Because of the wealth of resources available, the Coalition can afford to provide its citizens with the option to “default”.

Citizens who default generally do not provide anything of value to society. They don’t work and they don’t provide many favors to others. They may or may not create objects of art or that hold some other sort of value, but if they do, they do so at their own pace. The Rep-rating of a person who defaults may never climb very high, but so long as they avoid being a problem they can live out the remainder of their lives never really doing anything they don’t want to do.

To many, this is paradise. But not to all…

While many would have you believe that the Coalition lifestyle is free, there are others who believe that registered citizens pay an unacceptably high price. And not every person accepts the rule of the Coalition.

Coalition cities, habitats and homes sport nearly ubiquitous surveillance technology. The ARIS strips that provide the interface between your devices (and/or mindset) and the local mesh also functions as the eyes and ears of an AI monitor that watches your every move.

Coalition citizens have grown accustomed to this, and most never give it much thought. There are some, however, to whom this invasion of privacy is simply intolerable.

Apostates, as non-citizens are often called, value their privacy and choose to live outside the Coalition system. They live on ships, secret space stations, or enclaves on planets the Coalition deemed unworthy of colonization. Without access to compilers, apostates must get food, clothing, and other necessities the old fashion way. It’s a harder life, but at least they are free from the ever watching eyes of the Coalition.

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We have technology today that is similar to the ARIS strips mentioned above. The X-Box Kinect sensor, for example, is an augmented reality sensor. It features multiple cameras that are used to map your body and your surroundings, capable even of mapping depth.

And people have done some pretty amazing things with them.

In Nova Praxis, the ARIS strips are small strips of sensors that run along walls inside buildings, or along structures outside. These function much like thousands of X-Box Kinects, and are able to map the enviroment and people in it with a high enough resolution to be able to see where you are looking by tracking your eyes. This increases the utility of augmented reality systems, but also allows anyone with access to the security system to see you from any angle, at any time.

These videos show what can be done with an X-Box Kinect sensor today. And more and more uses are being discovered for it all the time.

How Kinect Fusion and Kinect Work (7:22) <- This one is really amazing.

Augmented Reality Sandbox (Uses a Kinect sensor, a projector, and a sandbox) (5:27)