Stories of Your Life and Others

From a broadcast of EduNews:
The Pembleton University calliagnosia initiative was defeated by a
vote of sixty-four percent to thirty-six percent.
Polls indicated a majority favoring the initiative until days before the
election. Many students who previously supported the initiative say they
reconsidered after seeing the speech given by Rebecca Boyer of the People
for Ethical Nanomedicine. This despite an earlier revelation that PEN was
established by cosmetics companies to oppose the calliagnosia movement.
Maria deSouza:
Of course it's disappointing, but we originally thought of the initiative
as a long shot. That period when the majority supported it was something of
a fluke, so I can't be too disappointed about people changing their minds.

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The important thing is that people everywhere are talking about the value of
appearances, and more of them are thinking about calli seriously.
And we're not stopping; in fact, the next few years will be a very
exciting time. A spex manufacturer just demonstrated some new technology
that could change everything. They've figured out a way to fit somatic
positioning beacons in a pair of spex, custom-calibrated for a single person.
That means no more helmet, no more office visit needed to reprogram your
neurostat; you can just put on your spex and do it yourself. That means
you'll be able to turn your calli on or off, any time you want.
That means we won't have the problem of people feeling that they
have to give up beauty altogether. Instead, we can promote the idea that
beauty is appropriate in some situations and not in others. For example,
people could keep calli enabled when they're working, but disable it when
they're among friends. I think people recognize that calli offers benefits, and
will choose it on at least a part-time basis.
I'd say the ultimate goal is for calli to be considered the proper way to
behave in polite society. People can always disable their calli in private, but
the default for public interaction would be freedom from lookism.
Appreciating beauty would become a consensual interaction, something you
do only when both parties, the beholder and the beheld, agree to it.