IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2016 - 64

not standard, inputs produced
different outcomes."
"Is this how you lost touch with
your son?"
"Mainly, yes, although there were
extenuating circumstances."

I met my husband Adam in
2056 and by then we were both
considered transhumans.
"Did our leaders see the socializing side effects coming?"
"Leaders only saw the upside,
improving the economy and wellness, and later protecting us
from the devastation of climate
change..."
"Can you give us an example of
an early enhancement that had an
economic effect?"
"I'd just turned thirteen and my
grandfather bought me a smart chip.
Let me buy products with no hassle.
Smart RFID-like devices were injected, if you can believe it, into our
hands. We'd walk into a store, which
of course no longer exists, and
wave over something we wanted.
Store equipment sensed the selection, charged our bank account,
and within hours the item would be
delivered by drone."
"Absolutely fascinating to hear
from somebody who experienced
visiting a store. What was the
next big societal change affecting
your life?"
"I'd have to mention how the
world was overcome, at first slowly,
but then with increasing ferocity, by
storms and rising tides. We tracked
each tenth degree Celsius beyond
1.8, which hit somewhere in 2030s.
When I'd turned fifteen, 2035,
technologists began aggressively
installing processors into humans,

mainly for medical therapeutics, as
I'd mentioned. But, a full 20 years
would pass before they turned to
imbedded technology for overcoming the assaults from a planet that
had reached a 2.4 centigrade rise.
By then we were seeing
sudden overnight extremes
in the temperate zones,
between minus 40 and
plus 130 degrees."
"The territory, known as
Florida, began disappearing about then, right?"
"Yes, and the land along
the northern Gulf Coast
was inundated, causing mass migrations to western elevations."
"I understand that across all
continents land became scorched.
By the early 2050s sea levels rose
over 1.5 meters. Places like Australia's Queensland and New South
Wales lost over 2 million habitable
properties. By 2080 another halfmeter took out 100 miles inland.
Fortunately, the idea of land has
ceased to have any real importance
to our survival."
"Yes, the planet changed dramatically."
"Were people aware that they
were heading toward annihilation?"
"Oh yes, but countries in the
early 2000s, before the tipping
point, couldn't agree about what to
do... much driven by commercial
interests and populations unwilling
to conserve. Politicians told people
that climate change was a hoax. By
the late 2040s, sea levels couldn't
be contained by higher levies and
dykes. Cities, like New York, Miami,
New Orleans, Seattle were becoming
uninhabitable."
"When did people realize that
the only chance for surviving was
imbedded technology?"
"Let's see, I met my husband
Adam in 2056 and by then we were
both considered transhumans."
"What identified you so?"
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

"We were born unaltered, but
technologically augmented in some
way, an artificial organ transplant here and there, or sensors
to warn of climate change threats,
and to a lesser degree help compete for work."
"Were there official ways that
kept track of who was and wasn't
altered?"
"The census bureau kept track
of such things. Transhuman was a
designation resulting from the type
of in-the-body technology one was
outfitted with, a vital organ, technologies to sense undetectable gases,
or unobservable infrared flames,
which if encountered immediately
incinerated you."
"Rather frightening. Did everyone
have access to this technology?"
"No, government applied a mix
of qualifications, such as one's utility to society."
"Wasn't it inhumane to let some
just perish?"
"It's not really that different from
the mechanisms that had been in
place for centuries."
"Such as?"
"In the U.S., although never
openly admitted, the affluent considered themselves to have more
utility than the poor. One of many
consequences was that wealthy
communities maintained schools
with more resources. Depending
on which schools children attended, they would either end up welloff or poor and the cycle repeated
itself. Poor people had less, died
sooner. It was not spoken about
openly. When time came to decide
who would be augmented, governments made policy choices based
on similar standards of 'utility.'
Those determined to have greater
social efficacy went through rigorous testing and economic scrutiny.
If you qualified, government subsidized the installation and maintained the technology."
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DECEmber 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2016