Overturn
From Gothpoodle
By the early 2070s, the social upheavals of the Transhuman Awakening were over. Most of the radical youth movements of the early Awakening had collapsed, although both Transhumanist and Preservationist ideals were continuing to take root in different sectors of society. In most parts of the developed world, a conservative reaction had gained control of political and social institutions. The new young generation was cynical rather than idealistic, interested in surviving rather than rebuilding a hostile world.
The era from about 2070 to 2084 was often called “The Overturn.” It was a time of economic prosperity worldwide, but in most places it was also a time of social drift, during which rival ideologies fought bitter but increasingly ineffective struggles. The global political order which had existed since the fall of Soviet Communism in 1992 was finally beginning to unravel. Established powers such as the United States and the European Union were suddenly finding themselves eclipsed by nations new to the center of the world stage.
Dragon Ascendant
Foremost of these new Great Powers was the People’s Republic of China. For decades the PRC had charted its own distinctive course, paying lip service to Mao- Communism but actually forging its own synthesis of Chinese social ideas and Western-style capitalism. Relations with the rest of the world were often prickly, as the Chinese leadership maintained its distance from the West and from the developed nations of eastern Asia. Economic growth was steady and tended to be somewhat faster than in Japan, the United States, or Europe. By 2070 the PRC had the largest national economy on the planet, passing that of the United States and still growing rapidly.
New Revolutions
Meanwhile, another new superpower of sorts was emerging from the “infosocialist” political movement of the 2060s. In 2074 several nations with infosocialist governments formed the Transpacific Socialist Alliance. Indonesia, Malaysia, Peru, and Thailand were the dominant partners. The members agreed to closely coordinate their economic and foreign policies, standing in defense of infosocialism against the world.
The new alliance soon alienated most of the world community through its radical policy of nationalizing all intellectual property. By 2077 the developed nations had enacted severe economic sanctions against the TSA, forbidding most trade and severely curtailing cultural and scientific exchanges. The sanctions had less effect than the capitalist nations had hoped, in large part because it proved impossible to prevent the flow of information in both directions across the TSA borders. Technical data continued to enter the TSA, while infosocialist propaganda poured out. The sanctions further encouraged the TSA nations to engage in wholesale piracy of patents.
The TSA failed to meet many of its economic goals, but “nanosocialism” (as the ideology eventually became known) did make many high-tech goods available to the general population of the TSA nations. The standard of living of the poorest citizens improved markedly. Soon, nanosocialism was as popular within the TSA as it was reviled outside.
Humanity Shattered
Aside from the nanosocialist revolution, the world continued to enjoy peace and prosperity through the 2070s. In the developed nations, the situation was one of social drift. The grand ideological crusades of the Awakening era were over, leaving behind cynicism and sour infighting over relatively trivial political issues.
By 2070, the majority of humans were gene-enhanced. The most common alterations were subtle and therapeutic, correcting well-known genetic disorders and bringing a general improvement to health and quality of life. In the wealthiest nations, however, more radical transformations were becoming common. It was now possible (and, in some circles, acceptable) to engineer one’s children for significantly higher intelligence, specific talents, or even a different physical structure. By the mid-2070s, dozens of engineered genetic types had gained widespread popularity. Despite dire predictions, this diversification in human genetics had relatively little effect at first.
The social time bomb exploded in 2075, when Hippocrene Laboratories made a public release of the specifications for its Alpha-series genetic design. The Alpha upgrade had been available at high cost for some time, but now it would be well within a middle-class budget in the developed world. At the same time, the first Alpha cohorts had reached young adulthood, and were already making a notable mark in many sectors of society. As a result, the design proved extremely popular.
At about the same time, Biotech Euphrates announced the conclusion of public trials for its more radical Ziusudra design. Despite its superficial similarity to the unmodified type, the Ziusudra was in fact a new human subspecies, unable to interbreed with the human root stock without technological aid. This in itself was not new, as there were already a number of such subspecies in existence. The widespread popularity of the Ziusudra template, however, meant that Homo sapiens sapiens would henceforth be sharing Earth with other human species. Indeed, the original human species might soon be a minority within Earth’s population. The world community was now confronted with the fact that the very definition of humanity could no longer be relied upon. Many observers (not all of them Preservationists) feared that bloody conflict would result.
Humanity did not have the luxury of time to decide how to deal with its division. The 2070s also saw the first mass production of bioroids, the genetic “uplifting” of nonhuman species to full sentience, the appearance of human-level sapience in computers, and the first experiments with personality uploading. Despite every effort on the part of Preservationists worldwide, the “Shattering Seventies” proved that humanity would inevitably be remade in a thousand divergent images. Once a fringe philosophy, Transhumanism was rapidly becoming so pervasive as to be taken for granted in much of the world.
