Concepts
- "Bitchun Society" is the dominant Earth culture in which rejuvenation and body-enhancement have made death obsolete, material goods are no longer scarce, and everyone is granted basic rights that in our present age are mostly considered luxuries.
- Whuffie replaces money and is a constantly updated rating that measures how much esteem and respect other people have for you. This rating system determines who gets the few scarce items, like the best housing, a table in a crowded restaurant, or a good place in a queue for a theme park attraction.
- "Deadhead" is a verb and a noun for suspended animation; which is done for two hour plane trips, lengthy space voyages, and ten thousand year substitutes for suicide.
- Adhocracy is a type of organization that is an opposite of bureaucracy that has replaced corporations.
- "Refresh" or a "restore from backup" is the cure for dying; which consists of creating a "force-grown" clone and downloading into its mind a backup of one's own mind created earlier. Synthesized memories (from other data sources filling in the time gap between last backup and death) was an innovation created recently in the book.
- HERF gun is a form of electromagnetic weapon, a narrow cylinder the length of a hand that outputs high energy radio frequency. It generates a variable-dispersion yet directional and focused beam that can punch through a floor or wall and fuse everything there or can be used to disable the electronic interface in a brain without harming that brain; but is blocked by a Faraday cage.
- "Sim-rides" are AI software driven simulations of reality that communicate with each other and with the guests, greeting them by name each time they rode and spinning age-appropriate tales related to the theme of the ride.
Read more about this topic: Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom
Famous quotes containing the word concepts:
“During our twenties...we act toward the new adulthood the way sociologists tell us new waves of immigrants acted on becoming Americans: we adopt the host culture’s values in an exaggerated and rigid fashion until we can rethink them and make them our own. Our idea of what adults are and what we’re supposed to be is composed of outdated childhood concepts brought forward.”
—Roger Gould (20th century)
“Germany collapsed as a result of having engaged in a struggle for empire with the concepts of provincial politics.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“It is impossible to dissociate language from science or science from language, because every natural science always involves three things: the sequence of phenomena on which the science is based; the abstract concepts which call these phenomena to mind; and the words in which the concepts are expressed. To call forth a concept, a word is needed; to portray a phenomenon, a concept is needed. All three mirror one and the same reality.”
—Antoine Lavoisier (1743–1794)