As a focus-group participant from the mid-atlantic region of the US, my relationship to Amazon was very superficial. It mostly involved flex work and remote jobs. I was inspired to write this story by reading about increasing AI involvement with big tech companies and governments. It made me wonder how this would appear in a far-distant future and if we woukld face the same issues as today. I started to explore some more themes involving history, framing, and bias.
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Excerpt from The Age of the World: A General Anthology with Highlighted Examples. Volume 12.1.2.5 edition 7, published by Sphere of New Americas CRE 4,559. Library copy.
[Begin excerpt]
In the Era of Great Suffering, as it is commonly known, there was much turmoil in the world.
Decades of decay from the deemed Damned Clan of humanity led to great inequality, poverty, and discontent. But after the collapse of the banking institutions and the nationalization of many companies, the world began to seek answers to the complex questions of how to rebuild.
Sadly, while many possible solutions were offered, implementation proved difficult, leading to wars of different scales on the basis of ideas, rights, and freedoms. Many who directly benefited from the exploitative Old World Order fought against the new one being brought about by the Blessed Class of reformers.
As it does, however, the march of progress prevailed and the governments who had built socialized institutions gained immense power. Militaristic nations were infiltrated and destabilized from their centers, and when they inevitably collapsed, they were replaced with democratic and socialist institutions that sought to heal trauma and rebuild societies.
Eventually, with the world governments adhering to the New World Order, the Blessed Class turned to global corporations, those last vestiges of the Old World Order. Through these decades of change, these corporations had gone unpunished, simply moving their operations to the safe embrace of the countries still operating according to the dictates of the Old World Order. When, eventually, every country had joined the New World Order, they could no longer flee. No safe haven existed for them anymore.
As they had done with the authoritarian regimes, the Blessed Class began at the center. Infiltrators entrerd into the corporations and stoked the egos and desires of those in power. They sowed disagreement and discontent and encouraged leaders and boards to take power for themselves. Just as these corporations had cannibalized and destroyed industries that existed before them, so too were they devoured.
Among the final corporations to disappear was Amazon, a notable goliath that had epitomized the Damned Clan. Amazon fell in a long, slow decline over decades of mismanagement, increased striking, and a decimated public image, helped along by the work of the Blessed Class. While Amazon had enormous power in its heyday, it grew too fast, too quickly. This led to power grabs within the company and volatility in middle management. When Amazon lost its central organizing figure, and with him, the vision that had inspired its birth, the company went through multiple owners and board configurations. While some of these owners believed Amazon should expand to compete with grocery stores, book stores, and even governments, others believed the path to growth lay with shipping goods. The resulting conflictultimately led to the stagnation of the company. In other words, the Blessed Class took Amazon down with the same engine of chaos that destroys all great empires and powerful monopolies: disintegration at the top.
The last Amazon warehouse, a small building in a mid-sized city, closed on 5 March, 2035. A rent dispute was the last nail in the coffin of a once great corporation. Amazon died unceremoniously, and with its death knell, the last of the corporations were extinguished.
In some ways, the world after the corporations was not so different from the world before. But in putting “people before profit” (to echo the discourse of the time) it was a kinder and more just world. “Globalization,” the mass exploitation and extraction that characterized the Old World Order, decreased, but global trade in terms of exchanging goods, ideas, and value increased. The days of cheap goods and cheaper labor in the name of consumption were over. In their place, ideas emerging from the interaction of different cultures, foods, trades, and achievements. People found that a world filled with communities of people who shared and cared was one where no one went hungry, where no one went homeless, where no one was unsafe, and where there was always enough for everyone.
Historians call this era the Dawn of the Golden Age. While is widely thought to have started in the subsequent century, I argue that its beginnings can be traced back to the stabilization efforts that followed the Era of Great Suffering. Dynamic changes happened at this time and peoples’ imaginations flourished. The global horizon seemed infinite.
The first of the advancements was the mass integration of identity and nations. Citizens, in their troubled path of healing, realized collectively that unification and appreciation should be the basis of a global society. Thus, a formal union of nations was born. Previously distinct states and countries were amalgamated into districts that were self-determined on the basis of history, culture, and languages. Each district was grouped into regions and each region grouped into spheres of influence in the world. A complex system of rules was put in place based on classification. Nations still existed, but they were reframed on the basis of their district and sphere. Each country was given a vote for their region and each region a vote for their sphere. When spheres decided on a global scale, each nation was given a vote. This system was designed to empower local decision-making, but also to encourage cohesion on a global scale.
With this groundwork enabled many advances in the following century. A free trade of ideas and goods flourished throughout the world. With a strong central global government, a system of storing and organizing global values, ideals, creativities and inventions was also designed. This resulted in the formation of the greatest of all advances, what is now known as the Global Library System. As ideas and knowledge were being formed, solicited, stored, shared, and organized, humans began expanding the definition of their existence.
In the latter half of the century, collective knowledge began to give humanity significant insight into how life and consciousness worked. The most significant achievement was discovery of life on an asteroid that had entered our solar system from deep space. When scientists brought samples to Earth, they were shocked to find many similarities between life on that planet and life in deep space. Despite a lack of oxygen and water on the asteroid the beings had suvived their journey, though it was not until the start of the new century that scientist Abherna Khaiyoula from the Southeast Sphere understood how. She began studying a phenomenon occurring among moss in a hypo-oxygenated state. Using knowledge from the interlinked Global Library System and a modified Northern Sphere Telescope, she conducted experiments, monitoring the energy emittance of the moss on the sub-plank level. To her surprise, she was able to detect a resonance that mimicked the lifeform found on the asteroid. She was able to reproduce the same signature with algae, simple plants, and even fruiting flora. She named her discovery “wanton energy” for its fickle nature andpublished her findings in the now-legendary paper “The Energies of the Other: More Similar than Different.”
When Abhernas’s work was replicated thirty-seven times in all Spheres and by the central government, they found this energy is inherent to every being in our world, and presumably throughout the universe. Efforts to understand and harness wanton energy s initiated a mad race of discovery and launched what would come to be known as the Golden Age.
Wanton energy became the essential element of mechanics and computing, replacing quantum energy. This energy, inherent to humanity and used to power our species’ creations, represented the formation and utilization of proto-magic, although magic in its true identity would only be fully implemented mid-century.
[End excerpt]
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