Caitlyn O Dec 17th
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
Philosophical Analysis
Society:
2) What is Whuffie? Is it different to the concept of money? How do you make Whuffie? Do you believe Whuffie is a good idea? Are there bad things about Whuffie? Would you enjoy and Whuffie world? Explain.
Whuffie is a concept based on the science-fiction novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctrow. Doctrow takes a look into the future and what he thinks it will be like. He came up with the idea of ‘Whuffie’ which is a reputation-based currency and identification. Meaning the more good you do, the higher your Whuffie is. You are more highly regarded with a higher Whuffie, so it’s natural to want to do good to increase your Whuffie. The basic necessities in life are free in Doctrow’s future, even some of the more luxurious things. It is very easy to access someones Whuffie as everyone has a brain implant that allows them immediate access to someones Whuffie rating. You can ‘ping’ someones Whuffie and communicate with someone via sub vocal digital waves.
I believe that Whuffie is a great idea. However, I feel it’s too idealistic. In a perfect world Whuffie would exist, but in the flawed world we live in with the flawed people, it’s just not reality. If Whuffie actually was reality, I believe everyone would be so much happier. We’re all giving and recieving, not fighting over the first world problem that exists today, money, it just seems like the perfect answer. Makes me wonder why humans didn’t invent Whuffie instead of money instead. I guess population control? That could be an issue. If there was Whuffie, we would have way more people. No more wars over money, so no deaths, less people dying from preventable diseases. We’d probably be way more technologically advanced. I think the element of competitiveness wouldn’t be there though. Well at least you’re competing for Whuffie by doing good things so that’s at least better than something so selfish as money. Ultimately I would prefer to live in a world where Whuffie is currency. I like to live my life believing in Karma, I suppose a similar concept but if everyone believed in karma, I’d have a little more faith in it!
Philosphy
1) The Bitchun World is a worl;d of immortality...there is no death and one can always be refreshed in a new clone. What are some problems for the self, tome memory, and good and evil?
The Bitchun Society is the romantic idea that we get pretty much everything we want and there are no longer scarcities of things like food and clothes, there’s a surplus of everything so there’s no man left out. It’s the perfect society. No one dies, unless you do something called, Dead-Heading for 10,000 or so years and that’s their form of suicide. Many philosophers wonder about human behaviour if we were to live in such a perfect world, and whether things would actually be perfect or not. It is difficult to know whether this would work in real life, if the Bitchun society could not only exist, but flourish? Are good and evil really two separate things in this sort of lifestyle? If someone can’t die, is killing them a crime? It’s all about the motive behind things, why would that person do something evil as a vendetta, if it could just be undone?. In a world were everyone has access to everything, would people still lie and cheat and steal? It’s hard to know what humans would be like. It’s puzzling to think whether our innate human nature would change in that kind of society, if we would all just be born wanting to please others and do good. The concept of the Bitchun Society brings up many philosophical questions, with no clear answers.
Refreshing in Cory Doctrow’s Down and Out in The Magic Kingdom, refreshing is basically the cure for death. How they do this is they create a clone of your brain’s information and grow it, so when you die, your information can be passed on or ‘downloaded’ into a new host. Memorize are synthesized and can be transferred from one body to the other. This opens the doors for the questions philosophers have been arguing for years, is life worth living forever? People are always asked whether they would want to be immortal or not, and the answer always differs. Well this is a society where you have a choice. Doctrow’s future makes us wonder whether we would want to live eternally, or just die. I personally feel like the value of life is disrupted if we were all to live forever. We are supposed to live short, but value every moment on our short time of earth. If we just had copious amounts of time, what would we do? I feel like I wouldn’t do much. It also harms the “cycle of life” Birth and death. If everyone’s eternally living, you can’t have children because of overpopulation? Seems to unnatural to me. But I suppose there’s good things about living forever too, and that’s what makes it philosophical.
