Кори Доктороу - Make Shift - Dispatches from the Post-Pandemic Future

After that, I took many jaunts, practically one every day.

[Footage of various teletours taken by Al: a busy kitchen in Yangzhou, China, where teletourists are perched on a shelf above the cooks, skittering from side to side as they watch the complicated, hours-long process for making the famous shizitou meatballs; somewhere in the Great Barrier Reef, where submersible teletour robots on fiber-optic cables can dive and observe the ecosystem with minimal impact or damage; a village in Indonesia, where a traveling shadow-puppet troupe is putting on a show not for Western tourists, but for an audience that is in sync with the story, with just a few teletour robots in the back perched on a tree, no translation, no explanation, no intervening guide; Chobe National Park in Botswana, where teletourists dangle from helium mini-airships and watch a pride of lions going about their business…

Over time, the control rig used by Al has been upgraded, allowing him to be more immersive with the teletour robots.]

I got to visit just about every country in the world, and I’ve met so many, many people. Teletours are different from the physical trips I took as a tourist back in the past. When I was in Thailand and Mexico, I could never feel comfortable: people were catering to me, and everything I did I couldn’t stop this nagging voice in the back of my mind telling me that it was a transaction, and I needed to get my money’s worth, even if that meant being petty, demanding… an ass.

With a teletour, it didn’t feel like that at all. Precisely because the stakes were so much lower, it also felt, oddly, as if my host and I were more like equals, not two sides of an unbalanced coin. I’m sure that sounds naive and wishful, but it’s how I feel.

I felt so good about the tours that I started hosting visitors myself.

[Footage of Al hosting jaunts at home: Al chatting with one of the cooks from the restaurant in Yangzhou as he attempts to recreate the shizitou, with the cook laughing and offering critiques; Al taking a group of teletourists fishing on a pier, the old man walking behind the row of robots and their fishing poles, advising, bantering, encouraging; Al showing two Xhong visitors how to eat a steamed lobster the New England way, struggling to describe the taste while the teletourists dined on a platter of crayfish to approximate the experience…]

Some of my hosts and guests have become my friends. I know it always seems odd to say that you can become friends with someone you’ve never met, but it’s not just chatting through a webcam, you know? You actually do things together. That, to me, makes all the difference. Maybe if the president went and did things with other people he wouldn’t sound so angry all the time.

[The camera pulls back to show that a teletour robot has been gliding along next to him this whole time. It’s squat, cylindrical, about the size of a small lobster pot so that it could be easily transported by one person when necessary; it has wheels as well as segmented feet for all-terrain operation; a camera is perched atop, along with two manipulators; a high-resolution screen shows the face of the visitor.

Al turns to speak to the visitor in Japanese, subtitled for our benefit.]

Takahashi-san, would you like to visit the Swan Boats next?

[The visitor assents.]

Are there swans in Hokkaido? You must show me next time…

[Together, Al and his teletour guest stroll away toward the Public Garden lagoon in the distance.]

Statement by President Bombeo, September 3, 203X

MY FELLOW AMERICANS, TODAY OUR GREAT REPUBLIC FACES AN UNPRECEDENTEDchallenge to its preeminence in the world. Hostile foreign powers are emboldened while feckless allies cower and dither. However, if there’s anything that history teaches us, it’s that the great American nation can defeat all enemies and overcome all challenges when we are decisive and take bold action.

My administration has been distinguished from the very start by a robust, potent foreign policy. In contrast to the previous administration, I made it clear from the day I took office that no one can defy, defraud, or deceive the United States without paying a heavy price.

To secure American borders, protect American jobs, and free the American people from unwanted foreign influence, my administration closed loopholes in the immigration and visa laws, voided suspicious naturalizations, rationalized birthright citizenship, and deported numerous foreign nationals who may harbor dual loyalties. We attempted to get Congress to reenact and expand the scope of U.S. Code Title 8, Chapter 7, though the effort was contemptibly blocked by the quisling opposition. We also drastically reduced the number of foreign students allowed to come to our great universities to study advanced technology and science—research funded by American taxpayers—only to take the knowledge back to their home countries. I specifically made it impossible for students from hostile or untrustworthy nations such as Iran, Russia, China, and many others to study in our country unless they first take an oath of loyalty to the United States. Despite the outcry from radical-left academic elites, these steps have unquestionably made America safer and stronger.

However, many of these prestigious universities, instead of faithfully carrying out my executive orders, have sought to bypass or subvert them, to the detriment of the American people. As Vice President Gossy’s investigative report shows, top universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Yale all attempted to route around the restrictions. Many created so-called remote-residency programs that make heavy use of advanced telepresence robots. Taking advantage of the mobility, dexterity, and advanced sensors enabled by these machines, students in foreign countries can attend classes alongside American classmates, make use of expensive laboratory equipment, and even experience much of the joys of campus life. Although these foreign students are, for all intents and purposes, here on American soil, the universities argue disingenuously that visa requirements don’t apply because they are simply engaged in “web-based remote learning.”

But the universities are hardly the only scoundrels.

Life in America has been fundamentally transformed by ubiquitous telepresence. In the aftermath of the great pandemics of the last decade, telepresence robots helped many Americans return to work and saved our economy. A general-purpose household robot, for example, allowed nervous homeowners to receive services from cleaners, electricians, plumbers, hairdressers, piano teachers, and so on without having to let strangers enter the house. Moreover, the robots could be programmed to limit their operators’ movements inside the house via geofencing and audit trails of actions performed. The social distancing enabled by telepresence saved many American workers from economic ruin.

But today, many of the remote operators you permit to inhabit your household robots are not Americans at all, but foreigners stealing American jobs without even leaving their own houses. Companies, greedy for profit, have shirked their patriotic duty. The gains we’ve made by reducing and regulating immigration have been lost through telepresence, with real Americans suffering the consequences.

Moreover, teletourists from abroad, without having to pass through comprehensive vetting at ports of entry or during the visa process, now visit America in greater numbers every year. Although teletour bots open to operation by foreign visitors are in principle subject to strict regulation that prevents their operators from wandering outside of specific designated tourist zones, enforcement is spotty, and many teletour bots owned by small consumer-providers are exempt.