Three years after the Diego War and the “mind-rain” that followed, the world has turned upside down: the stratified social order separating and elevating pretties from uglies and crumblies is no longer enforced. Instead, Tally Youngblood unleashed a new order. Pretty surgery is no longer mandatory, it’s optional--as is the choice to remain unchanged. Without the old system, the world struggles to find ways to organize themselves around each other (they must, of course, have some type of order and classification; humans need to label and categorize). In so short a time, the term Pretty now suggests “whatever got you noticed.” (p. 8). In Japan this means the reputation economy.In a world filled with, and navigated through, social media and networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, YouTube, and thousands of blogs, it’s not surprising that an author as astute as Scott Westerfeld decided this would make a great premise for a SF book. As an addition to his Uglies series for Young Adults, it’s become my favorite of the four. It also makes me a little self-conscious about using social media. The reputation economy works by ranking citizens for doing nothing else but writing short, 10-minute media presentations--pseudo-journalistic style--about what other people are doing (this is called “kicking” a story) and seeing how popular that story (and the kicker) gets. The more attention a kicker regularly receives, the higher their rank overall. Higher ranks grant access to top notch apartments, clothing, and other things that bring materialistic comfort. The idea that people essentially get rewarded for sitting in front of a wall screen (i.e. a computer in our reality) and, to put it in our terms, blogging, texting, or tweeting, is frightening. Although, who wouldn’t love to get paid, and have a certifiable excuse, for a hobby is beyond me.
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