In this entry
The Old World was the society that existed before the Turning. People used a global internet, paid for things digitally and relied on servos for much of their daily work. Those systems made life easier. They also concentrated a great deal of power in the governments and corporations that controlled the infrastructure, the data and the machines.
Servos worked in homes, stores, hospitals and public services. Connected equipment handled jobs that people had once done themselves. A problem could be fixed through an update, often without the owner having to do anything. Most people liked the convenience and wanted more of it.
At the same time, national currencies were losing value and confidence in governments was declining. People depended on the institutions they increasingly distrusted. That combination made centralization a major political conflict well before the Turning. Survivors remember both parts of the Old World: the opportunities it created and how vulnerable they became when its systems failed together.
