Positive Visions of Change

A page trying to express key emotions about the future, with more breadth but less detail than the following.

Once of the great things about the book Autonomous is the positive vibe you get from the robot's ability to communicate natively with a network. And similarly with each other over data channels. It feels so natural and useful for them that you might consider the advantages for yourself.

An interesting side effect:

Paladin realized that the last time the two of them had met, he had known less about his own mind than Lee did. Now he knew a lot more, which Lee could discover easily enough. Until he was autonomous, the Federation would always hold a key to the memories he’d encrypted in the Federation cloud. Lee or any other botadmin could pore over everything he’d learned and thought, editing or changing it if they chose. Knowing this didn’t bother Paladin. He trusted Lee, the same way he trusted Eliasz—and for the same reason. These feelings came from programs that ran in a part of his mind that he couldn’t access. He was a user of his own consciousness, but he did not have owner privileges. As a result, Paladin felt many things without knowing why.

It is hard to emotionally connect with the future and sci-fi authors are particularly bad at it, being typically interested in ideas and technology rather than character.... Even as they envisage that future. I wonder if this is also why they often deal with the far future not near? So this passage is a welcome approach highlighting benefits of a sci-fi world.

Could you write a story where our freewill is taken away by enhancement drugs, implants, but this is a good thing? Eg freeing up creativity, emotional honesty and connections or interconnections with others. Harmony with nature, Taoist beliefs?

Write like it is an alien takeover, where the aliens think in terms of wasteful self interest and the way to beat them is to think differently. Ask "how can we take control back of our destiny?" And do so with a new way of thinking that breaks their hold over us and makes their destruction of us seem less inevitable.