Culture

Much of
what some might now call ‘high culture’ does not really exist any more, at
least in any least in any widespread sense. Art and literature are no longer on
school curricula, replaced with purely vocational training. Universities –
which are only accessible to the richest 0.1% of the population – do teach
these courses purely for the interest and indulgence of the students, but again
the vast majority of courses are vocational. Arts and humanities make up
perhaps a twentieth of enrolments.

Libraries
are a thing of the past. For the employed and the rich, all information is accessible
online (for a price). For dependents and ineligibles, the expenditure would not
be wasted on providing them with anything so frivolous as knowledge or
enlightenment. Physical books are still produced, mainly for the rich, though
textbooks and manuals still appear sometimes in paper.

Most
historical artifacts are ways of storing wealth or for ostentation. With the
study of history or even political events of recent decades seen as
increasingly obsolete, a Medieval sword or Renaissance tapestry is generally
seen primarily in terms of its worth.

England’s,
and particularly London’s, rich architectural culture has gone to wrack and
ruin. Most of it is at ground level, where the toxic smog makes tourism
dangerous, and much of it has been eroded by acidified rain. Only a few
buildings – Buckingham Palace, the Houses of Parliament, the Marble Arch and,
outside London, the old College buildings of Cambridge – have been preserved
within vast domes.

Live
entertainment still thrives in the entertainment district, in both the Towers
and the Clouds. Musicals, dance acts, circuses, magic and theatre all appear in
the Clouds and have their less glamorous equivalents in the Towers. In the
Clouds, a show might be in the original Shakespeare, or a circus might contain
cloned animals rather than convincing animatronics. The Warrens of the
entertainment district are where the seedier entertainments typically take
place.

Gladiator
has been a popular sport for a decade or so. In the legitimate, Clouds and
Tower district versions, non-lethal weapons rigged to cause pain or to stun are
used; in the unlicensed rings down in the Warrens, anything goes, and even the
rich high-rollers tend to prefer these more bloody games.

The
Captains of Industry tend to be celebrities in their own right, glorified like
epic heroes in ways that would make the cults of Steve Jobs, Elon Musk or Henry
Ford seem trivial.

English
has remained the international language of commerce and is therefore dominant.
This is reinforced by automated translation systems, which mean that no one
really needs to learn a foreign language. However, Mandarin, Hindi and Spanish
are spoken frequently by people in the Warrens who had relevant ancestry when
they more or less lost the ability to migrate a generation ago, and by people
in the Towers who have recent family from abroad.

Other sports are still played – football and
rubgy, notably, as well as the Human Race, a parkour/speedrunning challenge
across London, and the ludicrously dangerous Dronesurfing. Movies are still released,
TV shows binged, computer games played, though most of these are on the vast
virtual world Arcadia to which nearly all Captains of Industry, Employed and
Dependents can connect. Given the soul-numbingly mundane horror of daily
existence in the real world, many increasingly prefer it.