In this system of government, every aspect of your life is managed and controlled via ssh connection to a massive super-computer whose actual location remains a closely guarded national secret.

Upon birth/registration, my parents can expect to be assigned a guid and password, to be revealed to me once I become of sign-on age. In the meantime, they can simply su into my profile as and when they need to update my details.

Much of the complexity of modern life could be managed through the assignment of user access groups - and changes requested via a simple mail request to my friendly local sysadmin.

National applications such as taxation, voting, jury services and so on can be made available (and access managed via group membership permissions) through various command-line options (all helpfully supported by appropriately detailed man-pages, naturally)

Marriages, parenthood and other relationships granting or revoking su access could also make life relatively straightforward, and the national log-files would of course keep track of any untoward behaviors.

Can't remember how you filled in your tax-return last year, simply grep your command history to get a helpful one-line reminder!

Immigration and Migration could be managed by piping out national guids into files to be ftp'd over to different national servers for processing, subject to encoding issues - though recent treaties have been signed across the various trade-blocks to standardise on utf-8 (except the Americans who insist on continuing to operate on CP-1252, much to the annoyance of everyone else)

And the state's ultimate sanction is to move your files out to /dev/null , though there is talk of insurgent rsync rebels who will sudo your content into a temporary location for redeployment, for a fee.

These darker elements aside, the country has never had it so good - good that is until the great core-dump of October 2004...but that is another story.
-- zen_tom, Mar 03 2016

Halfbakery: Family Family
This is what planted the seed of the idea. [zen_tom, Mar 04 2016]

Ahhh, another convert to the Collective ... [+]
-- 8th of 7, Mar 03 2016


If passwords are assigned, then they are probably all stored somewhere, just waiting to be hacked.
-- Vernon, Mar 03 2016


All this idea needs is to be co-deified.
-- normzone, Mar 03 2016


Can this be achieved without destroying the illusion of safety, security, privacy and independence that we peons hold so dear?
-- whatrock, Mar 03 2016


Of course it can. Just take two of these little white tablets, morning and evening ...
-- 8th of 7, Mar 03 2016


//cat /home/guid/.profile | grep 70s-unix-steampunk//

I don't get it. Talk to me like you would your baby. Talk baby talk to me, Tom. I need baby speak.
-- blissmiss, Mar 03 2016


When I'm at work, I have to switch between two different types of computer system - there's the slightly glitchy, windowsy one that takes agest to actually do anything because it hangs all the time, and a bunch of unix boxes that I connect to via an ssh connection. Some people, when they see this kind of connection think, "that looks technical" on account of it being all coloured text on a black background, you type something, and in the background things happen. Access to the system is controlled via someone with "root" privileges, often called a SysAdmin. You can do all the same kinds of things you might do on a normal computer, it's just a shade more industrial. There are a number of conventions that these systems use, to help organise data, documents and the people who work with them - which we all might benefit from by expanding their adoption from a purely system- administration scope, to a more societal one.

I was looking at Mindey's "Family" idea, and working on one of these systems and thought that you could do what he was suggesting quite easily in Unix, using their group- permissions functionality, and it kind of grew from there.

The cat thing is a possible command you might run to find anything in your personal configuration settings file that might reference '70s- unix-steampunk' (not a likely search, to be fair) Since unix is a technology whose roots are very much from that era, and that haven't changed all that much, but which remains very awesome today, much like steam-engines or victorian technology. I'm not sure if or when a literary genre will emerge that places alternative-history stories in the heady technological days of the last 30 years of the 20'th century (when unix might have first become known) but now, when they place those kinds of stories in the last 30 years of the 19th century, they call them steampunk. Maybe bitpunk, or computapunk, I don't know - but that's the feel I'm aiming for.
-- zen_tom, Mar 04 2016


Rather than explaining, it would have been quicker, easier (and ultimately, kinder) just to put [Bliss] out of her misery, [z_t].
-- 8th of 7, Mar 04 2016


I don't know - sometimes it's helpful to try and talk with another human being, using human being language, and human being ideas, I've found that if I stay close to the metal for too long, the wife starts getting twitchy, and I start holding imaginary conversations with myself.
-- zen_tom, Mar 04 2016


// stay close to the metal //

Yup, that's the best way, by far.

// the wife starts getting twitchy, //

"Wife" ? What is this "wife" of which you non-Collective organisms speak ? Your words are strange to us.

mount -u /wife
rm -rds /wife

// and I start holding imaginary conversations with myself. //

We have real conversations with ourselves, all the time ...
-- 8th of 7, Mar 04 2016


//The cat thing// I've heard one should not pipe cats.
-- lurch, Mar 04 2016


// We have real conversations with ourselves //

Do you also have arguments? Who wins?
-- whatrock, Mar 05 2016


8th of nothing, I am not now, nor have I ever been, in misery. I may make you miserable, but *I* am not in misery.

Quite the contrary, as my name alludes to, I am blissful. All of the damn time. Even when I'm not I am. Zen knows this. He is enlightened. You, however, are not. Bleh to you.
-- blissmiss, Mar 05 2016


// I've heard one should not pipe cats //

On the contrary, stuffing cats into pipes - particularly sewer pipes - is highly recommended. The wails and howling aquire a peculiarly resonant quality that is quite delightful.

// Who wins ? //

We do, of course.
-- 8th of 7, Mar 05 2016


//the national log-files would of course keep track of any untoward behaviors//

[-]
-- Voice, Mar 05 2016



random, halfbakery