Utopian Confederation: From the Mall to the Stars

by Matthew E. Gladden

What would humanity’s future look like, if the isle of Utopia had been real – and had guided the creation of a joyful global civilization free from all selfishness, competition, and discord?

Utopian Confederation: From the Mall to the Stars presents such a world. In the 22nd century, human society exists not as an array of rival “states” but as a halcyon confederation of all living persons everywhere that’s voluntarily reaffirmed with each new day. Here it isn’t just material goods that are held in common: even persons’ innermost thoughts are a shared public resource, thanks to advanced neurocybernetics. Written laws and politics no longer play any role in society, as all individuals are raised to embrace a single vision for achieving the greater good – and to live it continually. Scientific inquiry and thaumaturgy go hand in hand, as human beings seek to understand (and shape) their place in the cosmos through both technological and miraculous means.

And now the perfection of SQuarM reactors and the SNuP drive has allowed construction of the first vessel capable of completing an interstellar journey in decades rather than centuries. The colonies on the Moon and the “Cinnabar Planet” of Euthyphrar have already expanded the horizons of human experience – but now it’s hoped that a multigenerational voyage to the planets of Arcana Centauri might shed light on the greatest spiritual and intellectual puzzle still facing humankind: namely, is it really possible that our Solar System is home to the only life in the cosmos? Is Earth the focal point of the universe? And if intelligent life is abundant in other star systems, why have we been unable to discover any evidence of it, despite centuries of effort?

The Utopian Confederation series is a game of philosophical, theological, scientific, technological, and sociopolitical exploration – and From the Mall to the Stars is the 200-page sourcebook that introduces its hopeful, pacific, and intellectually inquisitive world. In this volume, you’ll discover:

• The administrative structure that organizes 21 billion human beings into communities from households and agathanias up through conurbs of millions of residents.
• The ingenuity of the 200,000 persons living offworld in colonies, spacebases, and spacevessels.
• Technologies like the Wellspring and the SGI Seliadne that make real-time “cognitive publication” possible.
• Elements of Utopian Synergeticist thought, including ratiomysticism, thaumaturgy, hypophenomics, Iridic Bubble Theory, and the field of aetheromechany that conceptualizes the natural sciences as “applied angelology.”
• The societal spheres of the pragmatic demeyne, metapsychic demeyne, and Ecclesia Peregrinans that operate in natural synchronicity.
• Why money and private possessions don’t exist – but “shopping malls” play a pivotal societal role.
• Cosmopraxis, axionomy, and the management of fields like housing, transportation, energy, agriculture, education, and healthcare.
• Utopian aesthetics, architecture, and fashion.
• The stats of the biodimensionary, aretalogue, and propellibrium, through which persons assess their own psychic strengths and failings.
• SQuarM reactors, SNuP drives, HERUs, and the basics of starvessel architecture.
• The cosmic enigma that is the “Imperceptance”; the nature of the Starflume Collegium; and the aims of the mission to Arcana Centauri.
• The historical path from the ancient Utopian Commonwealth to the “reunification” of humanity and the Utopian Confederation of ADI 2175.
• Character sheets for a group of four 22nd-century Confederation citizens.

234 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 14, 2024

About the author

My research investigates the impacts of technological posthumanization on the way in which we structure organizations, social interaction, and the architecture of the spaces in which we live. Such realms include not only the physical spaces of buildings and the workplace but also cognitive, information, and experiential spaces — both ‘real’ and virtual.

Much of my work has explored the organizational and managerial implications of emerging technologies relating to social robotics, artificial general intelligence, artificial life, swarm and nanorobotics, ubiquitous computing, neural implants and neuroprosthetics, and augmented and virtual reality. I am particularly interested in the architectures of cyberspace and virtual worlds.

I generally employ qualitative approaches that attempt to synthesize methodologies from the spheres of contemporary critical and philosophical posthumanism, systems theory and cybernetics, and classical phenomenology. I both analyze ongoing developments and attempt to anticipate future dynamics of technological posthumanization.

My work has been published by The MIT Press, IOS Press, Routledge, and Ashgate and has appeared in peer-reviewed journals including The International Journal of Contemporary Management, Annales: Ethics in Economic Life, Informatyka Ekonomiczna, Frontiers in Neuroscience, and Creatio Fantastica. I've presented my research at more than a dozen international academic conferences in countries including the US, Poland, Denmark, and Croatia. My work has been cited in academic journals, books, doctoral dissertations, conference presentations, blogs, and other media.