robots will steal your job, but that's ok

i love this talk. finally the new generation is beginning to give reason for optimism. open source, diy and a generalized "free" culture can give us the existence we crave - lives full of purpose and idealism in a world without need. but again - will the plutocrats (read "political, social and economic system") go along with this vision - i am beginning to believe that this wave of "lateral" power may soon become unstoppable...

vision - the venus project

i like to think that venus refers to a new emphasis on the feminine and a de-emphasis of the masculine - as applied to the systemic. nonetheless, i love this vision developed over the years by jacque fresco and roxanne meadows. they rightly point out that technology for abundance exists but social and economic systems in application have driven us to dystopia.

if i could, the only change i would introduce into the venus vision is an element of "wabi-sabi". the constructions of the venus project are too highly ordered and structured to be comforting for life. 

8 cents / kWh - new solar concept

looks like solar is marching ahead. this is a different solar cell concept that achieves 8 cents per kilowatt hour (the current average cost of solar pv in the us is 10-15 cents; the current cost of retail electricity in the us is 12 cents). the cost of solar is coming down so steeply that maintaining current electricity utility systems will become untenable within 5 years. remember what phones looked like 30 years ago and what they look like now (over and above how their functionality has changed) - solar - in look, feel, functionality and efficiency - is bound for similar transformation...

vision

rather dramatic presentation about a singularitarian vision of the future. regardless of whether the future will resemble this possibility, a question it raises will always be relevant - how will ruling plutocrats respond to technology-enabled abundance? as a tool to further distance the elite or to create a single large embrace of humanity...

machine induced job losses

recent job losses and jobless recoveries indicate a new regime where software and intelligent hardware are increasingly taking over middle-pay work (expert systems of the future will replace highly skilled career work like medicine and law). i expect this trend to intensify as more ai finds it's way into products and services. but how will we bridge to the perfect leisure society - i see little discussion of structures or societal reform that will ensure all people a minimum standard of living. futurists talk about this but in reality more and more people are being pushed into poverty without any safety nets. the road to abundance is bound to be bumpy...

as per a recent ap report:

—For more than three decades, technology has reduced the number of jobs in manufacturing. Robots and other machines controlled by computer programs work faster and make fewer mistakes than humans. Now, that same efficiency is being unleashed in the service economy, which employs more than two-thirds of the workforce in developed countries. Technology is eliminating jobs in office buildings, retail establishments and other businesses consumers deal with every day.
—Technology is being adopted by every kind of organization that employs people. It's replacing workers in large corporations and small businesses, established companies and start-ups. It's being used by schools, colleges and universities; hospitals and other medical facilities; nonprofit organizations and the military.

—The most vulnerable workers are doing repetitive tasks that programmers can write software for — an accountant checking a list of numbers, an office manager filing forms, a paralegal reviewing documents for key words to help in a case. As software becomes even more sophisticated, victims are expected to include those who juggle tasks, such as supervisors and managers — workers who thought they were protected by a college degree. 
—Thanks to technology, companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index reported one-third more profit the past year than they earned the year before the Great Recession. They've also expanded their businesses, but total employment, at 21.1 million, has declined by a half-million. 
—Start-ups account for much of the job growth in developed economies, but software is allowing entrepreneurs to launch businesses with a third fewer employees than in the 1990s. There is less need for administrative support and back-office jobs that handle accounting, payroll and benefits. 
—It's becoming a self-serve world. Instead of relying on someone else in the workplace or our personal lives, we use technology to do tasks ourselves. Some find this frustrating; others like the feeling of control. Either way, this trend will only grow as software permeates our lives. 
—Technology is replacing workers in developed countries regardless of their politics, policies and laws. Union rules and labor laws may slow the dismissal of employees, but no country is attempting to prohibit organizations from using technology that allows them to operate more efficiently — and with fewer employees.

ubiquitous robotics ahead

this video is a startling demonstration of how reverse engineering the human brain is going to introduce trickle down effects into all human endeavors. it turns out that the brain (especially the cerebral cortex) is a regular and repetitive structure - i.e. a simple universal program for much of human understanding exists. ray kurzweil and jeff hawkins talk about this a lot. understanding of the hierarchical nature of brain processing will make machines more autonomous. ubiquitous robotics are not far. silicon valley robotics, which represents 40 organizations, reports a boom in robotics start-ups. foxconn (the taiwan based company that manufactures for apple) has announced that it will soon induct a million robots worldwide.

what do robotics and autonomous machines imply for human employment? are we moving to a future where "jobs" do not exist - a liesure society where people work to self-actualize, educate or amuse themselves.

ran prieur offers the following (he is interesting but has no faith in human intention):

If the tech system can adapt to resource exhaustion, we might emerge into a high-tech utopia/dystopia, in which it's easy to be comfortable but difficult to be happy. Social class will no longer be about power or even standard of living, but valuable activity. The upper class will hold the few important jobs that still require humans. The middle class will be hobbyists, practicing difficult skills that are not necessary for society. And the lower class will be content to consume entertainment.

i strongly believe that human beings will transcend class once free of the bonds of scarcity. if maintaining a tight hold on class was the primary objective, the internet would never have been made available. i think it's evolution, the rise of intelligent machines and abundance will break down class structure. 

self-actualizing

abundance will unlock our drives to self-actualize or as this video proves to maximize purpose. "carrot and stick" ideology is part of modernity's slavery program, and must be re-written. once the issue of money is taken off the table, people will begin to do truly wonderful things. 

possible futures

ran prieur, one of my favorite bloggers imagines the following:

"Ten years ago it really seemed like the whole system was about to come apart. People who saw a crash coming were seeing things that were being ignored by people who expected business as usual. Yet we were still wrong. After seeing how little daily life has changed after the 2008 financial collapse, seven years with global oil production on a plateau, and two catastrophic hurricanes, I think the big mistake of doomers was assuming that failures would have positive feedback like a house of cards. At this point, anyone still using the "house of cards" metaphor is not a serious analyst but an entertainer. It's clear that the interconnectedness of modern complex systems makes them stronger, not weaker.

This is especially true of technological systems. I no longer expect any kind of tech crash, except that resource-intensive benefits like driving and eating meat will become more expensive and less available to poor people. Economies will collapse as they adjust to decades of zero or negative growth, weaker nations and businesses will fail, but computers will continue to get stronger, and automation will adapt to resource decline by becoming more efficient and better able to compete with human workers. At the same time, no government that can possibly avoid it will allow its citizens to starve, so there will be even more subsidies for industrially produced human dog food.

Over the next few decades I see the global system passing through a bottleneck as it shifts from nonrenewable to renewable resources. We fantasize about apocalypse because we want the world to get looser, but I see it getting crappier and tighter. When we emerge from the bottleneck, life will get nicer... but are we coming out of the bottle, or going in? I think the "singularity" will match its meaning in astrophysics: the center of a black hole, with 90% of increasing computing power being used to stop the other 10% from doing anything interesting. I imagine an airtight sci-fi utopia/dystopia, where almost everything will be automated, nobody will have to do any work, everyone will be comfortable and safe, and we will have amazing powers to entertain ourselves. Other than that, we will have less power than any people in history or prehistory. The world will be lifeless and meaningless, a human museum, a suicide machine. Making the world alive again will be our next challenge."

systems

an interesting set of ideas from a passionate thinker. i agree that answers for the future lie neither in "markets nor the state". ossified ideological positions merit little application - perhaps synthesis is a way to go. meaning and structures will evolve and take shape around a few key ideas - distributed "lateral" power, democratization, networked communities, power of the feminine, high-technology and sharing cultures. i also love the ideas and ideals of the social engineer jacque fresco and his "venus project".

manhattan beach project

this is an exciting beginning towards living healthy - as one of the speakers mentions, longevity is a positive side effect. i've been following aubrey de grey (sens foundation) for many years - it's good to see that he is now part of a larger, serious community of researchers committed to solving aging related health issues. i think mature ai will be the most critical input to this effort.

geo-technology

parag khanna is an exciting thinker. i like his use of the term "geo-technology" and how it underlies both geo-politics and geo-economics. unfortunately, technologists - the people that create the true value in our lives, get overshadowed by economists and politicians - both groups that have steered the world towards ruin because they are not creators but manipulators.