207 The Man2Man Project

In the past, Neolib Gov's economists, researchers, and especially the top teams of large platforms had already worked extensively on emotion enhancement. These techniques were sometimes effective, but often rudimentary and based only on behavioral or somatic signs typical in humans. The goal of predictability and subsequent economic exploitation was then achieved by appropriately using big data and neuromarketing techniques derived from those studies.

In neolib times, Nobel prizes in economics were sometimes propounded to researchers who, proclaiming themselves paternalistic libertarians, invented the concepts of behavioral economics and so-called nudges, the "gentle urge" to obey without realizing it. At that time, the nudge gimmick could be illustrated by the example of the fake fly placed in the urinals at Schiphol which, attracting the attention of users, prevented them from peeing outside of Duchamp's precious ready-made cup. This of course allowed for substantial savings in cleaning expenses. Rarely had a more appropriate place been found to explain a refined and highly awarded concept of economics that was perfectly inscribed in the continuity of occult neurocapitalist control procedures.

The Man2Man plinth was based on three fundamental devices. The first aimed to collect the slightest throb from the vast majority of the billions of humans and a good portion of the nonhumans in Gaia; the second was to field a quantum and conventional computing power capable of using the improbable amount of data produced in every given instant. The third device, almost all of which had to be invented, envisioned actions in real time based on the data collected from this processing. The goal was to achieve global, fine-precision algorithmic management of affect and emotion. The techno-tycoons called it artificial intelligence and, above all, very artificially politically oriented.

According to them, this would allow a new impetus to for the old procedures of neurocapitalism. The latter had reached its zenith in the golden age of the techbros' global platforms, but then the decline began in the two great Empires: the Middle Empire with the failure of the Long Spring Project, and the Bias Empire with the dissociative syndromes that had affected the population. Obviously, there was no need to start all over again from scratch; the tried and true concepts and procedures and, above all, the untold amount of bots, spies, sensors, and connected objects of all kinds already reticulating the biosphere in the sky, land and seas would further be used, enhanced and developed. This wasthe basis from which to start a new technological paradigm.

Man2Man was launched in the greatest secrecy. Obviously the intention wasn't to penalize private initiative and multinational corporations, but rather to take advantage of the project in order to reorganize the general arrangement and power centers.

Mirroring and opposing the Capitalocene advocates, Gov Q thought that once they regained control over human populations, it would then be easier to cope with Gaia's disease, which they still didn't recognize and defined aseptically and abstractly with definitions like "ecological problem" and "climate change." In the transition, they'd also neutralize the Autonomous Sphere, or at least the movements agitating in it, as an important collateral goal.

Within Gov, WorldForce had taken the lead on the project that would be coordinated with private and, in most cases, secret research centers owned by the tech platforms.

If the Manhattan Project's aura of mystery and vastness remained, the WF had rather been inspired by ARPANET to develop a global apparatus capable of handling new emotional and affective modes. ARPANET, the military network from which the Internet was derived, had been a project launched by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) the U.S. military agency for the development of new technologies for warfare use during the Cold War. At that time, DARPA called on major universities to invent a vast electronic network, resilient to any nuclear strike. It was the spark that gave birth to the epoch-making breakthrough of the Internet and universal communication. A breakthrough that, in the context of the Autonomous Sphere, seemed to bring with it new political possibilities, but this illusion proved ephemeral as the techno-tycoons and dominant figures of Neolib culture quickly managed to regain control.

Man2Man shared common genes with the Internet, which originated from a military project later turned civilian, but had to deal with the fact that universities, like the rest of teaching and research, had been completely privatized. For some time, WorldForce, which like many others had also incorporated DARPA, was already working on neurotechnological research, including neural interfaces and sensors that interacted with the central and peripheral nervous system using nanoneuroscience, neuroimaging and cyber-neurosystems. Prior to the launch of Man2Man, WorldForce developed technologies to access, evaluate, and manipulate neural signals, affecting the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral aspects of military personnel, traders, and other sensitive professions. The project planned to establish a specific bio-network, which would also use existing network infrastructure (Internet, mobile networks, etc.) where necessary. The bio-network, managed by artificial intelligence and powered by neurocognitive potentiometers, was intended for multiple uses for both production and control. Among others, it would be used by both the Ecofin cyber traders and SecurServ cyber warriors.

Perhaps there was something about Man2Man that also evoked the project directed by Alan Turing during World War II. Turing's work had deciphered the Enigma codes, the Nazi's cryptomachine. A decisive success in hastening Germany's defeat. But it was, after all, a duel mediated by machines piloted by humans whose bodies were not directly brought into play. Cyborgs had yet to be born.

About a century after the creation of the Internet - so we're at the turn of the 22nd century - research made tremendous progress on the modes of intra-action between neural signal networks and the precise real-time detection of primary emotional states. All of this would have been at the heart of the project.

The other determining factor was the extraordinary extension of the Internet of Things (IoT). For almost a century, the biosphere had been silently flooded with connected objects, sensors, triggers, increasingly miniaturized devices like webcams capable of picking up images even inside bodies, plus a whole range of GPS or GLS chips connected to networks, but also directly to satellites.

From this base, the project the intermediary goal of expanding the existing IoT and developing procedures and other miniaturized devices that would be able to transmit emotions, affections and moods of the surrounding living beings into the channels of a new bio-network. The exact count was lost, but it was assumed that the density averaged about 2000 devices per square kilometer, including oceans, poles, deserts, etc. So there were about 50 per human, but perhaps there were many more considering the billions of uncontrolled miniaturized objects dispersed secretly by multinational corporations, governments, mafias, SecurServ, etc. all with illegal or otherwise illicit purposes.

Oversimplifying, this was an Internet of perceptions able to plots the emotional and motivational experience of earthlings into a web of the living.

In addition to the mystery surrounding Man2Man, what united this technology with its nuclear predecessor was the belief that it represented a breakthrough in human history. Even as information began to leak out about the potential of these studies, it was still unknown how it was possible to directly interact with the brain functions that govern emotions. First and foremost, the research was aimed at finding forms of subjugation that were more powerful than the now almost obsolete forms of neurocapitalism used over decades of hegemony over bioipermedia by the large techno-tycoon platforms.