Seattle 2038

A FreeJack non-sanctioned periodical

March 2023:

After taking several significant stock hits thanks to an extended recession and changing public comfort with “traditional” social media platforms, Meta makes headlines again as it bids and wins a new contract for the US government, to oversee federal election machines and results.  This allows vote-by-phone and several other enhancements to the usual approach, given the Facebook identity validation infrastructure. In technical fact, “old fashioned” style voting is still possible, but the sheer convenience of the mobile architecture (as well as a host of assurances on the part of Meta, including the ability to verify each person’s vote was actually counted) mean more than 75% of the electorate say they’ll “probably use” or “definitely use” the new method

Meta didn’t develop this tech in house – rather, it was part of a strategic corporate acquisition.  Meta acquired an established company called InterConnect for $1.7B, whose CEO (An otherwise-

usually-not-in-the-news-cycle tech billionaire called Arindam Spielman) had led the company to a quiet success in the area of cryptography, data protection and other sorts of online security. 

Expected concerns are raised about private parties holding onto election data, but the security documentation generated by this new joint effort is sufficient to silence most of the critics. Because of the greater accessibility of voting, and the wave of “get out the vote” internal ads that Meta promises to deliver, most poll analysts predict a significant “blue wave” in the next election as young voter turnout is expected to dramatically increase. Also Meta claims that the InterConnect security platform will improve Meta’s overall security, in particular as they move into the VR/AR space.

Increasing inflation has started to bite some of the US industries rather badly. A correspondingly higher base interest rate is hoped

to increase investment in treasury bills and/or other sorts of bond, allowing for more investment in infrastructure.  In practice, the high-net-worth class in the US increasingly turns to these same options abroad, or development of high density real estate.  

A few products with an elastic supply curve (e.g. inexpensive mass market beer) are overproduced given the expected profit margins, and paradoxically deflate, leading to “bang and bust” product outages across the spectrum of consumer commodities and electronics.  On any given day, a supermarket’s shelves may look patchwork, but the average american still manages to stock a fridge and keep life together.  Several democratic fore-runners for next year’s presidential election are discussing the possibility of a Universal Basic Income in response to continually growing income inequality.