In the near-future world of Cory Doctorow’s science-fiction novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, money has been replaced by a kind of ‘social capital’ called Whuffie, which could be loosely described as “points for all the good/cool things you’ve ever done, minus points for all the bad/lame things you’ve ever done”. It’s a kind of automated social karma and in Doctorow’s post-scarcity world it has replaced money.
On Monday, Canadian science-fiction writer Peter Watts was spared jail time for the crime of failing to comply quickly enough with orders given to him by a US border guard at the Port Huron crossing. The case angered a lot of people, not least because it illustrates the way that what we recognize as right and reasonable evaporates when it comes in contact with law enforcement. For behaving in a way that many of us would not consider unreasonable or abnormal, Dr Watts was beaten, pepper-sprayed, detained, mistreated, lied about by officials and journalists, subjected to lengthy and expensive court-proceedings, threatened with a long prison term, branded a felon, and finally fined a large sum of money. The officers who failed to defuse a trivial situation, responded with unnecessary violence and played fast-and-loose with the truth in sworn statements escaped any kind of censure or discipline. Yet his friends and admirers consider it a victory because he wasn’t imprisoned. It’s rather like celebrating because the school bully only knocked out one of your teeth instead of beating you into a coma.
But that’s by the way. What I really wanted to write about was the ‘friends and admirers’ part. One thing that the incident made clear is that Dr Watts has Whuffie in spades. When his case first came up, his friends in the science-fiction community wrote about it and the result was an outpouring of support. People who had never met Dr Watts - myself included - hurried to express their concern and to send him money for his legal fees. I don’t know how much money of his own he may have, but public support must have played some part in helping him hire the capable lawyer who ultimately won him his freedom. If he’d had a public defender, he’d probably be starting his sentence right now.
There are two things to notice there. One is that in our scarcity economy, Whuffie can sometimes be translated to regular money. The other is that - in part because of that - Whuffie can buy you justice. We’re familiar with the sight of rich people walking free on a technicality because they could afford to buy the best lawyer in town. But it seems that being socially rich can also help: it gets you money to cover your legal costs, it generates coverage of your case, it gets you favorable recommendations and character testimony from friends and colleagues, and so on.
How did Dr Watts get his Whuffie? He got it by being connected, by being a nice guy, by being generous, by being creative and talented. Like many people, I know of him through his books, specifically the electronic versions that he makes available for free on his website, rifters.com. I downloaded his books, read them and enjoyed them. The fact that he wrote well and gave his work away for free made a positive impression: he earned some Whuffie. When my friend Charles Stross confirmed that he was indeed a thoroughly nice guy in person, he earned some more (that’s ‘right-handed Whuffie’ in Doctorow’s terminology). When he wrote a personal thank-you for the small amount of money I’d sent - not just an individual response, but one that referred specifically to a single email exchange we’d had in the past - he earned more. He gets points for being articulate, for being a scientist, for being witty. In short, real-world Whuffie seems to behave in many respects as Doctorow predicted: you get it by being a nice guy and you get it for doing cool stuff.
There are some other points to notice. One is that Whuffie isn’t a strict analog of money. Dr Watts spent a lot of money in the legal system and that money is gone. His Whuffie, on the other hand, is probably higher than ever (apparently we have to add ‘being beaten and pepper-sprayed by cops’ to the list of ways to get Whuffie: that’s further than most people are willing to go).
Another is that the courts system has actually recognized Whuffie for a long time: character witnesses who will testify that you are a good citizen are an integral part of any defense. The fact that Dr Watts is a respectable academic rather than a teenage thug probably counted in his favor, although it also illustrates the granularity of Whuffie in the real world. To a judge, a doctorate and steady employment are positive factors, but that Dr Watts writes ingenious fiction is neither here nor there. A skateboarder who is revered by all his peers is not going to get any special slack from a judge because of his recognized ability at airwalk grabs and ollies.
There’s also a celebrity element in Whuffie. Dr Watts is - within his own small community - a minor celebrity. If he were not, he could be the nicest guy in the world but his Whuffie wouldn’t buy him a cup of coffee outside his immediate social circle. It’s not enough to do good or kind things; you have to be seen to be doing them, and seen by people who are themselves influential. I try to be creative and kind, but if the border police maced me tomorrow, I wouldn’t find many strangers rallying to my cause. Whuffie isn’t absolute karma: it’s about the extent as well as the quality of your reputation.
The celebrity aspect is subtler than you might think. To get to the point where social capital works in your favor, you don’t need to be a big celebrity: you just need to get some recognition outside your immediate social group. That may just mean doing whatever you already do on a slightly larger scale, and maybe indulging in a little gentle self-promotion. Interestingly, one of the features of useful social capital is that it has a personal element. Reading between the lines of the comments on rifters.com, the impression I get is of people who had never met Dr Watts but thought of him as a friend. Whuffie isn’t simply an approval rating: it’s the perception of a bond or an obligation towards someone who does things that you appreciate. Big-name celebrities may qualify for approval from their fans, but as they get bigger that personal bond becomes more tenuous.
It’s interesting to think about Whuffie in the context of your own life. If you got into trouble tomorrow, who would rally round? (Call it the Port Huron Test). Conversely, who are the people you would support if they needed help? Leave out your immediate family and friends. Your relations with them are governed by long-established rules of reciprocity, affinity and mutual aid that were in place before we came down from the trees. Think about people who you’ve never met, but for whom you’d still want to do something if they needed it. Those are the people who have Whuffie.
Real-world Whuffie is a bit different from the machine-mediated idealized version described in Doctorow’s novel, but it does exist and can have real-world implications. Communications - particularly the Internet - have expanded our zone of influence beyond the circle of people we can see and touch, and made the idea of an extended reputation a reality. If you’ll excuse the pun, it’s time to wake up and smell the Whuffie.
Chasing Whuffie may seem narcissistic, but it’s hard to fault something that rewards people for being creative and generous. If you’re worried about your own Whuffie balance, there’s no magic formula for generating it, but I think the general rules can be summed up in just four words:
Aim higher. Give more.
