Inherit the Earth - Brian Stableford [85]
Damon was uncomfortably aware of the fact that his chosen career—the design of virtual environments for use with ordinary commercial hoods and synthesuits—had just been revealed to be a blind alley. Unless he could adapt his skills to the coming regime of manufactured dreams, everything he’d ever done and everything he currently planned to do would be consigned to the scrap heap of obsolescence.
“When will this hit the market?” he whispered.
“That’s an interesting question,” said the mirror man. “In fact, it’s a question which cuts to the heart of the emergent philosophy of the new world order. For hundreds of years, people have been developing products for the market: for the purposes of getting rich. Even artists got sucked into it, although the motive forces involved in their creativity—as I’m sure you understand very well—usually went far beyond the vulgar necessity of making a living. The sole raison d’être of the so-called mothercorps was to make as much money as possible as rapidly as possible. The defining feature of the Age of Capital was that money became an end instead of a means. The richest of men became so very rich that they couldn’t possibly spend what they had, but that didn’t stop them trying to make more and more. Money ceased to be mere purchasing power and became a measuring device—a way of keeping score of the position and prestige of individuals within the great competition that was the world. Every new discovery was weighed in the balance of the market, assessed according to its power to make money. Do you understand why that age is now over, Damon? Do you understand why everything has changed?”
“Has it changed?” Damon asked sceptically. “Maybe the people you know are so rich they no longer bother keeping score, but everyone I know needs all the money they can lay their hands on, because the purchasing power of money is their only hope of staying one step ahead of the Grim Reaper and riding the escalator to eternity.”
“Exactly,” said the mirror man, as if Damon were agreeing with him rather than disputing what he’d said. “That’s exactly the point. Money has retained its power because the ultimate product isn’t yet on the market. Until we have authentic emortality at a fixed price, the pursuit goes on and on—and while even the richest of men knew full well that he couldn’t take his money with him when he died, all the money in the world could be nothing to him but a means of keeping score. But that’s no longer the case, as Adam Zimmerman was the first to understand and demonstrate.
“Now every rich man—perhaps every man of moderate means—understands perfectly well that if he can only hang around long enough for the appropriate technologies to arrive, he will have the chance to live forever. That becomes the end, and money merely the means. We’re already living in a postcapitalist society, Damon—it’s just that many of our fellows haven’t yet noticed the fact or fully understood its significance. Your father understood the fundamental point long ago, of course—which makes it all the more frustrating that he doesn’t seem to be able to grasp its corollaries. I suppose it’s because