Every single person in the Australia Project was different, and no one focused on one thing exclusively, but there were some general patterns. Some people chose to focus their lives on friends and family. For example, lots of people with children wanted to spend time with the kids. Many others had extensive networks of friends and spent much of their time with friends socializing in a variety of ways. Many people loved to travel, and spent a great deal of time traveling to different parts of the country and the world. Some people enjoyed art — music, writing, painting, sculpture, dance, etc. — and spent a great deal of their time at their art. Athletes spent their time training and competing. For each different person, a different type of lifestyle brought fulfillment.
A surprising number of people found fulfillment in creating new things — inventors, scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, designers, architects. In the Australia Project, these people could find true fulfillment. Because of the “better and better” principle, the Australia Project set quite a bit of its resources aside to help people interested in innovation. All “known” product categories were under constant improvement. All unknowns were being researched.
For example, take any “known” product — shoes, clothes, food, housing, furniture, appliances, housing, restaurants, parks, etc. People were constantly coming up with new ideas to make them better and better. For example, if you came up with a new style of clothing, you would submit it and the robots would put it in the catalog. There was no way to know whether your new style would resonate with 100 people or a million, and the robots didn’t care. The only way to find out was to let people have access to it. If someone had a new idea for a restaurant, the robots would simulate it and ask 1,000 people about their level of interest. If there was any interest at all, the robots would try one copy of the restaurant out. If it took off, they would make copies of it in different regions. In this way, restaurants were constantly changing and improving. The same thing was true of housing — there were thousands of housing styles, and you could move whenever you felt like it. If someone had a new way of doing things, the robots would try it out.
Another thing that helped innovation was the elimination of profit. In the Australia Project, the robots made everything and delivered it. The only “price” for anything you wanted was for the resources consumed. The robots could make one copy or a million copies of anything in the catalog, and they did not need to make a “profit” from any of it.
In a profit-driven society, a huge range of innovative products never saw the light of day because they could not make a profit. A technology or a product had to have enough people using it to cover the costs of the people working on the product, the advertising, the legal bills, the rent, etc. That meant that a lot of people had to be using a product in order to bring the price down to a reasonable level. In the Australia Project, that restriction was eliminated. There were no advertising costs for example. Production and resources were free. Anything that anyone could conceive could be produced, and it would reach its natural audience. The size of the audience did not matter. This meant a much wider range of products and services.
There was a relatively small but highly regarded segment of the population that got its fulfillment from fundamental scientific research. This is the kind of research that figured out things like fusion power, the origin of the universe and new materials. Throughout history, these people had never worked for monetary reward as their primary incentive. They worked instead for the joy of scientific discovery, and for peer recognition. This was the same kind of thing driving the open source movement at the turn of the century. The Australia Project encouraged the creative work of scientists, engineers, programmers, etc. by devoting a large block of the resources to them. They could work in groups or individually, and they could work in their personal areas of interest. Because the scientists and engineers had the resources and freedom to work on whatever they wanted, the creative process accelerated. The intellectual playground offered by the Australia Project was perfect for them.
In this way, each person in the Australia Project was able to seek and find a truly fulfilling lifestyle. Those who wanted to lounge around all day did so. Those who wanted to answer the mysteries of the universe did that. If you decided you wanted to completely change your lifestyle at any point, you could do that too.
One of the more surprising divisions in the society was the difference between the Vites and the Peas. There was a very large group of people who, given a choice between the virtual world and the physical world, preferred to live their lives virtually. They were known as Vites. Burt, for example, became a Vite — completely virtual. He lived his life almost entirely in the virtual world. Vertebrane took care of everything physical for him — Eating, showering, using the bathroom, exercising. This freed Burt’s brain to connect to the virtual world 24 hours a day.
Because of their lifestyle, Vites used practically no resources. All they needed was a little space to live in, room to exercise, some simple, healthy foods and water. Nearly every minute of their lives was spent in virtual space. When I spent time with Burt, it was always in VS.
The other half of the population lived mostly in the physical world, and used Vertebrane as an accessory to their lives. We were known as Peas. Linda, Cynthia and I were Peas. Linda’s preferred mode for getting together was in virtual space — She was hooked on flying. But for the most part, Peas spent a majority of their time in the real world. They met people, traveled and lived their lives in the physical realm.
After orientation, I got to spend a fair amount of time with Burt in his virtual world. He showed me around his favorite places, as well as new spaces as they became available. The big news in the Vite community was “Vite racks”. For a Vite, the human body was a distraction more than anything else. Vite racks gave Vites the chance to discard their bodies. The brain was all that remained, and it consumed just 2.5 liters of space on a rack. The big advantage of a Vite rack was longevity. Current research was showing that the brain could last decades longer if it was maintained and managed in the optimal conditions of a rack. When a Vite wanted to enter the physical world, he or she could have his or her brain loaded into a variety of robotic bodies. But Vites rarely if ever needed a physical presence. The research was probably 4 or 5 years away from perfection, but it was going to be a huge development once it was complete.
Personally, I found the whole idea of a Vite rack creepy. I kind of liked my body. In fact, I liked everything about the physical world that made up the Australia project. After looking through the thousands of housing options available and touring many of them, I settled on a lifestyle that surprised me. There was a community set up to mimic many of the features of the original town of Williamsburg. People worked together to build their own houses, grow their own food, make their own clothes, practice simple crafts and trade with one another. The people living in this town were wonderful — honest, industrious, friendly, down-to-earth. The things we did together were simple and straightforward. I could still visit my friends in virtual space when I wanted to, but I often kept Vertebrane in pass-through mode for days at a time.
It was amazing to me that technology had brought us full circle like this. I was living in the most amazing civilization known to mankind. As a species we had conquered nearly every want or need of the human condition. Food, water, clothing and shelter, as well as every imaginable type of entertainment or endeavor, were available in such abundance that everyone had a nearly infinite supply. Technology had advanced to the point where I could take an elevator ride to space, and was nearly to the point where my brain could be removed from my body so I could live a completely virtual life.