I was going to respond to a comment from Harvey in the thread from this week’s FFR, but quickly came to realize that I was writing more of an essay than a blog comment, so here we are. Harvey writes:
While Moore’s Law finds the World Economy, is it a good idea, to put the fate of human lives in the hands of the “free market”?
My gut answer is “yes,” but I’m interested in learning about any viable alternatives on the table. I don’t believe in letting people starve or go without housing or medical attention, but then I don’t know of anyone who does. As I suggested on the podcast a couple of weeks ago, I’d like to see us start approaching these issues from a standpoint of effectiveness, using as close to scientific analysis as possible rather than ideological boilerplate. I believe the evidence indicates that (more or less) free markets are the most effective tool to push us to an economic singularity.
It is estimated that 600 million people have been lifted from poverty in China over the past 25-30 years, resulting from a dramatic move by the Chinese government in the direction of free markets. I can think of no other example where so many lives have been improved so rapidly.
The digital revolution occurred in and has been driven by free economies. If the elimination of poverty requires driving to a new generation of information technology — one where physical goods are the output of information processing — then I favor taking the quickest route available. It’s not a question of whether we care for the sick, the poor, the homeless. It’s a question of getting the most help to the most people in the shortest amount of time.
I’m eager to use whatever approach will do that, irrespective of whether that approach gets labeled “capitalism,” “socialism,” “progressivism,” or “conservatism.” I just don’t care. I want to do what works. From where I sit — and as I said, I’m eager to learn about anything else that works — but from where I sit, free markets are the humane approach.
I caught Things to Come on TCM last night. H. G. Wells was the author of the book The Shape of Things to Come, on which the movie was based, and, interestingly, was closely involved in the making of the film. Filmed in 1936, it’s a movie that takes us through 100 years of future history of the world.
As the host on TCM pointed out, it’s very interesting — with 76 years of that predicted 100 years now in humanity’s rear view mirror — to consider what Wells got right, and what he got wrong. The story is set in a thinly-disguised London renamed “Everytown” (I’ve visited a lot of towns all over the world, but have only been to one where you regularly see these and where you often have a view of this). We first see Everytown at Christmastime in the year 1940, when war breaks out. The World War projected in the movie is disturbingly similar to the real thing in some respects, especially the portrayal of aerial bombardment of urban civilian populations. What Wells (fortunately) got wrong was the duration: the War drones on for decades and ultimately brings civilization as we know it to an end.
By the year 1970, Everytown is under the control of local despot called the Boss who wants to go to war with the nearby Hill People in order to take their coal and convert it to fuel for his shabby fleet of non-functioning airplanes. The nation-state as we know it is gone, along with the infrastructure that kept it going. Although the Boss dreams of bringing some pieces of that infrastructure back for his own personal enrichment, no one has seen a working airplane in years.
And then, one day, an airplane lands in Everytown — a sleek, futuristic model (still propeller-driven, alas) unlike anything anyone has ever seen. The pilot, decked out in what must surely be the dorkiest helmet in the history of science fiction, has no interest in or use for the Boss, and instead seeks out the local technorati. He explains that he is part of a new brotherhood of “airmen,” a technical elite who have headquartered themselves in Basra — yep, the same Basra — and who have carried on the technological progress of the human race that was cut short by the war and ensuing chaos. This new fraternity calls itself Wings Over the World and it is ready to usher in a new chapter in the history of humanity.
Before long, an entire fleet of enormous futuristic aircraft descend upon Everytown and conquer it. It’s unclear to me whether they kill the Boss or he kills himself, but Wings Over the World is otherwise pretty much nonviolent — essentially slipping the entire town an airborne roofie, allowing them to wake up later to find themselves now under the control of the benign and progress-loving airmen.
The airmen conquer the entire world in this fashion and, true to their word, bring in a new age of peace and prosperity. We next see Everytown in the year 2036. The city is utterly transformed, an underground techno-paradise with rolling green hills above it. And now humanity is ready for it’s next big adventure — the first voyage to the moon!
It just goes to show you: technology is hard to predict. In parts of the world-war montage, we see tanks that look more advanced than anything we have today, and this would have been in the 40′s or 50′s. But a trip to the moon? Wells gives us 67 years more lead time on that one than we needed.
So, as prophecy, the movie fails. The world wars didn’t bring down civilization. From their ashes, a dictatorship of the proletariat did not emerge. Airmen never conquered the world. We don’t live underground. The state has not withered away.
That is one big helmet
But it’s interesting to see how, in some ways, Wells’ communist Utopian tropes are not that different from some of our own favorite ideas. When you get a choice as stark as Wings Over the World vs. the Boss, it’s not hard to be for the people who want to set humanity free and who want technology to improve everybody’s lives — even if they are a bunch of commies. And in 2036, when a Luddite rebellion threatens the moon mission, there’s, like, no way I’m siding with those losers. Their position seems utterly incoherent to me: arguing against the very progress which has made their easy, healthy, lengthened lives possible. It’s hard to imagine that people would take that position.
So score a big one for Wells: he got that exactly right.
The other thing that Wells got right was the transformative power of technology. We look for nanotechnology and artificial intelligence to enable, ultimately, a reboot of human history. It’s not surprising that people saw that potential in earlier technologies, especially things like electricity, industrialization, the telephone, radio, etc. Wells gave us an intriguing scenario: the Aeronautic Singularity.
And he was closer to being right than we might suppose at first glance. After all, air travel has been a major enabler in the emergence of the global economy. This isn’t the global economy that Wells was looking for, but I’m not sure he would completely disapprove. If he could see the real 2009, he might be disappointed that there are still nation-states, and that capitalism is still with us, but the ability to review a century that tried communism and found it severely wanting might temper his disappointment.
On the upside, the second world war did not destroy civilization. We still have nation-states, but a global civilization is emerging. Whether it ends up under one government might not matter as much as we once thought. And whether the world is largely “socialist” or “capitalist” might not matter that much either, not when technology threatens to distort what those terms mean beyond recognition. In 1936, nobody had the idea that technological development and more or less free markets could create a world in which all material goods ultimately become…free. But that is an idea that we have spent a lot of time exploring here recently. And it’s an idea that’s catching on.
Wells thought aviation was the transformational development that would allow us to rebuild the economy from scratch. Before him, Marx thought the same of industrial production. They were both right to the extent that there is, ultimately, a set of technologies that can make that possible. But they were both wrong about capitalism. It turns out that we needed it to give us those technologies. The Luddites in Things to Come arguing against a trip to the moon or any further technological development share something in common with the great visionaries who imagined the world in which those Luddites dwell — both groups fight against the very thing that makes everything they want possible.
The visionaries who extolled the greatness of human accomplishment missed out on a huge one — figuring out how to pay for Utopia. It is not just humanity’s great scientific and technological advancements that enable ushering in a new age — it is our economic achievements as well. Thanks to capitalism, by 2036 we may well live in a world far more abundant, clean, and free — and with humanity better poised to carry on the march of progress — than anything Wells or Marx could have imagined.
I don’t think of myself predicting things. I’m expressing possibilities. Things that could happen. To a large extent it’s a question of how badly people want them to. The purpose of thinking about the future is not to predict it but to raise people’s hopes.
We may have to relabel our Astounding Science Fact from last week as a Tale of the Paranormal. LiveScience observes that the “news” reporting for this story is a bit on the shoddy side (to say the least) and there’s no good reason to believe that a spider bite can cure paralysis.
Everybody got that? Poisonous spider bites: still bad for you.
MAGINE a bracelet or a watch that morphs into something else when you take it off. Perhaps it becomes a phone, or perhaps a small computer screen and keyboard.
Researchers are just a few years away from bringing to life revolutionary morphing devices known as programmable matter which can change size, shape and function.
Programmable matter, or “claytronics,” involves creating devices made of millions of microscopic robots that are to 3D objects what pixels are to a screen.
These devices sound like pure science fiction, but they might be closer than anyone would have dreamed. And that includes Jason Campbell, one of the key members of the research team developing the technology at the Intel Research Centre.
“It’s a really challenging research vision, but we are making steady progress and we’re now more convinced that we are actually going to do it,” says Mr Campbell.
“My estimates of how long it is going to take have gone from 50 years down to just a couple more years. That has changed over the four years I’ve been working on the project.”
Can utility fog and true replicators be far behind? I don’t think so.
On the podcast the other night there was some chat about George Jetson’s flying car which he could pack up in a briefcase. We’re not quite there yet, but stay tuned.
MAGINE a bracelet or a watch that morphs into something else when you take it off. Perhaps it becomes a phone, or perhaps a small computer screen and keyboard.
Researchers are just a few years away from bringing to life revolutionary morphing devices known as programmable matter which can change size, shape and function.
Programmable matter, or “claytronics,” involves creating devices made of millions of microscopic robots that are to 3D objects what pixels are to a screen.
These devices sound like pure science fiction, but they might be closer than anyone would have dreamed. And that includes Jason Campbell, one of the key members of the research team developing the technology at the Intel Research Centre.
“It’s a really challenging research vision, but we are making steady progress and we’re now more convinced that we are actually going to do it,” says Mr Campbell.
“My estimates of how long it is going to take have gone from 50 years down to just a couple more years. That has changed over the four years I’ve been working on the project.”
Can utility fog and true replicators be far behind? I don’t think so.
On the podcast the other night there was some chat about George Jetson’s flying car which he could pack up in a briefcase. We’re not quite there yet, but stay tuned.
Sunday night, March 22, Phil Bowermaster and Stephen Gordon honored the life of their friend and fellow blogger Michael Sargent.
They celebrated with topics that Mike loved to talk about. Stuff like jet packs, the Rocket Racing League, and the feasibility of building a Pleistocene park with cloned animals like the mammoth.
Michael Sargent made “the future” his hobby. A science buff with a penchant for computers, the 39-year-old Colorado Springs man blogged for The Speculist, a Web site that explores how emerging technology and trends might change the world. Its motto: “Live to see it.”
Sargent won’t get to.
He was killed after a speeding pickup ran a red light and slammed into his car at Marksheffel Road and Constitution Avenue late Thursday. The computer technician, who was heading to his northern Colorado Springs home after work at Schriever Air Force Base, was pronounced dead at the hospital. He was wearing a seatbelt, but his 2002 Saturn coupe was broadsided on the driver’s side.
Mike had a broad spectrum of interests and a sense of humor that could sneak up on you. He wrote on this site about robotics, artificial intelligence, energy, transportation, space travel (one of his favorite topics) and why in Spain it rains more often on the weekend than during the week. He cohosted FastForward Radio a couple of times, which was something I encouraged him to do more often. He agreed that podcasting was the perfect medium for The Speculist seeing as he, Stephen, and I all had faces “made for radio.”
In his brief autobiography at the Speculist home page, he wrote:
The perspective Michael brings to the Speculist is born out of his roots in a small community with a relatively short history. Social networks on the Front Range tend to be smaller and flatter than they might be in other places. The number of relationships between one’s self and certain socially- and historically- important figures is small. As examples, in his brief lifetime, Michael has personally met the all-around rodeo cowboy of 1906, multiple Governors, Soviet Cosmonaut Gherman Titov, and presidential candidate Gary Hart among others. All of this serves as justification to his personal belief that individuals, and the exchange of ideas among them, are the most fundamental influence on the direction and rate of technological and cultural change. Each individual has the capacity, and indeed the responsibility, to be aware of potential changes on the horizon, to evaluate them against personal preferences and values, and to exert their own influence on the process of either bringing these changes to pass or preventing others from doing so.
That responsibility was one that Mike took seriously, and the web community of futurists and technology enthusiasts will be poorer for his absence. He will be sorely missed.
Our deepest condolences to Peggy, to Mike’s family, and to his many friends.
UPDATE: In lieu of flowers, Peggy Sargent has asked that donations be sent to the American Heart Association.
It is with great sorrow that I pass on the news that our dear friend and co-blogger 
