In some ways, the notion of humans as instruction-following-meat-robots actually just feels like an extension of a todo list or a check list, but with AI. So basically I could give the computer my task list, my goals, or whatever, along with data about my energy levels, mood, etc. Then it could return an optimized & personalized set of "Do X for the next 5 minutes, do Y for the next 15 minutes" instructions. That could result in significantly more productivity.

I'm quite the fan of the exocortex notion - the computer as an external brain that extends my intelligence, productivity, etc.

Was there some other short story about a similar concept (AI managed fast food workers)? Something by Stallman or Doctorow maybe? I have vague deja-vu at that story, but from much longer ago than 2017, when Manna was published.

A lot going on there, my main observations:

1. the Australia Project resembles the society in Ian Banks' series The Culture

2. Curious that a post-capitalist society uses credits to ensure allocation, sort of a UBI, but it seems to gloss over a couple details:

2a. Do credits accrue or is it use-it-or-lose-it?

2b. It sounds like credits can be transferred between people (the space elevator story), what stops credit accrual from skewing via the Pareto Law into the same 1% having 99% of credits?