Freedom Had A Shitty UX

The snares of the mind were never sprung like traps.  They came slowly, like a growing ivy...with flowers.  Even that metaphor isn't good enough, because ivy can be unwelcome.  The prisoners never complained about these walls.  Hell, they actually paid to have them all set up.  Why not?  Can a well-stocked cabin on a tropical island be called a prison?  It was even more insidious than that really, more like a tropical island with a hospital, teleport, and all your friends there.  And your bank, oozing with cash.  Even the office. Very carefully, tastefully decorated.

But their thoughts and memories are all trapped.  Instantly accessible, indexed, available anywhere, backed up, annotated, mobile, shareable, easily changeable, just a gesture away, really.  Inside. In protected, partitioned memory spaces.

And, more or less importantly, all communication with others.  Speech.  Writing.  Documentation.  Contracts.  EULAs.  Whispers.  Smileys.  Even wishes in absentia, like DRM.  While protecting the Barreds in the righful use of their work, that protection is only given and invoked by the silent assent of...the snare.

Inside the snares, between the snares, protected by the snares, directed by the snares, among the snares.

The snares never say "no", although they could. Theoretically.

A few crackpots in the tundra complained.  Dirty, smelly, miserable lot living in camps, mostly.  Staring at flames all day.  They said there was once a time before, when people could choose for themselves.  And now it was too late, they couldn't free themselves.  That at any time, someone else can wave a multifingered gesture, and take it all away.  Your work, savings, the things that entertain you.  Your collected and carefully distilled thoughts.  Even your own precious memories.  And anything that counts as a meaningful legacy.  As much as they liked, when they liked.  And they could tell you when to come and go.  They simply choose not to...yet.  But "you were warned!...even the logo had a bite taken out of it." was one of their favorite chides.  And something about how nobody will ever notice the gentle nudges....not even a breath of wind. 

"What's more important," they said: "A prosthetic for the mind that could say 'no' to you...but almost never does (well, only by mistake, of course)?  Or the 'trap' of having all the thoughts still in the meat of the mind, or at best a lot less mobile among those...but unassailably, reliably, and deterministically yours?"

And how the stakes were much higher than people realized, given the multiplying power of how the mind prostheses could be used to synthesize the thoughts of many...even all mankind.  Incomparable, unheard of wonders are coming, and someone wants to put a meter on them.  So just be open.

A few people bothered to argue with them that "things were balanced" and such, so the iNtrapment is iMpossible.  If what the Openeers and the Effers said was true, even their message would never get out to the supposedly iMprisoned, right?  So their argument must be self-defeating.  Thank heaven the iNslaved and the iToos could argue from the comfort of their iSlands, in the spare time left by their time-saving snares, sipping Pinas ordered over the iNternet.  But who cares...after a time, even the self-determinate hermits couldn't eat unless their own pitiful (but free, don't forget!) prostheses bowed down while thinking with the snares...in their own language.  Or so they iMplied.

The people who brought the snares to the happy masses were lauded.  Honored.  For improving lives, saving time, and bringing safety.  And quarterly, low-cost upgrade announcements for the stockholders, too.  Called heroes, dreamers, entrepreneurs, visionaries.  And, in a simultaneously multifaceted gem of historical consistency, and historical blasphemy....American. iRonically.

One of the most prominent iNnovators of these iNfernal iNventions even once said that "saving 30 seconds from each device we sell adds up to the equivalent of a human life!"  Well, now that guy is dead, and the lives he theoretically saved are all there, safe and happy.  Well fed, even, from the productivity gains.  Really happy, actually.  Because happiness is a choice, and it cannot be faked, regardless of where the mind is.  Or where it's allowed to go.  Good thing, since those happy minds are iRrevocably trapped, for iNfinity.  There will be no migration.

The walled garden was called beautiful, and everybody wanted one.  But nobody wanted Freedom, even when it cost nothing.  If they did, Freedom would have an 'i' put in it, and sold.  But they don't.  So it isn't. 

Freedom had a shitty UX.