The future of work is likely to be complicated

The Nole Edge Economy: I’ve been talking a lot about protocols over platforms lately, and wanted to explore such a world in a fictional context — and combined 2 other elements: the incredible wealth of DIY info found totally free online such as on YouTube (I was inspired to write this after learning how to rebuild a carburetor via YouTube videos) and also the odd dependencies created by shareable, reusable code. Also, there’s a little nod towards SLAPP suits as well. In short, this is a story that hits on a lot of regular Techdirt points.

eMotion: by our very own Timothy Geigner. He kept telling me he was too busy to write something, and then at the last minute delivered this wonderful story exploring what the world might look like when artificial intelligence is granted its own rights — and starts to require what probably can’t be called “human” resources any more when dealing with job changes and transitions. But, in such a world, certainly the line begins to blur between who gets to make decisions for whom. And, I mean, how do you let a military artificial intelligence know that its services are no longer needed.

Genetic Changelings: by Keyan Bowes was one of the few stories we received that didn’t focus on artificial intelligence, but rather started exploring a world where genetic engineering has taken off to fairly spectacular levels. It’s a world that will seem quite familiar to today’s… but with a few potentially startling differences. I mean, when a story starts out in its first line discussing a child’s tail, you know it’s going to be a bit different.

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