Homer G Weiss - The "Timigrant"

The Protagonist is a young man in his mid-20s, he made the leap forward because he wanted something better, something different.

• Didn't feel like he belonged in the present. Glorified vision/expectations of the future. Optimism and imagination of what the world might be like.
• Different motivation than the imigrants and refugees of the past - he wasn't fleeing persecution, poverty, violence. He was living in a prosperous country (Toronto) with a decent job and a comfortable life but was just bored with it. Wanted something different, inspiring.
• Also he is running from the problems of his present/past wants to make a fresh start of it all in the future.
• He got caught up in the enthusiasm of the first wave of timigrants - specifically marketed and propogandized towards people like himself. The people who are initally targetted for "temporal relocation" are the same as those targetted for the military - poor, uneducated, willing to risk themselves for a chance at a better life. Many see it as a more respectable and less dangerous alternative to the military. The governments of the world view colonization of the future the way they did the space race in a way. Other countries see it as a way to deal with over-population (e.g. China)
• Eventually, liberal educated young people saw it as an opportunity to
• He faces discrimination in the future when it comes to getting jobs, being accepted by modern society, dating "natives" of the future. Society variously looks at the people of the past as backward, cowardly (for abandoning their own time). Society is just as xenophobic towards the timigrants as it was towards imigrants in their own time.
• While there are segments of society (the new new liberals) who embrace the timigrants and the valuable perspectives and traditional values, they are essentially quaint novelties to them like a pioneer village.
• Essentially the timigrants are ghettoized - they live in communities of ex-patriates.
• The protagonist is trying to write the first substantial and respected immigrant narrative - while a host of media and entertainment genre has sprung up to cater to the timigrants essentially they're just pandering to stereotypes, like the one-dimensional gay characters in sitcoms, blaxploitation movies that spoof the past and how ridiculous it was like Anchorman or The Wedding Singer, focusing instead on the excesses of our own time.
• He's trying to give a voice to his generation/community.
• Names/Slurs for Timigrants: Retros (Rets), Chronics, Rips (as in Rip van Winkle)
• Essentially the timigrants experience a disorientation similar to that of Rip van Winkle - they suddenly find themselves in a world that is strange, time having passed them by, instead of laziness or sleep their pessimism or cowardice has led them to skip a huge chunk of their lives. Suddenly all the people from their past/present are dead or aged and they've missed out on a huge chunk of their lives and the progress of society in general.
• Name: Same initials as HG Wells? Homer G Weiss. Appropriate as the bard of his people. Ironic since the name is an anachronism - nobody sees his name as a reference to the poet but as a reference to The Simpsons which is viewed as a relic of the past from where he came.
• Personality - conflicting traits: Homer considered himself a liberal and a revolutionary when he left but now that he sees the future he becomes conservative and yearns for the simpler past. His optimism soured into disillusionment and disappointment.
• He is aware of the fact that he is more in touch with reality and the true nature of life than most people who are integrated but he feels deadened by this burden.
  

His Friends:

• Homer made the leap as a pact with a group of friends. The experience affects them all differently. Some integrate perfectly. Some are so overwhelmed and depressed with the finality of their decision that they take their own lives or dull their senses with the new sensory overload options available to them in the Chips.
• One friend fathered a child (unknown to him) right before he abandoned its mother. The child is his own age on the other side. The difficulty of resenting someone who is your own age and hasn't had time to think about what he did. Could be a self-contained story or chapter from the child's perspective.
• The friend who integrates perfectly (or appears to do so) has a knack for adapting. He could have succeeded anywhere and in any time. He brings the perspective of his own time to the technology and media of the future. Homer regards him as a sellout but is jealous of his success and the ease with which he found his place. He is in fact happier than most timigrants but is still plagued with the same angst that they left behind a piece of their lives in the past.

Avatars and Simulated Culture

• People basically interact in the template of MMORPG in the sense of Second Life or Little Big Planet in every day life and like World of Warcraft in entertainment.
• The avatars that people pick are subject to the same kinds of critical scrutiny that real peoples are so people are constantly adjusting themselves to the types that they choose.
• People choose a sub-culture to identify with and it forms a type of tribalism.
• On an individual level people appear to each other as they want them to - much like a Facebook profile.
• The interconnectivity coupled with the technical integration of the people with their chips allow people access into each other's minds.
• People can eavesdrop on someone's experiences, not just their conversations.
• e.g. professional athletes, characters in movies (a completely first person perspective), porns stars (the most popular activity for many).
• This aspect of the reality can be emphasized through the voice of the narrator who shifts between 3rd and 1st person to the degree that he feels integrated.
• Begins mainly in the third person when he's occupying different people's heads. Graduates into first person as he can't distinguish himself from the collective mentality.
• Possibly the narrative as a whole can begin totally in third person and progress to the point where everything is first person (including all of humanity).
• Those who aren't integrated are almost like a virus(/terrorists) (especially those who want to destroy the system)
• When the hive mind decides that it can't tolerate the old humanity, it turns against it and treats it as a disease
• In China nobody has a choice, join the hive or die.
• In the rest of the world we see the rest of the spectrum between complete rejection and partial integration.
• For some the integration into certain subcultures enhances the power that cults like Scientology have. Techno-cults become the new religions.
• The Judeo-Christian religions become integrated and experience a resurgence. However they become entirely new religions that retain some of the previous facets, (like how Christianity adapted pagan rituals to its own litany) but are entirely new stages in the evolution of religion/collective consciousness.
• Parallel between religion and collective conciousness - even though integration and religion seem to be directly at odds with each other, they are essentially aiming to be the same.
• Religion is just threatened that technology could do it better than G-d.
  

The Protagonist of a Jewish themed short story

• A young Jewish man based on me in my more confused days.
• Wants to escape the present for such factors as:
• Existential angst (doesn't see a point in his own time)
• Politically disenfranchised.
• Running from his Jewish identity (rejected everything because of his overbearing father but went too far)
• The future of Israel (grim) hits him hard when he sees it and he goes back to his roots to repent.
• The assimilation of humanity in general into a collective digital consciousness can be described using the example of Jewish assimilation.
• Greatest threat to existence for Jews and humans in general to lose their essential identity.
• Jews who reject or restrict the use - the observant traditionalists are the ones who retain the greatest humanity. They pray for the rest.
• While the majority of humans who acknowledge that this is a stage of evolution take for granted that they are becoming superior beings (angelic?), those who reject the leap forward in evolution regard them as diminished, fallen.
• They believe that humanity reached its peak (some say with the Jews, because they were the chosen people.)
• They are living through the decline of humanity.
• Integration diminishes or locks up the soul.
  
• Could be a back story that either flashes to or references Old Testament stories, where the voice of God in people's heads guided their actions and enhanced their perception of the world the way the Chips do in the future. But while one elevates man to the next stage - a prophet - the other diminishes him to an automaton (angel - in that they do not have free will).
• Has time itself reached its peak and now history is repeating itself in reverse? While they think that they have jumped forward in time, the entire dimension has changed its vector (at least metaphorically).
• "In the particle accelerator of life and its various physical and metaphysical forces, humanity has bubbled up in tiny violent and brilliant fleeting instants in the collision between chaotic animal cruelty and perfect orderly collectivity.
• Individual humans are becoming a single omnipotent being. (The Messiah? God?)
• The elite who create the programs are the brain.
  

China

• China either develops (or at least is the first to universally adopt) the chips to fix the problems of over-population, social unrest and an overheated economy.
• The chips allow 24/7 propaganda to be pumped into their populaces individual consciousnesses and to develop a real collective consciousness (akin to a hive mentality).
• Acknowledged in its own time as the next stage of human evolution
• Although some say that it is in fact the end of humanity.
• China's dominance in the world is felt throughout the book.
• Shoddy products.
• Majority of popular entertainment programming and innovations.
  
• Chinese social trends are reflected in the other areas of the world.
  

The Young and Disenfranchised

• Those most likely to skip ahead are the ones who are unhappy in their own time and hope for something better.
• The fact that they are leaving something without expectations of what is on the other side other than hope that it will be better is what truly makes the main character's immigrant experience powerful.
• The people who don't have strong enough convictions to fight for what they believe in and to influence the world abandon their time rather than choose to participate in it and try to change it.
• 
  

Philosophy and Physics of Time Travel

• The relationship between energy and matter will be tied into the personal relationships.
• The portals are rips in time space that operate on a unique principle of probability - Matter is converted along this principle - as matter enters the portal, it can not actually cease to exist in the space and time where it enters the portal, because of the laws of thermodynamics that matter and energy can never be created or destroyed.
• As people or things as matter essentially disappear from the universe, the event causes a massive release of energy.
• This energy is eventually required for the matter to reappear on the other side of the portal.

Philosophical Aspect of Quantum Physics

• The fact that this even can occur, creates a reality in which it does.
• Since everything exists as a probability, infinite realities are possible.
• A stronger understanding of this concetp (ie mathematically and through the development of practical quantum applications and technology) allowed humanity to harness the power.
• The power generated by these leaps powers society once they learn how to harness it. The energy is dangerous but clean (like nuclear power, it is supremely destructive if not controlled but far more efficient and clean.
• QUANTUM POWERR
• Since power needs to be fed into the system for something to reconstitute as matter on the other side, people make a choice
• To feed the matter in or to let it remain in dimensional limbo forever.
  

Origin of the World of 134|D

Discovery of the Portals -

• The portals were discovered well before their world-changing applications transformed society.
• Astronomers observed a portion of an asteroid belt essentially disappearing and being transformed into energy in a huge exothermic reaction.
• The nature of the energy was not fully understood at the time although the wavelengths emitted exhibited unique behaviour.
• 20 years later in the same spot a huge endothermic reaction sucked the energy out of neighbouring star systems in order to produce the SAME ASTEROIDS that disappeared 20 years earlier exactly as they were when they entered the portal.
• The phenomenon was not understood until one scientist identified it as a rip in space time that operated on the principles of Quantum Mechanics (string theory/dark matter?)
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• The first artificial portal was created a few years later. Inanimate matter was fed into it in order to generate energy.
• A suicide attempt was the first person to leap. Scientist or janitor who crossed over the portal. Became a celebrity (politician?) and eventually committed suicide anyway (?)
  
• Eventually animals and finally humans are (intially paid to) go through the portal.
• Story of the first people to volunteer - no idea of what awaits them on the other side because time travel can only go in one direction.
  
• Government offers incentives (payments are invested in guaranteed interest funds so that their money will mature when they get to the future)
  

Political Landscape of 134|D

World has been fractured into 3 or 4 Super-powers:

• Similar to Oceania, Eurasia, etc. in 1984.
• Possibility that different stories would take place in the very different societies - each of which adapted to the technologies in different ways.
• Western Super-Power
• Main stories take place here.
• Hugely materialistic and source of direct marketing culture.
• Huge Consumers.
• Communist Super-Power
• China/Russia/India
• Main producers as facilitated by hive mentality.
  
• Chip is full of government propaganda, allows the authorities to know the minds of the people for the purposes of directly suppressing them - essentially 1984-ish world.
• Islamic Super-Power
• The self-obsession of the Western World allowed Muslim immigrants in Europe to far out-reproduce the native population and so most of Europe and Africa became a Muslim caliphate (a la Mark Steyn's ideas in America Alone)
• The traditional societies violently reject scientific progress by going even further back into the stone ages.
• Motif --> Science moves things forward, Religion moves them back --> The scientific time travel allowed by the portals can only go forwards, but God/religion allow backward time travel which is really the more useful one for an individual.
  
• Terrorism (why would I mention terrorism right after Islam? Oh I don't know. This is stream of consciousness after all.)
• Target the chip and you disable people completely. If terrorists can disable peoples chips they essentially render an entire population helpless.
• Those who reject the technology evolve differently - especially if they don't socially integrate and mate with the Chipped population.
• Eventually there is a war between subspecies rather than religions and ideas. The stakes are who will continue humanity.
  

The World of LEAP (134|D)

Technology: Chips

The most revolutionary technology of the new age is networked cybernetics.

• Everyone in the Western world is equipped with a Chip. The chips are computers with incredible computing power hooked directly into the mind. The chip is biologically integrated and draws its power from the body itself. It is upgradable and integrated with other bionic peripherals such as cameras (which would allow a blind or myopic person to see with perfect digital vision).
  
• The computing power of the chips allows average human beings to accomplish incredibly complicated tasks that would normally require years of training with the aid of increasingly sophisticated Life and Work Applications.
• For example, the task of a lawyer could be simplified to the essentially simple procedural elements by a good legal software application that would take anybody through the basic steps.
• This should change society as a great equalizer, allowing anyone who can afford the software application to install it and gain that skill set.
• Can't afford the application? No problem. As long as you are willing to accept its sponsors into your reality.
• Most of the essential software applications are ad sponsored. Like Google Adwords taken to a much further extreme, an application user will be subjected to a new form of advertising.
• Because Chips (or more specifically a Chip's display output) feeds directly into the human brain, it can completely alter the user's sensory perception of reality.
• E.g. If you are watching your favourite program (now a fully immersive experience instead of on a screen) instead of being shown an image of Coca Cola you could even get a teasing taste of it on your tongue.
• Advertising is so effective that weak willed people who are willing to accept all of the advertising that supports the perks (i.e. free software and life applications) into their lives are essentially fed the majority of their thoughts.
• The image of a person "tuned in" to a program - (similar to someone glued to their computer screen) --> They sit staring blankly oblivious to the world around them as they are entertained by programming that is literally mind-numbing.
• This is where the rich have an advantage again (as they have had in all times) they can afford to use software that is essentially ad-free. Are far more free to make their own choices.
• How is the advertising so pointedly effective? Again to gain the perks that come with it, people are willing to give access to their Chip activity to marketers. The integration of Chips with their human hosts as well as with each other over the new internet (Develop ideas for the future of the Web 2.0, etc.) allows anyone to potentially follow every movement that another person makes.
• This allows marketers to follow all of the daily habits of an individual and put extremely personally significant and effective advertisements in their heads. e.g. Horny teenagers are innundated with pornography websites (now sexual simulation programs). If a person watches certain movies, shows, etc - then carefully researched targetted ads appear in their reality.
• People can technically distinguish between reality and Chip images but most people who have gotten used to it and completely reliant on it don't bother to make that distinction anymore. Become more and more drone-like.
• Despite the challenges they face to rapidly integrate into this world, the timigrants are the best equipped to separate the reality from the Chip.
• This causes a unique sense of angst that Snails (the people who have become gradually integrated as the technology developed because they did not leap ahead) have become immune to this angst. They are so distracted by the applications that they don't have room for such feelings.
• Negative feelings are quickly stifled by distractions, amusements and pharmaceuticals that are specifically marketed to the people whose thoughts and behavior can be modified by those products.
• Entire chains of thought/feeling that are linked to a line of products to cater to those thoughts and feelings can be created to direct people down a specific conscious (and consumerist) path.
  
• Software can be likened to a drug.
• It allows people to hallucinate by seeing the world completely differently and experience things that are not there.
• So addictive that people can't unplug themselves.
  

• Creativity exists where the Chip network ends - artists deliberately unplug themselves to gain inspiration.

• Suffering for art has a new meaning when people essentially slice out a part of their brain (the part that makes life easy, blissful and escapist) to face the world as it really is and have the time-out required for them to actually have thoughts with some semblance of independence or reality.
• Most "art" or entertainment is made (or at least funded )by the marketers as new opportunities for perceptional product placement. Customized to each individual who experiences it.
• E.g. A blockbuster movie is funded by marketers. People pay the ticket price AND are subjected to subliminal ads. The fact that someone sees the movie is added to their marketing profile for future use. E.g. If someone just saw a movie with a lot of cool cars they would be inundated with car advertisements after leaving the theatre.
• There is a counter-culture that exists in the world of open-sourcing:
• People can design and customize their own programs in order to take back some independence.
• Of course when anyone comes up with something original and worthwhile that others would enjoy it eventually gets bought up, polished and integrated into the corporate ad-driven applications that most will prefer.
• Traditional societies reject the Chip to different degrees:
• Orthodox Jews unplug on shabbos.
  
• Fundamentalist religions ban its use altogether.
• e.g. Muslims call it an abomination before Allah. Criticize the peoples who have adopted as part of their reality as less than human, greedy, willing to sell their souls for convenience and luxury.
• Given the fact that most people who are chipped follow their basest urges, e.g. spending the majority of their time indulging sex fantasies in stim-sims... the Muslims' point is actually made a lot stronger.
• Of course the applications of the Chip reality are readily adaptable to the sort of fundamentalist indoctrination favoured by Islamist societies.
• MAJOR THEME - No matter where you come from or how you choose to live your life, it is virtually impossible to have truly independent thought in this world.
  

Blogging the Creative Process

Rather than just keep my notes in a pile of scribbled books and desktop cluttering electronic files this blog will exist for the purpose of containing my thoughts as they occur to me. Easily searchable and instantly copyrighted.