[…] almost unrecognizable. Nonetheless, some futurists trace a consistent national identity. Somewhat ironically, considering the degree of upheaval, this identity will be based on the fundamental principles on which the country was founded, democracy and federalism. In the chaos of the previous half century, these principles, while still referenced, became so confused and obscured by more specific concerns that they were in many ways warped beyond all recognition. However, their resurgence after an utter breakdown, even in very different forms, reimagined through new digital and social technologies, shows that they will remain strong undercurrents in the narrative that the people of the erstwhile United States continue to tell themselves.
The mainstream histories and futures written of this period will, of course, deal primarily with the bickering and petty struggles of a political class that, while shrunken in impact, will still manage to claim relevance at least to the lazy-minded and easily impressed. Most focus on the oscillating ascensions of [redacted] and [redacted], as well as the antics of [redacted] and their impact on the geopolitical […].
Although it would be impossible to deny that the official political leadership does have an impact on individual lives as well as on world events, it is also undeniable that other, less visible structures have substantial impact—and therefore, under most definitions, power—as well. Indeed, Rieger and Asmundsdottir’s (2028) persuasive argument that the formal political trappings receive attention by far disproportionate to their effects […] may seem radical, but it offers us a much more complete view of the forces transforming society. This approach is particularly appropriate for this period, in which one can argue that informal processes began to more aggressively claim public space for themselves, demanding awareness, engagement, and voice.
In some ways these activists can be seen as creating a different form of federalism, one that takes distribution of attention and importance, rather than geographic distribution, as a basis for apportioning representation […].
[…] perhaps because of the distinctly democratic aesthetic of these groups, there will be a consciously collective self-characterization by many of those fighting to flip the power balance. This can be another barrier to effective description of these processes, as they tend to lack clearly defined leader-figures for stories to revolve around and audiences to fixate on.
Rather than questioning the human need for individual heroes, we have chosen to look first at the collectivities and the way they functioned, and then select representative […].
Of these, the story of Zenaida Gonzales, better known as @zengo, offers a good example. We do not know for sure if Zenaida Gonzales is her real name, although she will be fairly consistent with its use across a number of platforms and avatars. There is new evidence*1 that in some cases she may use a male-mapping name and avatar, but it is unclear whether this is an indication of genderfluidity or an attempt to reach an audience who would not hear her as a woman; at the moment the consensus is to use female pronouns.*2
It should be noted as well that part of the reason @zengo is better known than some of her companions may be because of the comparatively rich details about her life. The fact that many of those details may be invented does not seem to affect the fascination with them. To take just one axis of this phenomenon, futurists and historians have been shown to write more about online personalities with a “real name” attached to their handle, even when that real name has been proven false.*3
And there is little from @zengo’s purported biography that we can prove true […]. Her early stories are mundane: unverifiable incidents she encounters (such as the famous So I’m walking home from work thread) or critical (if informal) analysis of popular media. The most political element to the first category, perhaps, is the degree to which these incidents are invisible to “history” in all its forms, making them impossible to verify or trace; they already express a project of observing and reporting on that which is otherwise unseen or considered unworthy of notice. In addition, the overall lack of outside reference points, too consistent to be random, suggests in itself an early caution, an unwillingness to allow that rapidly ballooning audience to connect with her real life.
Despite her resistance to selfebrity culture, research has been able to determine some hints as to @zengo’s non-virtual existence. Linguistic analysis confirms the Hispanophone heritage implied by her handle and suggests considerable time spent on both coasts. From details in her posts, it is almost certain that she will attend university in Chicago (or is attending as we write or as you read, since her age has not been determined).
What is certain is that in tandem with the collapse of the United States, @zengo will become something of a bard, a foundational novelist, a folksinger of the new environment, taking to Twitter, Instagram, Shoutdown, CrickIt, and others to tell the stories of the new nation and create it as she does so. Her stories, in interaction with those of other narrators and activists, will describe the boundaries of this turbulent experience, bear witness, and finally begin to function, consciously and by design, as templates for building something better.
Most scholars agree that the primary trigger for @zengo’s activism was an event of environmental injustice, probably one she experienced directly, although it is possible that she will empathize with family members caught up in it or engage in the response to the event so deeply that she begins to experience it on a personal level. However, there will be so many incidents matching that description that even cross-referencing with the areas she is known to frequent does not enable us to identify specifically which disaster. On the other hand, there is general agreement that once @zengo’s activism was triggered, it transferred with unusual ease to other areas. It appears she spends significant time researching different issues before leaping into the fray, adding credence to theories that she will be, at least at some point, an academic of some kind. Eventually her focus coalesces around new forms of government as mechanisms for addressing the multitude of other issues that attract her interest and sympathy.
There is some evidence that her earlier works were based on anecdotes she or others experienced. We were walking in the rain is a famous example, in which she details a long debate with friends both physically and virtually present. She is also considered one of the pioneers of what will be referred to as Jardines,*4 long threads with multiple, sometimes interlacing branches. As she grew into her voice, she began to combine narrative, essay, harangue, photo-manipulation, memeography, lyric and musical appropriation, and other forms of art to create narratives that pointed the way to a more collective future and that contributed fundamentally to the aspirations of this future people of the no-longer United States.
[…] In effect, “civil society” will become, in the absence of strong political institutions, just “society,” while without coherent corporations “social media” will become just “media.” While we can describe these transitions, from a distance, as neutral changes or even positive outcomes of creative destruction, it is important to remember that for people living in that time, such drastic shifts are disorienting and frightening.
One of the ways that the future society of the post–United States deals with this uncertainty and fear will be through non-contiguous activist collectives, sometimes called NACs and on occasion knacks.*5 These groups will consciously seek to form communities that are not aligned with physical location. While part of the reasoning will be practical, given the increased difficulties of interstate travel during this period, many of the NACs will also elaborate theoretical frameworks embracing non-contiguity as a powerful rebuke to the concept of bubbles, the fragmentation of political groups, and even to the (at that point foundering) nation-state itself […].
While the NACs and other activist groupings will start in defiantly unstructured ways—often, for example, refusing to identify leaders or define a hierarchy—the ones that survive do eventually create governance structures. These vary widely, but while a few develop personality cults, almost all of the long-running NACs will base their decision-making on some form of democracy […]. One popular model will give additional participation capital, which translates roughly to votes, to those who engage more with the collective, although the way engagement is defined becomes critical here.*6
Many futurist histories of this era focus on the statements and (occasionally) actions of celebrities who attached themselves to these groups or self-appointed leaders, but it is important to note that @zengo and other founding activists in these groups were largely from one or more marginalized groups […].
While the storyteller function is important and will be perhaps better remembered, NACs will also be instrumental in combining virtual and IRL resistance into something new and uniquely powerful. @zengo’s Gente Invisible NAC will be one of the primary proponents of what is usually known as Costopia, in which members conduct themselves as if they belong to the government they want to have. In one of the most extreme cases, the Costopia run by the Monde Inversé will hold trials and impose fines based on their invented legal system […]. Costopias will also provide a way to expand the new versions of democracy practiced by the NACs into populations beyond their membership. The theory promoted by @zengo and her colleagues, especially @neopericles, is that if enough people consistently act on the basis of an agreed code, that code would be as legitimate as the “official” government.
Gamification, which will be initially popularized by the artist and activist Michelle Wickramsinghe, will allow people to play and replay scenes and interactions from their lives. The Burn It Down collective will further develop this idea into a way to build speculative futures in immersive, massively multiplayer game play.*7 This is taken even further by the company Digital Alternatives, which will allow people to live inside virtual-reality approximations of happier political systems and all their effects. However, whether because of the involvement of a for-profit company or because of discomfort with the technology, this will lead to a backlash that splits the activist community. The Digital Alternatives followers will be accused of hiding in their customized playgrounds while the world burns around them. Supporters of Digital Alternativists will defend their right to live fuller and more engaged lives than they could manage in reality. The players themselves rarely surface long enough to get involved in this discussion.
Gente Invisible and certain other NACs will defend Digital Alternatives and, more generally, the gamification phenomenon on the grounds that by imagining and engineering false but hopeful futures, they make those futures plausible and therefore possible. During the devastated realpolitik fragmentation of the immediate post-national period, many of @zengo’s colleagues will work to make those futures available to politicians and others in power, believing that this will tilt policy (such as it is, in that unstable time) in favorable directions. @zengo, as far as we can tell, will continue to focus rather on her “constituency” of followers and mutuals, preferring to strengthen cohesion and engagement among the masses. Other Gente Invisible members, however, will put a lot of effort into trying to connect their work with elites, and for a while this will seem like a conduit for reunification and progress. In the longer term such activities will become normalized, reducing their impact […].
What we have discussed so far in this chapter are future incidents and changes in the real world. There is, however, another genre of histories that will be written about the stories of those alternate histories that took place within Costopias, games, or VR. Many of the collectives will assign dedicated historians to document their activities, on the principle that as much could be learned from these experiments as from what is considered IRL history. In addition to narratives, they create textbooks, monuments, conferences, criticism, and a wide range of historical fictions. For example, in 2043 the digital architect and artist Shulammite Kurucz will create a memorial to the women harassed from the digital world, while the Otherworldly collective will establish an entire digital museum dedicated to artifacts of the digital experience. In 2051 Harvard will appoint the first Kavita Sawyer Professor of Virtual History.
[…] importance of storytelling in the future. We remember that while @zengo is famous for her activism, it is with storytelling that she built the audience she needed to become effective […].
Some scholars argue that the people in these collectives, who will hold together the principles of democracy, grassroots activism, and even a kind of dispersed federalism, will be able to do so because of their experience on the margins of United States society. Not belonging, according to this school of thought, will be the key indicator for productive engagement when nobody belongs and, eventually, constructing something new with greater inclusivity that will later be recognized as having new and different requirements for belonging. A relatively new area of research concerns the relationships between those actively excluded by society and those who self-identify as not fitting in […].
[…] however, by this time the territory once belonging to the United States of America will, it is generally agreed, have moved on to a new phase: sustainability.
MALKA OLDER is a writer, aid worker, and PhD candidate. Her science fiction political thriller Infomocracy was named one of the best books of 2016 by Kirkus Reviews, Book Riot, and The Washington Post. She is also the author of the sequels, Null States (2017) and State Tectonics (2018), as well as of short fiction appearing in Wired, Twelve Tomorrows, Reservoir, Fireside Fiction, Tor.com, and others. Named Senior Fellow for Technology and Risk at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs for 2015, she has more than a decade of field experience in humanitarian aid and development. Her doctoral work on the sociology of organizations at the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) explores the dynamics of post-disaster improvisation in governments, using the cases of Hurricane Katrina and the Japan tsunami of 2011.
*1. See, for example, Irepani Zitlal, “How Many Voices? Textual and Network Analysis of Resistance Icons,” Journal of Future Activism 18, no. 2 (2029): 64–78.
*2. It is also possible, of course, that @zengo will be a man masquerading most of the time as a woman, but statistical analysis shows this is unlikely to occur with such consistency over such a long timeframe. See Van Aalst and Pavletic, 2034.
*3. See Opal Þórirsson, “What’s in a Name? Handles, Pseudonyms, Avatars, and Scholarship of the Online Future,” Virtual Sociology 23, no. 1 (2035): 23–40.
*4. While proof has not been found that this terminology will be created by @zengo, there is ample evidence that she will use it. The word is a reference to Borges’s “El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan” (1941).
*5. It’s not clear whether the confusion with the English word will be deliberate or if it will be a result of the proliferation of non-text-based audio platforms during this period.
*6. There will be extensive ideological battles on whether reading other people’s posts counts as engagement and, if so, whether it is lesser than expressing one’s own opinion. Gente Invisible, for example, will come to the conclusion that even if expression requires more active engagement than lurking, it is unwise to incentivize opinionating. Some futurists believe this episode is the source of the name Gente Invisible and that it refers to lurkers, but Branimir (2030) has shown persuasively that the name will be used before that controversy arises and therefore is a more general evocation of voicelessness.
*7. Many scholars trace the emergence of future history as a field to this technology.