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Build of a nation

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Fri, 2010-11-05 11:45

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Build of a nation

[My players are cordially invited to stay away from this thread ;-) ] In my game setting, the characters have become involved with the fate of Tanzania. A sizable fraction of Tanzanians are in cold storage, lugged around by a lobbyist representing the infomorph cabinet running in his attaché case. Thanks to some deft lobbying, a Titan microcorp has reached an agreement to try to build them a homeland. The plan is to make a fork of a stalled Hamilton cylinder project (see the Construction section of http://www.aleph.se/EclipsePhase/Habitat.pdf for more details), build server farms where the Tanzanians can work, and control the key nanoconstruction "by hand" - it is audacious, and crazy enough to work. If it succeeds, Tanzania will exist in a prime real estate Hamilton cylinder and the microcorp will have earned amazing rep with its improved construction software. Now I am interested in hearing your ideas for events and adventures around this project. The most obvious issue is open source politics. The originators of the habitat software are not too happy about this inelegant fork and the nearly-for-profit microcorp, and will no doubt try to show that their approach is better. Any ideas from real-world open source movement on how this may play out? Another issue is preservationism of Saturn's rings. Building a Hamilton cylinder might affect their natural beauty (they are just a few meters thick, and gobbling up ice to get the tholins will cause fragments to shift orbits until they settle down). The computational substrate for the Tanzanians better be very safe. The chief engineer (a PC) happens to be from Firewall, so there will be some secret help to guarantee no seed AI. The fact that she happens to be an AGI with secret seed ambitions might be a bit more troubling... How will the politics of Tanzania unfold? Many Tanzanians elsewhere have dropped the obsolete nationalism and gone autonomist, something the politicians dislike. Many citizens will wake up to a completely changed world, and maybe not even accept the fine goal set for them by their politicians. There is going to be plenty of friction between different political views here, both within and outside the nation. What are the stages of building a Hamilton cylinder? What can go wrong in interesting ways? Who else might want to get in on the project or interfere? Oversight agents that want to counteract outer system "sweatshop technology"? Jovian agitators arguing the Tanzanians have a right to sleeve into a natural body in a natural environment? Other nationalists, eager to try to build their own nations? Sponsoring gerontocrats playing chessgames? Ultimates offering to act as an outsourced army? Anarchists unwilling to let the virus of nationalism appear in their utopian Saturn system?

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Fri, 2010-11-05 12:08

root

Re: Build of a nation

root@Build of a nation [hr] I'll have to think about this one some more this weekend, and finish reading that paper on Saturn's ring harmonics, but the first thing that comes to mind for me is communication. You have, if I understand this correctly, an briefcase nation-state: the new danger of political terrorism. Someone wants to use them as an infomorph hive on a habitat-for-transhumanity project, where they end up controlling aspects of nanoassembly of a hamilton cylinder by direct supervision. Presumably, they are being employed because using normal nanoengineering methods produces lackluster results? You will end up with a great deal more variation in construction when you have a population of 40 million infomorphs working independently on various aspects, rather than having an architectural AI handle all of it. This fits with the desire for specialized and personalized goods in a post-scarcity economy, but blows from an engineering perspective. How do you coordinate the efforts of 40x10[sup]6[/sup] souls for a single project, and do so in a way that doesn't smack of totalitarianism? I'll give it some thought for the rest of the day, but right now I need to go complete an assignment for my electromagnetism theory course that is taught by our resident nanoengineer.

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Fri, 2010-11-05 17:53

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Build of a nation

root wrote:
You will end up with a great deal more variation in construction when you have a population of 40 million infomorphs working independently on various aspects, rather than having an architectural AI handle all of it. This fits with the desire for specialized and personalized goods in a post-scarcity economy, but blows from an engineering perspective. How do you coordinate the efforts of 40x10[sup]6[/sup] souls for a single project, and do so in a way that doesn't smack of totalitarianism?

Yup. That is going to be quite important. The population is slightly smaller, just 3 million (too bad about the other 37...) but the problem remains. As I see the technique it basically consists of having a lot of people do a lot of pattern recognition and simple manipulation - essentially the minicorp software translates the real nanoengineering tasks into simpler "games" people play. Randomly assembled groups will be playing the same little piece, the construction actually doing what the majority does (this reduces mistakes and noise quite a lot). Randomly generated simulations are used to check vigilance and estimate performance, enabling various forms of reward for good performance (in turn triggering competition instincts). Hmm, maybe your score in the game is used to buy land, morphs, smart matter in the finished habitat. Unless you blow it all at the company store on virtual skins and narcoalgorithms, of course. In any case, I think any project that wants to succeed need to lure people to work for it rather than just force them. The slave can always rebel by being lazy or incompetent. Something that might occur in the background but not be mentioned too openly is that to increase efficiency there will be a lot of forking too - a few beta forks each, and the mindpower increases an order of magnitude. This might even be done sneakily: the organisers don't say anything, but people soon figure out that if they use a few betas as "bots" they can earn more points... so they will themselves fork away to the limits set by the system in order to maximize their performance. No need to force anybody to do anything, or hold a bad policy.

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Sat, 2010-11-06 01:13

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

Re: Build of a nation

I'll throw out some ideas. First some questions; The basic plan is to use Tanzanian infomorphs to make billions of Hardware:nanofacturing, Hardware:Aerospace and Hardware:Industrial tests asisted by AI and overseen by bigger AI right? Youre saying that they allready have a complete nanofacture blueprint for the entire habitat that's allready been run through all the modeling and simulations and proven (in simulation) to work correctly? And they got this as freeware on the internet? And they also allready have all the macro engineering components vehicles and tools that will be needed to collect and transport raw material and they have a contract with some energy provider to provide them with fuel and their first generators? And they'll allready have a massive server and communication station to run the infomorphs and the Engineer AI(s) and the big over seer AI? But they're still going to need some heavy element feedstock from somewhere outside the rings right? If the answers are yes to most of those questions then my pirate character cut's a deal with the Extropians to finance a delivery of a small metalic asteroid and alot of guns to the build site. Once there I unplug the informorph servers and boot the entire nation of Tanzania into slow trip to polaris. Since posession is 99.44% of the law in space I cut a new deal with the original Titanian microcorp that will make them rich enough to thumb their noses at thier contemporaries, murder the holdouts, and start selling completely customizable realestate. Also I'll be accepting bids from hypercorps to provide real construction infomorphs who actually know something about building a habitat. Once the money starts flowing and the lines of credit are fairly secure I begin to siphon off a tiny percentage (which will probably be a fairly sizeable amount) into my private hidden accounts. Then use that to set up a clone of the operation based entirely on stolen copies of all the ego's and software from the original progect somewhere else but this one will be entirly privately funded by me and my shell corporations. Once my second progect gets going I'll avoid fair competition by subtly sabotogeing the original progect and let all my partners soak the losses. While I become RICH BEYOND MY WILDEST DREAMMMS HAAAAHAHAHA! As I see it; the main problem with my plan is that someone in the Tanzanian government will probably think of it first ;)

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Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

Sat, 2010-11-06 11:43

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Build of a nation

OneTrikPony wrote:
The basic plan is to use Tanzanian infomorphs to make billions of Hardware:nanofacturing, Hardware:Aerospace and Hardware:Industrial tests asisted by AI and overseen by bigger AI right?

Yup. And it is more plausible than one may think. The Organic Builder program for example demonstrated that players could build artificial chemistries able to produce self-replicating structures. And in http://fold.it/portal/ the public figured out better ways of doing protein folding than the currently best algorithms. Generally, I envision this as a form of citizen science merged with MMORPGs. The real trick, and what the microcorp plans to become rich from, is how to map sufficiently appealing and understandable games for humans to complex industrial processes. The habitat itself is merely an *advert* to get the solar system to take notice.

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Youre saying that they allready have a complete nanofacture blueprint for the entire habitat that's allready been run through all the modeling and simulations and proven (in simulation) to work correctly? And they got this as freeware on the internet?

Yup. Hamilton cylinders are open source (p. 108). As for modelling and proof of concept, this is where the big open source argument comes in. The Wallbanger Counil at MC station has done most of this work, in turn based on earlier Hamilton projects in the rings. The Tanzanian project will be making use of this, likely making very minor updates (but oh, those 'minor' updates might cause interesting trouble!) The problem with "downloading it all from the internet" is of course that most people have no clue how to use it. You cannot just send it to a matter compiler, since it is an entire *project* involving logistics, growth models, lots of specialized tech and heaven knows what else. There will be quite a lot of professional nanoprogrammers and engineers running things (and they will cost money or rep - this is where we will see the business acumen of players, minicorp, nation and hangers-on). I will likely be using my technological complexity rules too: most of the work will consist of finding and fixing the myriad mis-interactions going on in something this big.

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And they also allready have all the macro engineering components vehicles and tools that will be needed to collect and transport raw material and they have a contract with some energy provider to provide them with fuel and their first generators?

Part of the setup. There will be plenty of trade with Pan/Izulu for energy, I expect. Transport is largely irrelevant, since they have the rings (which are surprisingly dense, if flat). The main import will be certain rare elements needed for the nano. Of course, trouble with energy and rare element supply can always be fun. Especially if the Izulu-MC station-Tanzania political situation starts to get messy... (My players still chant "The nitrogen must flow!" whenever our previous hard sf space colonization campaign comes up)

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And they'll allready have a massive server and communication station to run the infomorphs and the Engineer AI(s) and the big over seer AI?

Yup. I guess one of the PCs will be the big overseer. The very first thing in this campaign will be the physical construction of the first server satellite (I think the sensible thing is to have several) and loading of the first few hundred thousand people.

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If the answers are yes to most of those questions then my pirate character cut's a deal with the Extropians to finance a delivery of a small metalic asteroid and alot of guns to the build site. Once there I unplug the informorph servers and boot the entire nation of Tanzania into slow trip to polaris.

;-) Getting a small metal asteroid is a good idea, actually. As for the guns, this is where we will see how smart the Tanzanian minister of defence is. He has complained that his infomorph army is somewhat puny...

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Since posession is 99.44% of the law in space I cut a new deal with the original Titanian microcorp that will make them rich enough to thumb their noses at thier contemporaries, murder the holdouts, and start selling completely customizable realestate. Also I'll be accepting bids from hypercorps to provide real construction infomorphs who actually know something about building a habitat.

This is of course where your plan doesn't work. The minicorp *want* the habitat built by non-skilled labor, otherwise they would not be able to get really rich from their software (another Hamilton, ho hum, a new way of cutting design costs by 99% - WOW!). And hypercorps have those pesky people from Oversight that prevent them from ultraforking their engineers...

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As I see it; the main problem with my plan is that someone in the Tanzanian government will probably think of it first ;)

Exactly. I better get started on specifying the government and see just how many cabinet members are up to something sinister, treacherous or just plain corrupt. Hmm, the minister of health is *always* evil... (at this point the minister of communications emergency farcasts away, since he realizes that in nearly all my previous political games ministers of communications have been assassinated.)

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Sat, 2010-11-06 19:38

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

Re: Build of a nation

Quote:
(My players still chant "The nitrogen must flow!" whenever our previous hard sf space colonization campaign comes up)

LOL! :D That and the fact that your games routinely *have* ministers of comunication makes me ask. what language to I need to learn and how far is the comute from Utah to play in your games. You rawk dude. :)

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This is of course where your plan doesn't work...

Um, you got the part about "I'm a corrupt administrator who is willing to murder anyone who doesn't see things my way." right? Other than the "RICH BEYOND MY WILDEST DREAMS HAAHAHAA" part that was my favorite part of my whole plan. On a more serious note: I've been musing about large scale nano projects and nanoecology and it seems to me that a project on this scale has similar compexity to a small biosphere. So you might use that perspective when considering the tecnical problems that could arise. For instance, as the project grows so will it's gravity well thus trapping polution. The complexity of the ring system means that you might not know to the 9th decimal the exact abundance of local materials creating un predicted shortages or extra pollution and cost overruns. There's also the human element. Some parts of the "game" will be more desireable than others creating labor shortages in some processes and vice versa. That one is highly probable because the "game" is more of a social experiment than an engineering experiment. You're asking Titanians to create a game that will entertain and hold the attention of Tanzainians for hours each day for years and years. There will be some cultural missconceptions that decrease eficiency by a large factor. I think essentially what your talking about will require alot more resources than a microcorp can offer because you'll have at the peak 3 million 'Customers' that you're trying to get to play your game. You're going to need at least the resources equivelant to WoW, Secondlife, and EASports to keep every one working. I suspect that it might be easier to just give them all training or skillware. (Preferably training.) As to more adventure type conflicts you can't go wrong with Pesant Revolts and TITAN infections. Who knows if Myrmidon was the only seed for the Glory Virus. [ominous music]Da Dun DUMMMMM![/ominous music] I think it would be Sweet if a major nanotech project supported by the Titanians failed half way through due to a latent exurgent infection. Jovans wouldn't look so silly then would they??? :)

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Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

Sun, 2010-11-07 15:54

Extrasolar Angel Extrasolar Angel's picture

Re: Build of a nation

Ahh, your players are being seduced by the alluring meme of nation-state. I applaud :)

Quote:
Many Tanzanians elsewhere have dropped the obsolete nationalism and gone autonomist, something the politicians dislike

It's been point out elsewhere in EP discussions that many survivors in EP are opportunists, those who were willing to undergo drastic measures to keep on living. As such many of them are probably highly individualistic. Groups that survived in other ways or by collective efforts could have somewhat different cultural values. Also note that 10 years have passed(and frankly more for many due to time compression technology) and society changed in huge ways, along with the world. People who were just awakened will seek others similiar to them(of course not everybody will do this,but enough will). I suppose that for significant part of survivors the conditions of EP Sol System and the way Earth was abanonded might be somewhat unnacceptable or shocking. So I would expect the community to be rather bioconservative(not necessarily radically) and perhaps expressing support for Reclaimers as well somewhat more or less friendly relations with JR. I don't really see much problem with people wanting to abandon the nation state-they probably would be individualists from the start, and abandon the station for other regions more suitable to their line of thought anyway.

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Who else might want to get in on the project or interfere?

I think there is a lot of potential conflict here. First both JR an PC would likely try to "help" the colonists-such station would be more or less baseline human outpost in Outer System that has good potential for spying and intelligence operations and would influence balance of power in the region. They might come from the point of view that it would be easier to influence such humans. Titanian Commonwealth and Autonomists of course would like to prevent that. In the end perhaps the station would serve as Vienna did in Cold War-a spying and contact hub for all interested parties. Some factions might actually try to sabotage the project with exsurgent infection or virus to prove their right and prevent its construction or to blame bioconservatives for the terror attack(heck you can even make TC do this, so it doesn't come off as EP's version of political utopia). You can also start having Tanzanians promising restoration of national based stations for those refugees who thought that they are doomed on PC/JR dominance. Sort of "National-Sol" alliance with Tanzanians helping build small stations dedicated to preserving cultural groups. There is a number off them in Earth orbit and on Luna, and they might be interested.

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This might even be done sneakily: the organisers don't say anything, but people soon figure out that if they use a few betas as "bots" they can earn more points... so they will themselves fork away to the limits set by the system in order to maximize their performance. No need to force anybody to do anything, or hold a bad policy.

If people will notice that such employees get extra points, those against forking will complain. Tensions between those supporting and opposing such practice can easily be exploited by groups from outside.

—

[I]Raise your hands to the sky and break the chains. With transhumanism we can smash the matriarchy together.[/i]

Sun, 2010-11-07 16:22

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Build of a nation

OneTrikPony wrote:
LOL! :D That and the fact that your games routinely *have* ministers of comunication makes me ask. what language to I need to learn and how far is the comute from Utah to play in your games. You rawk dude. :)

Thanks! My games are usually run in fluent swenglish over in Stockholm, which is unfortunately a bit far away for commuting (the lag is *hundreds* of milliseconds!)

Quote:
On a more serious note: I've been musing about large scale nano projects and nanoecology and it seems to me that a project on this scale has similar compexity to a small biosphere. So you might use that perspective when considering the tecnical problems that could arise. For instance, as the project grows so will it's gravity well thus trapping polution. The complexity of the ring system means that you might not know to the 9th decimal the exact abundance of local materials creating un predicted shortages or extra pollution and cost overruns. There's also the human element. Some parts of the "game" will be more desireable than others creating labor shortages in some processes and vice versa.

Good points! Yes, this will be as complex and unpredictable as an ecosystem. To some degree that is why the humans are needed: there has to be lots of problem-solvers looking for problems and fixing them, but it of course introduces new problems. It is not just an ecosystem, but a growing economy and indeed a growing new society. One of the key challenges is going to be whether the new Tanzania will be anything like the old - or even whether the society holds together.

Quote:
That one is highly probable because the "game" is more of a social experiment than an engineering experiment. You're asking Titanians to create a game that will entertain and hold the attention of Tanzainians for hours each day for years and years. There will be some cultural missconceptions that decrease eficiency by a large factor.

The microcorp people might indeed have underestimated the complexity of human interactions, and will get a nasty realization halfway in when things really starts to get out of hand but cannot be fixed easily. Right now their programmers and planners have been thinking like engineers: they can map the input-output problems of Hamilton embryogenesis into a bunch of fairly simple games, and they think they have a clever scheme to motivate people. Who wouldn't be motivated by owning a chunk of prime real estate and a biomorph after a measly year of work? But they are dealing with people who speak dozens of different languages, follow several competing religions, have their own ideas about their lives, want to start businesses, disagree with their government, want to have revenge for the Fall, want to find lost relatives, want to go posthuman, want to be famous, want to escape, want to put the project under democratic control or want to be left alone. Ah, the sheer messiness of things!

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I think essentially what your talking about will require alot more resources than a microcorp can offer because you'll have at the peak 3 million 'Customers' that you're trying to get to play your game. You're going to need at least the resources equivelant to WoW, Secondlife, and EASports to keep every one working. I suspect that it might be easier to just give them all training or skillware. (Preferably training.)

This might be the big disaster for the microcorp. They assume people will be willing to work at a fairly simple game because they will earn something great in the near future. So when people start demanding something better, they might be unable to provide it. So maybe Tanzanians will start making their own software, which then might have to be integrated with the nanocontrols (security issues, ownership issues, quality issues!), or outsiders might want to provide software ("Oh, you don't have to pay us for this game interface... it is all paid for by inner system hypercorp product placement!") Training is the slow and expensive method. I think there will have to be some - a lot of these people will be lacking in modern skills. But this will require lots of teachers. (Ah, I should post The Solar Education Initiative in another thread) Skillware would be enormously expensive - 3.5 million [High] implants is 17.5 billion credits! (or 3.5 million level 4 services) In a way, I think the microcorp might be a prime example of Titan-style hubris. They think that just because they have a post-scarcity economy, flexible autonomist governance and a really clever plan nothing can go wrong that can't be fixed through some cleverness...

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As to more adventure type conflicts you can't go wrong with Pesant Revolts and TITAN infections. Who knows if Myrmidon was the only seed for the Glory Virus. [ominous music]Da Dun DUMMMMM![/ominous music] I think it would be Sweet if a major nanotech project supported by the Titanians failed half way through due to a latent exurgent infection. Jovans wouldn't look so silly then would they??? :)

Hehehe... the AoK hack is almost perfectly made for a particular character in my group. Peasant revolts can be interesting too. What happens when the citizens unionize to demand better deals from their government?

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Sun, 2010-11-07 16:46

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Build of a nation

Extrasolar Angel wrote:
Ahh, your players are being seduced by the alluring meme of nation-state. I applaud :)

Well, one of them got the Tanzanian Kilimanjaro Medal for setting up the deal... those things are addictive.

Quote:
It's been point out elsewhere in EP discussions that many survivors in EP are opportunists, those who were willing to undergo drastic measures to keep on living. As such many of them are probably highly individualistic. Groups that survived in other ways or by collective efforts could have somewhat different cultural values.

It is interesting to consider just how bizarre a nation like this might be. These are the people who went with the government nation-saving scheme at the last minute, rather than having fled earlier (or being unlucky enough to miss the chance). They are the middle-of-the-road types who did trust their government and were not part of any other networks that could have helped them out. Tanzania was just starting to rise when the Fall happened, so they are not very used to a posthuman existence. So in many ways they will be very conservative by Saturn standards - almost a mini Jovian republic. (Ah, there has to be a whole bunch of imams, pentecostal priests and hightech witchdoctors in the collection... they will be fun to mix in.)

Quote:
First both JR an PC would likely try to "help" the colonists-such station would be more or less baseline human outpost in Outer System that has good potential for spying and intelligence operations and would influence balance of power in the region. They might come from the point of view that it would be easier to influence such humans. Titanian Commonwealth and Autonomists of course would like to prevent that. In the end perhaps the station would serve as Vienna did in Cold War-a spying and contact hub for all interested parties.

Ah, this is a *very* good point. Of course, JR and PC will want to be subtle. So they have to do it cleverly, while TC will try to equally discreetly counter it. Hmm, the TC might want to ensure that eventual sleeving will be in more radical morphs, while the JR and PC could be acting through various charities or offers of "development deals". Crashing the whole project might be a desperate approach, but small "warning" infections that require heroic rescue from Titan might be very good for spreading influence. Ah, tensions between "cheaters" and "proper workers", secret agents, religious discontent ("We refuse to work on Sundays!"), infections, emergent nanotech troubles, ring-environmentalists, not-entirely culturally sensitive engineers... it is going to be a fun setting.

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Tue, 2010-11-09 07:57

#10

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Build of a nation

OK, time to sketch out some of the main villains... oops, I mean protagonists. The political situation At the time of the Fall, Tanzanian politics was dominated by Chama cha Maendeleo (the Progress Party). A pragmatic conservative/centrist party open both to hypercorp investment and popular autonomist networks, it is a remote descendant of the current Chama Cha Mapinduzi. The other parties with representation in the national assembly were the Chama Wa Kewli (Truth Party), religious conservatives, Huria Chama (the liberal party), extropians, and Tanzania Uhuru (Tanzanian Freedom Party), autonomist/socialist followers of "Wanjaja Ujamaa" ("Smart socialism") with strong ties to the equatorial networks and other anti-national, anti-hypercorp groups. The initial response to the Fall was sluggish, and when Dodoma was attacked much of the government was decapitated. While many members had backups retrieving them was slow, and due to a conservative embodiment requirement in the Tanzanian constitution only sleeved members with continuous memories could hold political office. The new cabinet formed around President Reginald Ngwale struggled to organize the erupting chaos. The military was fighting a losing war against invading TITAN forces, hypercorps were evacuating everybody they could through the Kilimanjaro beanstalk with no concern for national sovereignty and the population was utterly confused due to massive misinformation campaigns of unknown origin. President Ngwale allied with a few other political leaders to implement a large-scale emergency upload program. It mainly focused on Mwanza, Dar es Salaam and Moshi, which soon became centers of massive refugee flows as attacks from the central plains began. One of the problems was the under-representation of Zanzibar. There was limited scanning facilities on the island and many fewer uploads arrived; the scanned population is almost entirely mainland Tanzanians, something the few remaining Zanzibari will be greatly upset about. As the government tried to organize an orderly retreat towards the beanstalk and get bandwidth allocation things began to break down more and more. Nanoswarms were approaching the beanstalk from the north, negotiations with the hypercorp forces and military about access were slow, and the refugee streams had begun to turn into panicked hordes. While a state of emergency was declared, full-scale evacuation and storage of the population *and* legislative and judiciary branches of the government was a hard pill to swallow (not to mention the constitutional amendment allowing infomorphs to serve political office). The president agreed on the "suitcase solution" to get the opposition and supreme court to agree: the Executive would be contractually obliged to remain infomorphs until the Tanzanian state was properly reconstituted, as adjudicated by an independent third party (in this case Nomic on Extropia). While the president would likely have succeeded in pushing through another solution, the killswarms were approaching rapidly and few leaders wanted to quibble too long. Since then the cabinet has existed within an online simspace, trying to organise a new future of Tanzania elsewhere. The government has not given up its claims to the Earth region (or the long-running issue of sovereignty over the Beanstalk International Zone), but few expect that to matter much. The total treasury of the nation is very modest: it is largely dependent on the taxes sent home by sleeved Tanzanians who work across the solar system (somewhere in between charity, remittances and extortion money). The major players President Reginald Ngwale President Ngwale was vice president when Dodoma was destroyed and was lucky enough to be sleeved. His predecessor President Joseph Matata remains in infomorph storage: at the time he was 'dead', so the presidency passed to Ngwale. If Matata is revived there will be some constitutional complications, but Ngwale expects that if the New Tanzania project actually succeeds he will have little problem retaining power through popular support. He is head of state, head of government and commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Normally the president tends to be party chairman of the CCM, but due to the current situation the issue of who actually is party chairman has not been settled: most likely it is Matata. As long as there is no active party it doesn't matter. He is an intelligent, experienced politician but not terribly charismatic. He has an ebullient style that hides serious anxiety. One of his main worries is his wife, who lives on Progress and is involved in lobbyism there: they are slipping apart. Politically he is an ultra-pragmatist, always willing to do whatever it takes to get good results. He is ambitious and plans to ensure that he, his party and Tanzania comes out on top. Vice President Mahmoud Said Khatib Chairman of Tanzania Uhuru, the leftist party. He gained the vice presidency in exchange for his party's (and party network) support for the evacuation plan. A long-running opposition politician who finds it hard to actually cooperate with CCM. While the president and vice respect each other they do not get along. He is downright asocial, before the Fall often called "the hermit politician". His political strength lies in organisation ability and ability to network with NGOs. Together with the Minister for Union Affairs he forms a strong autonomist-leaning team. Prime Minister Pombe Masatu Membe Prime Minister Membe is a very popular politician: charming, witty and very social. The main reason he ended up prime minister had more to do with party loyalty and producing good, calming PR during the Fall than brains: most of his colleagues find him dumb as a brick. The president would ideally like to replace him but at the same time he is a good buffer against some of the more ambitious cabinet members. The Ministers The cabinet has a sizeable number of ministers, most of which insist on being instantiated. Many have portfolios that are completely irrelevant for the time being, leaving them far too much time to plan future careers, bicker and make proposals. Ministers of State in the President's Office Public Service Management Good Governance Political Affairs and Civil Societies Relations Ministers of State in the Vice President's Office Union Affairs Environment (right now largely useless, but of course insists on being active) Ministers of State in the Prime Minister's Office Regional Administration and Local Government Parliamentary Affairs (inactive) Minister for Agriculture Minister for Communication Minister for Community Development Minister for Defence and National Service Minister for East African Cooperation Minister for Education Minister for Energy and Minerals Minister for Finance and Economic Affairs Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Minister for Health and Social Welfare Minister for Higher Education, Science and Technology Minister for Home Affairs Minister for Industry, Trade and Marketing Minister for Information, Culture and Sports Minister for Infrastructure Development Minister for Justice and Constitutional Affairs Minister for Labour, Employment and Youth Development Minister for Lands, Housing and Human Settlements Development Minister for Livestock Development and Fisheries Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism Minister for Planning Minister for Public Safety and Security Minister for Science and Technology Minister for Space Minister for Water and Irrigation Comments, ideas?

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Wed, 2011-08-31 22:30

#11

jackgraham jackgraham's picture

Re: Build of a nation

Glad you're thinking of Zanzibar. It's a small but economically important part of Tanzania. I'd also wonder what effect proximity to the southern African space elevator pre- and during the Fall might have had.

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J A C K G R A H A M :: Hooray for Earth! http://eclipsephase.com :: twitter @jackgraham @faketsr :: Google+Jack Graham