Serious Play Lab Wiki - User contributions [en]

Group 3

2024-11-30T23:01:22Z

99.247.16.84: /* History */

Andy, Ben, Abrar, Ilinca

The City of Toronto, housing a population of 2.8 million, is currently organised via a tier society. As housing costs incrementally increased annually in the years since the financial crisis of 2008, 70% of the population was homeless by 2057. The interest group Property Owners of Toronto Collective (POTC) and tech megacorporation 6ixcorp partnered to make an affordable housing contract, the biggest housing contract in history. The following year, in 2058, DrakePod units connected to the Drake Intelligent Simulation System (DISS) were introduced as an affordable housing solution. Increasing civil unrest culminated in The Great Collapse of 2061, which was subsequently used as the rationale for the 6Barrier project that divided the city into three distinct areas : The Hub, the Borderlands and Cropland, separated by the Inner Six and Outer Six Border Walls. The separation was completed in 2064. A mass eviction of the unhoused 2066 established the populations of each section.

The Hub is the city centre, the most urban, developed and technologically advanced area of Toronto. The Borderlands, separated from The Hub by the Inner Six Border Wall, is less urbanized, with the space optimised for the larger population with the DrakePods. CropLand is mostly farmland and untouched by residential renovation projects. It is technologically bare, being populated by farmers and the Deviant class.

6ixCorp has a monopoly over all levels of government, and is funded by the Property Owners of Toronto Collective.

Lifestyle varies greatly by class. The upper class, confined to The Hub, lives luxuriously in extravagant condos. They have access to a variety of rich and nutritious food, imported directly from CropLand. They have access to AI-Human hybrid teachers that provide the highest calibre of education. The middle class, occupying the Borderlands, is almost entirely controlled by AI or simulated reality. The lifestyles of the Deviant class is entirely human-lead.

==History==

Beginning after the 2008 financial crisis, housing costs in Toronto increased by 9.8% year over year. As the 21st century progressed, an increasing percentage of the population was driven to live the streets and by 2057 Toronto reached 70% homelessness.

[[File:Toronto Homless Encampment.jpg|thumb|right|A homless encampment in 2057]]

Toronto municipal politics at that time was dominated by an interest group called, “Property Owners of Toronto Collective” (POTC). They pressured the city council to clear the city of homeless encampments and in September of 2057 a state of emergency was declared. A $350 billion dollar emergency fund was tapped by city council and [[tech megacorporation 6ixcorp]] was given the biggest housing contract in history with a mandate to build affordable housing.

In April of 2058, condo buildings at Young and Eglinton began to be converted into DrakePod units. These single occupant units offered tenants enough space to sleep, consume calories, and link to the Drake Intelligent Simulation System (DISS) at an affordable rate.

From the spring of 2059 to early 2060 there was continued widespread civil unrest surrounding the implementation of the DrakePod program. Many of the unhoused people living in the city at the time argued that they were being forced to live in “prison cells” and that they were being “treated like cattle”.

In 2061, the unrest in the city reached a tipping point and the Property Owners Of Toronto Collective lobbied the city government to build a barrier to keep vagrants out of the city. City council voted unanimously to offer a contract to 6ixcorp and construction began in October of the same year. This period has been called “The Great Collapse”

6ixcorp began construction of the 6Barrier project which was completed in 2064. The barrier system consists of two electric fences in concentric semi-circle formation. The inner barrier called “The Inner Six” separates the inner city or “Hub” from the “Border Lands”. The Inner 6 runs from Bloor at the north, Bathurst on the West, and Church St. in the East. The Outer Six wall separates the border lands from the “Crop Lands”. It is heavily guarded by 6ixCorp defensive robots to defend against scavengers from outside of the city.

In 2066 a mass eviction campaign was implemented and 6ixCorp defensive robots carried out a mass eviction of the unhoused to the CropLand outside of Toronto city limits. Since the completion of the DrakePod housing project and Six Barrier, homelessness has dropped to 0% within Toronto city boundaries. There are, however, large encampments of unregistered people living outside of city limits who live off the grid.

==Geography==

Historically, Toronto covered a surface area of roughly 630 square kilometres, with a maximum east-west distance of 43 kilometres, and a maximum north-south distance of 21 kilometres. Since 2066, while the city’s total occupied space has remained the same, urbanisation greatly varies depending on the area. The city is divided into three distinct and separate areas: the city centre, colloquially known as “The Hub”, the Borderlands and CropLand. The Hub takes up 16.6 square kilometres, and its borders remain unchanged from that of the old Downtown sphere, though it was drastically reworked in the years after the Great Collapse of 2066. On the outskirts of The Hub, there are the Borderlands. This area, measuring 40.4 square kilometres, is less urbanised than The Hub. After the Great Collapse, much of the area has remained the same, spare three infrastructure building projects organised by 6ixCorps starting in 2058 and ending in 2066. The rest of the landmass of the old city of Toronto (573 square kilometres), named CropLand, is almost completely rural. Old infrastructure was completely bulldozed in 2061 and redesigned for resource exploitation.

===The Hub===

Though The Hub contains the smallest land mass out of the three sections of Toronto, it has been optimised to house as many people as possible. It is the area that has the highest density of skyscrapers in the city. While Toronto has always been relatively flat, 6ixcorps organised several flattening projects following the Great Collapse to accommodate for the optimised city layout. The Hub is designed according to the modernist architectural style, with 6ixcorps citing “the necessity to prioritise function over form, to embrace minimalism in these trying times [after the Great Collapse]”. As such, buildings are very minimally ornamented. Following complaints from the citizens that the area was “bland, sterile and depressing”, 6ixcorps organised “meaningful art initiatives” that were meant to “bring life back to our city, in a meaningful way”. Since the official start of the initiative in 2094, 98% of the buildings in The Hub have permanent advertising projections constantly running on one side. There are no dedicated green spaces on ground level, with all greenery confined to the roofs of the buildings. As a result, there are no naturally-occuring instances of wildlife. All animals present in The Hub are domesticated house pets, with the most common being the Super-Poof dog and cat breeds. The Hub has a strict border patrol that is manned by the military 24/7.

===The Borderlands===
In The Borderlands (area of approx. 22.2 kilometres squared), much of the city’s previous infrastructure has been allowed to remain. Around 85% of the buildings predate the Great Collapse, having undergone various renovation projects for modernization purposes in the time since. Such renovation projects consist of the integration of the DrakePods in every living quarter. The only completely modern structures are the 6ixcorps Associate Inc. building, which is the headquarters of the Borderlands Division of 6ixcorps, and the Outer6ix Fence, which separates The Borderlands and CropLand. The Outer6ix fence is heavily fortified, due to the area’s increasing problem with scavengers coming from CropLand. The Borderlands contains some green spaces in the form of pre-Collapse public parks, though they are no longer regularly maintained. All other aspects of The Borderlands mirror that of The Hub. As in The Hub, all non-human life consists of domesticated pets, among which are hound the Super-Poof dog and cat breeds, as well as the Regular Tabby Cat, native to The Borderlands.

===CropLands===

Once 6ixCorps established the borders of The Hub and the Borderlands following the Great Collapse, the remaining area was set to be converted into a space solely dedicated for resource exploitation. In 2061, the infrastructure in the area that now houses CropLand was almost completely bulldozed so as to optimise farm building. As such, there are no updated dedicated residential or urban areas designed by 6ixCorps. Any residential areas are abandoned and not maintained. Of the farms located in CropLand, 78% are specialised for growing produce, while the remaining 32% are livestock ranches. The animals raised in these farms are imported locally and internationally. As for the produce, while the first generation of non-indigenous crops were also imported, state-of-the-art greenhouses now allow for these plants to grow naturally in Toronto. Despite CropLand being the only region that was not designed for large-scale housing, it boasts the largest percent of the population [see “Demographics” section for more details]. This is because CropLand became the refuge for those who refused to integrate into the tier society when it was first introduced after the Great Collapse. The area is mostly flat, on account of the farms, but there are also large, dense pockets of greenery that cannot be found elsewhere in Toronto, as well as the small residential areas. The Deviants (those who fled to CropLand following the implementation of the 6ixCorps Societal Tier System) occupy this space. Many animals other than livestock have been recorded in the area: squirrels, rabbits, raccoons, foxes, coyotes, snakes, rodents, crows, eagles, hawks, pigeons are most commonly noted.

==Demographics==
{| class="wikitable"
|+ Population Distribution
|-
! Total Population !! The Hub !! The Borderlands !! Croplands
|-
| '''2.8 million''' || 308,000 || 592,000 || 1,540,000

|}

==Politics==

[[File:Leonardo_Phoenix_In_a_futuristic_hightech_Toronto_city_council_0.jpg|thumb|right|A heated in a city council debate in 2056]]

Toronto politics in 2089 are dominated by 6ixCorp and the Property Owners of Toronto Collective (POTC).

The transition from a democratically elected city council occurred in the mid 21st century when homelessness reached it's peak. Only those with a fixed address were able to vote in municipal elections and so wealthy homeowners were able to lobby as a group and seize all 25 seats in the city council. The POTC lead council then turned over the majority of the city budget to 6Corp and gave them a mandate to resolve homelessness.

6ixCorp executes all major government functions: 6Corp defensive robots maintain law and order within the city, the Bix Barrier acts as a border where goods are allowed to enter and vagrants are kept out; Drake Pods are the preferred solution to public housing in the Toronto; education for the middle class is carried out through DISS.

DISS is also used to monitor the thoughts and behaviors of the middle classes so as to avoid the type of widespread civil unrest that was so common in the 2060s.

6ixcorp receives its mandate and funding from the POTC lead city council and then devises and implements the specific strategies for city improvement.

==Society==
There are three major class groups in and around Toronto:

The Upper class maintains political power in the city council through their lobby group Property Owners of Toronto Collective (POTC). They were able to keep their houses through the financial crisis of the 2050s and the upheaval of the 2070s and as homeowners with voting rights, were able to control the City Council. The primary employer for the upper class is 6ixCorp. The middle class, or renter class, of Toronto lives in DrakePods. The majority of time is spent within DISS and make up %85 of Toronto City residents. The lower classes, deemed "the deviants" were evicted from the city in 2066 and live outside of the 6ix Barrier. There numbers are unknow since they do not interact with DISS.

==Technology==
As the 21st Century draws to a close, technology plays a crucial role as the defining maker of class divisions in Toronto. The access to and use of technology vary greatly among the city's social classes, reflecting and reinforcing existing inequalities. While the wealthiest residents enjoy unparalleled technological advancements, the middle class experiences a more constrained and controlled interaction with technology, and the poorest citizens rely on salvaged and outdated devices for basic survival.

===Upper Class===
The Upper Class (also known as the Ultra-Rich) live in luxury, seamlessly merging human ingenuity with the latest cutting-edge technology. They inhabit giant mansions equipped with AI systems that anticipate every human need, from mood-based room lightning to personalised medical diagnostics. They have access to their own “auto-doc” system that cures and provides instant remedy to various sickness and bone reparation. Neural implants grant direct brain-to-network connection, enabling instant communications with other neural implant users as well as cognitive enhancements. For the wealthy, technology is a tool of indulgence and ego.

===Middle Class===
The Middle Class by contrast, experiences technology as a double-edged sword. Cramped within closed spaces in condos and apartments which will be known as DrakePods- a literally pod with high-tech modular units. In the Pod, the user will be able to access the digital world through an immersive VR “Coffin” system that they have to “sleep” in order to access the virtual world. These VR coffins simulate tailored realities, allowing them to work, shop, and “socialise” within the confines of their pods. However, this technology isn't perfect; bugs and glitches frequently disrupt their lives, and updates are slow and costly. Furthermore, DrakePods serves as a Data collecting device in order to attainmore knowledge on the Human consciousness by monitoring activities. The Corporation, 6ixCorp, governs their daily schedules, assigning tasks and monitoring their performance system through the “coffin”. A social credit point system is implemented in the UI interface of the Coffin to keep count of Completed/Incompleted tasks, Digitizied “social media” profile page, breached offenses and more. The middle class is more servant than master to their devices.

[[File:Drakepod.jpg|thumb|right|An example of the VR Coffin Unit provided by 6ixCorp]]

===Lower Class===
For the lower class (also classified as the Deviants in society), technology is a distant dream. Living in the decaying remnants of Toronto’s outskirts, they rely on salvaged devices such as Old smartphones and other outdated devices. Smartphones are used as communal tools for organising resources and sharing knowledge. Ingenious “scrappers” dismantle the acquired tech from “scavengers” to build makeshift power sources as communication devices. For the Deviants, technology serves as a lifeline rather than a luxury. The deviants main form of communications is through genuine human interactions.

==Food==
Food in the late 21st century reflects the stark social and economic divisions within Toronto. Access to food and the quality of meals vary significantly across classes, symbolizing the growing disparity in wealth and resources. While the wealthy indulge in luxurious dining experiences powered by advanced technology, the middle class relies on artificial and convenient alternatives, and the lower class struggles to survive with limited and improvised resources.

===Upper Class===
The Elites have access to enjoy luxurious gourmet meals crafted from authentic, organic ingredients. Gourmet meals are crafted by AI robo-chefs are programmed with centuries of culinary knowledge and fine-tuned to individual tastes. AI butlers monitor biometric feed to adjust meal temperature, portion size, and seasoning in real-time, ensuring that every bite is near perfection. Meat from various animals are scarce in the late 21st century. Animals and crops are grown in pristine farms or imported from distant biodomes located in the CropLands. Exclusive dining clubs and private tasting events are also common, where only the Upper Class can showcase their AI robo-chefs innovations. For the wealthy, food is an art form and a symbol of status and gluttony.

[[File:Robo-Chef.jpg|thumb|left|6ixChef-89: 6ixCorp's advanced robot-chef, blending AI precision and gourmet excellence for the ultra-rich in 2089.]]

===Middle Class===
The Middle-Class has adapted to artificial sustenance, relying heavily on 3D printed meals. These printed meals would mimic most traditional dishes but will often times lack the depth of flavour and nutrition of organic ingredients. For convenience's sake, many people from the middle class opt for nutrient pills that compress an entire day's calorie intake into a single dose. These pills could be brought from various convenience stores or delivered by auto-taxis that are assigned by 6ixCorp to deliver to various DrakePods. Access to fresh food is rare and is based on the amount of cyber points accumulated from accomplishing daily tasks assigned by 6ixCorp by stepping into the coffin.

[[File:6ixCorp Pills.png|thumb|right|Nutrient pills by 6ixCorp]]

===Lower Class===
The Lower Class scrape by whatever they can grow or forage. Living outside the 6ixbarrier also, they cultivate small collaborative gardens and hunt or fish when possible. Most of the meals are simple, share community, and is often insufficient to feed everyone. The lack of proper access to food results in a new system of currency based on “seeds” that are traded in order to buy food. No scrap goes to waste. Unlike the Upper class, whose meal reflects excess and gluttony, food is a testament to survival against all odds and appreciation of what mother nature has bestowed upon them. Food preparation and communal meals serve as a reminder of the strength of the human spirit. In rare moments of abundance, the community celebrates with small feasts, where very person contributes a share of their resources.

==Education==

===Education in Upper Class society===
Education in Upper Class 6ixCorp society is administered by an elite squadron of AI-human hybrid teachers. The Teacher-AI interface is designed to augment the aptitudes of teachers, enabling teachers to perform highly complex and accurate calculations at thousands of times the rate of non-augmented human specimens. The 6ixCorp teacher training program lasts 2-3 weeks, involving a surgical component to implant the AI interface in the candidates brain, as well as 200 hours of “downloading” in which teachers are linked to all existing AI-powered knowledge libraries. Certain knowledge categories are bypassed by the DISS AI interface and cognitively inaccessible to TCs, including the knowledge categories of critical thinking and philosophy – categories deemed by the 6ixCorp Department of Education to be “detrimental to the safety and well-being of 6ixCorp society.” (6ixCorp Municipal Codes, Section iii, paragraph 18.)

The 6ixCorp K-12 curriculum prioritizes STEM fields, business, and AI Studies. The curriculum was developed by the 6ixCorp AI engine PedaGadget v. 98 and is streamlined to maximize academic achievement, competition, and stratification in order to produce a handful of highly skilled students that rise to the top through a series of standardized tests and a complex academic credit / deficit system. Top achievers are recruited to join 6ixCorp, and a position at the Corporation is held in the highest esteem in upper class society, although financial trading, software engineering, and landlording are also considered respected fields.

===Education in Middle Class Society===
Middle Class education is primarily administered through VR classroom environments linked to DrakePod coffin software. Students “meet” in virtual classrooms to complete various STEM puzzles and writing assignments. Writing-based assignments often require students to respond to a prompt, usually a question about how a particular marketing campaign or product prototype makes them feel, their assessment of its user-friendly design, etc. That data is then harvested and analyzed by 6ixCorp algorithms for product development purposes. Students are also assigned STEM puzzles where they have to work out solutions to engineering, science, and math problems. Their cognitive processing is closely tracked by the 6ixCorp MindMapper software, and that data is utilized to train, model and enhance 6ixCorp AI engine processing. Students who perform well on their puzzles are given Star Points that can be used to purchase virtual classroom customizations and longer recess breaks. Less successful students are deprived of customization options and are blocked from interacting with the other student Avatars in their VR classroom. Students who exhibit exceptional problem solving and expressive linguistic capacities are recruited to participate in the 6ixCorp Teacher Education Program.

===Education in Deviant Communities===

[[File:Knowledge keepers.jpg|thumb|right]]
With limited access to screen-based technologies and paper media, education in deviant communities in the Borderlands and Croplands is largely community-based, relying on a loosely-organized network of elders, knowledge-keepers, oral historians, and scavenger librarians.
Elders are highly regarded as community knowledge-keepers because they had access to formal education before the mass evictions of 66. Elders self-organize mobile learning clinics, traveling to various neighborhoods throughout the Croplands to offer lectures and storytelling circles for youth in the area, and anyone else who wants to join – attendance is entirely voluntary. Elders share their knowledge on diverse fields depending on their expertise, including history, medicine, music, philosophy, mechanical engineering, and chemistry. Elders are accompanied by a group of 5 to 10 young people called Memory Keepers, usually children who are exceptionally gifted with memorization skills. These children can recite significant texts word-for-word, often by setting texts to music and are able to recite from specific passages on demand.

Practice-based education is also highly regarded in the Croplands, and young people rely on the guidance and mentorship of parents and community members to learn skills-based trades through apprenticeships. Adult farmers, hunters, scavengers, mechanics, and doctors are generally accompanied by young students who begin by assisting their mentors and eventually learn to practice independently.

==Anecdotes==
[[Abrar]]

[[Andy]]

[[Ben]]

[[Ilinca]]

Ilinca

2024-11-30T21:21:08Z

99.247.16.84: /* Cynthia's recounting of The Great Collapse */

== Cynthia's Recounting of a Time Before The Great Collapse ==

Hello. To whoever is reading this, my name is Cynthia, and I live in CropLand. I suppose that I am officially a “Deviant”, though I don’t like to call myself that–nobody here does. We don’t consider ourselves “Deviant” because we don’t consider ourselves to be anti-society. Uncompliant, yes, but not anarchists. That’s what that word means.

I’m writing this… because… Well, if I’m being completely honest, I don’t really have a reason to be writing this. I suppose I just want to prove that I was alive at some point. The only downside to living in CropLand is that once you’re gone, you’re really gone. Once your time comes, it’s really over. Before I fled to CropLand (I was born in The Borderlands, kicked out when I was 26), I knew a lot of people whose family members could live for years in the DrakePods, way past their expiration dates. And when they did eventually die, all their data was available for anyone to search, if one really wanted to. Their SocialCredit, their life stats, their total time plugged in, everything. The DrakePods could even simulate them, the way they spoke, the way they thought (though one couldn’t really say they ''thought'', in the proper sense…), the way they moved. That way, they would never truly be gone, or at least not until people accepted the truth for what it was, which rarely happened. In CropLand, you only really live on in the memories of your close friends and loved ones. You can argue that it’s more meaningful that way, but the thing about memories is that they eventually fade. I realized that recently. I’m getting up there in age, so I’m thinking about death much more than I did before. Writing this is self-indulgent, I recognize that, and I apologise for that, but I want to make my mark. I want it to be so that, when I die, and after everyone who knew me has also passed, that there is some remnant of me that exists, somewhere.

I suppose I should start at the beginning. I was born in 2035 into a family of three: there was my mother, Daria, my father, Thomas, and my older brother, Marcus. Marcus was two years older than me. I had a pretty normal childhood for the average kid during those times. We were poor, but I wasn’t too concerned about it. Everyone was poor, and children don’t really pay attention to things like that, especially if we’re all in the same boat. I don’t remember much from those times. All I know is that, eventually, it got too expensive to keep living there, so we moved into a small 1 bedroom apartment that we shared with the Rogers family. That is a very vivid memory. First entering that place, I mean. In hindsight, it was actually a pretty nice place, but at the time, I remember feeling this overwhelming sense of dread when that front door opened in front of me. That’s what makes the memory so, well, memorable. The door opened on a small living room, cold and bare. There was no furniture, just a tarp laid out on the floor with some dirty pillows thrown sporadically on top. The only thing on the walls were a hanging bookshelf, an ornamental cross (the Rogers were Catholic) and a calendar. I remember hating that calendar. My mother would always tell me that things would get better in time, but the days passed and passed, and nothing got better. At one point, the old Sharpie pen we used to mark the days ran out of ink. That, or we just stopped caring to keep track. The days were too similar to distinguish. We would wake up, share a small breakfast, go to work or school, come home, repeat. Thankfully, we always had some food. It wasn’t a lot, but we never starved, like a lot of others did. My parents and the Rogers never told us kids where and how they got that food. They carried that information to their graves. I can only imagine what they must have put themselves through to get it.

Another notable memory I have is when the DrakePods launched in 2058. I remember hearing the announcement that they were coming one morning when a 6ixCorp spokesperson came to our neighbourhood. I was 23 at the time. I remember everyone being excited. At this point, nothing could distract us from the fact that we were very poor, and we were only getting poorer. I remember hearing on the radio that over 70% of the population of Toronto was homeless. We were just about to join them. We all signed up for the program, mine and the Rogers’ families. When we got our pods, I remember being so happy. I had everything I could ever want! Shelter, food (back then, the simulated food didn't have that metallic taste it acquire later on), community we were constantly connected to, amusement, you name it. The novelty soon wore off, though. I missed my family. Sure, I would see them in VR, but it wasn’t the same. I wanted to interact with them again, face-to-face, in real time, but every time anyone would exit the pods, a 6ixCorp official would tax us some Social Credit points. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that. The SocialCredit point system came two-for-one with the Pods. Everyone started with 20,000, and any infraction (anything that "indicated a participant was taking the program for granted") would result in a loss incurred. The more severe the act, the more points deducted. If you ran out of points, they would kick you out of your Pod and give it to someone who was “more grateful”. You would be homeless again, but this time, it would be worse. You would be alone. I remember my father telling me that nothing in life came for free. The DrakePods seemed to be the exception, because we didn’t have to pay for it. Little did we know, we did pay, just with our agency instead of with cash.

Slowly but surely, people were starting to realize what was happening. And people were angry. Before we knew it, the Great Collapse happened. It happened just as I turned 26. It started with people leaving the Pods. Each day, they would stay outside for a little longer, SocialPoint system be damned. Then they started to coax others out of the Pods. Then they started to transmit anti-Pod messages over VR. Then they started spewing Anti-6ixCorp rhetoric. Then they would break the Pods. Then they would protest. Then they would riot. Then, then, then. 6ixCorps got fed up with it, naturally, and started building the Inner and Outer Six Fences. Some people took their chance to flee to CropLans, then. The rest were forcefully evicted in 2066, me included. Anyone who received or interacted with Anti-6ixCorps content, regardless if they were homeless or not, were evicted, just in case. Of course, no official body will admit that…
I’ve been living in the Borderlands ever since. My family is here with me too. Luckily, everyone managed to stick together. We left the Rogers’ behind, though… Sometimes, they send us letters with news from the inside. They are the only contact we have with the “civilized” society, besides the Scavengers. We write each other using pseudonyms. It’s too dangerous otherwise.
Before going into the Pods, I was an artist. I’ve been drawing ever since I could remember. I used to copy the pictures from magazines I would find in the trash. I got pretty good at it. One day, during my first week in CropLand, an elder named Maya saw me drawing, and asked to see. She gave me some shading tips. It turns out that she used to be an art teacher before everything went wrong. She mentored me. As fate would have it, I eventually took Maya’s place as a mentor. I have 5 students: Rachel, Sarah, Michael, Bahar and Richard (he likes to be called Richie).

People talk about CropLand as if its some dystopian wasteland. It really isn't. I mean, sure, we are still technically homeless, but it doesn’t feel that way. Trust me, I would know. We have a real, tangible community here, where we interact with real people and work together toward real goals. This is real life. I don’t know what it’s like in the inner city nowadays, and I don’t care to know. Everything I need is right here.

I hate to end my rambling with clichés, but I wouldn’t change my life for anything in the world. Yes, I’ve suffered, but it wasn’t all bad. At least I can say that my life–a real one–was worth a damn.

Ilinca

2024-11-30T21:19:39Z

99.247.16.84:

== Cynthia's recounting of The Great Collapse ==

Hello. To whoever is reading this, my name is Cynthia, and I live in CropLand. I suppose that I am officially a “Deviant”, though I don’t like to call myself that–nobody here does. We don’t consider ourselves “Deviant” because we don’t consider ourselves to be anti-society. Uncompliant, yes, but not anarchists. That’s what that word means.

I’m writing this… because… Well, if I’m being completely honest, I don’t really have a reason to be writing this. I suppose I just want to prove that I was alive at some point. The only downside to living in CropLand is that once you’re gone, you’re really gone. Once your time comes, it’s really over. Before I fled to CropLand (I was born in The Borderlands, kicked out when I was 26), I knew a lot of people whose family members could live for years in the DrakePods, way past their expiration dates. And when they did eventually die, all their data was available for anyone to search, if one really wanted to. Their SocialCredit, their life stats, their total time plugged in, everything. The DrakePods could even simulate them, the way they spoke, the way they thought (though one couldn’t really say they ''thought'', in the proper sense…), the way they moved. That way, they would never truly be gone, or at least not until people accepted the truth for what it was, which rarely happened. In CropLand, you only really live on in the memories of your close friends and loved ones. You can argue that it’s more meaningful that way, but the thing about memories is that they eventually fade. I realized that recently. I’m getting up there in age, so I’m thinking about death much more than I did before. Writing this is self-indulgent, I recognize that, and I apologise for that, but I want to make my mark. I want it to be so that, when I die, and after everyone who knew me has also passed, that there is some remnant of me that exists, somewhere.

I suppose I should start at the beginning. I was born in 2035 into a family of three: there was my mother, Daria, my father, Thomas, and my older brother, Marcus. Marcus was two years older than me. I had a pretty normal childhood for the average kid during those times. We were poor, but I wasn’t too concerned about it. Everyone was poor, and children don’t really pay attention to things like that, especially if we’re all in the same boat. I don’t remember much from those times. All I know is that, eventually, it got too expensive to keep living there, so we moved into a small 1 bedroom apartment that we shared with the Rogers family. That is a very vivid memory. First entering that place, I mean. In hindsight, it was actually a pretty nice place, but at the time, I remember feeling this overwhelming sense of dread when that front door opened in front of me. That’s what makes the memory so, well, memorable. The door opened on a small living room, cold and bare. There was no furniture, just a tarp laid out on the floor with some dirty pillows thrown sporadically on top. The only thing on the walls were a hanging bookshelf, an ornamental cross (the Rogers were Catholic) and a calendar. I remember hating that calendar. My mother would always tell me that things would get better in time, but the days passed and passed, and nothing got better. At one point, the old Sharpie pen we used to mark the days ran out of ink. That, or we just stopped caring to keep track. The days were too similar to distinguish. We would wake up, share a small breakfast, go to work or school, come home, repeat. Thankfully, we always had some food. It wasn’t a lot, but we never starved, like a lot of others did. My parents and the Rogers never told us kids where and how they got that food. They carried that information to their graves. I can only imagine what they must have put themselves through to get it.

Another notable memory I have is when the DrakePods launched in 2058. I remember hearing the announcement that they were coming one morning when a 6ixCorp spokesperson came to our neighbourhood. I was 23 at the time. I remember everyone being excited. At this point, nothing could distract us from the fact that we were very poor, and we were only getting poorer. I remember hearing on the radio that over 70% of the population of Toronto was homeless. We were just about to join them. We all signed up for the program, mine and the Rogers’ families. When we got our pods, I remember being so happy. I had everything I could ever want! Shelter, food (back then, the simulated food didn't have that metallic taste it acquire later on), community we were constantly connected to, amusement, you name it. The novelty soon wore off, though. I missed my family. Sure, I would see them in VR, but it wasn’t the same. I wanted to interact with them again, face-to-face, in real time, but every time anyone would exit the pods, a 6ixCorp official would tax us some Social Credit points. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that. The SocialCredit point system came two-for-one with the Pods. Everyone started with 20,000, and any infraction (anything that "indicated a participant was taking the program for granted") would result in a loss incurred. The more severe the act, the more points deducted. If you ran out of points, they would kick you out of your Pod and give it to someone who was “more grateful”. You would be homeless again, but this time, it would be worse. You would be alone. I remember my father telling me that nothing in life came for free. The DrakePods seemed to be the exception, because we didn’t have to pay for it. Little did we know, we did pay, just with our agency instead of with cash.

Slowly but surely, people were starting to realize what was happening. And people were angry. Before we knew it, the Great Collapse happened. It happened just as I turned 26. It started with people leaving the Pods. Each day, they would stay outside for a little longer, SocialPoint system be damned. Then they started to coax others out of the Pods. Then they started to transmit anti-Pod messages over VR. Then they started spewing Anti-6ixCorp rhetoric. Then they would break the Pods. Then they would protest. Then they would riot. Then, then, then. 6ixCorps got fed up with it, naturally, and started building the Inner and Outer Six Fences. Some people took their chance to flee to CropLans, then. The rest were forcefully evicted in 2066, me included. Anyone who received or interacted with Anti-6ixCorps content, regardless if they were homeless or not, were evicted, just in case. Of course, no official body will admit that…
I’ve been living in the Borderlands ever since. My family is here with me too. Luckily, everyone managed to stick together. We left the Rogers’ behind, though… Sometimes, they send us letters with news from the inside. They are the only contact we have with the “civilized” society, besides the Scavengers. We write each other using pseudonyms. It’s too dangerous otherwise.
Before going into the Pods, I was an artist. I’ve been drawing ever since I could remember. I used to copy the pictures from magazines I would find in the trash. I got pretty good at it. One day, during my first week in CropLand, an elder named Maya saw me drawing, and asked to see. She gave me some shading tips. It turns out that she used to be an art teacher before everything went wrong. She mentored me. As fate would have it, I eventually took Maya’s place as a mentor. I have 5 students: Rachel, Sarah, Michael, Bahar and Richard (he likes to be called Richie).

People talk about CropLand as if its some dystopian wasteland. It really isn't. I mean, sure, we are still technically homeless, but it doesn’t feel that way. Trust me, I would know. We have a real, tangible community here, where we interact with real people and work together toward real goals. This is real life. I don’t know what it’s like in the inner city nowadays, and I don’t care to know. Everything I need is right here.

I hate to end my rambling with clichés, but I wouldn’t change my life for anything in the world. Yes, I’ve suffered, but it wasn’t all bad. At least I can say that my life–a real one–was worth a damn.

Group 3

2024-11-30T20:58:27Z

99.247.16.84: /* Anecdotes */

Andy, Ben, Abrar, Ilinca

The City of Toronto, housing a population of 2.8 million, is currently organised via a tier society. As housing costs incrementally increased annually in the years since the financial crisis of 2008, 70% of the population was homeless by 2057. The interest group Property Owners of Toronto Collective (POTC) and tech megacorporation 6ixcorp partnered to make an affordable housing contract, the biggest housing contract in history. The following year, in 2058, DrakePod units connected to the Drake Intelligent Simulation System (DISS) were introduced as an affordable housing solution. Increasing civil unrest culminated in The Great Collapse of 2061, which was subsequently used as the rationale for the 6Barrier project that divided the city into three distinct areas : The Hub, the Borderlands and Cropland, separated by the Inner Six and Outer Six Border Walls. The separation was completed in 2064. A mass eviction of the unhoused 2066 established the populations of each section.

The Hub is the city centre, the most urban, developed and technologically advanced area of Toronto. The Borderlands, separated from The Hub by the Inner Six Border Wall, is less urbanized, with the space optimised for the larger population with the DrakePods. CropLand is mostly farmland and untouched by residential renovation projects. It is technologically bare, being populated by farmers and the Deviant class.

6ixCorp has a monopoly over all levels of government, and is funded by the Property Owners of Toronto Collective.

Lifestyle varies greatly by class. The upper class, confined to The Hub, lives luxuriously in extravagant condos. They have access to a variety of rich and nutritious food, imported directly from CropLand. They have access to AI-Human hybrid teachers that provide the highest calibre of education. The middle class, occupying the Borderlands, is almost entirely controlled by AI or simulated reality. The lifestyles of the Deviant class is entirely human-lead.

==History==

Beginning after the 2008 financial crisis, housing costs in Toronto increased by 9.8% year over year. As the 21st century progressed, an increasing percentage of the population was driven to live the streets and by 2057 Toronto reached 70% homelessness.

Toronto municipal politics at that time was dominated by an interest group called, “Property Owners of Toronto Collective” (POTC). They pressured the city council to clear the city of homeless encampments and in September of 2057 a state of emergency was declared. A $350 billion dollar emergency fund was tapped by city council and [[tech megacorporation 6ixcorp]] was given the biggest housing contract in history with a mandate to build affordable housing.

In April of 2058, condo buildings at Young and Eglinton began to be converted into DrakePod units. These single occupant units offered tenants enough space to sleep, consume calories, and link to the Drake Intelligent Simulation System (DISS) at an affordable rate.

From the spring of 2059 to early 2060 there was continued widespread civil unrest surrounding the implementation of the DrakePod program. Many of the unhoused people living in the city at the time argued that they were being forced to live in “prison cells” and that they were being “treated like cattle”.

In 2061, the unrest in the city reached a tipping point and the Property Owners Of Toronto Collective lobbied the city government to build a barrier to keep vagrants out of the city. City council voted unanimously to offer a contract to 6ixcorp and construction began in October of the same year. This period has been called “The Great Collapse”

6ixcorp began construction of the 6Barrier project which was completed in 2064. The barrier system consists of two electric fences in concentric semi-circle formation. The inner barrier called “The Inner Six” separates the inner city or “Hub” from the “Border Lands”. The Inner 6 runs from Bloor at the north, Bathurst on the West, and Church St. in the East. The Outer Six wall separates the border lands from the “Crop Lands”. It is heavily guarded by 6ixCorp defensive robots to defend against scavengers from outside of the city.

In 2066 a mass eviction campaign was implemented and 6ixCorp defensive robots carried out a mass eviction of the unhoused to the CropLand outside of Toronto city limits. Since the completion of the DrakePod housing project and Six Barrier, homelessness has dropped to 0% within Toronto city boundaries. There are, however, large encampments of unregistered people living outside of city limits who live off the grid.

==Geography==

Historically, Toronto covered a surface area of roughly 630 square kilometres, with a maximum east-west distance of 43 kilometres, and a maximum north-south distance of 21 kilometres. Since 2066, while the city’s total occupied space has remained the same, urbanisation greatly varies depending on the area. The city is divided into three distinct and separate areas: the city centre, colloquially known as “The Hub”, the Borderlands and CropLand. The Hub takes up 16.6 square kilometres, and its borders remain unchanged from that of the old Downtown sphere, though it was drastically reworked in the years after the Great Collapse of 2066. On the outskirts of The Hub, there are the Borderlands. This area, measuring 40.4 square kilometres, is less urbanised than The Hub. After the Great Collapse, much of the area has remained the same, spare three infrastructure building projects organised by 6ixCorps starting in 2058 and ending in 2066. The rest of the landmass of the old city of Toronto (573 square kilometres), named CropLand, is almost completely rural. Old infrastructure was completely bulldozed in 2061 and redesigned for resource exploitation.

===The Hub===

Though The Hub contains the smallest land mass out of the three sections of Toronto, it has been optimised to house as many people as possible. It is the area that has the highest density of skyscrapers in the city. While Toronto has always been relatively flat, 6ixcorps organised several flattening projects following the Great Collapse to accommodate for the optimised city layout. The Hub is designed according to the modernist architectural style, with 6ixcorps citing “the necessity to prioritise function over form, to embrace minimalism in these trying times [after the Great Collapse]”. As such, buildings are very minimally ornamented. Following complaints from the citizens that the area was “bland, sterile and depressing”, 6ixcorps organised “meaningful art initiatives” that were meant to “bring life back to our city, in a meaningful way”. Since the official start of the initiative in 2094, 98% of the buildings in The Hub have permanent advertising projections constantly running on one side. There are no dedicated green spaces on ground level, with all greenery confined to the roofs of the buildings. As a result, there are no naturally-occuring instances of wildlife. All animals present in The Hub are domesticated house pets, with the most common being the Super-Poof dog and cat breeds. The Hub has a strict border patrol that is manned by the military 24/7.

===The Borderlands===
In The Borderlands (area of approx. 22.2 kilometres squared), much of the city’s previous infrastructure has been allowed to remain. Around 85% of the buildings predate the Great Collapse, having undergone various renovation projects for modernization purposes in the time since. Such renovation projects consist of the integration of the DrakePods in every living quarter. The only completely modern structures are the 6ixcorps Associate Inc. building, which is the headquarters of the Borderlands Division of 6ixcorps, and the Outer6ix Fence, which separates The Borderlands and CropLand. The Outer6ix fence is heavily fortified, due to the area’s increasing problem with scavengers coming from CropLand. The Borderlands contains some green spaces in the form of pre-Collapse public parks, though they are no longer regularly maintained. All other aspects of The Borderlands mirror that of The Hub. As in The Hub, all non-human life consists of domesticated pets, among which are hound the Super-Poof dog and cat breeds, as well as the Regular Tabby Cat, native to The Borderlands.

===CropLands===

Once 6ixCorps established the borders of The Hub and the Borderlands following the Great Collapse, the remaining area was set to be converted into a space solely dedicated for resource exploitation. In 2061, the infrastructure in the area that now houses CropLand was almost completely bulldozed so as to optimise farm building. As such, there are no updated dedicated residential or urban areas designed by 6ixCorps. Any residential areas are abandoned and not maintained. Of the farms located in CropLand, 78% are specialised for growing produce, while the remaining 32% are livestock ranches. The animals raised in these farms are imported locally and internationally. As for the produce, while the first generation of non-indigenous crops were also imported, state-of-the-art greenhouses now allow for these plants to grow naturally in Toronto. Despite CropLand being the only region that was not designed for large-scale housing, it boasts the largest percent of the population [see “Demographics” section for more details]. This is because CropLand became the refuge for those who refused to integrate into the tier society when it was first introduced after the Great Collapse. The area is mostly flat, on account of the farms, but there are also large, dense pockets of greenery that cannot be found elsewhere in Toronto, as well as the small residential areas. The Deviants (those who fled to CropLand following the implementation of the 6ixCorps Societal Tier System) occupy this space. Many animals other than livestock have been recorded in the area: squirrels, rabbits, raccoons, foxes, coyotes, snakes, rodents, crows, eagles, hawks, pigeons are most commonly noted.

==Demographics==
{| class="wikitable"
|+ Population Distribution
|-
! Total Population !! The Hub !! The Borderlands !! Croplands
|-
| '''2.8 million''' || 308,000 || 592,000 || 1,540,000

|}

==Politics==

Toronto politics in 2089 are dominated by 6ixCorp and the Property Owners of Toronto Collective (POTC).

The transition from a democratically elected city council occurred in the mid 21st century when homelessness reached it's peak. Only those with a fixed address were able to vote in municipal elections and so wealthy homeowners were able to lobby as a group and seize all 25 seats in the city council. The POTC lead council then turned over the majority of the city budget to 6Corp and gave them a mandate to resolve homelessness.

6ixCorp executes all major government functions: 6Corp defensive robots maintain law and order within the city, the Bix Barrier acts as a border where goods are allowed to enter and vagrants are kept out; Drake Pods are the preferred solution to public housing in the Toronto; education for the middle class is carried out through DISS.

DISS is also used to monitor the thoughts and behaviors of the middle classes so as to avoid the type of widespread civil unrest that was so common in the 2060s.

6ixcorp receives its mandate and funding from the POTC lead city council and then devises and implements the specific strategies for city improvement.

==Society==
There are three major class groups in and around Toronto:

The Upper class maintains political power in the city council through their lobby group Property Owners of Toronto Collective (POTC). They were able to keep their houses through the financial crisis of the 2050s and the upheaval of the 2070s and as homeowners with voting rights, were able to control the City Council. The primary employer for the upper class is 6ixCorp. The middle class, or renter class, of Toronto lives in DrakePods. The majority of time is spent within DISS and make up %85 of Toronto City residents. The lower classes, deemed "the deviants" were evicted from the city in 2066 and live outside of the 6ix Barrier. There numbers are unknow since they do not interact with DISS.

==Technology==
As the 21st Century draws to a close, technology plays a crucial role as the defining maker of class divisions in Toronto. The access to and use of technology vary greatly among the city's social classes, reflecting and reinforcing existing inequalities. While the wealthiest residents enjoy unparalleled technological advancements, the middle class experiences a more constrained and controlled interaction with technology, and the poorest citizens rely on salvaged and outdated devices for basic survival.

===Upper Class===
The Upper Class (also known as the Ultra-Rich) live in luxury, seamlessly merging human ingenuity with the latest cutting-edge technology. They inhabit giant mansions equipped with AI systems that anticipate every human need, from mood-based room lightning to personalised medical diagnostics. They have access to their own “auto-doc” system that cures and provides instant remedy to various sickness and bone reparation. Neural implants grant direct brain-to-network connection, enabling instant communications with other neural implant users as well as cognitive enhancements. For the wealthy, technology is a tool of indulgence and ego.

===Middle Class===
The Middle Class by contrast, experiences technology as a double-edged sword. Cramped within closed spaces in condos and apartments which will be known as DrakePods- a literally pod with high-tech modular units. In the Pod, the user will be able to access the digital world through an immersive VR “Coffin” system that they have to “sleep” in order to access the virtual world. These VR coffins simulate tailored realities, allowing them to work, shop, and “socialise” within the confines of their pods. However, this technology isn't perfect; bugs and glitches frequently disrupt their lives, and updates are slow and costly. Furthermore, DrakePods serves as a Data collecting device in order to attainmore knowledge on the Human consciousness by monitoring activities. The Corporation, 6ixCorp, governs their daily schedules, assigning tasks and monitoring their performance system through the “coffin”. A social credit point system is implemented in the UI interface of the Coffin to keep count of Completed/Incompleted tasks, Digitizied “social media” profile page, breached offenses and more. The middle class is more servant than master to their devices.

[[File:Drakepod.jpg|thumb|right|An example of the VR Coffin Unit provided by 6ixCorp]]

===Lower Class===
For the lower class (also classified as the Deviants in society), technology is a distant dream. Living in the decaying remnants of Toronto’s outskirts, they rely on salvaged devices such as Old smartphones and other outdated devices. Smartphones are used as communal tools for organising resources and sharing knowledge. Ingenious “scrappers” dismantle the acquired tech from “scavengers” to build makeshift power sources as communication devices. For the Deviants, technology serves as a lifeline rather than a luxury. The deviants main form of communications is through genuine human interactions.

==Food==
Food in the late 21st century reflects the stark social and economic divisions within Toronto. Access to food and the quality of meals vary significantly across classes, symbolizing the growing disparity in wealth and resources. While the wealthy indulge in luxurious dining experiences powered by advanced technology, the middle class relies on artificial and convenient alternatives, and the lower class struggles to survive with limited and improvised resources.

===Upper Class===
The Elites have access to enjoy luxurious gourmet meals crafted from authentic, organic ingredients. Gourmet meals are crafted by AI robo-chefs are programmed with centuries of culinary knowledge and fine-tuned to individual tastes. AI butlers monitor biometric feed to adjust meal temperature, portion size, and seasoning in real-time, ensuring that every bite is near perfection. Meat from various animals are scarce in the late 21st century. Animals and crops are grown in pristine farms or imported from distant biodomes located in the CropLands. Exclusive dining clubs and private tasting events are also common, where only the Upper Class can showcase their AI robo-chefs innovations. For the wealthy, food is an art form and a symbol of status and gluttony.

[[File:Robo-Chef.jpg|thumb|left|6ixChef-89: 6ixCorp's advanced robot-chef, blending AI precision and gourmet excellence for the ultra-rich in 2089.]]

===Middle Class===
The Middle-Class has adapted to artificial sustenance, relying heavily on 3D printed meals. These printed meals would mimic most traditional dishes but will often times lack the depth of flavour and nutrition of organic ingredients. For convenience's sake, many people from the middle class opt for nutrient pills that compress an entire day's calorie intake into a single dose. These pills could be brought from various convenience stores or delivered by auto-taxis that are assigned by 6ixCorp to deliver to various DrakePods. Access to fresh food is rare and is based on the amount of cyber points accumulated from accomplishing daily tasks assigned by 6ixCorp by stepping into the coffin.

[[File:6ixCorp Pills.png|thumb|right|Nutrient pills by 6ixCorp]]

===Lower Class===
The Lower Class scrape by whatever they can grow or forage. Living outside the 6ixbarrier also, they cultivate small collaborative gardens and hunt or fish when possible. Most of the meals are simple, share community, and is often insufficient to feed everyone. The lack of proper access to food results in a new system of currency based on “seeds” that are traded in order to buy food. No scrap goes to waste. Unlike the Upper class, whose meal reflects excess and gluttony, food is a testament to survival against all odds and appreciation of what mother nature has bestowed upon them. Food preparation and communal meals serve as a reminder of the strength of the human spirit. In rare moments of abundance, the community celebrates with small feasts, where very person contributes a share of their resources.

==Education==

===Education in Upper Class society===
Education in Upper Class 6ixCorp society is administered by an elite squadron of AI-human hybrid teachers. The Teacher-AI interface is designed to augment the aptitudes of teachers, enabling teachers to perform highly complex and accurate calculations at thousands of times the rate of non-augmented human specimens. The 6ixCorp teacher training program lasts 2-3 weeks, involving a surgical component to implant the AI interface in the candidates brain, as well as 200 hours of “downloading” in which teachers are linked to all existing AI-powered knowledge libraries. Certain knowledge categories are bypassed by the DISS AI interface and cognitively inaccessible to TCs, including the knowledge categories of critical thinking and philosophy – categories deemed by the 6ixCorp Department of Education to be “detrimental to the safety and well-being of 6ixCorp society.” (6ixCorp Municipal Codes, Section iii, paragraph 18.)

The 6ixCorp K-12 curriculum prioritizes STEM fields, business, and AI Studies. The curriculum was developed by the 6ixCorp AI engine PedaGadget v. 98 and is streamlined to maximize academic achievement, competition, and stratification in order to produce a handful of highly skilled students that rise to the top through a series of standardized tests and a complex academic credit / deficit system. Top achievers are recruited to join 6ixCorp, and a position at the Corporation is held in the highest esteem in upper class society, although financial trading, software engineering, and landlording are also considered respected fields.

===Education in Middle Class Society===
Middle Class education is primarily administered through VR classroom environments linked to DrakePod coffin software. Students “meet” in virtual classrooms to complete various STEM puzzles and writing assignments. Writing-based assignments often require students to respond to a prompt, usually a question about how a particular marketing campaign or product prototype makes them feel, their assessment of its user-friendly design, etc. That data is then harvested and analyzed by 6ixCorp algorithms for product development purposes. Students are also assigned STEM puzzles where they have to work out solutions to engineering, science, and math problems. Their cognitive processing is closely tracked by the 6ixCorp MindMapper software, and that data is utilized to train, model and enhance 6ixCorp AI engine processing. Students who perform well on their puzzles are given Star Points that can be used to purchase virtual classroom customizations and longer recess breaks. Less successful students are deprived of customization options and are blocked from interacting with the other student Avatars in their VR classroom. Students who exhibit exceptional problem solving and expressive linguistic capacities are recruited to participate in the 6ixCorp Teacher Education Program.

===Education in Deviant Communities===
With limited access to screen-based technologies and paper media, education in deviant communities in the Borderlands and Croplands is largely community-based, relying on a loosely-organized network of elders, knowledge-keepers, oral historians, and scavenger librarians.
Elders are highly regarded as community knowledge-keepers because they had access to formal education before the mass evictions of 66. Elders self-organize mobile learning clinics, traveling to various neighborhoods throughout the Croplands to offer lectures and storytelling circles for youth in the area, and anyone else who wants to join – attendance is entirely voluntary. Elders share their knowledge on diverse fields depending on their expertise, including history, medicine, music, philosophy, mechanical engineering, and chemistry. Elders are accompanied by a group of 5 to 10 young people called Memory Keepers, usually children who are exceptionally gifted with memorization skills. These children can recite significant texts word-for-word, often by setting texts to music and are able to recite from specific passages on demand.

Practice-based education is also highly regarded in the Croplands, and young people rely on the guidance and mentorship of parents and community members to learn skills-based trades through apprenticeships. Adult farmers, hunters, scavengers, mechanics, and doctors are generally accompanied by young students who begin by assisting their mentors and eventually learn to practice independently.

==Anecdotes==
[[Abrar]]

[[Andy]]

[[Ben]]

[[Ilinca]]

Group 3

2024-11-30T20:58:09Z

99.247.16.84: /* Anecdotes */

Andy, Ben, Abrar, Ilinca

The City of Toronto, housing a population of 2.8 million, is currently organised via a tier society. As housing costs incrementally increased annually in the years since the financial crisis of 2008, 70% of the population was homeless by 2057. The interest group Property Owners of Toronto Collective (POTC) and tech megacorporation 6ixcorp partnered to make an affordable housing contract, the biggest housing contract in history. The following year, in 2058, DrakePod units connected to the Drake Intelligent Simulation System (DISS) were introduced as an affordable housing solution. Increasing civil unrest culminated in The Great Collapse of 2061, which was subsequently used as the rationale for the 6Barrier project that divided the city into three distinct areas : The Hub, the Borderlands and Cropland, separated by the Inner Six and Outer Six Border Walls. The separation was completed in 2064. A mass eviction of the unhoused 2066 established the populations of each section.

The Hub is the city centre, the most urban, developed and technologically advanced area of Toronto. The Borderlands, separated from The Hub by the Inner Six Border Wall, is less urbanized, with the space optimised for the larger population with the DrakePods. CropLand is mostly farmland and untouched by residential renovation projects. It is technologically bare, being populated by farmers and the Deviant class.

6ixCorp has a monopoly over all levels of government, and is funded by the Property Owners of Toronto Collective.

Lifestyle varies greatly by class. The upper class, confined to The Hub, lives luxuriously in extravagant condos. They have access to a variety of rich and nutritious food, imported directly from CropLand. They have access to AI-Human hybrid teachers that provide the highest calibre of education. The middle class, occupying the Borderlands, is almost entirely controlled by AI or simulated reality. The lifestyles of the Deviant class is entirely human-lead.

==History==

Beginning after the 2008 financial crisis, housing costs in Toronto increased by 9.8% year over year. As the 21st century progressed, an increasing percentage of the population was driven to live the streets and by 2057 Toronto reached 70% homelessness.

Toronto municipal politics at that time was dominated by an interest group called, “Property Owners of Toronto Collective” (POTC). They pressured the city council to clear the city of homeless encampments and in September of 2057 a state of emergency was declared. A $350 billion dollar emergency fund was tapped by city council and [[tech megacorporation 6ixcorp]] was given the biggest housing contract in history with a mandate to build affordable housing.

In April of 2058, condo buildings at Young and Eglinton began to be converted into DrakePod units. These single occupant units offered tenants enough space to sleep, consume calories, and link to the Drake Intelligent Simulation System (DISS) at an affordable rate.

From the spring of 2059 to early 2060 there was continued widespread civil unrest surrounding the implementation of the DrakePod program. Many of the unhoused people living in the city at the time argued that they were being forced to live in “prison cells” and that they were being “treated like cattle”.

In 2061, the unrest in the city reached a tipping point and the Property Owners Of Toronto Collective lobbied the city government to build a barrier to keep vagrants out of the city. City council voted unanimously to offer a contract to 6ixcorp and construction began in October of the same year. This period has been called “The Great Collapse”

6ixcorp began construction of the 6Barrier project which was completed in 2064. The barrier system consists of two electric fences in concentric semi-circle formation. The inner barrier called “The Inner Six” separates the inner city or “Hub” from the “Border Lands”. The Inner 6 runs from Bloor at the north, Bathurst on the West, and Church St. in the East. The Outer Six wall separates the border lands from the “Crop Lands”. It is heavily guarded by 6ixCorp defensive robots to defend against scavengers from outside of the city.

In 2066 a mass eviction campaign was implemented and 6ixCorp defensive robots carried out a mass eviction of the unhoused to the CropLand outside of Toronto city limits. Since the completion of the DrakePod housing project and Six Barrier, homelessness has dropped to 0% within Toronto city boundaries. There are, however, large encampments of unregistered people living outside of city limits who live off the grid.

==Geography==

Historically, Toronto covered a surface area of roughly 630 square kilometres, with a maximum east-west distance of 43 kilometres, and a maximum north-south distance of 21 kilometres. Since 2066, while the city’s total occupied space has remained the same, urbanisation greatly varies depending on the area. The city is divided into three distinct and separate areas: the city centre, colloquially known as “The Hub”, the Borderlands and CropLand. The Hub takes up 16.6 square kilometres, and its borders remain unchanged from that of the old Downtown sphere, though it was drastically reworked in the years after the Great Collapse of 2066. On the outskirts of The Hub, there are the Borderlands. This area, measuring 40.4 square kilometres, is less urbanised than The Hub. After the Great Collapse, much of the area has remained the same, spare three infrastructure building projects organised by 6ixCorps starting in 2058 and ending in 2066. The rest of the landmass of the old city of Toronto (573 square kilometres), named CropLand, is almost completely rural. Old infrastructure was completely bulldozed in 2061 and redesigned for resource exploitation.

===The Hub===

Though The Hub contains the smallest land mass out of the three sections of Toronto, it has been optimised to house as many people as possible. It is the area that has the highest density of skyscrapers in the city. While Toronto has always been relatively flat, 6ixcorps organised several flattening projects following the Great Collapse to accommodate for the optimised city layout. The Hub is designed according to the modernist architectural style, with 6ixcorps citing “the necessity to prioritise function over form, to embrace minimalism in these trying times [after the Great Collapse]”. As such, buildings are very minimally ornamented. Following complaints from the citizens that the area was “bland, sterile and depressing”, 6ixcorps organised “meaningful art initiatives” that were meant to “bring life back to our city, in a meaningful way”. Since the official start of the initiative in 2094, 98% of the buildings in The Hub have permanent advertising projections constantly running on one side. There are no dedicated green spaces on ground level, with all greenery confined to the roofs of the buildings. As a result, there are no naturally-occuring instances of wildlife. All animals present in The Hub are domesticated house pets, with the most common being the Super-Poof dog and cat breeds. The Hub has a strict border patrol that is manned by the military 24/7.

===The Borderlands===
In The Borderlands (area of approx. 22.2 kilometres squared), much of the city’s previous infrastructure has been allowed to remain. Around 85% of the buildings predate the Great Collapse, having undergone various renovation projects for modernization purposes in the time since. Such renovation projects consist of the integration of the DrakePods in every living quarter. The only completely modern structures are the 6ixcorps Associate Inc. building, which is the headquarters of the Borderlands Division of 6ixcorps, and the Outer6ix Fence, which separates The Borderlands and CropLand. The Outer6ix fence is heavily fortified, due to the area’s increasing problem with scavengers coming from CropLand. The Borderlands contains some green spaces in the form of pre-Collapse public parks, though they are no longer regularly maintained. All other aspects of The Borderlands mirror that of The Hub. As in The Hub, all non-human life consists of domesticated pets, among which are hound the Super-Poof dog and cat breeds, as well as the Regular Tabby Cat, native to The Borderlands.

===CropLands===

Once 6ixCorps established the borders of The Hub and the Borderlands following the Great Collapse, the remaining area was set to be converted into a space solely dedicated for resource exploitation. In 2061, the infrastructure in the area that now houses CropLand was almost completely bulldozed so as to optimise farm building. As such, there are no updated dedicated residential or urban areas designed by 6ixCorps. Any residential areas are abandoned and not maintained. Of the farms located in CropLand, 78% are specialised for growing produce, while the remaining 32% are livestock ranches. The animals raised in these farms are imported locally and internationally. As for the produce, while the first generation of non-indigenous crops were also imported, state-of-the-art greenhouses now allow for these plants to grow naturally in Toronto. Despite CropLand being the only region that was not designed for large-scale housing, it boasts the largest percent of the population [see “Demographics” section for more details]. This is because CropLand became the refuge for those who refused to integrate into the tier society when it was first introduced after the Great Collapse. The area is mostly flat, on account of the farms, but there are also large, dense pockets of greenery that cannot be found elsewhere in Toronto, as well as the small residential areas. The Deviants (those who fled to CropLand following the implementation of the 6ixCorps Societal Tier System) occupy this space. Many animals other than livestock have been recorded in the area: squirrels, rabbits, raccoons, foxes, coyotes, snakes, rodents, crows, eagles, hawks, pigeons are most commonly noted.

==Demographics==
{| class="wikitable"
|+ Population Distribution
|-
! Total Population !! The Hub !! The Borderlands !! Croplands
|-
| '''2.8 million''' || 308,000 || 592,000 || 1,540,000

|}

==Politics==

Toronto politics in 2089 are dominated by 6ixCorp and the Property Owners of Toronto Collective (POTC).

The transition from a democratically elected city council occurred in the mid 21st century when homelessness reached it's peak. Only those with a fixed address were able to vote in municipal elections and so wealthy homeowners were able to lobby as a group and seize all 25 seats in the city council. The POTC lead council then turned over the majority of the city budget to 6Corp and gave them a mandate to resolve homelessness.

6ixCorp executes all major government functions: 6Corp defensive robots maintain law and order within the city, the Bix Barrier acts as a border where goods are allowed to enter and vagrants are kept out; Drake Pods are the preferred solution to public housing in the Toronto; education for the middle class is carried out through DISS.

DISS is also used to monitor the thoughts and behaviors of the middle classes so as to avoid the type of widespread civil unrest that was so common in the 2060s.

6ixcorp receives its mandate and funding from the POTC lead city council and then devises and implements the specific strategies for city improvement.

==Society==
There are three major class groups in and around Toronto:

The Upper class maintains political power in the city council through their lobby group Property Owners of Toronto Collective (POTC). They were able to keep their houses through the financial crisis of the 2050s and the upheaval of the 2070s and as homeowners with voting rights, were able to control the City Council. The primary employer for the upper class is 6ixCorp. The middle class, or renter class, of Toronto lives in DrakePods. The majority of time is spent within DISS and make up %85 of Toronto City residents. The lower classes, deemed "the deviants" were evicted from the city in 2066 and live outside of the 6ix Barrier. There numbers are unknow since they do not interact with DISS.

==Technology==
As the 21st Century draws to a close, technology plays a crucial role as the defining maker of class divisions in Toronto. The access to and use of technology vary greatly among the city's social classes, reflecting and reinforcing existing inequalities. While the wealthiest residents enjoy unparalleled technological advancements, the middle class experiences a more constrained and controlled interaction with technology, and the poorest citizens rely on salvaged and outdated devices for basic survival.

===Upper Class===
The Upper Class (also known as the Ultra-Rich) live in luxury, seamlessly merging human ingenuity with the latest cutting-edge technology. They inhabit giant mansions equipped with AI systems that anticipate every human need, from mood-based room lightning to personalised medical diagnostics. They have access to their own “auto-doc” system that cures and provides instant remedy to various sickness and bone reparation. Neural implants grant direct brain-to-network connection, enabling instant communications with other neural implant users as well as cognitive enhancements. For the wealthy, technology is a tool of indulgence and ego.

===Middle Class===
The Middle Class by contrast, experiences technology as a double-edged sword. Cramped within closed spaces in condos and apartments which will be known as DrakePods- a literally pod with high-tech modular units. In the Pod, the user will be able to access the digital world through an immersive VR “Coffin” system that they have to “sleep” in order to access the virtual world. These VR coffins simulate tailored realities, allowing them to work, shop, and “socialise” within the confines of their pods. However, this technology isn't perfect; bugs and glitches frequently disrupt their lives, and updates are slow and costly. Furthermore, DrakePods serves as a Data collecting device in order to attainmore knowledge on the Human consciousness by monitoring activities. The Corporation, 6ixCorp, governs their daily schedules, assigning tasks and monitoring their performance system through the “coffin”. A social credit point system is implemented in the UI interface of the Coffin to keep count of Completed/Incompleted tasks, Digitizied “social media” profile page, breached offenses and more. The middle class is more servant than master to their devices.

[[File:Drakepod.jpg|thumb|right|An example of the VR Coffin Unit provided by 6ixCorp]]

===Lower Class===
For the lower class (also classified as the Deviants in society), technology is a distant dream. Living in the decaying remnants of Toronto’s outskirts, they rely on salvaged devices such as Old smartphones and other outdated devices. Smartphones are used as communal tools for organising resources and sharing knowledge. Ingenious “scrappers” dismantle the acquired tech from “scavengers” to build makeshift power sources as communication devices. For the Deviants, technology serves as a lifeline rather than a luxury. The deviants main form of communications is through genuine human interactions.

==Food==
Food in the late 21st century reflects the stark social and economic divisions within Toronto. Access to food and the quality of meals vary significantly across classes, symbolizing the growing disparity in wealth and resources. While the wealthy indulge in luxurious dining experiences powered by advanced technology, the middle class relies on artificial and convenient alternatives, and the lower class struggles to survive with limited and improvised resources.

===Upper Class===
The Elites have access to enjoy luxurious gourmet meals crafted from authentic, organic ingredients. Gourmet meals are crafted by AI robo-chefs are programmed with centuries of culinary knowledge and fine-tuned to individual tastes. AI butlers monitor biometric feed to adjust meal temperature, portion size, and seasoning in real-time, ensuring that every bite is near perfection. Meat from various animals are scarce in the late 21st century. Animals and crops are grown in pristine farms or imported from distant biodomes located in the CropLands. Exclusive dining clubs and private tasting events are also common, where only the Upper Class can showcase their AI robo-chefs innovations. For the wealthy, food is an art form and a symbol of status and gluttony.

[[File:Robo-Chef.jpg|thumb|left|6ixChef-89: 6ixCorp's advanced robot-chef, blending AI precision and gourmet excellence for the ultra-rich in 2089.]]

===Middle Class===
The Middle-Class has adapted to artificial sustenance, relying heavily on 3D printed meals. These printed meals would mimic most traditional dishes but will often times lack the depth of flavour and nutrition of organic ingredients. For convenience's sake, many people from the middle class opt for nutrient pills that compress an entire day's calorie intake into a single dose. These pills could be brought from various convenience stores or delivered by auto-taxis that are assigned by 6ixCorp to deliver to various DrakePods. Access to fresh food is rare and is based on the amount of cyber points accumulated from accomplishing daily tasks assigned by 6ixCorp by stepping into the coffin.

[[File:6ixCorp Pills.png|thumb|right|Nutrient pills by 6ixCorp]]

===Lower Class===
The Lower Class scrape by whatever they can grow or forage. Living outside the 6ixbarrier also, they cultivate small collaborative gardens and hunt or fish when possible. Most of the meals are simple, share community, and is often insufficient to feed everyone. The lack of proper access to food results in a new system of currency based on “seeds” that are traded in order to buy food. No scrap goes to waste. Unlike the Upper class, whose meal reflects excess and gluttony, food is a testament to survival against all odds and appreciation of what mother nature has bestowed upon them. Food preparation and communal meals serve as a reminder of the strength of the human spirit. In rare moments of abundance, the community celebrates with small feasts, where very person contributes a share of their resources.

==Education==

===Education in Upper Class society===
Education in Upper Class 6ixCorp society is administered by an elite squadron of AI-human hybrid teachers. The Teacher-AI interface is designed to augment the aptitudes of teachers, enabling teachers to perform highly complex and accurate calculations at thousands of times the rate of non-augmented human specimens. The 6ixCorp teacher training program lasts 2-3 weeks, involving a surgical component to implant the AI interface in the candidates brain, as well as 200 hours of “downloading” in which teachers are linked to all existing AI-powered knowledge libraries. Certain knowledge categories are bypassed by the DISS AI interface and cognitively inaccessible to TCs, including the knowledge categories of critical thinking and philosophy – categories deemed by the 6ixCorp Department of Education to be “detrimental to the safety and well-being of 6ixCorp society.” (6ixCorp Municipal Codes, Section iii, paragraph 18.)

The 6ixCorp K-12 curriculum prioritizes STEM fields, business, and AI Studies. The curriculum was developed by the 6ixCorp AI engine PedaGadget v. 98 and is streamlined to maximize academic achievement, competition, and stratification in order to produce a handful of highly skilled students that rise to the top through a series of standardized tests and a complex academic credit / deficit system. Top achievers are recruited to join 6ixCorp, and a position at the Corporation is held in the highest esteem in upper class society, although financial trading, software engineering, and landlording are also considered respected fields.

===Education in Middle Class Society===
Middle Class education is primarily administered through VR classroom environments linked to DrakePod coffin software. Students “meet” in virtual classrooms to complete various STEM puzzles and writing assignments. Writing-based assignments often require students to respond to a prompt, usually a question about how a particular marketing campaign or product prototype makes them feel, their assessment of its user-friendly design, etc. That data is then harvested and analyzed by 6ixCorp algorithms for product development purposes. Students are also assigned STEM puzzles where they have to work out solutions to engineering, science, and math problems. Their cognitive processing is closely tracked by the 6ixCorp MindMapper software, and that data is utilized to train, model and enhance 6ixCorp AI engine processing. Students who perform well on their puzzles are given Star Points that can be used to purchase virtual classroom customizations and longer recess breaks. Less successful students are deprived of customization options and are blocked from interacting with the other student Avatars in their VR classroom. Students who exhibit exceptional problem solving and expressive linguistic capacities are recruited to participate in the 6ixCorp Teacher Education Program.

===Education in Deviant Communities===
With limited access to screen-based technologies and paper media, education in deviant communities in the Borderlands and Croplands is largely community-based, relying on a loosely-organized network of elders, knowledge-keepers, oral historians, and scavenger librarians.
Elders are highly regarded as community knowledge-keepers because they had access to formal education before the mass evictions of 66. Elders self-organize mobile learning clinics, traveling to various neighborhoods throughout the Croplands to offer lectures and storytelling circles for youth in the area, and anyone else who wants to join – attendance is entirely voluntary. Elders share their knowledge on diverse fields depending on their expertise, including history, medicine, music, philosophy, mechanical engineering, and chemistry. Elders are accompanied by a group of 5 to 10 young people called Memory Keepers, usually children who are exceptionally gifted with memorization skills. These children can recite significant texts word-for-word, often by setting texts to music and are able to recite from specific passages on demand.

Practice-based education is also highly regarded in the Croplands, and young people rely on the guidance and mentorship of parents and community members to learn skills-based trades through apprenticeships. Adult farmers, hunters, scavengers, mechanics, and doctors are generally accompanied by young students who begin by assisting their mentors and eventually learn to practice independently.

==Anecdotes==
[[Abrar]]
[[Andy]]
[[Ben]]
[[Ilinca]]

Group 3

2024-11-30T20:57:30Z

99.247.16.84:

Andy, Ben, Abrar, Ilinca

The City of Toronto, housing a population of 2.8 million, is currently organised via a tier society. As housing costs incrementally increased annually in the years since the financial crisis of 2008, 70% of the population was homeless by 2057. The interest group Property Owners of Toronto Collective (POTC) and tech megacorporation 6ixcorp partnered to make an affordable housing contract, the biggest housing contract in history. The following year, in 2058, DrakePod units connected to the Drake Intelligent Simulation System (DISS) were introduced as an affordable housing solution. Increasing civil unrest culminated in The Great Collapse of 2061, which was subsequently used as the rationale for the 6Barrier project that divided the city into three distinct areas : The Hub, the Borderlands and Cropland, separated by the Inner Six and Outer Six Border Walls. The separation was completed in 2064. A mass eviction of the unhoused 2066 established the populations of each section.

The Hub is the city centre, the most urban, developed and technologically advanced area of Toronto. The Borderlands, separated from The Hub by the Inner Six Border Wall, is less urbanized, with the space optimised for the larger population with the DrakePods. CropLand is mostly farmland and untouched by residential renovation projects. It is technologically bare, being populated by farmers and the Deviant class.

6ixCorp has a monopoly over all levels of government, and is funded by the Property Owners of Toronto Collective.

Lifestyle varies greatly by class. The upper class, confined to The Hub, lives luxuriously in extravagant condos. They have access to a variety of rich and nutritious food, imported directly from CropLand. They have access to AI-Human hybrid teachers that provide the highest calibre of education. The middle class, occupying the Borderlands, is almost entirely controlled by AI or simulated reality. The lifestyles of the Deviant class is entirely human-lead.

==History==

Beginning after the 2008 financial crisis, housing costs in Toronto increased by 9.8% year over year. As the 21st century progressed, an increasing percentage of the population was driven to live the streets and by 2057 Toronto reached 70% homelessness.

Toronto municipal politics at that time was dominated by an interest group called, “Property Owners of Toronto Collective” (POTC). They pressured the city council to clear the city of homeless encampments and in September of 2057 a state of emergency was declared. A $350 billion dollar emergency fund was tapped by city council and [[tech megacorporation 6ixcorp]] was given the biggest housing contract in history with a mandate to build affordable housing.

In April of 2058, condo buildings at Young and Eglinton began to be converted into DrakePod units. These single occupant units offered tenants enough space to sleep, consume calories, and link to the Drake Intelligent Simulation System (DISS) at an affordable rate.

From the spring of 2059 to early 2060 there was continued widespread civil unrest surrounding the implementation of the DrakePod program. Many of the unhoused people living in the city at the time argued that they were being forced to live in “prison cells” and that they were being “treated like cattle”.

In 2061, the unrest in the city reached a tipping point and the Property Owners Of Toronto Collective lobbied the city government to build a barrier to keep vagrants out of the city. City council voted unanimously to offer a contract to 6ixcorp and construction began in October of the same year. This period has been called “The Great Collapse”

6ixcorp began construction of the 6Barrier project which was completed in 2064. The barrier system consists of two electric fences in concentric semi-circle formation. The inner barrier called “The Inner Six” separates the inner city or “Hub” from the “Border Lands”. The Inner 6 runs from Bloor at the north, Bathurst on the West, and Church St. in the East. The Outer Six wall separates the border lands from the “Crop Lands”. It is heavily guarded by 6ixCorp defensive robots to defend against scavengers from outside of the city.

In 2066 a mass eviction campaign was implemented and 6ixCorp defensive robots carried out a mass eviction of the unhoused to the CropLand outside of Toronto city limits. Since the completion of the DrakePod housing project and Six Barrier, homelessness has dropped to 0% within Toronto city boundaries. There are, however, large encampments of unregistered people living outside of city limits who live off the grid.

==Geography==

Historically, Toronto covered a surface area of roughly 630 square kilometres, with a maximum east-west distance of 43 kilometres, and a maximum north-south distance of 21 kilometres. Since 2066, while the city’s total occupied space has remained the same, urbanisation greatly varies depending on the area. The city is divided into three distinct and separate areas: the city centre, colloquially known as “The Hub”, the Borderlands and CropLand. The Hub takes up 16.6 square kilometres, and its borders remain unchanged from that of the old Downtown sphere, though it was drastically reworked in the years after the Great Collapse of 2066. On the outskirts of The Hub, there are the Borderlands. This area, measuring 40.4 square kilometres, is less urbanised than The Hub. After the Great Collapse, much of the area has remained the same, spare three infrastructure building projects organised by 6ixCorps starting in 2058 and ending in 2066. The rest of the landmass of the old city of Toronto (573 square kilometres), named CropLand, is almost completely rural. Old infrastructure was completely bulldozed in 2061 and redesigned for resource exploitation.

===The Hub===

Though The Hub contains the smallest land mass out of the three sections of Toronto, it has been optimised to house as many people as possible. It is the area that has the highest density of skyscrapers in the city. While Toronto has always been relatively flat, 6ixcorps organised several flattening projects following the Great Collapse to accommodate for the optimised city layout. The Hub is designed according to the modernist architectural style, with 6ixcorps citing “the necessity to prioritise function over form, to embrace minimalism in these trying times [after the Great Collapse]”. As such, buildings are very minimally ornamented. Following complaints from the citizens that the area was “bland, sterile and depressing”, 6ixcorps organised “meaningful art initiatives” that were meant to “bring life back to our city, in a meaningful way”. Since the official start of the initiative in 2094, 98% of the buildings in The Hub have permanent advertising projections constantly running on one side. There are no dedicated green spaces on ground level, with all greenery confined to the roofs of the buildings. As a result, there are no naturally-occuring instances of wildlife. All animals present in The Hub are domesticated house pets, with the most common being the Super-Poof dog and cat breeds. The Hub has a strict border patrol that is manned by the military 24/7.

===The Borderlands===
In The Borderlands (area of approx. 22.2 kilometres squared), much of the city’s previous infrastructure has been allowed to remain. Around 85% of the buildings predate the Great Collapse, having undergone various renovation projects for modernization purposes in the time since. Such renovation projects consist of the integration of the DrakePods in every living quarter. The only completely modern structures are the 6ixcorps Associate Inc. building, which is the headquarters of the Borderlands Division of 6ixcorps, and the Outer6ix Fence, which separates The Borderlands and CropLand. The Outer6ix fence is heavily fortified, due to the area’s increasing problem with scavengers coming from CropLand. The Borderlands contains some green spaces in the form of pre-Collapse public parks, though they are no longer regularly maintained. All other aspects of The Borderlands mirror that of The Hub. As in The Hub, all non-human life consists of domesticated pets, among which are hound the Super-Poof dog and cat breeds, as well as the Regular Tabby Cat, native to The Borderlands.

===CropLands===

Once 6ixCorps established the borders of The Hub and the Borderlands following the Great Collapse, the remaining area was set to be converted into a space solely dedicated for resource exploitation. In 2061, the infrastructure in the area that now houses CropLand was almost completely bulldozed so as to optimise farm building. As such, there are no updated dedicated residential or urban areas designed by 6ixCorps. Any residential areas are abandoned and not maintained. Of the farms located in CropLand, 78% are specialised for growing produce, while the remaining 32% are livestock ranches. The animals raised in these farms are imported locally and internationally. As for the produce, while the first generation of non-indigenous crops were also imported, state-of-the-art greenhouses now allow for these plants to grow naturally in Toronto. Despite CropLand being the only region that was not designed for large-scale housing, it boasts the largest percent of the population [see “Demographics” section for more details]. This is because CropLand became the refuge for those who refused to integrate into the tier society when it was first introduced after the Great Collapse. The area is mostly flat, on account of the farms, but there are also large, dense pockets of greenery that cannot be found elsewhere in Toronto, as well as the small residential areas. The Deviants (those who fled to CropLand following the implementation of the 6ixCorps Societal Tier System) occupy this space. Many animals other than livestock have been recorded in the area: squirrels, rabbits, raccoons, foxes, coyotes, snakes, rodents, crows, eagles, hawks, pigeons are most commonly noted.

==Demographics==
{| class="wikitable"
|+ Population Distribution
|-
! Total Population !! The Hub !! The Borderlands !! Croplands
|-
| '''2.8 million''' || 308,000 || 592,000 || 1,540,000

|}

==Politics==

Toronto politics in 2089 are dominated by 6ixCorp and the Property Owners of Toronto Collective (POTC).

The transition from a democratically elected city council occurred in the mid 21st century when homelessness reached it's peak. Only those with a fixed address were able to vote in municipal elections and so wealthy homeowners were able to lobby as a group and seize all 25 seats in the city council. The POTC lead council then turned over the majority of the city budget to 6Corp and gave them a mandate to resolve homelessness.

6ixCorp executes all major government functions: 6Corp defensive robots maintain law and order within the city, the Bix Barrier acts as a border where goods are allowed to enter and vagrants are kept out; Drake Pods are the preferred solution to public housing in the Toronto; education for the middle class is carried out through DISS.

DISS is also used to monitor the thoughts and behaviors of the middle classes so as to avoid the type of widespread civil unrest that was so common in the 2060s.

6ixcorp receives its mandate and funding from the POTC lead city council and then devises and implements the specific strategies for city improvement.

==Society==
There are three major class groups in and around Toronto:

The Upper class maintains political power in the city council through their lobby group Property Owners of Toronto Collective (POTC). They were able to keep their houses through the financial crisis of the 2050s and the upheaval of the 2070s and as homeowners with voting rights, were able to control the City Council. The primary employer for the upper class is 6ixCorp. The middle class, or renter class, of Toronto lives in DrakePods. The majority of time is spent within DISS and make up %85 of Toronto City residents. The lower classes, deemed "the deviants" were evicted from the city in 2066 and live outside of the 6ix Barrier. There numbers are unknow since they do not interact with DISS.

==Technology==
As the 21st Century draws to a close, technology plays a crucial role as the defining maker of class divisions in Toronto. The access to and use of technology vary greatly among the city's social classes, reflecting and reinforcing existing inequalities. While the wealthiest residents enjoy unparalleled technological advancements, the middle class experiences a more constrained and controlled interaction with technology, and the poorest citizens rely on salvaged and outdated devices for basic survival.

===Upper Class===
The Upper Class (also known as the Ultra-Rich) live in luxury, seamlessly merging human ingenuity with the latest cutting-edge technology. They inhabit giant mansions equipped with AI systems that anticipate every human need, from mood-based room lightning to personalised medical diagnostics. They have access to their own “auto-doc” system that cures and provides instant remedy to various sickness and bone reparation. Neural implants grant direct brain-to-network connection, enabling instant communications with other neural implant users as well as cognitive enhancements. For the wealthy, technology is a tool of indulgence and ego.

===Middle Class===
The Middle Class by contrast, experiences technology as a double-edged sword. Cramped within closed spaces in condos and apartments which will be known as DrakePods- a literally pod with high-tech modular units. In the Pod, the user will be able to access the digital world through an immersive VR “Coffin” system that they have to “sleep” in order to access the virtual world. These VR coffins simulate tailored realities, allowing them to work, shop, and “socialise” within the confines of their pods. However, this technology isn't perfect; bugs and glitches frequently disrupt their lives, and updates are slow and costly. Furthermore, DrakePods serves as a Data collecting device in order to attainmore knowledge on the Human consciousness by monitoring activities. The Corporation, 6ixCorp, governs their daily schedules, assigning tasks and monitoring their performance system through the “coffin”. A social credit point system is implemented in the UI interface of the Coffin to keep count of Completed/Incompleted tasks, Digitizied “social media” profile page, breached offenses and more. The middle class is more servant than master to their devices.

[[File:Drakepod.jpg|thumb|right|An example of the VR Coffin Unit provided by 6ixCorp]]

===Lower Class===
For the lower class (also classified as the Deviants in society), technology is a distant dream. Living in the decaying remnants of Toronto’s outskirts, they rely on salvaged devices such as Old smartphones and other outdated devices. Smartphones are used as communal tools for organising resources and sharing knowledge. Ingenious “scrappers” dismantle the acquired tech from “scavengers” to build makeshift power sources as communication devices. For the Deviants, technology serves as a lifeline rather than a luxury. The deviants main form of communications is through genuine human interactions.

==Food==
Food in the late 21st century reflects the stark social and economic divisions within Toronto. Access to food and the quality of meals vary significantly across classes, symbolizing the growing disparity in wealth and resources. While the wealthy indulge in luxurious dining experiences powered by advanced technology, the middle class relies on artificial and convenient alternatives, and the lower class struggles to survive with limited and improvised resources.

===Upper Class===
The Elites have access to enjoy luxurious gourmet meals crafted from authentic, organic ingredients. Gourmet meals are crafted by AI robo-chefs are programmed with centuries of culinary knowledge and fine-tuned to individual tastes. AI butlers monitor biometric feed to adjust meal temperature, portion size, and seasoning in real-time, ensuring that every bite is near perfection. Meat from various animals are scarce in the late 21st century. Animals and crops are grown in pristine farms or imported from distant biodomes located in the CropLands. Exclusive dining clubs and private tasting events are also common, where only the Upper Class can showcase their AI robo-chefs innovations. For the wealthy, food is an art form and a symbol of status and gluttony.

[[File:Robo-Chef.jpg|thumb|left|6ixChef-89: 6ixCorp's advanced robot-chef, blending AI precision and gourmet excellence for the ultra-rich in 2089.]]

===Middle Class===
The Middle-Class has adapted to artificial sustenance, relying heavily on 3D printed meals. These printed meals would mimic most traditional dishes but will often times lack the depth of flavour and nutrition of organic ingredients. For convenience's sake, many people from the middle class opt for nutrient pills that compress an entire day's calorie intake into a single dose. These pills could be brought from various convenience stores or delivered by auto-taxis that are assigned by 6ixCorp to deliver to various DrakePods. Access to fresh food is rare and is based on the amount of cyber points accumulated from accomplishing daily tasks assigned by 6ixCorp by stepping into the coffin.

[[File:6ixCorp Pills.png|thumb|right|Nutrient pills by 6ixCorp]]

===Lower Class===
The Lower Class scrape by whatever they can grow or forage. Living outside the 6ixbarrier also, they cultivate small collaborative gardens and hunt or fish when possible. Most of the meals are simple, share community, and is often insufficient to feed everyone. The lack of proper access to food results in a new system of currency based on “seeds” that are traded in order to buy food. No scrap goes to waste. Unlike the Upper class, whose meal reflects excess and gluttony, food is a testament to survival against all odds and appreciation of what mother nature has bestowed upon them. Food preparation and communal meals serve as a reminder of the strength of the human spirit. In rare moments of abundance, the community celebrates with small feasts, where very person contributes a share of their resources.

==Education==

===Education in Upper Class society===
Education in Upper Class 6ixCorp society is administered by an elite squadron of AI-human hybrid teachers. The Teacher-AI interface is designed to augment the aptitudes of teachers, enabling teachers to perform highly complex and accurate calculations at thousands of times the rate of non-augmented human specimens. The 6ixCorp teacher training program lasts 2-3 weeks, involving a surgical component to implant the AI interface in the candidates brain, as well as 200 hours of “downloading” in which teachers are linked to all existing AI-powered knowledge libraries. Certain knowledge categories are bypassed by the DISS AI interface and cognitively inaccessible to TCs, including the knowledge categories of critical thinking and philosophy – categories deemed by the 6ixCorp Department of Education to be “detrimental to the safety and well-being of 6ixCorp society.” (6ixCorp Municipal Codes, Section iii, paragraph 18.)

The 6ixCorp K-12 curriculum prioritizes STEM fields, business, and AI Studies. The curriculum was developed by the 6ixCorp AI engine PedaGadget v. 98 and is streamlined to maximize academic achievement, competition, and stratification in order to produce a handful of highly skilled students that rise to the top through a series of standardized tests and a complex academic credit / deficit system. Top achievers are recruited to join 6ixCorp, and a position at the Corporation is held in the highest esteem in upper class society, although financial trading, software engineering, and landlording are also considered respected fields.

===Education in Middle Class Society===
Middle Class education is primarily administered through VR classroom environments linked to DrakePod coffin software. Students “meet” in virtual classrooms to complete various STEM puzzles and writing assignments. Writing-based assignments often require students to respond to a prompt, usually a question about how a particular marketing campaign or product prototype makes them feel, their assessment of its user-friendly design, etc. That data is then harvested and analyzed by 6ixCorp algorithms for product development purposes. Students are also assigned STEM puzzles where they have to work out solutions to engineering, science, and math problems. Their cognitive processing is closely tracked by the 6ixCorp MindMapper software, and that data is utilized to train, model and enhance 6ixCorp AI engine processing. Students who perform well on their puzzles are given Star Points that can be used to purchase virtual classroom customizations and longer recess breaks. Less successful students are deprived of customization options and are blocked from interacting with the other student Avatars in their VR classroom. Students who exhibit exceptional problem solving and expressive linguistic capacities are recruited to participate in the 6ixCorp Teacher Education Program.

===Education in Deviant Communities===
With limited access to screen-based technologies and paper media, education in deviant communities in the Borderlands and Croplands is largely community-based, relying on a loosely-organized network of elders, knowledge-keepers, oral historians, and scavenger librarians.
Elders are highly regarded as community knowledge-keepers because they had access to formal education before the mass evictions of 66. Elders self-organize mobile learning clinics, traveling to various neighborhoods throughout the Croplands to offer lectures and storytelling circles for youth in the area, and anyone else who wants to join – attendance is entirely voluntary. Elders share their knowledge on diverse fields depending on their expertise, including history, medicine, music, philosophy, mechanical engineering, and chemistry. Elders are accompanied by a group of 5 to 10 young people called Memory Keepers, usually children who are exceptionally gifted with memorization skills. These children can recite significant texts word-for-word, often by setting texts to music and are able to recite from specific passages on demand.

Practice-based education is also highly regarded in the Croplands, and young people rely on the guidance and mentorship of parents and community members to learn skills-based trades through apprenticeships. Adult farmers, hunters, scavengers, mechanics, and doctors are generally accompanied by young students who begin by assisting their mentors and eventually learn to practice independently.

==Anecdotes==
[Abrar]
[Andy]
[Ben]
[Ilinca]

Group 3

2024-11-28T01:51:16Z

99.247.16.84: /* The Borderlands */

Andy, Ben, Abrar, Ilinca

The City of Toronto, housing a population of 2.8 million, is currently organised via a tier society. As housing costs incrementally increased annually in the years since the financial crisis of 2008, 70% of the population was homeless by 2057. The interest group Property Owners of Toronto Collective (POTC) and tech megacorporation 6ixcorp partnered to make an affordable housing contract, the biggest housing contract in history. The following year, in 2058, DrakePod units connected to the Drake Intelligent Simulation System (DISS) were introduced as an affordable housing solution. Increasing civil unrest culminated in The Great Collapse of 2061, which was subsequently used as the rationale for the 6Barrier project that divided the city into three distinct areas : The Hub, the Borderlands and Cropland, separated by the Inner Six and Outer Six Border Walls. The separation was completed in 2064. A mass eviction of the unhoused 2066 established the populations of each section.

The Hub is the city centre, the most urban, developed and technologically advanced area of Toronto. The Borderlands, separated from The Hub by the Inner Six Border Wall, is less urbanized, with the space optimised for the larger population with the DrakePods. CropLand is mostly farmland and untouched by residential renovation projects. It is technologically bare, being populated by farmers and the Deviant class.

6ixCorp has a monopoly over all levels of government, and is funded by the Property Owners of Toronto Collective.

Lifestyle varies greatly by class. The upper class, confined to The Hub, lives luxuriously in extravagant condos. They have access to a variety of rich and nutritious food, imported directly from CropLand. They have access to AI-Human hybrid teachers that provide the highest calibre of education. The middle class, occupying the Borderlands, is almost entirely controlled by AI or simulated reality. The lifestyles of the Deviant class is entirely human-lead.

==History==

Beginning after the 2008 financial crisis, housing costs in Toronto increased by 9.8% year over year. As the 21st century progressed, an increasing percentage of the population was driven to live the streets and by 2057 Toronto reached 70% homelessness.

Toronto municipal politics at that time was dominated by an interest group called, “Property Owners of Toronto Collective” (POTC). They pressured the city council to clear the city of homeless encampments and in September of 2057 a state of emergency was declared. A $350 billion dollar emergency fund was tapped by city council and [[tech megacorporation 6ixcorp]] was given the biggest housing contract in history with a mandate to build affordable housing.

In April of 2058, condo buildings at Young and Eglinton began to be converted into DrakePod units. These single occupant units offered tenants enough space to sleep, consume calories, and link to the Drake Intelligent Simulation System (DISS) at an affordable rate.

From the spring of 2059 to early 2060 there was continued widespread civil unrest surrounding the implementation of the DrakePod program. Many of the unhoused people living in the city at the time argued that they were being forced to live in “prison cells” and that they were being “treated like cattle”.

In 2061, the unrest in the city reached a tipping point and the Property Owners Of Toronto Collective lobbied the city government to build a barrier to keep vagrants out of the city. City council voted unanimously to offer a contract to 6ixcorp and construction began in October of the same year. This period has been called “The Great Collapse”

6ixcorp began construction of the 6Barrier project which was completed in 2064. The barrier system consists of two electric fences in concentric semi-circle formation. The inner barrier called “The Inner Six” separates the inner city or “Hub” from the “Border Lands”. The Inner 6 runs from Bloor at the north, Bathurst on the West, and Church St. in the East. The Outer Six wall separates the border lands from the “Crop Lands”. It is heavily guarded by 6ixCorp defensive robots to defend against scavengers from outside of the city.

In 2066 a mass eviction campaign was implemented and 6ixCorp defensive robots carried out a mass eviction of the unhoused to the CropLand outside of Toronto city limits. Since the completion of the DrakePod housing project and Six Barrier, homelessness has dropped to 0% within Toronto city boundaries. There are, however, large encampments of unregistered people living outside of city limits who live off the grid.

==Geography==

Historically, Toronto covered a surface area of roughly 630 square kilometres, with a maximum east-west distance of 43 kilometres, and a maximum north-south distance of 21 kilometres. Since 2066, while the city’s total occupied space has remained the same, urbanisation greatly varies depending on the area. The city is divided into three distinct and separate areas: the city centre, colloquially known as “The Hub”, the Borderlands and CropLand. The Hub takes up 16.6 square kilometres, and its borders remain unchanged from that of the old Downtown sphere, though it was drastically reworked in the years after the Great Collapse of 2066. On the outskirts of The Hub, there are the Borderlands. This area, measuring 40.4 square kilometres, is less urbanised than The Hub. After the Great Collapse, much of the area has remained the same, spare three infrastructure building projects organised by 6ixCorps starting in 2058 and ending in 2066. The rest of the landmass of the old city of Toronto (573 square kilometres), named CropLand, is almost completely rural. Old infrastructure was completely bulldozed in 2061 and redesigned for resource exploitation.

===The Hub===

Though The Hub contains the smallest land mass out of the three sections of Toronto, it has been optimised to house as many people as possible. It is the area that has the highest density of skyscrapers in the city. While Toronto has always been relatively flat, 6ixcorps organised several flattening projects following the Great Collapse to accommodate for the optimised city layout. The Hub is designed according to the modernist architectural style, with 6ixcorps citing “the necessity to prioritise function over form, to embrace minimalism in these trying times [after the Great Collapse]”. As such, buildings are very minimally ornamented. Following complaints from the citizens that the area was “bland, sterile and depressing”, 6ixcorps organised “meaningful art initiatives” that were meant to “bring life back to our city, in a meaningful way”. Since the official start of the initiative in 2094, 98% of the buildings in The Hub have permanent advertising projections constantly running on one side. There are no dedicated green spaces on ground level, with all greenery confined to the roofs of the buildings. As a result, there are no naturally-occuring instances of wildlife. All animals present in The Hub are domesticated house pets, with the most common being the Super-Poof dog and cat breeds. The Hub has a strict border patrol that is manned by the military 24/7.

===The Borderlands===
In The Borderlands (area of approx. 22.2 kilometres squared), much of the city’s previous infrastructure has been allowed to remain. Around 85% of the buildings predate the Great Collapse, having undergone various renovation projects for modernization purposes in the time since. Such renovation projects consist of the integration of the DrakePods in every living quarter. The only completely modern structures are the 6ixcorps Associate Inc. building, which is the headquarters of the Borderlands Division of 6ixcorps, and the Outer6ix Fence, which separates The Borderlands and CropLand. The Outer6ix fence is heavily fortified, due to the area’s increasing problem with scavengers coming from CropLand. The Borderlands contains some green spaces in the form of pre-Collapse public parks, though they are no longer regularly maintained. All other aspects of The Borderlands mirror that of The Hub. As in The Hub, all non-human life consists of domesticated pets, among which are hound the Super-Poof dog and cat breeds, as well as the Regular Tabby Cat, native to The Borderlands.

===CropLands===

Once 6ixCorps established the borders of The Hub and the Borderlands following the Great Collapse, the remaining area was set to be converted into a space solely dedicated for resource exploitation. In 2061, the infrastructure in the area that now houses CropLand was almost completely bulldozed so as to optimise farm building. As such, there are no updated dedicated residential or urban areas designed by 6ixCorps. Any residential areas are abandoned and not maintained. Of the farms located in CropLand, 78% are specialised for growing produce, while the remaining 32% are livestock ranches. The animals raised in these farms are imported locally and internationally. As for the produce, while the first generation of non-indigenous crops were also imported, state-of-the-art greenhouses now allow for these plants to grow naturally in Toronto. Despite CropLand being the only region that was not designed for large-scale housing, it boasts the largest percent of the population [see “Demographics” section for more details]. This is because CropLand became the refuge for those who refused to integrate into the tier society when it was first introduced after the Great Collapse. The area is mostly flat, on account of the farms, but there are also large, dense pockets of greenery that cannot be found elsewhere in Toronto, as well as the small residential areas. The Deviants (those who fled to CropLand following the implementation of the 6ixCorps Societal Tier System) occupy this space. Many animals other than livestock have been recorded in the area: squirrels, rabbits, raccoons, foxes, coyotes, snakes, rodents, crows, eagles, hawks, pigeons are most commonly noted.

==Demographics==
{| class="wikitable"
|+ Population Distribution
|-
! Total Population !! The Hub !! The Borderlands !! Croplands
|-
| '''2.8 million''' || 308,000 || 592,000 || 1,540,000

|}

==Politics==

Toronto politics in 2089 are dominated by 6ixCorp and the Property Owners of Toronto Collective (POTC).

The transition from a democratically elected city council occurred in the mid 21st century when homelessness reached it's peak. Only those with a fixed address were able to vote in municipal elections and so wealthy homeowners were able to lobby as a group and seize all 25 seats in the city council. The POTC lead council then turned over the majority of the city budget to 6Corp and gave them a mandate to resolve homelessness.

6ixCorp executes all major government functions: 6Corp defensive robots maintain law and order within the city, the Bix Barrier acts as a border where goods are allowed to enter and vagrants are kept out; Drake Pods are the preferred solution to public housing in the Toronto; education for the middle class is carried out through DISS.

DISS is also used to monitor the thoughts and behaviors of the middle classes so as to avoid the type of widespread civil unrest that was so common in the 2060s.

6ixcorp receives its mandate and funding from the POTC lead city council and then devises and implements the specific strategies for city improvement.

==Society==
There are three major class groups in and around Toronto:

The Upper class maintains political power in the city council through their lobby group Property Owners of Toronto Collective (POTC). They were able to keep their houses through the financial crisis of the 2050s and the upheaval of the 2070s and as homeowners with voting rights, were able to control the City Council. The primary employer for the upper class is 6ixCorp. The middle class, or renter class, of Toronto lives in DrakePods. The majority of time is spent within DISS and make up %85 of Toronto City residents. The lower classes, deemed "the deviants" were evicted from the city in 2066 and live outside of the 6ix Barrier. There numbers are unknow since they do not interact with DISS.

==Technology==
As the 21st Century draws to a close, technology plays a crucial role as the defining maker of class divisions in Toronto. The access to and use of technology vary greatly among the city's social classes, reflecting and reinforcing existing inequalities. While the wealthiest residents enjoy unparalleled technological advancements, the middle class experiences a more constrained and controlled interaction with technology, and the poorest citizens rely on salvaged and outdated devices for basic survival.

===Upper Class===
The Upper Class (also known as the Ultra-Rich) live in luxury, seamlessly merging human ingenuity with the latest cutting-edge technology. They inhabit giant mansions equipped with AI systems that anticipate every human need, from mood-based room lightning to personalised medical diagnostics. They have access to their own “auto-doc” system that cures and provides instant remedy to various sickness and bone reparation. Neural implants grant direct brain-to-network connection, enabling instant communications with other neural implant users as well as cognitive enhancements. For the wealthy, technology is a tool of indulgence and ego.

===Middle Class===
The Middle Class by contrast, experiences technology as a double-edged sword. Cramped within closed spaces in condos and apartments which will be known as DrakePods- a literally pod with high-tech modular units. In the Pod, the user will be able to access the digital world through an immersive VR “Coffin” system that they have to “sleep” in order to access the virtual world. These VR coffins simulate tailored realities, allowing them to work, shop, and “socialise” within the confines of their pods. However, this technology isn't perfect; bugs and glitches frequently disrupt their lives, and updates are slow and costly. Furthermore, DrakePods serves as a Data collecting device in order to attainmore knowledge on the Human consciousness by monitoring activities. The Corporation, 6ixCorp, governs their daily schedules, assigning tasks and monitoring their performance system through the “coffin”. A social credit point system is implemented in the UI interface of the Coffin to keep count of Completed/Incompleted tasks, Digitizied “social media” profile page, breached offenses and more. The middle class is more servant than master to their devices.

===Lower Class===
For the lower class (also classified as the Deviants in society), technology is a distant dream. Living in the decaying remnants of Toronto’s outskirts, they rely on salvaged devices such as Old smartphones and other outdated devices. Smartphones are used as communal tools for organising resources and sharing knowledge. Ingenious “scrappers” dismantle the acquired tech from “scavengers” to build makeshift power sources as communication devices. For the Deviants, technology serves as a lifeline rather than a luxury. The deviants main form of communications is through genuine human interactions.

==Food==
Food in the late 21st century reflects the stark social and economic divisions within Toronto. Access to food and the quality of meals vary significantly across classes, symbolizing the growing disparity in wealth and resources. While the wealthy indulge in luxurious dining experiences powered by advanced technology, the middle class relies on artificial and convenient alternatives, and the lower class struggles to survive with limited and improvised resources.

===Upper Class===
The Elites have access to enjoy luxurious gourmet meals crafted from authentic, organic ingredients. Gourmet meals are crafted by AI robo-chefs are programmed with centuries of culinary knowledge and fine-tuned to individual tastes. AI butlers monitor biometric feed to adjust meal temperature, portion size, and seasoning in real-time, ensuring that every bite is near perfection. Meat from various animals are scarce in the late 21st century. Animals and crops are grown in pristine farms or imported from distant biodomes located in the CropLands. Exclusive dining clubs and private tasting events are also common, where only the Upper Class can showcase their AI robo-chefs innovations. For the wealthy, food is an art form and a symbol of status and gluttony.
===Middle Class===
The Middle-Class has adapted to artificial sustenance, relying heavily on 3D printed meals. These printed meals would mimic most traditional dishes but will often times lack the depth of flavour and nutrition of organic ingredients. For convenience's sake, many people from the middle class opt for nutrient pills that compress an entire day 's calorie intake into a single dose. These pills could be brought from various convenience stores or delivered by auto-taxis that are assigned by 6ixCorp to deliver to various DrakePods. Access to fresh food is rare and is based on the amount of cyber points accumulated from accomplishing daily tasks assigned by 6ixCorp by stepping into the coffin
===Lower Class===
The Lower Class scrape by whatever they can grow or forage. Living outside the 6ixbarrier also, they cultivate small collaborative gardens and hunt or fish when possible. Most of the meals are simple, share community, and is often insufficient to feed everyone. The lack of proper access to food results in a new system of currency based on “seeds” that are traded in order to buy food. No scrap goes to waste. Unlike the Upper class, whose meal reflects excess and gluttony, food is a testament to survival against all odds and appreciation of what mother nature has bestowed upon them. Food preparation and communal meals serve as a reminder of the strength of the human spirit. In rare moments of abundance, the community celebrates with small feasts, where very person contributes a share of their resources.

==Education==

===Education in Upper Class society===
Education in Upper Class 6ixCorp society is administered by an elite squadron of AI-human hybrid teachers. The Teacher-AI interface is designed to augment the aptitudes of teachers, enabling teachers to perform highly complex and accurate calculations at thousands of times the rate of non-augmented human specimens. The 6ixCorp teacher training program lasts 2-3 weeks, involving a surgical component to implant the AI interface in the candidates brain, as well as 200 hours of “downloading” in which teachers are linked to all existing AI-powered knowledge libraries. Certain knowledge categories are bypassed by the DISS AI interface and cognitively inaccessible to TCs, including the knowledge categories of critical thinking and philosophy – categories deemed by the 6ixCorp Department of Education to be “detrimental to the safety and well-being of 6ixCorp society.” (6ixCorp Municipal Codes, Section iii, paragraph 18.)

The 6ixCorp K-12 curriculum prioritizes STEM fields, business, and AI Studies. The curriculum was developed by the 6ixCorp AI engine PedaGadget v. 98 and is streamlined to maximize academic achievement, competition, and stratification in order to produce a handful of highly skilled students that rise to the top through a series of standardized tests and a complex academic credit / deficit system. Top achievers are recruited to join 6ixCorp, and a position at the Corporation is held in the highest esteem in upper class society, although financial trading, software engineering, and landlording are also considered respected fields.

===Education in Middle Class Society===
Middle Class education is primarily administered through VR classroom environments linked to DrakePod coffin software. Students “meet” in virtual classrooms to complete various STEM puzzles and writing assignments. Writing-based assignments often require students to respond to a prompt, usually a question about how a particular marketing campaign or product prototype makes them feel, their assessment of its user-friendly design, etc. That data is then harvested and analyzed by 6ixCorp algorithms for product development purposes. Students are also assigned STEM puzzles where they have to work out solutions to engineering, science, and math problems. Their cognitive processing is closely tracked by the 6ixCorp MindMapper software, and that data is utilized to train, model and enhance 6ixCorp AI engine processing. Students who perform well on their puzzles are given Star Points that can be used to purchase virtual classroom customizations and longer recess breaks. Less successful students are deprived of customization options and are blocked from interacting with the other student Avatars in their VR classroom. Students who exhibit exceptional problem solving and expressive linguistic capacities are recruited to participate in the 6ixCorp Teacher Education Program.

===Education in Deviant Communities===
With limited access to screen-based technologies and paper media, education in deviant communities in the Borderlands and Croplands is largely community-based, relying on a loosely-organized network of elders, knowledge-keepers, oral historians, and scavenger librarians.
Elders are highly regarded as community knowledge-keepers because they had access to formal education before the mass evictions of 66. Elders self-organize mobile learning clinics, traveling to various neighborhoods throughout the Croplands to offer lectures and storytelling circles for youth in the area, and anyone else who wants to join – attendance is entirely voluntary. Elders share their knowledge on diverse fields depending on their expertise, including history, medicine, music, philosophy, mechanical engineering, and chemistry. Elders are accompanied by a group of 5 to 10 young people called Memory Keepers, usually children who are exceptionally gifted with memorization skills. These children can recite significant texts word-for-word, often by setting texts to music and are able to recite from specific passages on demand.

Practice-based education is also highly regarded in the Croplands, and young people rely on the guidance and mentorship of parents and community members to learn skills-based trades through apprenticeships. Adult farmers, hunters, scavengers, mechanics, and doctors are generally accompanied by young students who begin by assisting their mentors and eventually learn to practice independently.

Group 3

2024-11-28T01:24:45Z

99.247.16.84: /* Demographics */

Andy, Ben, Abrar, Ilinca

The City of Toronto, housing a population of 2.8 million, is currently organised via a tier society. As housing costs incrementally increased annually in the years since the financial crisis of 2008, 70% of the population was homeless by 2057. The interest group Property Owners of Toronto Collective (POTC) and tech megacorporation 6ixcorp partnered to make an affordable housing contract, the biggest housing contract in history. The following year, in 2058, DrakePod units connected to the Drake Intelligent Simulation System (DISS) were introduced as an affordable housing solution. Increasing civil unrest culminated in The Great Collapse of 2061, which was subsequently used as the rationale for the 6Barrier project that divided the city into three distinct areas : The Hub, the Borderlands and Cropland, separated by the Inner Six and Outer Six Border Walls. The separation was completed in 2064. A mass eviction of the unhoused 2066 established the populations of each section.

The Hub is the city centre, the most urban, developed and technologically advanced area of Toronto. The Borderlands, separated from The Hub by the Inner Six Border Wall, is less urbanized, with the space optimised for the larger population with the DrakePods. CropLand is mostly farmland and untouched by residential renovation projects. It is technologically bare, being populated by farmers and the Deviant class.

6ixCorp has a monopoly over all levels of government, and is funded by the Property Owners of Toronto Collective.

Lifestyle varies greatly by class. The upper class, confined to The Hub, lives luxuriously in extravagant condos. They have access to a variety of rich and nutritious food, imported directly from CropLand. They have access to AI-Human hybrid teachers that provide the highest calibre of education. The middle class, occupying the Borderlands, is almost entirely controlled by AI or simulated reality. The lifestyles of the Deviant class is entirely human-lead.

==History==

Beginning after the 2008 financial crisis, housing costs in Toronto increased by 9.8% year over year. As the 21st century progressed, an increasing percentage of the population was driven to live the streets and by 2057 Toronto reached 70% homelessness.

Toronto municipal politics at that time was dominated by an interest group called, “Property Owners of Toronto Collective” (POTC). They pressured the city council to clear the city of homeless encampments and in September of 2057 a state of emergency was declared. A $350 billion dollar emergency fund was tapped by city council and [[tech megacorporation 6ixcorp]] was given the biggest housing contract in history with a mandate to build affordable housing.

In April of 2058, condo buildings at Young and Eglinton began to be converted into DrakePod units. These single occupant units offered tenants enough space to sleep, consume calories, and link to the Drake Intelligent Simulation System (DISS) at an affordable rate.

From the spring of 2059 to early 2060 there was continued widespread civil unrest surrounding the implementation of the DrakePod program. Many of the unhoused people living in the city at the time argued that they were being forced to live in “prison cells” and that they were being “treated like cattle”.

In 2061, the unrest in the city reached a tipping point and the Property Owners Of Toronto Collective lobbied the city government to build a barrier to keep vagrants out of the city. City council voted unanimously to offer a contract to 6ixcorp and construction began in October of the same year. This period has been called “The Great Collapse”

6ixcorp began construction of the 6Barrier project which was completed in 2064. The barrier system consists of two electric fences in concentric semi-circle formation. The inner barrier called “The Inner Six” separates the inner city or “Hub” from the “Border Lands”. The Inner 6 runs from Bloor at the north, Bathurst on the West, and Church St. in the East. The Outer Six wall separates the border lands from the “Crop Lands”. It is heavily guarded by 6ixCorp defensive robots to defend against scavengers from outside of the city.

In 2066 a mass eviction campaign was implemented and 6ixCorp defensive robots carried out a mass eviction of the unhoused to the CropLand outside of Toronto city limits. Since the completion of the DrakePod housing project and Six Barrier, homelessness has dropped to 0% within Toronto city boundaries. There are, however, large encampments of unregistered people living outside of city limits who live off the grid.

==Geography==

Historically, Toronto covered a surface area of roughly 630 square kilometres, with a maximum east-west distance of 43 kilometres, and a maximum north-south distance of 21 kilometres. Since 2066, while the city’s total occupied space has remained the same, urbanisation greatly varies depending on the area. The city is divided into three distinct and separate areas: the city centre, colloquially known as “The Hub”, the Borderlands and CropLand. The Hub takes up 16.6 square kilometres, and its borders remain unchanged from that of the old Downtown sphere, though it was drastically reworked in the years after the Great Collapse of 2066. On the outskirts of The Hub, there are the Borderlands. This area, measuring 40.4 square kilometres, is less urbanised than The Hub. After the Great Collapse, much of the area has remained the same, spare three infrastructure building projects organised by 6ixCorps starting in 2058 and ending in 2066. The rest of the landmass of the old city of Toronto (573 square kilometres), named CropLand, is almost completely rural. Old infrastructure was completely bulldozed in 2061 and redesigned for resource exploitation.

===The Hub===

Though The Hub contains the smallest land mass out of the three sections of Toronto, it has been optimised to house as many people as possible. It is the area that has the highest density of skyscrapers in the city. While Toronto has always been relatively flat, 6ixcorps organised several flattening projects following the Great Collapse to accommodate for the optimised city layout. The Hub is designed according to the modernist architectural style, with 6ixcorps citing “the necessity to prioritise function over form, to embrace minimalism in these trying times [after the Great Collapse]”. As such, buildings are very minimally ornamented. Following complaints from the citizens that the area was “bland, sterile and depressing”, 6ixcorps organised “meaningful art initiatives” that were meant to “bring life back to our city, in a meaningful way”. Since the official start of the initiative in 2094, 98% of the buildings in The Hub have permanent advertising projections constantly running on one side. There are no dedicated green spaces on ground level, with all greenery confined to the roofs of the buildings. As a result, there are no naturally-occuring instances of wildlife. All animals present in The Hub are domesticated house pets, with the most common being the Super-Poof dog and cat breeds. The Hub has a strict border patrol that is manned by the military 24/7.

===The Borderlands===
In The Borderlands, much of the city’s previous infrastructure has been allowed to remain. Around 85% of the buildings predate the Great Collapse, having undergone various renovation projects for modernization purposes in the time since. Such renovation projects consist of the integration of the DrakePods in every living quarter. The only completely modern structures are the 6ixcorps Associate Inc. building, which is the headquarters of the Borderlands Division of 6ixcorps, and the Outer6ix Fence, which separates The Borderlands and CropLand. The Outer6ix fence is heavily fortified, due to the area’s increasing problem with scavengers coming from CropLand. The Borderlands contains some green spaces in the form of pre-Collapse public parks, though they are no longer regularly maintained. All other aspects of The Borderlands mirror that of The Hub. As in The Hub, all non-human life consists of domesticated pets, among which are hound the Super-Poof dog and cat breeds, as well as the Regular Tabby Cat, native to The Borderlands.

===CropLands===

Once 6ixCorps established the borders of The Hub and the Borderlands following the Great Collapse, the remaining area was set to be converted into a space solely dedicated for resource exploitation. In 2061, the infrastructure in the area that now houses CropLand was almost completely bulldozed so as to optimise farm building. As such, there are no updated dedicated residential or urban areas designed by 6ixCorps. Any residential areas are abandoned and not maintained. Of the farms located in CropLand, 78% are specialised for growing produce, while the remaining 32% are livestock ranches. The animals raised in these farms are imported locally and internationally. As for the produce, while the first generation of non-indigenous crops were also imported, state-of-the-art greenhouses now allow for these plants to grow naturally in Toronto. Despite CropLand being the only region that was not designed for large-scale housing, it boasts the largest percent of the population [see “Demographics” section for more details]. This is because CropLand became the refuge for those who refused to integrate into the tier society when it was first introduced after the Great Collapse. The area is mostly flat, on account of the farms, but there are also large, dense pockets of greenery that cannot be found elsewhere in Toronto, as well as the small residential areas. The Deviants (those who fled to CropLand following the implementation of the 6ixCorps Societal Tier System) occupy this space. Many animals other than livestock have been recorded in the area: squirrels, rabbits, raccoons, foxes, coyotes, snakes, rodents, crows, eagles, hawks, pigeons are most commonly noted.

==Demographics==
{| class="wikitable"
|+ Population Distribution
|-
! Total Population !! The Hub !! The Borderlands !! Croplands
|-
| '''2.8 million''' || 308,000 || 592,000 || 1,540,000

|}

==Politics==

Toronto politics in 2089 are dominated by 6ixCorp and the Property Owners of Toronto Collective (POTC).

The transition from a democratically elected city council occurred in the mid 21st century when homelessness reached it's peak. Only those with a fixed address were able to vote in municipal elections and so wealthy homeowners were able to lobby as a group and seize all 25 seats in the city council. The POTC lead council then turned over the majority of the city budget to 6Corp and gave them a mandate to resolve homelessness.

6ixCorp executes all major government functions: 6Corp defensive robots maintain law and order within the city, the Bix Barrier acts as a border where goods are allowed to enter and vagrants are kept out; Drake Pods are the preferred solution to public housing in the Toronto; education for the middle class is carried out through DISS.

DISS is also used to monitor the thoughts and behaviors of the middle classes so as to avoid the type of widespread civil unrest that was so common in the 2060s.

6ixcorp receives its mandate and funding from the POTC lead city council and then devises and implements the specific strategies for city improvement.

==Society==
There are three major class groups in and around Toronto:

The Upper class maintains political power in the city council through their lobby group Property Owners of Toronto Collective (POTC). They were able to keep their houses through the financial crisis of the 2050s and the upheaval of the 2070s and as homeowners with voting rights, were able to control the City Council. The primary employer for the upper class is 6ixCorp. The middle class, or renter class, of Toronto lives in DrakePods. The majority of time is spent within DISS and make up %85 of Toronto City residents. The lower classes, deemed "the deviants" were evicted from the city in 2066 and live outside of the 6ix Barrier. There numbers are unknow since they do not interact with DISS.

==Technology==
As the 21st Century draws to a close, technology plays a crucial role as the defining maker of class divisions in Toronto. The access to and use of technology vary greatly among the city's social classes, reflecting and reinforcing existing inequalities. While the wealthiest residents enjoy unparalleled technological advancements, the middle class experiences a more constrained and controlled interaction with technology, and the poorest citizens rely on salvaged and outdated devices for basic survival.

===Upper Class===
The Upper Class (also known as the Ultra-Rich) live in luxury, seamlessly merging human ingenuity with the latest cutting-edge technology. They inhabit giant mansions equipped with AI systems that anticipate every human need, from mood-based room lightning to personalised medical diagnostics. They have access to their own “auto-doc” system that cures and provides instant remedy to various sickness and bone reparation. Neural implants grant direct brain-to-network connection, enabling instant communications with other neural implant users as well as cognitive enhancements. For the wealthy, technology is a tool of indulgence and ego.

===Middle Class===
The Middle Class by contrast, experiences technology as a double-edged sword. Cramped within closed spaces in condos and apartments which will be known as DrakePods- a literally pod with high-tech modular units. In the Pod, the user will be able to access the digital world through an immersive VR “Coffin” system that they have to “sleep” in order to access the virtual world. These VR coffins simulate tailored realities, allowing them to work, shop, and “socialise” within the confines of their pods. However, this technology isn't perfect; bugs and glitches frequently disrupt their lives, and updates are slow and costly. Furthermore, DrakePods serves as a Data collecting device in order to attainmore knowledge on the Human consciousness by monitoring activities. The Corporation, 6ixCorp, governs their daily schedules, assigning tasks and monitoring their performance system through the “coffin”. A social credit point system is implemented in the UI interface of the Coffin to keep count of Completed/Incompleted tasks, Digitizied “social media” profile page, breached offenses and more. The middle class is more servant than master to their devices.

===Lower Class===
For the lower class (also classified as the Deviants in society), technology is a distant dream. Living in the decaying remnants of Toronto’s outskirts, they rely on salvaged devices such as Old smartphones and other outdated devices. Smartphones are used as communal tools for organising resources and sharing knowledge. Ingenious “scrappers” dismantle the acquired tech from “scavengers” to build makeshift power sources as communication devices. For the Deviants, technology serves as a lifeline rather than a luxury. The deviants main form of communications is through genuine human interactions.

==Food==
Food in the late 21st century reflects the stark social and economic divisions within Toronto. Access to food and the quality of meals vary significantly across classes, symbolizing the growing disparity in wealth and resources. While the wealthy indulge in luxurious dining experiences powered by advanced technology, the middle class relies on artificial and convenient alternatives, and the lower class struggles to survive with limited and improvised resources.

===Upper Class===
The Elites have access to enjoy luxurious gourmet meals crafted from authentic, organic ingredients. Gourmet meals are crafted by AI robo-chefs are programmed with centuries of culinary knowledge and fine-tuned to individual tastes. AI butlers monitor biometric feed to adjust meal temperature, portion size, and seasoning in real-time, ensuring that every bite is near perfection. Meat from various animals are scarce in the late 21st century. Animals and crops are grown in pristine farms or imported from distant biodomes located in the CropLands. Exclusive dining clubs and private tasting events are also common, where only the Upper Class can showcase their AI robo-chefs innovations. For the wealthy, food is an art form and a symbol of status and gluttony.
===Middle Class===
The Middle-Class has adapted to artificial sustenance, relying heavily on 3D printed meals. These printed meals would mimic most traditional dishes but will often times lack the depth of flavour and nutrition of organic ingredients. For convenience's sake, many people from the middle class opt for nutrient pills that compress an entire day 's calorie intake into a single dose. These pills could be brought from various convenience stores or delivered by auto-taxis that are assigned by 6ixCorp to deliver to various DrakePods. Access to fresh food is rare and is based on the amount of cyber points accumulated from accomplishing daily tasks assigned by 6ixCorp by stepping into the coffin
===Lower Class===
The Lower Class scrape by whatever they can grow or forage. Living outside the 6ixbarrier also, they cultivate small collaborative gardens and hunt or fish when possible. Most of the meals are simple, share community, and is often insufficient to feed everyone. The lack of proper access to food results in a new system of currency based on “seeds” that are traded in order to buy food. No scrap goes to waste. Unlike the Upper class, whose meal reflects excess and gluttony, food is a testament to survival against all odds and appreciation of what mother nature has bestowed upon them. Food preparation and communal meals serve as a reminder of the strength of the human spirit. In rare moments of abundance, the community celebrates with small feasts, where very person contributes a share of their resources.

==Education==

===Education in Upper Class society===
Education in Upper Class 6ixCorp society is administered by an elite squadron of AI-human hybrid teachers. The Teacher-AI interface is designed to augment the aptitudes of teachers, enabling teachers to perform highly complex and accurate calculations at thousands of times the rate of non-augmented human specimens. The 6ixCorp teacher training program lasts 2-3 weeks, involving a surgical component to implant the AI interface in the candidates brain, as well as 200 hours of “downloading” in which teachers are linked to all existing AI-powered knowledge libraries. Certain knowledge categories are bypassed by the DISS AI interface and cognitively inaccessible to TCs, including the knowledge categories of critical thinking and philosophy – categories deemed by the 6ixCorp Department of Education to be “detrimental to the safety and well-being of 6ixCorp society.” (6ixCorp Municipal Codes, Section iii, paragraph 18.)

The 6ixCorp K-12 curriculum prioritizes STEM fields, business, and AI Studies. The curriculum was developed by the 6ixCorp AI engine PedaGadget v. 98 and is streamlined to maximize academic achievement, competition, and stratification in order to produce a handful of highly skilled students that rise to the top through a series of standardized tests and a complex academic credit / deficit system. Top achievers are recruited to join 6ixCorp, and a position at the Corporation is held in the highest esteem in upper class society, although financial trading, software engineering, and landlording are also considered respected fields.

===Education in Middle Class Society===
Middle Class education is primarily administered through VR classroom environments linked to DrakePod coffin software. Students “meet” in virtual classrooms to complete various STEM puzzles and writing assignments. Writing-based assignments often require students to respond to a prompt, usually a question about how a particular marketing campaign or product prototype makes them feel, their assessment of its user-friendly design, etc. That data is then harvested and analyzed by 6ixCorp algorithms for product development purposes. Students are also assigned STEM puzzles where they have to work out solutions to engineering, science, and math problems. Their cognitive processing is closely tracked by the 6ixCorp MindMapper software, and that data is utilized to train, model and enhance 6ixCorp AI engine processing. Students who perform well on their puzzles are given Star Points that can be used to purchase virtual classroom customizations and longer recess breaks. Less successful students are deprived of customization options and are blocked from interacting with the other student Avatars in their VR classroom. Students who exhibit exceptional problem solving and expressive linguistic capacities are recruited to participate in the 6ixCorp Teacher Education Program.

===Education in Deviant Communities===
With limited access to screen-based technologies and paper media, education in deviant communities in the Borderlands and Croplands is largely community-based, relying on a loosely-organized network of elders, knowledge-keepers, oral historians, and scavenger librarians.
Elders are highly regarded as community knowledge-keepers because they had access to formal education before the mass evictions of 66. Elders self-organize mobile learning clinics, traveling to various neighborhoods throughout the Croplands to offer lectures and storytelling circles for youth in the area, and anyone else who wants to join – attendance is entirely voluntary. Elders share their knowledge on diverse fields depending on their expertise, including history, medicine, music, philosophy, mechanical engineering, and chemistry. Elders are accompanied by a group of 5 to 10 young people called Memory Keepers, usually children who are exceptionally gifted with memorization skills. These children can recite significant texts word-for-word, often by setting texts to music and are able to recite from specific passages on demand.

Practice-based education is also highly regarded in the Croplands, and young people rely on the guidance and mentorship of parents and community members to learn skills-based trades through apprenticeships. Adult farmers, hunters, scavengers, mechanics, and doctors are generally accompanied by young students who begin by assisting their mentors and eventually learn to practice independently.

Group 3

2024-11-28T01:00:53Z

99.247.16.84: /* Demography */

Andy, Ben, Abrar, Ilinca

The City of Toronto, housing a population of 2.8 million, is currently organised via a tier society. As housing costs incrementally increased annually in the years since the financial crisis of 2008, 70% of the population was homeless by 2057. The interest group Property Owners of Toronto Collective (POTC) and tech megacorporation 6ixcorp partnered to make an affordable housing contract, the biggest housing contract in history. The following year, in 2058, DrakePod units connected to the Drake Intelligent Simulation System (DISS) were introduced as an affordable housing solution. Increasing civil unrest culminated in The Great Collapse of 2061, which was subsequently used as the rationale for the 6Barrier project that divided the city into three distinct areas : The Hub, the Borderlands and Cropland, separated by the Inner Six and Outer Six Border Walls. The separation was completed in 2064. A mass eviction of the unhoused 2066 established the populations of each section.

The Hub is the city centre, the most urban, developed and technologically advanced area of Toronto. The Borderlands, separated from The Hub by the Inner Six Border Wall, is less urbanized, with the space optimised for the larger population with the DrakePods. CropLand is mostly farmland and untouched by residential renovation projects. It is technologically bare, being populated by farmers and the Deviant class.

6ixCorp has a monopoly over all levels of government, and is funded by the Property Owners of Toronto Collective.

Lifestyle varies greatly by class. The upper class, confined to The Hub, lives luxuriously in extravagant condos. They have access to a variety of rich and nutritious food, imported directly from CropLand. They have access to AI-Human hybrid teachers that provide the highest calibre of education. The middle class, occupying the Borderlands, is almost entirely controlled by AI or simulated reality. The lifestyles of the Deviant class is entirely human-lead.

==History==

Beginning after the 2008 financial crisis, housing costs in Toronto increased by 9.8% year over year. As the 21st century progressed, an increasing percentage of the population was driven to live the streets and by 2057 Toronto reached 70% homelessness.

Toronto municipal politics at that time was dominated by an interest group called, “Property Owners of Toronto Collective” (POTC). They pressured the city council to clear the city of homeless encampments and in September of 2057 a state of emergency was declared. A $350 billion dollar emergency fund was tapped by city council and [[tech megacorporation 6ixcorp]] was given the biggest housing contract in history with a mandate to build affordable housing.

In April of 2058, condo buildings at Young and Eglinton began to be converted into DrakePod units. These single occupant units offered tenants enough space to sleep, consume calories, and link to the Drake Intelligent Simulation System (DISS) at an affordable rate.

From the spring of 2059 to early 2060 there was continued widespread civil unrest surrounding the implementation of the DrakePod program. Many of the unhoused people living in the city at the time argued that they were being forced to live in “prison cells” and that they were being “treated like cattle”.

In 2061, the unrest in the city reached a tipping point and the Property Owners Of Toronto Collective lobbied the city government to build a barrier to keep vagrants out of the city. City council voted unanimously to offer a contract to 6ixcorp and construction began in October of the same year. This period has been called “The Great Collapse”

6ixcorp began construction of the 6Barrier project which was completed in 2064. The barrier system consists of two electric fences in concentric semi-circle formation. The inner barrier called “The Inner Six” separates the inner city or “Hub” from the “Border Lands”. The Inner 6 runs from Bloor at the north, Bathurst on the West, and Church St. in the East. The Outer Six wall separates the border lands from the “Crop Lands”. It is heavily guarded by 6ixCorp defensive robots to defend against scavengers from outside of the city.

In 2066 a mass eviction campaign was implemented and 6ixCorp defensive robots carried out a mass eviction of the unhoused to the CropLand outside of Toronto city limits. Since the completion of the DrakePod housing project and Six Barrier, homelessness has dropped to 0% within Toronto city boundaries. There are, however, large encampments of unregistered people living outside of city limits who live off the grid.

==Geography==

Historically, Toronto covered a surface area of roughly 630 square kilometres, with a maximum east-west distance of 43 kilometres, and a maximum north-south distance of 21 kilometres. Since 2066, while the city’s total occupied space has remained the same, urbanisation greatly varies depending on the area. The city is divided into three distinct and separate areas: the city centre, colloquially known as “The Hub”, the Borderlands and CropLand. The Hub takes up 16.6 square kilometres, and its borders remain unchanged from that of the old Downtown sphere, though it was drastically reworked in the years after the Great Collapse of 2066. On the outskirts of The Hub, there are the Borderlands. This area, measuring 40.4 square kilometres, is less urbanised than The Hub. After the Great Collapse, much of the area has remained the same, spare three infrastructure building projects organised by 6ixCorps starting in 2058 and ending in 2066. The rest of the landmass of the old city of Toronto (573 square kilometres), named CropLand, is almost completely rural. Old infrastructure was completely bulldozed in 2061 and redesigned for resource exploitation.

===The Hub===

Though The Hub contains the smallest land mass out of the three sections of Toronto, it has been optimised to house as many people as possible. It is the area that has the highest density of skyscrapers in the city. While Toronto has always been relatively flat, 6ixcorps organised several flattening projects following the Great Collapse to accommodate for the optimised city layout. The Hub is designed according to the modernist architectural style, with 6ixcorps citing “the necessity to prioritise function over form, to embrace minimalism in these trying times [after the Great Collapse]”. As such, buildings are very minimally ornamented. Following complaints from the citizens that the area was “bland, sterile and depressing”, 6ixcorps organised “meaningful art initiatives” that were meant to “bring life back to our city, in a meaningful way”. Since the official start of the initiative in 2094, 98% of the buildings in The Hub have permanent advertising projections constantly running on one side. There are no dedicated green spaces on ground level, with all greenery confined to the roofs of the buildings. As a result, there are no naturally-occuring instances of wildlife. All animals present in The Hub are domesticated house pets, with the most common being the Super-Poof dog and cat breeds. The Hub has a strict border patrol that is manned by the military 24/7.

===The Borderlands===
In The Borderlands, much of the city’s previous infrastructure has been allowed to remain. Around 85% of the buildings predate the Great Collapse, having undergone various renovation projects for modernization purposes in the time since. Such renovation projects consist of the integration of the DrakePods in every living quarter. The only completely modern structures are the 6ixcorps Associate Inc. building, which is the headquarters of the Borderlands Division of 6ixcorps, and the Outer6ix Fence, which separates The Borderlands and CropLand. The Outer6ix fence is heavily fortified, due to the area’s increasing problem with scavengers coming from CropLand. The Borderlands contains some green spaces in the form of pre-Collapse public parks, though they are no longer regularly maintained. All other aspects of The Borderlands mirror that of The Hub. As in The Hub, all non-human life consists of domesticated pets, among which are hound the Super-Poof dog and cat breeds, as well as the Regular Tabby Cat, native to The Borderlands.

===CropLands===

Once 6ixCorps established the borders of The Hub and the Borderlands following the Great Collapse, the remaining area was set to be converted into a space solely dedicated for resource exploitation. In 2061, the infrastructure in the area that now houses CropLand was almost completely bulldozed so as to optimise farm building. As such, there are no updated dedicated residential or urban areas designed by 6ixCorps. Any residential areas are abandoned and not maintained. Of the farms located in CropLand, 78% are specialised for growing produce, while the remaining 32% are livestock ranches. The animals raised in these farms are imported locally and internationally. As for the produce, while the first generation of non-indigenous crops were also imported, state-of-the-art greenhouses now allow for these plants to grow naturally in Toronto. Despite CropLand being the only region that was not designed for large-scale housing, it boasts the largest percent of the population [see “Demographics” section for more details]. This is because CropLand became the refuge for those who refused to integrate into the tier society when it was first introduced after the Great Collapse. The area is mostly flat, on account of the farms, but there are also large, dense pockets of greenery that cannot be found elsewhere in Toronto, as well as the small residential areas. The Deviants (those who fled to CropLand following the implementation of the 6ixCorps Societal Tier System) occupy this space. Many animals other than livestock have been recorded in the area: squirrels, rabbits, raccoons, foxes, coyotes, snakes, rodents, crows, eagles, hawks, pigeons are most commonly noted.

==Demographics==
{| class="wikitable"
|+ Population Distribution
|-
! Total Population !! The Hub !! The Borderlands !! Croplands
|-
| '''2.8 million''' || 311,111 || 622,222 || 933,333

|}

==Politics==

Toronto politics in 2089 are dominated by 6ixCorp and the Property Owners of Toronto Collective (POTC).

The transition from a democratically elected city council occurred in the mid 21st century when homelessness reached it's peak. Only those with a fixed address were able to vote in municipal elections and so wealthy homeowners were able to lobby as a group and seize all 25 seats in the city council. The POTC lead council then turned over the majority of the city budget to 6Corp and gave them a mandate to resolve homelessness.

6ixCorp executes all major government functions: 6Corp defensive robots maintain law and order within the city, the Bix Barrier acts as a border where goods are allowed to enter and vagrants are kept out; Drake Pods are the preferred solution to public housing in the Toronto; education for the middle class is carried out through DISS.

DISS is also used to monitor the thoughts and behaviors of the middle classes so as to avoid the type of widespread civil unrest that was so common in the 2060s.

6ixcorp receives its mandate and funding from the POTC lead city council and then devises and implements the specific strategies for city improvement.

==Society==
There are three major class groups in and around Toronto:

The Upper class maintains political power in the city council through their lobby group Property Owners of Toronto Collective (POTC). They were able to keep their houses through the financial crisis of the 2050s and the upheaval of the 2070s and as homeowners with voting rights, were able to control the City Council. The primary employer for the upper class is 6ixCorp. The middle class, or renter class, of Toronto lives in DrakePods. The majority of time is spent within DISS and make up %85 of Toronto City residents. The lower classes, deemed "the deviants" were evicted from the city in 2066 and live outside of the 6ix Barrier. There numbers are unknow since they do not interact with DISS.

==Technology==
As the 21st Century draws to a close, technology plays a crucial role as the defining maker of class divisions in Toronto. The access to and use of technology vary greatly among the city's social classes, reflecting and reinforcing existing inequalities. While the wealthiest residents enjoy unparalleled technological advancements, the middle class experiences a more constrained and controlled interaction with technology, and the poorest citizens rely on salvaged and outdated devices for basic survival.

===Upper Class===
The Upper Class (also known as the Ultra-Rich) live in luxury, seamlessly merging human ingenuity with the latest cutting-edge technology. They inhabit giant mansions equipped with AI systems that anticipate every human need, from mood-based room lightning to personalised medical diagnostics. They have access to their own “auto-doc” system that cures and provides instant remedy to various sickness and bone reparation. Neural implants grant direct brain-to-network connection, enabling instant communications with other neural implant users as well as cognitive enhancements. For the wealthy, technology is a tool of indulgence and ego.

===Middle Class===
The Middle Class by contrast, experiences technology as a double-edged sword. Cramped within closed spaces in condos and apartments which will be known as DrakePods- a literally pod with high-tech modular units. In the Pod, the user will be able to access the digital world through an immersive VR “Coffin” system that they have to “sleep” in order to access the virtual world. These VR coffins simulate tailored realities, allowing them to work, shop, and “socialise” within the confines of their pods. However, this technology isn't perfect; bugs and glitches frequently disrupt their lives, and updates are slow and costly. Furthermore, DrakePods serves as a Data collecting device in order to attainmore knowledge on the Human consciousness by monitoring activities. The Corporation, 6ixCorp, governs their daily schedules, assigning tasks and monitoring their performance system through the “coffin”. A social credit point system is implemented in the UI interface of the Coffin to keep count of Completed/Incompleted tasks, Digitizied “social media” profile page, breached offenses and more. The middle class is more servant than master to their devices.

===Lower Class===
For the lower class (also classified as the Deviants in society), technology is a distant dream. Living in the decaying remnants of Toronto’s outskirts, they rely on salvaged devices such as Old smartphones and other outdated devices. Smartphones are used as communal tools for organising resources and sharing knowledge. Ingenious “scrappers” dismantle the acquired tech from “scavengers” to build makeshift power sources as communication devices. For the Deviants, technology serves as a lifeline rather than a luxury. The deviants main form of communications is through genuine human interactions.

==Food==
Food in the late 21st century reflects the stark social and economic divisions within Toronto. Access to food and the quality of meals vary significantly across classes, symbolizing the growing disparity in wealth and resources. While the wealthy indulge in luxurious dining experiences powered by advanced technology, the middle class relies on artificial and convenient alternatives, and the lower class struggles to survive with limited and improvised resources.

===Upper Class===
The Elites have access to enjoy luxurious gourmet meals crafted from authentic, organic ingredients. Gourmet meals are crafted by AI robo-chefs are programmed with centuries of culinary knowledge and fine-tuned to individual tastes. AI butlers monitor biometric feed to adjust meal temperature, portion size, and seasoning in real-time, ensuring that every bite is near perfection. Meat from various animals are scarce in the late 21st century. Animals and crops are grown in pristine farms or imported from distant biodomes located in the CropLands. Exclusive dining clubs and private tasting events are also common, where only the Upper Class can showcase their AI robo-chefs innovations. For the wealthy, food is an art form and a symbol of status and gluttony.
===Middle Class===
The Middle-Class has adapted to artificial sustenance, relying heavily on 3D printed meals. These printed meals would mimic most traditional dishes but will often times lack the depth of flavour and nutrition of organic ingredients. For convenience's sake, many people from the middle class opt for nutrient pills that compress an entire day 's calorie intake into a single dose. These pills could be brought from various convenience stores or delivered by auto-taxis that are assigned by 6ixCorp to deliver to various DrakePods. Access to fresh food is rare and is based on the amount of cyber points accumulated from accomplishing daily tasks assigned by 6ixCorp by stepping into the coffin
===Lower Class===
The Lower Class scrape by whatever they can grow or forage. Living outside the 6ixbarrier also, they cultivate small collaborative gardens and hunt or fish when possible. Most of the meals are simple, share community, and is often insufficient to feed everyone. The lack of proper access to food results in a new system of currency based on “seeds” that are traded in order to buy food. No scrap goes to waste. Unlike the Upper class, whose meal reflects excess and gluttony, food is a testament to survival against all odds and appreciation of what mother nature has bestowed upon them. Food preparation and communal meals serve as a reminder of the strength of the human spirit. In rare moments of abundance, the community celebrates with small feasts, where very person contributes a share of their resources.

==Education==

===Education in Upper Class society===
Education in Upper Class 6ixCorp society is administered by an elite squadron of AI-human hybrid teachers. The Teacher-AI interface is designed to augment the aptitudes of teachers, enabling teachers to perform highly complex and accurate calculations at thousands of times the rate of non-augmented human specimens. The 6ixCorp teacher training program lasts 2-3 weeks, involving a surgical component to implant the AI interface in the candidates brain, as well as 200 hours of “downloading” in which teachers are linked to all existing AI-powered knowledge libraries. Certain knowledge categories are bypassed by the DISS AI interface and cognitively inaccessible to TCs, including the knowledge categories of critical thinking and philosophy – categories deemed by the 6ixCorp Department of Education to be “detrimental to the safety and well-being of 6ixCorp society.” (6ixCorp Municipal Codes, Section iii, paragraph 18.)

The 6ixCorp K-12 curriculum prioritizes STEM fields, business, and AI Studies. The curriculum was developed by the 6ixCorp AI engine PedaGadget v. 98 and is streamlined to maximize academic achievement, competition, and stratification in order to produce a handful of highly skilled students that rise to the top through a series of standardized tests and a complex academic credit / deficit system. Top achievers are recruited to join 6ixCorp, and a position at the Corporation is held in the highest esteem in upper class society, although financial trading, software engineering, and landlording are also considered respected fields.

===Education in Middle Class Society===
Middle Class education is primarily administered through VR classroom environments linked to DrakePod coffin software. Students “meet” in virtual classrooms to complete various STEM puzzles and writing assignments. Writing-based assignments often require students to respond to a prompt, usually a question about how a particular marketing campaign or product prototype makes them feel, their assessment of its user-friendly design, etc. That data is then harvested and analyzed by 6ixCorp algorithms for product development purposes. Students are also assigned STEM puzzles where they have to work out solutions to engineering, science, and math problems. Their cognitive processing is closely tracked by the 6ixCorp MindMapper software, and that data is utilized to train, model and enhance 6ixCorp AI engine processing. Students who perform well on their puzzles are given Star Points that can be used to purchase virtual classroom customizations and longer recess breaks. Less successful students are deprived of customization options and are blocked from interacting with the other student Avatars in their VR classroom. Students who exhibit exceptional problem solving and expressive linguistic capacities are recruited to participate in the 6ixCorp Teacher Education Program.

===Education in Deviant Communities===
With limited access to screen-based technologies and paper media, education in deviant communities in the Borderlands and Croplands is largely community-based, relying on a loosely-organized network of elders, knowledge-keepers, oral historians, and scavenger librarians.
Elders are highly regarded as community knowledge-keepers because they had access to formal education before the mass evictions of 66. Elders self-organize mobile learning clinics, traveling to various neighborhoods throughout the Croplands to offer lectures and storytelling circles for youth in the area, and anyone else who wants to join – attendance is entirely voluntary. Elders share their knowledge on diverse fields depending on their expertise, including history, medicine, music, philosophy, mechanical engineering, and chemistry. Elders are accompanied by a group of 5 to 10 young people called Memory Keepers, usually children who are exceptionally gifted with memorization skills. These children can recite significant texts word-for-word, often by setting texts to music and are able to recite from specific passages on demand.

Practice-based education is also highly regarded in the Croplands, and young people rely on the guidance and mentorship of parents and community members to learn skills-based trades through apprenticeships. Adult farmers, hunters, scavengers, mechanics, and doctors are generally accompanied by young students who begin by assisting their mentors and eventually learn to practice independently.