#WritingWonders July 24: What is a common occurrence in your story that would be odd here?
I write science fiction. So, basically everything, in one way or another, but that's kind of cheating.
Er. Competence? Decency?
...sorry, I seem to be stuck on "cynical with a side order of bitter" today.
Okay, here's one, seeing as I just started a thread on my Discourse on little strange things that you'd have to be reading awfully closely to notice:
You never have to log in to anything. Every 'weave site and device smart enough to have any brains at all (so, y’know, park benches, plant pots, that sort of thing) already knows who you are and what your personal preferences are. At most, you might have to click a button confirming that you wish to upgrade from “visitor” to “site user”.
(This can get a bit complicated and I can talk all day, so stop me when I start to go overboard. 😁 )
In the Empire, it's seen as a convenience to the extent that people think about it at all. (Which is usually about as long as it takes to approve the "Yes, I don't care if every chair in the galaxy knows the shape of my ass" check-box.)
(Everything quietly adjusting itself to be exactly the way you wanted it to be without having to be told is just, well, the way the world's _supposed_ to work.)
Technically? Well, the two enabling techs are the Universal, which is a little electronic-signature widget designed to serve as, well, basically every form of identification, license, bank card, passport, password, membership card, etc., etc., in one unit, so you can solve the hard problems once and have done with them; and ISOP, the Interweave Security Operations Protocol, which does end-to-end encryption of everything on the extranet, including user and device signatures on every packet.
Cosmopolitans have an intellectual understanding that some other cultures have different attitudes towards sharing personal-preference information ("well, that's what the _settings_ are for, right?") and a curious insistence on privacy-in-public-actions and associated issues, in many cases because they're sufficiently dysfunctional that there are real downsides attached to doing so, but usually conclude that the appropriate response is to kick society's ass until it learns some manners.
(Local movements with similar attitudes are generally thought of as a strange cult that enjoys uncomfortable chairs, bad lighting, poorly seasoned food, and not being told about things that might interest them. Weirdos.)
I should probably clarify that it's a very different culture to ours, in which privacy _within your own property_ and freedom from intrusion are fiercely defended, but a combination of the cultural features "if I was in any way ashamed of it, I would not have done it, and I have nothing to fear from anyone"; and "it is proper to maintain an appropriate indifference to the affairs of others" mean that the advantages of comprehensive public surveillance overwhelmingly won the argument.
@cerebrate How does this work? Is it viewed as a convenience, dystopian surveillance system, or something in between?