The material world

As academic discourse, social interaction, and civilization as a whole have been absorbed by the ultranet, relatively little remains outside of its expansive demesne.

It sometimes is defined in a tautological and inversive sense as "The Material World is anything the ultranet isn't".

Inconsiderable attention is now given to the basic flora, fauna, and crusta that makes up the physical sphere of existence as it plays very little role in modern lives. That said, there persist a number of categories of people for whom the ultranet is not their principle reality:

## Residents of the material world:

#### Ultranet infrastructure

The workers and support structures for the ultranet itself.  Given the encompassing nature of the ultranet and its needs for ongoing maintenance and a massive uninterrupted supply of aether, a large, dedicated staff is employed to ensure its continued functioning. While automation has mitigated some of support needs, manual oversight and some element of labor continues by necessity. Thus this workforce resides almost exclusively in the material world.

For those ultranetizens that retain their corporeal bodies, there is of course also an element of life support structure needed to sustain those. Thus there are divers facilities supplying nutritional care, neuromuscular stimulation, and other bodily needs provided as Whole Life Service offerings by Unicorp and The Lion's Share.

#### Distopes

This ontological category is a *portmanteau* of three distinct identities:

##### *Dissidents* (di-)

Activists or critics with theocratic and/or political stances directly in conflict with the institutions in power or view them as some form of oppression.

##### *Tonalists* (-to-)

A pejorative name given to those who object to the editorial "tone" or viewpoints employed by either the ArchformArchitects who define the ultranet, or the Etymerian Archivist Acolytes who curate it.

##### *Pedagogues*1 (-pe)

Academics, educators, or acolytes who espouse antiquarian teachings that are unpopular or incongruous with modern doctrine.

Collectively, these are groups who have opted out2 of the ultranet due to intractable differences in their ideological viewpoints, which were often deemed iconoclastic, heretical, or otherwise anathema to the ultranet society at large. They eschew further involvement within the ultranet and primarily live in the material world as their principle reality.

#### Motes

The final category of people found residing in the material world. These are individuals who involuntarily are unable to remain in the ultranet due to poverty, criminal activities, or an incompatible psyche3.

## Other Uses:

"..in the material world" - a derisive expression used to connote significantly inferior value even when the comparison would be nonsensical, as in "Rho's scholarship wouldn't even be tolerated in the material world"

"Spirits in the Material World" - a scathing social commentary presented in the form of an ultranet production with lyrical accompaniment by The Enforcers as part of their *Phantasm Ex Machina* thesis.  Ironically, it itself was found to contain subliminal elements of neurodogmatic hyponosis through use of cortical entrainment and quadaural holography, in addition to a refrain that repeated nearly incessantly. Its opening stanza however was consider rather provocative by many in the distope factions, and has become a mantra or motto of sorts to them:

> There is no individual evolution
>
>

> From our immersive interlocution
>
>

> It is all misattribution
>
>

> and never equidistribution
>
>

Like many missives interpreted as critical of the status quo, this work has been tagged by Etymerian archivists as "fictating" content and thus increasingly hard to locate or experience on the ultranet.

[1] Debate remains if the third component of this triumvirate is "pedagogues" or instead "pedants" as citations to both have been recorded, but there is enough overlap in these groups that either epithet can be applied despite not being synonymous.

[2] While there are scholars who assert that some among the distopes are not voluntarily abstaining from the ultranet at large, but are instead banished from it, insufficient verifiable evidence has been found to support this claim. In any case, the absence of any path for redress makes the concern moot.

[3] There is a rare genetic anomaly of the hypothalamus that prevents some individuals from being able to establish a substantive interface with current ultranet protocols. Its discovery occurred rather late in the ultranet's timeline given that nearly all medical and scientific research now occurs within the ultranet, and material world aberrations are a relatively understudied periphery topic combined with a paucity of funding or mandates for such research. While there has been some debate within the Etymerian sect about outreach and ministry to these "motes of perdition", no viable means of doing so at any scale have been proposed, and only a few intrepid missionaries have chosen to pursue this on their own.