transmetropolitan

Cosmopolis:

“There’s a poem I read in which a rat becomes the unit of currency.”
 “Yes. That would be interesting,” Chin said.
 “Yes. That would impact the world economy.”
 “The name alone. Better than the dong or the kwacha.”
“The name says everything.”
 “Yes. The rat,” Chin said.
 “Yes. The rat closed lower today against the euro.”
“Yes. There is growing concern that the Russian rat will be devalued.”
 “White rats. Think about that.”
 “Yes. Pregnant rats.”
 “Yes. Major sell-off of pregnant Russian rats.”
“Britain converts to the rat,” Chin said.
said.
 “Yes. Joins trend to universal currency.”
“Yes. U.S. establishes rat standard.”
 “Yes. Every U.S. dollar redeemable for rat.”
“Dead rats.”
 “Yes. Stockpiling of dead rats called global health menace.

UPDATED – New Zealand Students Can Buy Beers with Rats:

Beer Trap is a program that lets time-rich and beer-poor university students swap dead rats for free brews. Genius, right? We spoke to Jonathan Musther, one of the masterminds of the campaign, about the intricacies of fixing the environment with young Kiwis and alcohol.
VICE: So first of all, how do I get a free beer?
Gareth Morgan: It’s pretty simple, you bring a dead rat to Victoria University of Wellington’s Science Society, we supply the traps, and we exchange it for a voucher which you can use to claim a drink at The Hunter Lounge (the uni bar).
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A Utopia of One’s Own:

If we’re going to have parts of the world sectioned off to allow for unfettered technological experimentation, then we’re going to need to seal them off and deny the rest of the world access to that tech for some period of time. Speeding things up in some places means slowing things down everywhere else.

After all, if the purpose of these zones would be to try things out and take risks to figure out their effects on society, then we need to prevent those things from getting out into the wild, in case the effect they have is bad. This suggests a global model of technological adoption that’s more like theAmish system.

Make no mistake, some of the experiments will go bad. If they don’t, then the experiments weren’t really all that experimental.

People will die. Dedication to the idea of communities that are free to go down rabbit holes and dead ends to see if there’s something valuable there means a dedication to allowing some of those groups to wipe themselves out. What do you do when your futurenauts end their period of experimentation maimed and traumatized because of a rampaging biotech project? How do you quarantine a group of people pushing the limits of the nuclear lifestyle?

Worse yet, what if things go well? What do you do when one of your experimentation communities cures AIDS (or seems to have) ahead of schedule. Do you let that tech back out into the world? What’s the procedure for evaluation and release? How long does the next Facebook have to stay isolated and in testing before we allow it access to the first billion users?

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Cosmopolis:

“There’s a poem I read in which a rat becomes the unit of currency.”
 “Yes. That would be interesting,” Chin said.
 “Yes. That would impact the world economy.”
 “The name alone. Better than the dong or the kwacha.”
“The name says everything.”
 “Yes. The rat,” Chin said.
 “Yes. The rat closed lower today against the euro.”
“Yes. There is growing concern that the Russian rat will be devalued.”
 “White rats. Think about that.”
 “Yes. Pregnant rats.”
 “Yes. Major sell-off of pregnant Russian rats.”
“Britain converts to the rat,” Chin said.
said.
 “Yes. Joins trend to universal currency.”
“Yes. U.S. establishes rat standard.”
 “Yes. Every U.S. dollar redeemable for rat.”
“Dead rats.”
 “Yes. Stockpiling of dead rats called global health menace.

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