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The Model

A fascinating feat in software, seemingly cobbled together from a broad range of technologies, no one really knows quite how it works. The user interface is slick, but it has to be given the type of people who use it. World leaders are not renowned for their technical prowess, and this is one of the few times that they will even look at a computer screen.

All countries are modelled, their geography, geology, industry, their population demographics, and even the governments themselves. All models are updated in real-time, satellites feed models on agriculture, weather, mineral movements, anything that can be gleaned from the image deltas from one moment to the next. Factory output, financial accounts, distribution, all and more modelled to give an accurate picture of the state of the governable world.

Demographics, however, has come to be seen as the most powerful model in the system. Recent technological development has give unimaginable insights into both the collective mind of the people, and to the intimate thoughts of the individual. There was an unspoken embarrassment among leaders as to why this had not been exploited sooner. When confronted with such a huge prize that had been hidden in plain sight, nobody wanted to accept responsibility, and so everyone decided not to point fingers, since the fingers may end up pointing at them.

As a tool, the model was undeniably powerful. Tell it what you want to change, and it will tell you the consequences. Tell it what you want to achieve, and it will enumerate the most direct ways to get there. The model has no inherent constraints. Whether the cost is minerals or people, the model doesn't care, that's up to the leaders to decide.

Where the model excels, however, is not in the technical marvels of what it can do, breathtaking as they are. The most valuable thing it offers is much simpler than that, much more human in nature. It offers a common language with which leaders can discuss their policies. Discussions can centre around model attributes, how they might be changed, or what target-values they'd like to achieve, because such discussions can be open and public, without being at all revealing.

Discussion and negotiation takes place on public forums, on broadcast TV, online news outlets. The discussions even broadly make sense to all viewers, they seem semantically coherent, almost understandable on a superficial level. It doesn't matter who hears, because the implications are only intelligble in the context of the model. Whoever has the model can interpret proposals in terms of outcomes, in terms of their own agenda, and they can announce their own counter-arguments, their counter proposals. When agreement has been reached on actions that benefit all sides in an acceptable way, then plans are executed, with a high degree of certainty that the outcomes will match the model.

Public opinion no longer contributes to decision making, the model already revealed that it's not necessary, in fact it's often counter-productive. What's actually important is simply that the public feel that they contribute to decision making, otherwise there is a tendency for dissent. This, it has been found, is the 'achillies heel' of the model, since it seeds chaos that results in highly unpredictable outcomes. Chaos spreads in chaotic ways.

This, of course, is why technological advances in demographic modelling were seen as revolutionary. Profound insights into populations led to overwhelming control of those populations. The risks of chaos entering the system had been, almost overnight, reduced to zero. Sentiment can now be measured, remedial action can be taken, the success of which can be tested, and all of which feeds back into the model for ever more accurate analysis.

Nobody objects because nobody observes. The stage is set long before the performance and, while like in the patomime the audience paricipates, the shouts of the crowd are baked into the script. Hecklers are never taken seriously.