C.V Curriculum Vitae; Envisioning the future of the RESUME in 2050

 

Once upon a future… this is who you could be.

The Birth
I am a newborn.
I do not know how I got here. Everything seems vaguely familiar when I look at the world
and yet I am locked inside myself. I feel this potential inside me, yet I am unable to
communicate properly with my environment. I realize I have two individuals taking care of
my every need. Actually, more than two… They are the main providers but I benefit from the
caring wills of a homogeneous group of people. And then I realize I am lucky. I was born in
an ok family and in a nice bubble. In 2050 the world is ruled by global standards but people
aggregate in tribes sharing the same characteristics, namely the same mission or score. So
like I said, I am lucky. I am a new member in a medium high, legitimate, energy/nutrition
bubble. The two people who decided to combine some of their potential to create me had
great scores and submitted a great proposal for renewable energy based out of food waste.
The proposal got approved and they had the permission to have a child. This is how things
work in 2050. The number one priority on earth is your individual contribution to humanity’s
progress. Everyone has a mission – energy, nutrition, environment, education, culture,
health, etc. – and everyone has a score that depends on the score of one’s creators, one’s
achievements in life, and overall contribution potential. So here I am: a newborn with the
mission to produce renewable energy out of food waste who should apparently be great at
it. My mind realizes everything very fast but I can not articulate my thoughts to the world,
perhaps is it for the mission to sink in, for me to absorb all I need from my creators and the
bubble we live in. And suddenly I feel that my basic human needs are overtaking my mission,
I slowly lose my sense of clarity over my purpose and it becomes an invisible second nature.
A few months in to life, and I already start losing sight of my inner power and lucidity on the
world around me. My inability to communicate forces me to copy and to learn through
others.

The Birthday
I am 5.
I spent the past few years growing up in our nice energy/nutrition bubble in London, one of
the leading city in the Better World cities alliance. My creators and my extended family all
keep raising their scores steadily and showing great examples for improving humanity.
Today is my birthday and everyone seems excited, way more than they have ever been, and
I’m not quite sure what is happening exactly.
And suddenly my female creator unveils my present: “Congratulations! You are CV
1,596,364,201!!”. Wait… I am not sure what this means. I can communicate very well now
thanks to my personal learning robot who trained me on key skills such as creativity,
character, data science, programming, or public communication. I do not want to offend
anyone so I know I need to smile, so I smile but questions and scenarios are rushing through
my mind. Learning R.246 who is used to reading my thoughts by now interferes to help me
understand the situation. “You just turned 5 and therefore received your Curriculum Vitae.
This is your life path making engine capable of predicting your life every 10 year and advising you on the best choices to make so you can better achieve your mission and improve your
score. You can turn it on now and it will stop by itself when you die. You are the number
1,596,364,201 Curriculum Vitae so that will now be your name and identity number. The
world will know you as CV 1,596,364,201 and will be able to follow your progress from all
scoring monitors. Global and cities authorities have the right to match you with
opportunities that will only help you in your mission and match your profile.” I can not
believe what I am hearing, everyone seems to get even more excited at hearing these
explanations. But wait, my life is programmed?! Learning R. hears the new questions
popping out in my brain and continues with his diatribe “You are extremely lucky. You now
have a purpose in life that matches your origins, your skills, your potential, your genetic
needs and predispositions. Your life will have meaning and you will be able to always
progress, have clear visibility over your participation and impact. You will interact with
people sharing your interests and characteristics. You will have purpose, you will belong, you
will never miss or need anything, and most importantly, you will never make a wrong choice.
Having a CV is like having an invisible hand guiding you through life to ensure you and
society both maximize their happiness level.”
Silence. I feel I should be happy so I keep smiling. But I am not sure about what other option
I have, do I have any. Hearing again, Learning R. finished his speech “Individuals who were
born without authorization, or out of a bubble, or who denied their role in humanity’s great
leap forward do not have a CV. They do not have any insurance to make the right choices
and end up excluded from all great human networks, losing their ability to contribute and
therefore to vote. No participation, no future. They all leave together in the outsiders’
community and keep going down. They use technology to escape reality and forget about
their status, they do not believe in a positive outcome for humanity and abandon their roles
in the making of our global future. They are out. No CV, no mission, no score, no future.” I
am astonished by what I am hearing and not sure if I should believe it all or not. I am trying
to control my thoughts now so Learning R. let’s me think in peace. Ok, now is not the best
time to let my mind wander. I’ll use my Mindrest meditation room later. I refocus on the
party. My creators give me my personal monitor for the first time, my remote control to the
world, and now to myself. Apps to interact with my bubble, to access knowledge, to store
my memory, to access my backend. And there they are: my mission “Energy/Nutrition:
renewable energy out of food waste”, and my score “743”. Out of a 1000. Mmmmmm… So,
now what?! Intuitively I press the green “Start” button. Bip. And there it appears, my first
ever 10 years vision. What places to visit, people to meet, material to read and see, how to
best entertain myself, nurture my potential. All perfectly corresponds to me, all makes
perfect sense, all sounds so reassuring and like the most perfect plan. I love my life. But now
I know. 10 years right ahead of me. 10 happy years. Then I see that there are some
roundabouts in the path designed, some choices to make but really all options seem great.
For the first time I feel whole, reassured, confident, I feel the potential inside me, the one I
felt when I was born. I am something, I have a role, I have resources. I am me and I am free.

The Rebellion
I am 15.
Really?! A friend just told me the most incredible story. Why do they only give us our CV at
the age of 5 and not when we are born. Some creators cheated with the authorization
demands, some were unhappy with the approved mission, others with the beginning score
of their combined potentials, and they abandoned the newborns. The rates of juvenile wandering souls and deaths reached such high peaks that the global government had to
intervene. They decided to move the CV baptism date to the age of 5 so they could early
childhood to research, test, and grow individual potential through Learning R. robots and
validate that the creators did as best as they could with their creations. The civilization
believed in individual potential and therefore had to be consistent with its goals and rules
and provide the best growing environment to all potentials. I thought this was outraging,
how could individual creators evaluate a newborn based solely on a stupid mission and
number?! Ok society realized it wasn’t right and made changes to improve the situation but
it didn’t change the fact that people would replace values with value. Was this whole CV
system good enough? Was it good not to fully let people make their own mistakes and judge
them, or not judge them actually, on how they deal with them? Having a CV had been great
up until now. I never worried, I made the most of every situation because I knew I could, I
upgraded my potential even more quickly than it was planed, my creators were impressed
and thrilled, I felt fantastic to raise my score and feel I was doing good, good for real and not
feeling personal good. But my initial questions where still haunting me. Wouldn’t I be doing
the same things without the CV guiding me, how could I know? How could I ever value
myself if I was going to be valued all my life by the CV?
So I did it. It was October 3 rd , 2 days before my 16 th birthday. I switched it off. I had to search
and search for the off button but finally found it. OFF. Bip. Nothing. Nothing for 1 minute. 1
minute before an alert started buzzing on my creators’ personal devices and on the city
council monitor. Both creators came to find me in 15minutes thanks to the permanent
geolocalisation feature on my device, that one I could not turn off before I was 18. “What
have you done?!” They were angry, no, not even angry. Something more, an emotion I had
never seen on anyone’s faces. A facilitator from the city’s government arrived only 5 minutes
after them and suggested a virtual counselling session to avoid any real violence or hurtful
exchanges. I didn’t know what a virtual session was but I felt so scared that I agreed. I was
put in a room on my own, and I waited. I waited. I waited. Until my personal device biped
again. “Your decision is available”. What decision? Basically, for this virtual session my first
virtual avatar got created and had the mission to negotiate with my creator’s avatars. The
avatar of the city representative monitored the discussion. It lasted a long time, it was
extremely hard, but I didn’t have to waste the time, energy, or to feel all the bad emotions
that would affect my potential. Everything was always done to preserve potentials and to
give you the lessons you needed to know with the least hurdles or damage possible. So I
learned that day that I was ungrateful, disrespectful to humanity’s greater purpose, and too
rebellious and young to fully appreciate the benefits of a system my ancestors had had to
fight so hard for. True, I didn’t understand. To fully integrate this lessons I had to connect to
my device to the Brainmaker. It would directly link my mind to the system and get me to
experience the lesson in a snapshot: minimum damage, total learning. I was a rebellious
teenager who dared switch his CV off and I would never do it again. FINE.
2 days after, I got my second 10 years’ vision. And there is was, my present from the global
government: the wild card feature.

The Shift
I am 18.
I am two years in my second vision and I have been enjoying my wild cards. Every time your
path, your vitae could take a different turn – all highly positive and made to improve your
success and score of course – and you get to chose between the great opportunities. The wild card feature allows you to come up with an alternative proposal and to submit it to the
city or global government depending on its importance. If it gets approved, you can go
ahead and implement your own choice. The choice gets recorded and depending on your
outcome and its positive influence on your score, the choice might then be offered to other
individual with similar curriculum. I had reached the record of wild cards used. Indeed, all
decisions that were not for basic survival, I had submitted a wild card request. It was my way
to test the system, to shape my potential and feel that it was truly my potential being
developed and not a mere pile of energy being cultivated and used for other purposes. But
something else had been haunting me for the past few years, my mission. I did not like it. I
did not truly care about energy, or nutrition. I mean don’t get me wrong these are perfectly
fine and highly important topics except I didn’t feel they related to my inner sense of
purpose. My potential wasn’t fully excited and unlocked. I wanted to change my mission.
Now that I was 18 and independent from my creators, I decided to file a petition to change
it. The response was immediate and came from the global government: NO. I filed a higher
petition. I got a hearing. Media heard about my bold move and the hearing became public.
CV 1,596,364,201 has gone crazy! That’s what everyone was thinking. My bubble was about
to implode, my creators felt betrayed, but it didn’t change the fact that my potential wasn’t
fully activated. The government ran test and came to the same conclusion. To be coherent
with the higher purpose and insure that my life would have the biggest positive impact it
could have, they would need to allow me to change my mission. I chose Education. I had
been opening new paths, testing out new curriculum options, investigating other vitaes. I
felt excited by the idea to work with the engineers behind the CV system. I wanted to make
the tools to enable people to navigate more smoothly and more uniquely. So far they had
been using the power of big data and building of usual social behaviors and collective
intelligence to make the most out of the social influence being displayed in bubbles. CV
makers encouraged the creation of high potential bubbles to grow potentials more quickly
and to control individual assignations more efficiently. When the maximum number of
energy movers was reached they solely approved creation demands in other bubbles etc.
But their system was completely denying the potential of outliers. Like me. It is not before
some combinations of complex systems end up in a surprising result that the result needs to
be disregarded as an error and sent to the outsiders’ group. I saw this as a waste of
potential. I wanted to combine the power of bid data and role modeling with high touch
customization and individual rules. Technology now allowed governments and individuals to
have visibility and clarity on all actions and thoughts therefore it shouldn’t be a problem to
allow alternative path and mission switches. My request got accepted.

The Duplication
I am 30.
I am busy. I have been working hard for the past 12 years on improving path making. We
released two new versions of the CV system and improved humanity’s overall score by 10%.
I feel my potential is stronger, I feel less frustrated. Yet I feel tired, for the first time I feel
consumed. “Just get an avatar!” says my colleague and best friend. She says she has 3 of
them, one managing her family, one taking care of one of her creators who is growing old
and dealing badly with his declining potential, and one always on the look for great lessons
and innovative ideas that would make her better in her mission. Her avatars are virtual yet
fully equipped versions of her. It only costs her a hew score points to duplicate herself so overall she can achieve more. What the avatar do doesn’t account for the completion of her
overall mission of course but allow her to better focus while managing other life
imperatives. I remember I had a first avatar to have that painful discussion with my creators
at 15. I had only used it a couple of other times to have the conversations I didn’t want to
have as I felt they would lower my potential and I could not afford it. Break ups, explanations
and mentoring. My avatar was me, only a me that would not waste point because not
affected by emotional distress and pressure. I am still human. I decide to try it and create my
second avatar to deal with all administrative and logistical issues in my life. I am very
demanding and always preferred to handle things myself so they are handled the way I like.
But an avatar isn’t another person it’s another you! How convenient to be able to virtually
duplicate yourself. I feel even more focused and passionate by my mission. Free of some
exhaustion I can go on and work on this Reshuffle program I have in mind to allow for better
CV combinations between individuals. Some parts of your life paths would have a higher
impact if you could join forces with a few specific people also on the same mission but with a
different kind of potential. My model would allow for the system to detect this high
potential complementarities and include them in individual curriculum so all scores and the
global one would make a jump. I am excited and less tired, yet something is different.

The Revelation
I am 68.
I am frustrated. I spent the last decades continuously improving the CV system, testing all
new features and options on myself. I devoted my life to this. I mean, yes I’m aware that this
is my mission and therefore I should feel happy and complete, but I am frustrated. There is a
bug in the CV system, I am not happy. I followed the rules and yet my score didn’t improve
for the past 10 years, I’m blocked. I realize that the CV system works as long as the individual
potential grow. It doesn’t matter if at some point only humanity’s score keeps increasing if
your own doesn’t budge. You lose all motivation and therefore disengage. And that’s when it
hits me: the quantified self is wrong. We all submitted ourselves to the rise of data and
wanted to collect more and more of it, for higher purposes of course, and therefore
established a global humanity score as a result of the combination of all individual scores.
But there is no space in the model for the magic of surprise combinations. Yet we knew from
observing nature that collective behavior would see the emergence of new positives serving
all individuals involved in the group effort. How could we have missed this: 1+1=3! I gave my
life to improve my score, thinking it would be the best way to contribute to humanity’s
wellbeing. I fought to allow combination of certain paths of course and managed to prove
that cooperation of diverse potentials would improve the scores of all parties involved but I
never extrapolated it to the society scale. And now I realize that by attributing a score and
by making all scores public we kind of limited the development of some individuals or
formation of some highly impactful systems not only across different kind of potentials, but
across different kind of missions. We kept on measuring people while limiting their impact to
one sole mission assuming expertise could only accumulate and serve one purpose. It was
just easier to aggregate and run our model that’s all. But I realized that my potential could
have been improved by being trained on new sets of issues requiring the same kind of skills
yet just for different purposes. That was my big revelation, one can have several purposes! I
decided to create a special project called Multipolar. I got the approval of the global
government to investigate multipurpose missions and the translation of high potentials to
new missions. My new goal is to blow up the 1000 score limit to show that there are no rules really, and that the quantification of the self is limiting individual potentials instead of
incentivizing people to follow instincts and try alternative paths. The pressure of numbers
makes it harder to fail, and therefore to test new things. I’m determined to blow up the
score and to get rid of it!

The End
I am 154 years old.
I am dying. But I did it, there is only one score left, the one of humanity. It has no limit, just
allows us to visualize effort, and progress. We know by now how important visualization is
for individuals so they have a baseline story to build off. The role of the CV has become to
make sure that anyone and everyone has the resources he or she needs when they need it
to explore, create, measure, or share. Everyone has the same purpose but can interpret it in
their own very peculiar way. That was the recipe. There are still bugs of course, still
frustrations, still some incomprehension between potentials, but overall humanity is
blooming. People are calling it the Mindorado period. I am happy, but missing something. I
don’t get it… What could I possibly be missing? I have a purpose, a shared one. I belong. I am
awake and aware, I was highly active until very recently. Yet I don’t feel whole.
My avatars! I suddenly realize that my avatars are still wandering around, unaware of my
physical state but fully in capacity of my highest mind state ever. They managed my logistics
and difficulties perfectly over the years, without bothering me, sometimes transferring me
important lessons through snap mindpshots, but overall we all have had different lives. How
crazy now is it to think about these virtual copies of me, living in the same world and yet
living a completely different life. But wait, how can I know that I was the original one?!
So I start looking for each and everyone of them. My individual monitor is slower these days
but I can still manage to think at the speed of light. I find all of them and erase them from
my backend, making sure I save and integrate all their memories into my system. One by
one, I feel my potential becoming stronger. I feel my physical state declining but my inner
spirit growing faster than ever. How is this possible? It clicks. By avoiding all the
complications and difficulties I could focus on my mission but I could not fully leverage my
potential. Potential doesn’t only come from success and unlimited learning, it also comes
from pain, from hard, from unsettling. My avatars were able to handle trouble and therefore
grew stronger. My potential grew but never reinforced itself. Now I am in full possession of
everything, the good and the bad. I am me. I am the newborn again. Only I know why I am
here. The CV made that possible, it allowed me to channel my sense of purpose and
belonging to write my own story, my own WHY. For the few years I have left I will transmit. I
will give away my potential to individuals I will carefully identify so it doesn’t get lost. It was
never about me, or maybe it was, because I gave meaning to things and to others. My whole
life I had this impression of needing to open new path so everyone could not only have
choices but make their own. My memory is now failing; I am just one of the victims of this
year’s Alzheimer epidemic. I thought I would have died of something more dramatic but in
the end perhaps it is reassuring that my death would be so normal.
The CV app starts buzzing, louder and louder. 2 words blink on the screen my personal
device gets projected on the wall in front of me. “Final Score”. Not mine, humanity’s.
Black.

The Blank Page
No wait, not black. White. I am nothing, I am nowhere, I am me.
I see two options, a choice, again.
But I am me. I am making the choice without a wild card. Or maybe all choices are…
>> GAME OVER << >> START OVER <<
Easy. I press Enter.
Blank page. So that’s why most of us are scared by it.
Everything starts all over again. My beginning, humanity’s next simulation.