The CCITI

At the turn of the twenty-first century the internet as a technology was growing faster than any other in human history. Scientists, engineers, and individual contributors from around the world collaborated on its evolution, and a fundamental component of that expansion was the design and construction of a solution to unify all systems, networks, and data. The resulting technology was named the Continuous Cloud Integrating Transport Interface, or CCITI.

The CCITI provided humanity with a new digital universe to explore and exploit. The combined computational power and volume of available data supercharged human innovation, causing society's evolutionary pace to accelerate again. The new cultural landscape bore similarities to that of the internet boom of the late twentieth century with technologies and communities arising and falling in a constant dance of chaos and order. The first decades of the century were turbulent and filled with many tales of impossible gain and utter ruin; the magnified intensity of growth in the CCITI only led to further disparity between those with power and the vulnerable people of the World.

By the first quarter of the twenty-first century the CCITI had become a place where people could interact in fully immersive virtual reality. Either with other humans or with completely artificially generated intelligent systems. This culture gave rise to rich virtual worlds where entire alternate existences could be lived, complete with friends, family, property, birth, and even death. The era of virtual reality had fully arrived, and in one way or another nearly every human was affected by its cultural gravity.

As the CCITI grew to encompass more of civilization it started to become increasingly Balkanized. This fracturing amongst ever larger groups of people also decreased the effective communication channels between disparate colleagues. The resulting friction led to many disputes and hostilities in the CCITI with frequent overlaps to violence in the World. Once again from the wild enigma of human creativity a solution arose, a new virtual world opened within the CCITI and its rise in popularity was meteoric on an unprecedented scale.

CCITI Life

CCITI Life is a virtual world that began development almost ten years ago. It started as a collaboration between open source enthusiasts and closed source businesses when they identified a common need to build a bridge between the two communities. Despite the fact that these groups did not trust each other, a series of interfaces were defined which ensured that neither party got entirely what they wanted while allowing both the freedom to innovate separately and grow in concert.

The world of CCITI Life gives its inhabitants wide liberties to create and maintain their spaces as they desire. This environment has led to a place where people live full lives, being able to trade their goods and services with others while fulfilling their needs in the World. The stability and transparency between unique spaces means that each person can carry their experiences and connections with them, wherever they travel within CCITI Life.

The new "lives" that many people are experiencing have become so engrossing that wide swathes of society have evolved to support and maintain the nearly constant online presences. The nature of this relationship has birthed a system that causes more and more people to indenture themselves to powerful corporate entities in order to stay in their "city lives" more permanently. These people work within CCITI Life doing everything from organizing new features and development with the CCITI to servicing other inhabitants in roles where artificial systems are not desirable, and all points in-between.

The effects of this online migration have had profound results in the World. The social benefit from continued interactions in virtual reality have given people the outlet to calm their stresses in an extremely hostile environment. At the same time, the craving for increased time online has driven society to create ever denser and more automated living conditions in the World. The effect on humanity's ability to survive the environment has also improved, due in large part to the centralizing effects of habitation.