Life on Mars- Part One

I'm going to apologise in advance for this series.
Because it is kind of my speculations on some of the more positive scenarios for our future.
And some of the implications.

This series, is a kind of a speculation on how human culture will develop.

To do this, I'm going to do things that may annoy you.

Firstly, I'm going to assume my own most optimistic hopes for the future changes I think are needed in our system, actually happen.

Secondly, I'm going to write the series in question from a fictional settings. So it can be done in the first person. For reasons that will come clear, I think that will work better.

I'm assuming this comes to pass.
I'm assuming the UN charter now contains this statement.

I'm assuming it's now 2200AD. I'm assuming that whilst the relationship of the eight states described here to the UN was that of the UK to the EU in 2100, now it is more that of Texas to the US. And by now there are ten states. Antarctica is a fully fledged developed and populated state of the human infrastructure, as are the 200 million human lives who live on the Moon. The Moon, home to all mankind's heavy and dangerous industry, home to its nuclear warheads, stationed in the Sea of Moscow, on the Far side pointing out to ward away the missiles of the heavens.

Now first, a little explanation at what sort of Earth culture we will see.

I'm guessing air travel will be the normal mode of travel. Smaller planes, possibly no loner needing wings at all, will mean that just popping into the plane, is the standard made of travel- the motor car as obsolete as the horse and cart. So, by extension, anywhere only two hours away by plane, is as near, relatively, as Birmingham now is to London.

So in relative terms, London and Rome are two CONVENIENT hours away. Popping to Rome for the day won't be a major mission for the twenty third century Brummie.

But nor will Sydney. Shuttle flight will be more normal. As soon as long distance (23 hour) shuttle flights have become regular enough to bring shuttle flight in to the normal human life pattern (which it will have done long before 2100 even, internal (as in, global) shuttle flights from London to Sydney will become the new form of air transport long distance. Catching the shuttle from London to Sydney, will be the twenty third century equivalent of flying London to Paris.

Nowhere on Earth will be strange. Nowhere will be far off. No one lives too far away for you to visit them.

And media will have changed. The internet will have become so much a part of life that it online communication is no longer seen- or even is- that much different from 3D communication. And we'll all be permanently connected to it. It will be mobile, on our phones, which will now probably be in wrist watch form on our arms.

No one on Earth can get lost or starve. The days when people on Earth could get lost and not be rescued within five minutes belong, in earth culture, to days of legend.

Nothing on Earth of significance does not hit the internet within seconds. And become known to the world instantaneously.

Human culture governs itself by being in perpetually in communication and consultation with itself.

And what sort of human culture will exist? Diverse? Or Monolithic?

Both. It is to the cities of the west today we must look. That much derided word, that's the key. Multiculturalism.

Because that will be the world of 2200. Because the ten states will be diverse cosmopolitan places. I don't think we'll all be one coffee coloured shade yet, but only historians will remember which of these many skin tones and types of hair originated in which location.

People will lead diverse lives I think, in some ways. Greater personal freedom plus the huge communication resources available will mean that personal beliefs and ideas flourish. With no MSM, merely a popular mode of disseminating information, the world will still have maybe as many Catholics, Muslims, Buddhist, Jedi knights, etc. And many more and diverse beliefs.

But they won't look so strange to eachother. Look to our cities now. It is here, not in the failures, not in the sink estates where frustration leads people to seize on the negative aspects of other faiths, but in your Muslim friends who you often forget are Muslim.

That will be Earth culture. Diverse in belief, monolithic in the system used. There will be a whole series of things which everyone thinks and accepts, because they are part of earth culture. Things that have evolved as being the way globalised earth does things.



Some of them will be things that developed as common ground between the blended cultures that have melted together. Others will just be unthinking assumptions you and I make today, which have just grown up. And we think them, because they work. Or they always have done, on Earth.

This post- or the rest of it- is supposed to be a blog post written- bit like Fusion is doing now- by someone visiting Mars in 2200. For something like this, blogging would be ideal.

Because Mars will still be far away. The nuclear rockets which leave the Moon to take travellers to Mars, will still take two weeks to get there. Radio and telephone conversation are not possible. The internet is, but still an eight minute time delay has to be taken into account between sending and receiving.

So ordinary dialogue isn't possible. But blogging is. An Earth Blogger and a Martian Blogger could get to know eachother as well as any of us do here via a-mail.

So this post is written by a Fusion of the future, up to visit a Martian blogger he's known for years, but just gone to meet.

Monday, Week Five, Quarter Three, 2208

Well, I'm at George's place.
Wow.
On solid earth- No, must remember that- Solid Mars. And that in itself is funny.

It's easier to get used to in some ways than the Moon. But you certainly are lighter here.

It's good to not feel cramped any more. I can't really complain about the journey- it wasn't like those twenty first century accounts you hear of being packed like sardines eating food cubes and the smell of sweat and waste. These liners have all the mod cons. But facilities are still sparse and one gets bored of pool and computer games. Plus, any form of stimulants is forbidden in space transit for reasons of health and safety.

I guess as Mars starts to get closer and it really dominates the observation window, you're just impatient to land. Nothing prepares you for just how long it takes to actually slow down and dock. Or the elaborate procedures leaving the liner and walking out onto the surface, into the ordinary life of Mars entails. You are entering another World, and they make sure you know it.

Right from the start, you realise this is a new world. It's just starting. This isn't a world where life is guaranteed. The system is still finding its feet and they can't afford the luxuries we on Earth have grown to be accustomed to. The security services are armed and prominent. No risk will be allowed on Mars. Martians can't afford to think first and act later. They will not allow you through to their surface until they know you will not threaten the delicate balance that is humanity building a system capable of independently providing for its people without needing the sustenance provided by the Old World.

And yet many come, millions every year. The majority of my co-passengers, as I have said before, were coming here for good. To build new lives up here, to give their labours to the building of the New World. To live lives anew, lives away from where the entire history of humanity until a century or two ago, were lived.

And that's the feel Mars has. Everything, is built entirely to serve today. Mars has only the past it brought with it. It exists in human memory, but not in the landscape. And that's the difference. Human cities on Earth are still built in ways which show where once streets were thronged with motor cars. Down on ground level, some of those old streets buzz still with conveyors and throngs of revellers. And others yet, can be traced with human knowledge, in the arcades and other features that are based on a streetplan that existed when ground transport was the norm.

Not on Mars. No Martian city ever needed those features. Martian cities are built to serve air transport alone.

Martian cities are designed to serve the movements of human thought and energy in a New world. A World without millenia of slow infrastructural growth, but a world importing the knowledge of how to build one.

As I sit in George's apartment here I'm still taking in the first glimpses of this world that I've taken in.

But one thing I'm sure of.

Back on Earth we regard the Martians with mild interest. Children of Earth, we think. Our experiment in creating a New Earth.

But that's not any longer what it is. It's the Martian's experiment. The people there are Martians now. Not New Earthlings.



And we find it hard on Earth sometimes to understand when the Martians 'answer us back', as I've heard some people call it. Refuse point blank to do what UNESCO, or UNASA tell them must be done, but decide to do it their way.
We look at the demands of the Martian Security Council to be accepted by Earth as an equal partner and for the UN to relinquish its remaining articles of control over Mars, and we say 'We can't let that happen'.

But after a few hours here, I'm on the side of the Martians.

Martians are ready to pursue Martian solution to Martian problems.

TO BE CONTINUED...