The App of Apps Revolution
A lighthearted look into the future of 2055

The day in the life of a Plumber

What’s up smart?  I was awake but didn’t want to be.  Most people would still be sleeping looking forward to another day of leisure.

“good morning duke”, cut the crap smart, not in the mood, just give me the day. My smart, I still call smart, as the original name derived from smart phones and it took no time for people to start giving the technology pet names - but not me, I want it keep it in its place.  Unfortunately, smart now knows far more about me than I do.

“ok, first appt is in the Chalfonts, two hour kitchen tap job, mutuals done, going via Amersham, you have half an hour before auto arrives, do you want to hear the rest now?”

No, that’ll do. I start my notes for my smart blog... 'day in the life', I hope to get quite a following, many people would love to have a proper job, but its easier just to listen to a trader and I am adding in some history notes for the younger generation - the few that there are.

So my day is going to start with a small job repairing a cold tap system in an older dwelling.  And I am one of the lucky ones.  I have a real paid job.  You can’t just advertise as a plumber any longer, oh no, you are allocated with a location for a specific type of work.  This is all part of the dynamic economy – more of that later.  The important thing for me is that I get fifty percent more on my base personal allowance for every eighty hours worked per month.  So what is this personal allowance? – During the ‘crisis’ the Government opted for a sort of quantative easing using the smarts and smart finance to directly distribute funds to most individuals to keep the economy working. This proved particularly effective, creating demand and keeping the most vulnerable safe, while helping businesses to invest.

For now, I am up breakfasting.  My smart is trying to engage me in my usual news snippets, and my interests such as the local community pub.   I am ignoring the smarter as I am a bit hung over from a late night in the local – one of the very few aspects of life that still reflect the old days – apparently anyway.

Many people give their smarts not just a name but consider it as almost sentient - which it is not of course. Me, I don’t want to make it more of a personal affliction than necessary, even though I do rely on it for almost every aspect of my life. Sad isn’t?

I was born in 2023, now in my thirty second year I have already seen possibly the most momentous changes for Britain than anyone in the past.  Born into a time of utter turmoil, a time that the oldies say are similar to those of the great wars, the oil crisis where people’s lives were put on hold while providing for the immediate and necessary survival needs.   Of course, I remember little, but life did seem rather chaotic when I was young, always moving from location to location, my parents striving to make the best of each day being seconded into different jobs to help build new infrastructure and new systems. Those times kicked-off the fault lines enabling the shifts in society, all involving the smart technology – which, as it happens, was a British invention.

What smart?  “auto outside now sir”, Don’t take the piss, tell it two mins.  A nice sleek dark-blue auto in the drive, I get into the front and I am amazed that it is a semi.  Did you ask for a semi smart?

“no”  Well, perhaps we can get sys to agree to a little self-driving? Ask will you – on the basis that I need to keep my hand in for those occasions I need to drive off-road to reach a few locations. “ok”

“no go, excuse is usual traffic and insurance cover”  That’s crap, tell sys to lodge my position with a mutual. “ok, will do”.

Insurance, like nearly all administration and finance is now pretty much zero cost.  For vehicles there is hardly any need now - the autos just don’t crash.

So let me fill you in with a bit of the history.  During the 20’s the start of the process was the ‘app of apps’ – very simple to begin with – just an app that joins all other apps and their info.  This app of app’s controls any input or output anywhere that another app has an ‘app of app’ extension.

It took a while but then serious business started automating stuff like shops, deliveries, bookings hire-cars, meetings, then insurance, loans etc.  Like email of old, this suddenly becomes a necessity, if your app is not part of this scene then its not going anywhere, if you don’t have the app of apps you are locked out of many everyday processes.  Smart finance then becomes the link between the people and suppliers, totally automated with an independent app – ‘the mutual’ – sitting between the two (blockchain based providing security and audit trail). So the ‘app of apps’ morphs into the smarts, a device similar to the smart phone but one that answers back using artificial intelligence and cloud based computing power, coupled to just about everything.

I sit back, the audio plays from my favourite tracks, smart knows what I like at this time of day and mood.  We take normal roads, no need for a tube for such a short journey, the auto and smart know the best routes through the traffic and my preferences for scenery.

Travelling is very peaceful, very quiet as the fuel-cell and electric motors make hardly any noise, there is a slight rumble from the road tyres but that’s about it.  We sweep majestically past the ‘veggies’ – towering rectangular blocks that are a key production system for our food sources.  These look a bit better these days, initially they were real eyesores, now they are cleverly covered in art or growing their own external cladding.   Completely automated and powered of course by solar during the day and hydrogen during the night hours, providing a 24/7 production plant for both edible plants and protein stock.   The produce gets flicked away in a tube to the food factories.

Yea, the vac-tubes.  They are just great, in a way make life worth living.  The vac-tubes use extruded nano fibres (ncc tech) with bands of magnets to accelerate and de-accelerate magnetically floating cars.  These were kicked off by a new process in the 40’s that allowed for continuous production and the flexible nature of ncc made quick cheap lay down of vast stretches of vac-tubes, burrowing through mountains or just going underground was simple due to the inherent strength of the ncc, (ten times stronger than steel), no other structure required.

At eight hundred miles per hour cars zip along in a vacuum.  Five north-south main tubes, many east-west tubes all with branches criss crossing the whole of Britain.  Each car is a small unit programmed by your smart to follow the correct branches and finally stop at your transition station. These are loops and flow back onto main vac-tubes, fast acceleration and constant flow of tubes means lots of volume and quick journey times.  At your transition your auto is waiting for your on journey.  It meant I could zip to the best kitesurfing coast in the UK, have great day and be back in time to go to the local for a pint and a meal by early evening.

I arrive at a modest dwelling house, must be at least hundred years old, probably almost as old as the occupier.  Mrs Noakes opens the door, I don’t have to knock but with the oldies it is considered polite as they still don’t trust the smarts.  My stock has already arrived and is in a big bag in the stock auto next to the porch, I heave it into the house and take it with me along to the kitchen.  The offending leaking pipe is of course right under the sink, with a cramped access.  Permission’s smart, I say? “yep, but it wont get you anywhere this place is not on the smart system”  What? Jesu, now I need to find the main water supply manually and turn it off, great start.  Having done a quick repair and declined the cup of tea, I make sure Mrs Noakes is happy with the job and ask her to sign it off, she looks at me a little blankly and then says “of course, smart are you there? Would you complete the transaction please”  Oh, I just love the please, these oldies are hilarious.  Smart say’s “done” and I am on my way. 

The transactions are all via a mutual, funds flowing instantly from her account into my business account.  Gone are all the old banks, the new smart banks are completely automatic transaction systems linked into the smart system as a whole. The Government knows instantly of this transaction too and deducts my tax and updates my allowance.  smart knows what bits and pieces I have used and updates my stock requirements.  I heave my bag back to the stock auto and plonk it in the container. “Thanks Mrs Noakes” I say, “we are off now”.  Shit, shit, shit, I have fallen into the trap of personalising my smart again!

I get into the new auto that’s just arrived, (not a semi this time), and wait for smart to comment, I know its going to, but I am ready.  “nice to know I am liked really” says smart.  Yea, well remember to just smart the shut up, and tell your makers that I don’t like their sense of humour.  “but how do you know I am not really intelligent?”  Because you are a dumb arse and just have a lot of information, end of.  “but in future I may become intelligent and you won’t know until its too late”  Yea, you wish.   The programmers like playing this sort of game, gives them something to laugh about I suppose, in what must be a dreary job, although much of the systems processing is also automated now.  But some people didn’t like the banter, they think it could actually happen some day. I begin to wonder who does really run everything these days.

I travel in silence to the next job twenty minutes away.  smart knows not to disturb me when I am in this mood.   I have time to reflect upon the way life has panned out.

I recall my initial sys dump.  I was just 16, and as I could vote I could also enter the sys and get my own smart.  The sys dump effectively creates a massive data bank of all of my information, medical, dna, education, places I have been, my likes and dislikes plus my contacts, friends associates, the music I have listened to the films I have seen, the virtuals I have accessed, all the stuff I have had bought for me and use – effectively my whole life. 

At this point you are opting-in and get your allowance.  You also get to choose your defaults, although you can change these at any time – things like when and where you eat, delivered meals or ingredients for home or local kitchen cooking (many homes have no cooking facilities).  You choose a level of auto, this is mostly cosmetic but people like to choose.  Of course, once you have an adult smart, everything can be changed on the fly, provided you have the funds and yes, like any good parent the sys wont let you blow all you allowance, it makes sure you have enough for essential living expenses till the next payment.

“rapid coming”.  The auto slows and makes room for a fast vehicle to pass.  You rarely see them, designed as a rapid reaction force they are deployed for emergencies and even more rarely crime scenes.  We don’t get much crime, its normally when people have too much to drink or some sort of partner bust up.  As the smarts are always watching, and most people have an emergency mode set to monitor for serious issues, it is almost impossible to get away with attacking someone.  Its surprising how this has dampened down the natural reactions of people to people relations.  When I was young, the smarts were much less aware, there was plenty of action in the high stress environment of rationing and effectively forced labour due to the crisis.

The rapid, a large vehicle decked out in reds and greens shot passed without a murmur.  It was an auto of course; the old police forces and other emergency forces were the last to give up their special driving status.  But they kept crashing - however good a driver you are you cannot process information from twenty sources at a time, smarts can easily, and never crash, even at very high speeds.   The police were effectively disbanded after the crisis as they got a bad name in handling the riots.  They became increasingly heavy handed, with many casualties.  When the special crisis state was called off, a new combined rapid emergency force was created by combining the emergency services with the armed services.

What’s going on smart?  “nothing much, some ops are trying to break in to a local property, must be a desperate lot as they have no chance scanning the info feeds”   Can we go look? “no area closed down, the auto is banned from that location”  Oh well, that’s about as exciting as it ever gets theses days, roll on Friday when I am of to the coast – wherever the wind is blowing. Back to my notes.

As I mentioned, Britain started this smart revolution.  In fact, the UK lead the whole process of change, not by design, but because one small company working with Cambridge Science Labs created the technology of printing solar panels using a paper like substrate printed with layers of common materials that trapped the light energy and created a voltage. Although initially the panels were not very efficient it made solar so cheap that it could be used anywhere and everywhere. For just the cost of plastering the panels to whatever you could find that faced approximately south you had lots of watts. This invention saved the UK (and in the next few years many other nations) from the aftermath of the Middle East crisis – the whole area being blown to bits by several nukes - started apparently by some radical organisation, then the Israelis’ joined in, 'as a defensive operation', but no one really knows – or at least they don’t tell us if they do.

The resulting oil crisis – by that I mean no oil unless you were a producer, which of course the UK still was then, but not enough to fuel transport or main energy systems.  So, solar along with hydrogen fuel cells came to the rescue big time.  In just two years the UK had a new infrastructure based on solar with hydrogen production, storage and distribution.  After the crisis, the UK had leapt into the lead on several fronts, especially with the use of smarts to help the economy recover.

The smarts really getting going in the late 20’s just as all this hell breaks loose.  So the hydrogen and electric systems kick in big time, most vehicles are converted and the solar powers both the grid and hydrogen production systems.  Some base power is still provided from nuclear, but most is now from hydrogen produced from daytime solar and distributed across the UK.

This gives the UK a massive lead in production costs and fuels the move to increasingly automated production using the bots that work much more effectively when linked to the smart system as everything they need to know can be provided by the AI power units in the cloud. Soon the bots are being taught online to do all manner of processes, the bots development is concentrated on physical system such handling mechanisms and movement. And of course there is the old joke - the most watched youtube - the auto bot assembling the auto bot – titled ‘making my brother’.

At this point the UK Government makes fateful decision – ‘as an emergency measure’ it links the smarts to all businesses and their administration and then enables a sort of demand economy – but this time this does actually work, as the central government smarts have instant feedback from all other smarts – everything that done in the UK – and the central smarts effectively regulate the supply and demand minute by minute, and this paves the way for the change to the dynamic economy.

After the crisis the world strikes back at fundamentals and wipes them out, using the biggest call to arms since the second world war.  The western civilisations steamrollered the whole Middle East, leaving a new set of countries and reorganised them based on religious beliefs.  All now have imposed western promoted governments using smart technology to provide both the control and the needs of the people - big brother states – but the western world has awoken and it is not going to let anymore extremists get the hands on nukes again or let any religious states control any region, many peoples perish in this period wiping some tens of millions of the face of the earth.

The smarts link into a central government run system central, know as sys.  The mutuals are the checks and balances – the smarts that check independently between companies, transactions and people.  These check creditability of everyone within a transaction including the Government processes and log any issues using the almost unbreakable block chain auditing system.

The mutual’s then become the core movers within sys, as they are deemed independent. The Government basically just sits back and then just deems control over the mutuals via changes to the UK’s laws.  As the economic survival basis for most people is their opt-in which provides their basic pay allowance it is very difficult for anyone to opt-out and the status quo is accepted - well who wouldn’t want the opt-in?  Some don’t of course, especially the rich and these are knows as the ops (for opt-outs).  These people choose to live by their own means without direct links to the smart economy or devices, but even the wealthy do not have the leverage to create their own economic system that allows them their freedom.  As most other countries soon move to a similar system, there are few places to hide.  Basically it’s a lock out, many choose to opt-in and get the standard allowance with the Government taxing their wealth at ninety five percent at the same time.

Companies are required to opt-in to sys control – or they are must live outside the smart finance – and can therefore not sell anything, (except to the ops), and pay a much higher tax rate, the Government says this is for the additional administration costs.  Very few companies are not opt-in now.  Sys monitors companies income real time, with tax being taken directly from both profit and all employment, there is simply nowhere to hide.

The Dynamic Economic System is born at the later stage of the crisis management – this automatically adjusts the allowances week by week on basis of resources available along with Wealth Development Management (WDM) process for ensuring investment in the right areas.
This utilises a Business Growth Allowance which is an important part of the process. This allowance is given to specific businesses and their directors as an incentive to expand production.   Over-time companies make less and less profit as the dynamic economy ensures just enough demand for the supply, but they are still incentivised to invest in increased production so supply continues to increase.  

Now almost all production and assembly processes are automated.  The movement of materials and finished product is low cost due to the auto vehicle system and efficient tubes.  Most manufacturing is now locally assembled, often from ncc (nanocrystalline cellulose).  Many parts are extruded or printed at the time of assembly and auto assembled by bots.  The cost of energy continues to fall as the printed solar panels get more efficient and the fuel cells become cheaper to produce although they still use a small amount of expensive platinum catalysts.

The New Economics just happened, it was not planned, the Government was not clever enough to think it up, and it went against basic economic theory.  Interestingly, it was a Conservative Government that finally put the boot into the old capitalistic processes.   As the allowances roll out and less and less people work, and production continues to increase, the government forgets about the ‘old economics’ and just kept expanding the money supply in line with resource availability.  This seems to work as most people have plenty and are doing much as they wish.  The additional incentives for people like me whom work a proper paid job are enough to make it worthwhile, at least for the time being, but I shall probably retire after another 5 years when I have done my 15 years in work experience as I then get twenty percent more allowance forever.

So all in all, the bunch that nuked the Middle East actually did everyone a favour – eventually.  I arrive at my next appointment on time, what’s this job smart? I am sure my smart giggles the reply – "blocked toilet master", oh shit!

The app of apps revolution