CAPITALIST HUMANISM
okanverse's "humanism" is like... while it's not advocating a "Return To Biological Humanity" (at least outside of fringe groups that nobody really cares about). and it can't really tolerate a return to pre-transhumanist tech because that wouldn't really be economically competitive, it nevertheless worships the idea of Flaws that Make Us Human and these arbitrary ideas of Things That Make Us Human which they strive to reify in their developments of transhuman tech. so it's like, Capitalist Transhumanist Humanism - we advance but only in ways that supposedly further our supposed essential Humanity. of course, "furthering our humanity" is an incoherent idea and as capitalist tech is developed to further the ends of capital it inevitably generates tensions with this idea of "humanity" just because it's incoherent which become fodder for new generations of liberal vs conservative debate over "are we taking development Too Far" and so forth - rinse and repeat.
for what its worth i'd say i'm like on the fence between what kinda small stuff i know of humanism and anti-humanism. i think like edwad says the marxist humanists have a lot of good takes but i dont appreciate some leftists' commitment to this idea of essential humanity as this like "we are fundamentally different" or "the nature of human existence is flawed and people fight and stuff but that's Good Actually as long as we abolish the super big fighting" (graeber does this in particular i feel and it's quite annoying)
i guess what my thing is kinda saying is that "essential humanity" as a concept (at least the way lots of people seem to think about it) is so arbitrary that it can and i'm sure will continue into a transhuman capitalist future. as we've changed ourselves in the past, so we will change ourselves in the future, yet continue to assert this idea of the equivalent, Human legal subject defined by certain arbitrary qualities that "make them human" - qualities which run, in the end, antithetical to communist aims, imo. the Innate Flaws of Human Existence, our little original sins, or whatever
SKILL DOWNLOADING AND KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION
skill downloads are a routine fact of daily life but higher level knowledges are restricted various ways for profit and to help keep people in line, via cost barriers or explicit consumption law-style prohibitions, and in turn, DRM. it depends though, discounts and relaxation of laws around skill downloads do happen as the labor market or the state's interests shift and they want to stimulate a wage slump (increase the pool of skilled workers competing for wages) or to fuel some new program. additionally theres all kinds of lower to lower-mid level skill packages floating around download sites - and a lot of scams.
academies do exist in addition to this i think, as well as more freeform venues of study. this is cheaper than and less restricted than knowledge download (in the case of many online resources, free) and serves as the second class path for knowledge acquisition in a lot of ways.
psychedelic and relaxing consciousness mods, those are probably sold around too. cyber weed is in you now
TRANSHUMAN MAGIC
trying to figure out the significance of Fumi's magic versus other kinds, and stuff. because there are a lot of different kinds of magic out there, due to not just different specializations, but different laws of physics, and magics that rely on invoking powerful entities, which are collectively called the "world-spirits"
fumi's world-spirits, which her culture also calls Kami (and while she is an atheist, there are significant factions within the various religions to recognize them as religiously significant spirits), are unique in that their powers seem able to function anywhere in the multiverse. whereas other magics are limited to certain cosmoi (universes) or regions because they require certain laws of physics or the presence / reach of the patron world-spirit(s) to operate, or else they fizzle out
i'm also trying to figure out the exact significance of Fumi's powers in the transhuman age, where memories and skills can be literally downloaded - originally i was thinking that they might be a strategic asset for states because the Kami are pretty strong and you don't have to learn new magic powers in another universe, but i'm not sure if they might not find it easier to download new skills into witch agents and stuff. but it would definitely help them maintain a consistency of powers that can be deployed across the multiverse, especially in lower-magic regions, although transhumanity is broadly migrating toward more fantastical universes. it could also be seen as a strategic liability, since magic users from these places can take their powers anywhere and wouldn't be rendered powerless by chucking them into a different universe, so they might make powerful dissidents
however there are only certain places where you can go to become "attuned" to Kami so the power isn't available to everyone off the bat via skill downloads, whereas other magics often are, at least low level ones. theres a lot of low to lower-mid level magics (many that dont work) which are widespread on the net. more powerful skill packages commonly are DRM locked to keep them behind profit walls or to help keep the bureaucracy in control. while a lot of magics are snake oil, its kinda like pharmaceuticals - theres magics that are known to work thru empirical study even though nobody really knows why, and then theres "perfect butt shape talisman - only 9.99$ per month for 33 months - see success in all your jobs and be promoted to BOSS - low down payment of 300$ buy today!"
THE PARANORMAL
relatedly, a lot of known space is crawling with weird paranormal shit, but there are also bigger overarching currents as well as smaller scale weird stuff. in the Mandate in particular but also other states, people have been noticing an uptick in paranormal activity over the centuries: missing persons cases, weird presences, etc, eventually starting to boil over into larger incidents openly involving city blocks and neighborhoods. investigators and paranormal "enthusiasts" have been tracking links between big movements of dark money and goods, internet phenomena, reports of strange magical incidents and stuff, and missing persons cases collectively referred to as "Giggling Eye" because of one of the weird seemingly random gibberish names they name the companies that they use to move resources around. such big weirdnesses float among a vast number of other smaller, but similar weirdnesses - dealing most openly in shady international storefronts and obscure scammy businesses that are hard to track, but seemingly with tendrils in larger stuff as well.
larger scale paranormal shit has occurred before, affecting entire communities and larger sections of the populace; and if the data is correct, at an increasing rate. it's difficult to forecast with certainty but many in transhuman space predict the possibility of much greater and worse things looming ahead. anxieties that seem confirmed by reports from the ZPSG communists (trickling through the communications jam imposed by the Mandate and FTU) in recent decades, the ZPSG commies began a survey of the edges of known space using new methods and came into contact with a forgotten spur of transhuman settlement, where contact was lost in centuries past. they've managed to re-establish tenuous connection with the descendant society of the settlement effort that reached the Alsifer system, and found that they became stranded in this cosmos and landed in the middle of a paranormal apocalypse among the local aliens.
they found that their own technology largely ceased working outside the special shielding of their ships, which had, thankfully for them, managed to unintentionally anticipate strange conditions in this new world. but lacking the technology to reproduce the shielding tech en masse, they ended up rebuilding industrial society outside together with their neighbors with, for the most part, mechanical tech, and holding the various weird entities now stalking the world at bay with various esoteric magics and other technologies. the ZPSG surveyors' reports and further studies indicate signs of a previous civilization in that region of hyperspace having gone nova recently (at least in the sense of a few thousand years ago), with this like "haunted space" stretching for many hundreds of lightyears in hyperspace, which has fueled speculation that a similar fate lies ahead for transhuman society.
TALKING ANIMALS?
ive been thinking a bit abt animals in okanverse and thoughts of animals using the internet and stuff and transhuman society integrating with animal societies and stuff. animal facebook... there would be unfortunate stuff with this of course outside the communist sphere but it is an interesting thought and one i feel is not just possible but perhaps likely to become relevant IRL. like those monkeys working at stardocks in revelation space. funny monkey get paid