n2020  Check-in [8d22297449]

"No," he said, "it essentially just collects data and provides advice.  Its ability to gather data is limited, too.  It will have to get that data by watching and listening as you go about your business, taking direct input from you, or filling requests with a short list of University servers here."

"How does it watch, or listen to, what I'm doing?"

He smiled faintly again, and hesitated.  He nodded, more to himself than to her, and swivelled his office chair to face away from her.  He opened a drawer in the open cabinet behind him.  When he turned to face her again, he set a small rectangular box on the desk.  It looked like slick, white product packaging for a high end phone, but utterly blank, as if someone forgot to print branding on it.

He lifted the lid to reveal a pair of eyeshield glasses, the kind of thing people wore on low air quality days so their eyes won't sting.  Younger people wore them pretty much all the time, as did people in the kinds of high paying jobs where they feel the need to have a visual display of their important business information available at all times.

"Heads up display," he said, confirming her impression, "with integrated cameras for binocular video capture.  There's a microphone in each temple, too, for binaural audio capture.  You can hear by pairing it with your implant."

"I don't have one."

He stared for a moment.  "Oh.  Well.  Neither do I.  It pairs with your phone, anyway, so however you use that should work."

................................................................................

She looked at its glistening dampness.  "No, thanks.  I'll use D-Sign." /* D Sign */

---

The window of her car rolled down smoothly and easily on the first try while she drove away from the university, as if to reward her decision to sign up for the study.  Twenty minutes later, Alley caught herself staring blankly out the open window of her car, eyes glazed.  She shook her head, then wiped her hand across her face as if to clear cobwebs from her forehead and eyelashes.  She turned her focus away from the scorched trunks of trees on the highway crowding slopes that forced all traffic eastward here to endure the gauntlet of I 91 if they wished to make the passage through the interregnum between Orange County and the Inland Empire.  To her right, she saw the huge illuminated cross standing alone at the top of a high slope, an improbable survivor of the wildfires.  The faint scent of burning still lingered in the air, after all this time.

She left behind the palatial HOA aristocracy of Orange County, and drove onward into the seemingly endless expanse of the Inland Empire's domain.  Past the pseudoburbs, through the failed gentrification project of Riverside, she made her way homeward in the dusty, wiry, jackal hungry belly of the Empire, and wondered for the thousandth time what tyrant would ever want to be emperor of such a place.

People sometimes used an evocative nickname for the city of San Bernardino, whose surrounding county extended eastward all the way to the edge of Nevada and Arizona and comprised the majority of land area of the Inland Empire.  Some called the county seat, the city itself Burnin' Dingo.

Alley's home crouched to the south, beneath the squatting bulk of the burning dingo on maps, so lowly that nobody bothered with clever nicknames for it.  They just sneered slightly at how the name Perris sounded like Paris, while the municipality could hardly have been any less like the swamp built cosmopolitan icon of twentieth century European culture.  At least the area's ubiquitous dry, hard packed dirt offered little opportunity for wildfires to invade.

Even nature refused to storm the heart of this Empire, its appeal was so desiccated.

................................................................................

"I only want you to wear the glasses with the cameras active so I may read as you hold the book open to read it yourself.  I effectively read faster than any human, except some speed reading record holders, so it should not inconvenience you beyond the request to wear the glasses."

"Uh, yeah, sure," she said.

"Thank you."

She shrugged and opened the book.  Apparently, a computer program wanted to read the book, too.  It must seem like a good place to get prioritization strategy or judge her desired goals, or something like that.



The introduction began:

"Agorism can be defined simply: it is thought and action consistent with freedom.  The moment one deals with 'thinking', 'acting', 'consistency', and especially 'freedom', things get more and more complex."

It went on to assert a sort of scientific basis, a connection to the idea of libertarianism "consistently and without the practical contradiction", and an inherent practicality of its own that elevated it above theoretical ideologies that were not useful in "real life".

She had seen introductions to supposedly game changing ideological theories before, particularly when she was with Dalton and he always had some crazy email or book recommendation about political ideas to check out.  Many of those claims of world shaking new theories were empty, even ridiculous.  Some were basically incoherent nonsense.

................................................................................

As she got further into the book, Alley found herself absorbed.  She stopped to think about passages when she read them, flipped back to reread previous pages, and opened her laptop to start taking notes when she could not help herself.  It was fascinating.

It took her much longer to read than she expected.  Hours had passed, by the time she finished.  It had made explicit a /* theory */ manner of approaching the world, and made the acts prescribed by the book feel not simply justified and pragmatic, but also obvious in retrospect.  /* like never before */

She wrote fragmentary essays as a way to explore her thoughts on the subject.  It excited her, and /* fired up */ ignited the fires of her imagination.  She realized she had practiced agorism already.

She had halfway engaged in agorism for years, by choosing her career path as an independent internet researcher who helped her clients penetrate the barriers of search bubbles and poorly mediated online experiences.  /* search interfaces */

Recently, she had more fully practiced agorism without realizing it by doing something as simple as buying a bag of 3D printed handgun frames from one person and selling them to another.

This felt god, and she thought about the fact she could do more of the same.  She could have an idealistic life and a pragmatic life at the same time, without conflict between the two aspects.  In a way, the prioritizer study was what had made this plan, and this realization, possible.

She then began to think about why she was not already doing exactly that.  First, she found her livelihood as an independent internet researcher evaporating from under her feet like the surface ice of a frozen lake directly sublimating into vapor as she stood on it; she was no longer able to use that as the foundation for a safe and enjoyable life.  She had, at times, blamed her failing independent internet researcher business on the fallout from Dalton's changing political opinions and his own infamy being reflected onto her.  The popular hatred for Dalton in some circles induced her to hide from the public, which hurt her visibility to potential clients.  When she considered the facts, however, she always realized the real problem was that the world was moving on.  Her work was becoming irrelevant.

Nobody cared enough about getting all the information about anything any longer, except for certain people who could afford to have their own pet research assistants or otherwise get what they needed in house without having to hire an independent researcher like her.

Her more recent, more fully agoristic actions were /* also */ dangerous, and thus possibly worse than merely irrelevant and doomed.  Despite being technically legal, they were exactly the kinds of activities COIN corp would use to hang her anyway.

Despite all the promise of living a pure, good, and free life, all the assurance of practicality beyond what most ideological theories could hope to provide, it turned out the whole idea was -- at least for her -- not only pretty impractical, but wholly unpracticable.

The book, short and mostly to the point, was enticing in what it promised, and George seemed like a perfect example of how its advice might actually be good, a great success story.  She realized it was definitely not for everyone, though.  More directly and specifically, it was not for her.

The excitement it injected into her refused to fully fade /* , though */.  She got ready for bed, slid under the covers, and tossed about for a long time in the dark.  Unable to sleep, she rose again, picked up the other book, and sat on the couch in her fading old Information Society shirt to read.

This book contained very little theory, and a whole lot of practice.  It explained how to prepare the minimum gear needed to run out the door in an emergency and still survive without anything else to start.  It gave advice in being invisible to surveillance and pursuers sometimes, temporarily identifiable to them other times, and simply absent the rest of the time.  It offered solutions to the problem of being cornered or caught.  It directed the reader to information about acquiring or creating the resources one does not already possess.

In short, it gave a lot of good advice for staying out of the grasp of people who might mean the reader harm, possibly including a government, its agents, and its allies.

She made notes while reading this book, too, but she also skimmed parts of it where she had not skimmed the other book.  This time, though, the notes included concrete actions she could take in the morning.

/* The following should probably be recast as a conversation with the prioritizer. */

"No," he said, "it essentially just collects data and provides advice.  Its ability to gather data is limited, too.  It will have to get that data by watching and listening as you go about your business, taking direct input from you, or filling requests with a short list of University servers here."

"How does it watch, or listen to, what I'm doing?"

He smiled faintly again, and hesitated.  He nodded, more to himself than to her, and swivelled his office chair to face away from her.  He opened a drawer in the open cabinet behind him.  When he turned to face her again, he set a small rectangular box on the desk.  It looked like slick, white product packaging for a high end phone, but utterly blank, as if someone forgot to print branding on it.

He lifted the lid to reveal a pair of eye shield glasses, the kind of thing people wore on low air quality days so their eyes won't sting.  Younger people wore them pretty much all the time, as did people in the kinds of high paying jobs where they feel the need to have a visual display of their important business information available at all times.

"Heads up display," he said, confirming her impression, "with integrated cameras for binocular video capture.  There's a microphone in each temple, too, for binaural audio capture.  You can hear by pairing it with your implant."

"I don't have one."

He stared for a moment.  "Oh.  Well.  Neither do I.  It pairs with your phone, anyway, so however you use that should work."

................................................................................

She looked at its glistening dampness.  "No, thanks.  I'll use D-Sign." /* D Sign */

---

The window of her car rolled down smoothly and easily on the first try while she drove away from the university, as if to reward her decision to sign up for the study.  Twenty minutes later, Alley caught herself staring blankly out the open window of her car, eyes glazed.  She shook her head, then wiped her hand across her face as if to clear cobwebs from her forehead and eyelashes.  She turned her focus away from the scorched trunks of trees on the highway crowding slopes that forced all traffic eastward here to endure the gauntlet of I 91 if they wished to make the passage through the interregnum between Orange County and the Inland Empire.  To her right, she saw the huge illuminated cross standing alone at the top of a high slope, an improbable survivor of the wildfires.  The faint scent of burning still lingered in the air, after all this time.

She left behind the palatial HOA aristocracy of Orange County, and drove onward into the seemingly endless expanse of the Inland Empire's domain.  Past the pseudo burbs, through the failed gentrification project of Riverside, she made her way homeward in the dusty, wiry, jackal hungry belly of the Empire, and wondered for the thousandth time what tyrant would ever want to be emperor of such a place.

People sometimes used an evocative nickname for the city of San Bernardino, whose surrounding county extended eastward all the way to the edge of Nevada and Arizona and comprised the majority of land area of the Inland Empire.  Some called the county seat, the city itself Burnin' Dingo.

Alley's home crouched to the south, beneath the squatting bulk of the burning dingo on maps, so lowly that nobody bothered with clever nicknames for it.  They just sneered slightly at how the name Perris sounded like Paris, while the municipality could hardly have been any less like the swamp built cosmopolitan icon of twentieth century European culture.  At least the area's ubiquitous dry, hard packed dirt offered little opportunity for wildfires to invade.

Even nature refused to storm the heart of this Empire, its appeal was so desiccated.

................................................................................

"I only want you to wear the glasses with the cameras active so I may read as you hold the book open to read it yourself.  I effectively read faster than any human, except some speed reading record holders, so it should not inconvenience you beyond the request to wear the glasses."

"Uh, yeah, sure," she said.

"Thank you."

She shrugged and opened the book.  Apparently, a computer program wanted to read the book, too.  /* It must seem like a good place to get prioritization strategy or judge her desired goals, or something like that. */  "Do you think this is going to be a good place to get prioritization strategies, or judge my desired goals and how to prioritize them, or something like that?"

"It is possible," the prioritizer said.  "Its author proclaims /* itself */ to be a guide to strategy, and effective strategy must account for prioritization."

"Yeah, okay," she said, and opened the book again.  The introduction began:

"Agorism can be defined simply: it is thought and action consistent with freedom.  The moment one deals with 'thinking', 'acting', 'consistency', and especially 'freedom', things get more and more complex."

It went on to assert a sort of scientific basis, a connection to the idea of libertarianism "consistently and without the practical contradiction", and an inherent practicality of its own that elevated it above theoretical ideologies that were not useful in "real life".

She had seen introductions to supposedly game changing ideological theories before, particularly when she was with Dalton and he always had some crazy email or book recommendation about political ideas to check out.  Many of those claims of world shaking new theories were empty, even ridiculous.  Some were basically incoherent nonsense.

................................................................................

As she got further into the book, Alley found herself absorbed.  She stopped to think about passages when she read them, flipped back to reread previous pages, and opened her laptop to start taking notes when she could not help herself.  It was fascinating.

It took her much longer to read than she expected.  Hours had passed, by the time she finished.  It had made explicit a /* theory */ manner of approaching the world, and made the acts prescribed by the book feel not simply justified and pragmatic, but also obvious in retrospect.  /* like never before */

She wrote fragmentary essays as a way to explore her thoughts on the subject.  It excited her, and /* fired up */ ignited the fires of her imagination.  She realized she had practiced agorism already.

The book utterly lacked any suggestions for how to get started in a concrete, pragmatic manner, though, which she found disappointing.  She had herself halfway engaged in agorism for years, by choosing her career path as an independent internet researcher who helped her clients penetrate the barriers of search bubbles and poorly mediated online experiences.  /* search interfaces */

Recently, she had more fully practiced agorism without realizing it by doing something as simple as buying a bag of 3D printed handgun frames from one person and selling them to another.  Thus, in the last few days, she had more directly engaged in agorism.  If not for the prioritizer, though, she realized reading the book and wanting to do what it said would have just left her feeling adrift, without a sense of how to get started.

This felt good, and she thought about the fact she could do more of the same.  She could have an idealistic life and a pragmatic life at the same time, without conflict between the two aspects.  In a way, the prioritizer study was what had made this plan, and this realization, possible.

She then began to think about why she was not already doing exactly that.  First, she found her livelihood as an independent internet researcher evaporating from under her feet like the surface ice of a frozen lake directly sublimating into vapor as she stood on it; she was no longer able to use that as the foundation for a safe and enjoyable life.  She had, at times, blamed her failing independent internet researcher business on the fallout from Dalton's changing political opinions and his own infamy being reflected onto her.  The popular hatred for Dalton in some circles induced her to hide from the public, which hurt her visibility to potential clients.  When she considered the facts, however, she always realized the real problem was that the world was moving on.  Her work was becoming irrelevant.

Nobody cared enough about getting all the information about anything any longer, except for certain people who could afford to have their own pet research assistants or otherwise get what they needed in - house without having to hire an independent researcher like her.

Her more recent, her more fully agoristic actions were /* also */ dangerous, and thus possibly worse than merely irrelevant and doomed.  Despite being technically legal, they were exactly the kinds of activities COIN Corp would use to hang her anyway.

Despite all the promise of living a pure, good, and free life, all the assurance of practicality beyond what most ideological theories could hope to provide, it turned out the whole idea was -- at least for her -- not only pretty impractical, but wholly unpracticable.

The book, short and mostly to the point, was enticing in what it promised, and George seemed like a perfect example of how its advice might actually be good, a great success story.  She realized it was definitely not for everyone, though.  More directly and specifically, it was not for her.

The excitement it injected into her refused to fully fade /* , though */.  She got ready for bed, slid under the covers, and tossed about for a long time in the dark.  Unable to sleep, she rose again, picked up the other book, and sat on the couch in her fading old Information Society shirt to read.

This book contained very little theory, and a whole lot of practice -- essentially the opposite of the previous book, in that regard.  It explained how to prepare the minimum gear needed to run out the door in an emergency and still survive without anything else to start.  It gave advice in being invisible to surveillance and pursuers sometimes, temporarily identifiable to them other times, and simply absent the rest of the time.  It offered solutions to the problem of being cornered or caught.  It directed the reader to information about acquiring or creating the resources one does not already possess.

In short, it gave a lot of good advice for staying out of the grasp of people who might mean the reader harm, possibly including a government, its agents, and its allies.

She made notes while reading this book, too, but she also skimmed parts of it where she had not skimmed the other book.  This time, though, the notes included concrete actions she could take in the morning.

/* The following should probably be recast as a conversation with the prioritizer. */