the point, where there was no such thing as trash anymore, because everything is renewable, and this society has reached its full potential of possible development. But in therms of science, there is still so much more to be developed and explored, because science never sleeps.  

So, in the future, she will research more, to better the world…

Epilog

This cyberutopia is based on Platos description of Atlantis in the Kritias text from around 450 BC. Both utopias show a powerful island nation with lush and fertile land with everything there is to live happy and prosperous lives.  

But that’s where the similarities between these two nations stop. Atlantis being in ancient times and “Harmony Springs” playing in a developed future is just one of the many differences. While Atlantis is a powerful military nation and has a hierarchy with kings, soldiers and farmers, in my story there is no social hierarchical system, and everyone is on the same level in society. Atlanteans being descendants from the gods and the other ones being from normal human descendance. While first ones are slowly getting more and more ungodlike and fully losing their utopia in the end second ones are improving their society further and further into greatness.  

Analysis

The "Harmony Springs" cyberutopia is set in the near to far future with technologies having reached a new level. It is set up as a nature paradise with technological support throughout all stages. The people in this story have reached multiple utopic backgrounds. With the interconnected network over their glasses, they have always unlimited access to all information and knowledge even as far as to having it explained to them via artificial reality, they have reached perfect wisdom (link). The same glasses allow them to have a transparent society through communication without any borders. The new language developed as a programming and talking language everyone speaks and knows, they have the means to communicate freely in the end being perfect language (link). In the story was no talk of any security forces or any surveillance with “Harmony Springs” having a trustful society (link), making the utopia truly a great place to live in.  

Differences to Huxleys: “Brave New World”, Jaumanns: "New Worlds" and Bacons: "Nova Atlantis"

In “Brave New World” the youth is conditioned to be placed into different casts and to like or dislike different things dependent on their status. This conditioning may not seem to be too far away from the AI telling everything it wants to know to the child. But by this education being purely factual and free in choice the child can choose its path and place in society. Breeding tubes and the negative outlook on giving birth naturally is the norm in “the brave new world”, but breeding tubes being a possibility in my story with the technological advancements, but pure choice by the parents. A big difference is the availability of knowledge. In Huxleys novel many old things if not all are forbidden and not reachable by the normal people, because it may cause a drift in society, while in “Harmony Springs” everyone has access to everything in the network, if not destroyed in the war. The governing system is also a bit different. The leading ten persons in Huxleys utopia have all the power to decide what happens to who and when, while in my story everyone can choose what they do conforming to the rules and decide what happens in the nation.

In Alex Jaumann’s “New Worlds” the humans have also reached a peaceful society this a further developed technological system. But there still is the problem in both stories, what governmental system is the best for the human live in this place. While both stories incorporate the basics of perfect language and of transparent society, the different political systems are very different. While there are a few different systems in “New Worlds” there is only one in “Harmony Springs”. But the easiest to compare are the technocratic government and the AI-based democratic system. In both versions there are people elected because of skills, but the technocratic government only has these few people leading the system, while in the AI-based democracy everyone has the possibility to take part in the decision-making process.

In 1627 Francis Bacon published the unfinished english book "New Atlantis", Therein, an island called Bensalem is described, which is a science and religion based nation with no food shortages or illnesses. The similarities are the emphasis on research and innovation with new technologies being developed, but the big difference is, that in the story of New Atlantis it's a society based on christianity and through that prosperous lives and willingness to give and help.

Dystopia

There are a few things that could turn my envisioned utopia into a dystopia: There is always the possibility for there to be one mistake or one missing thing that would turn the dough sour. One key thing keeping the humans from fulfilling their dream or something that cannot be reached. Also there could be other factors making this word into a negative counterpart. The people could become lazy, stop researching and furthering the society, stay inside, eat unhealthily and get illnesses through their changed behavior.

And there is the classic of movie stories: the ever-looming dread of the artificial intelligence turning evil, yes of course there can be counters against that, and if this environment is perfect for humans and they don’t behave badly anymore and don’t destroy the planet anymore, why would the AI turn against the humans? I don’t know, it is still a possibility that could turn this world into a dystopia.