Yesterday OPOL posted a diary called "Future Shocked and the Emergent Future" and if I have understood him correctly, he presented a hope and vision that would answer the question in this diary's title with: "Yes, why shouldn't it be possible?" and summarized his opinion and view points like this:
I believe that we can make life sweet for future humanity, if we can become sufficiently determined to do so and if we can overcome the obvious obstacles. If we can bring ourselves to be wise enough, kind enough and peaceful enough as we make this massive paradigm shift, we can be guided by science and cooperation to a better place for everyone. Humanity working together to restore and heal the earth while increasing global human happiness could conceivably be just beyond the horizon. And it's certainly just what the doctor ordered. The alternative could be hell on earth. And haven't we had about enough of that?
We have to get our hearts right for a future where everyone is free and powerful.
We have to imagine the kind of future we want.
based on the many examples he described in the body of his diary that convincingly made his vision realistically possible.
Imagine a strongly encrypted and free ultra high-speed global Internet impervious to attacks by malicious control freaks or random assholes or spying by surreptitious governments and other powers, ensuring privacy and actual democracy for all while providing an unprecedented capacity for collaboration across great distances between all nations and cultures, and including all people. This is unlike anything the world has ever seen. Humanity liberated, connected and empowered. Humanity in harmony. Imagine all of humanity's genius pulling together to make life not only possible but better for every one of us. It could be Bucky being right again.
Even though the trend toward a decentralized, web-based democracy seems clear, there's no guarantee that it will be a truly democratic and humanitarian hive mind, but it could be and it should be – we really need it to be. The tools are evolving that could make it happen. In theory, every node (person) on the net is equal.And coupled with non-trust based (because its not necessary) identity authentication based on bulletproof encryption, there could be nothing more democratic than that. We have a shot at it.
When I read his diary I had an alternative view point to his vision, which I was not able to really express due to lack of knowledge of the ideologies and visions that the supporters and makers of the new technologies are embedded in. I just didn't know how to express why the concept of decentralization is one I have difficulties to believe to be for real.
This morning I read this article in "Der Spiegel": Tomorrowland: How Silicon Valley Shapes Our Future and realized how well it could be presented as an addition and sort of skeptical answer to OPOL's vision.
It is a very long article, but I think well worth reading in its entirety. It's too much for me to go through the points OPOL made in his diary and contrast it with all the points the above article makes and write something about it. But I do believe that it is a task one should tackle given enough time and enough reading has been done.
I try to excerpt a couple of paragraphs to wet your appetite to think about the role of Silicon Valley shaping our future and if you think they will shape it the way you would like it. There were a lot of bells ringing in my mind, while reading the article. May be they will ring to you as well ?
From Tomorrowland: How Silicon Valley Shapes Our Future, starting in their introductory paragraph:
In the Silicon Valley, a new elite is forming that wants to determine not only what we consume, but also the way we live. They want to change the world, but they don't want to accept any rules. Do they need to be reined in?
Considering this:
But Uber isn't the only company with ambitions of taking over the world. That's how they all think: Google and Facebook, Apple and Airbnb -- all the digital giants along with the myriad smaller companies in their wake.
Their goal is never a niche market; it's always the entire world. But far from being driven by delusional fantasies, their objectives are often realistic, made possible by a potent cocktail unique in economic history: globalization combined with digitalization.
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All the world's knowledge condensed into a digital map and easily accessible? Normal. The fact that algorithms in the US control some 70 percent of all trading on the stock market? Crazy, to be sure. But normal craziness.
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Huge armies of engineers are chasing after the holy grail of artificial intelligence. And the advances keep coming. Machines that can learn, intelligent robots: We have begun overtaking science fiction.
the question it they need to be reigned in, is a reasonable and responsible and justifiable question.
Because:
It appears that policymakers have not yet decided whether to dive in and create a usable policy framework for the future or to stand aside as others create a global revolution.
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We are witnessing nothing less than a societal transformation that ultimately nobody will be able to avoid.
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The digital revolution isn't just altering specific sectors of the economy, it is changing the way we think and live.
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This time (as compared to the industrial revolution), though, the transformation is different. This time, it is being driven by just a few hundred people.
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The new global elite are no longer based on Wall Street. Rather, they have their headquarters in Silicon Valley.
and here is one of the explanations that cause me to calmly freak out:
The new "masters of the universe," though, are fundamentally different from their predecessors: Their primary focus is NOT on money. They don't want to just determine what we consume, but how we consume it and how we live. They aren't trying to capture just one economic sector, but all of them. They aren't stumbling haphazardly into the future, rather they are ideologues with a clear agenda. Indeed, aside from their astounding success, it is that ideology that makes them unique. The religion of Wall Street is money. But the religion of Silicon Valley goes much deeper. It is driven by substance; it is the unfailing belief in a message.
The UNFAILING BELIEF in a message? Really, does that ring a bell? It sure does with me.
That message holds that technology can change humanity for the better. The people from the valley who hope to reshape the world fundamentally
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The Silicon Valley elite has little use for policymakers and considers regulation to be more than just a hindrance, they see it as an anachronism. Their message seems to be: If societal values such as privacy and data protection stand in the way, then we simply have to develop new values.
Yeah right, just invent new values...I wonder what kind of values that might be.
Now this was kind of eye-opening and not so clear to me before:
They see the roots of their technological crusade in the counterculture of the 1960s, the era that formed Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. But their worldview is a libertarian one, in the tradition of radical thinkers such as Noam Chomsky, Ayn Rand and Friedrich Hayek .
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The result is a unique political philosophy that combines esoteric hippie sensibilities with hardcore capitalism. And the Silicon Valley elite aren't reticent about their plans. They openly admit to wanting to shape the world in accordance with their ideas. And they are convinced that the changes we have already seen in recent years were nothing but the opening act.
I wonder what Chomsky would say to being thrown in the same pot with Ayn Rand...
Just look at this "Prophet" Ray Kurzweil:
Ray Kurzweil is widely recognized as a genius. He is director of engineering at Google, holds 19 honorary doctorate degrees, is the inventor of the flatbed scanner and the first text-to-speech synthesizer and holds dozens of additional patents.
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A decade ago, Kurzweil cemented and concentrated this tech optimism into a single term: Singularity.
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"The pace of technological change will be so rapid, its impact so deep, that human life will be irreversibly transformed," Kurzweil writes in his book "The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology."
There are more books by him and I ordered a bunch for pennies. So, when humans transcend biology, what do they become? Gods? Devils? Inhumane? Angels? You see, I don't want that humans transcend biology. And my hope is they never will. But I will read first what he had to say in his books and always keep the right to change my mind.
Ot read about Sebastian Thrun: The Engineer
Thrun has been interested in the brain and human intelligence since his youth, leading him to become a robotics specialist. "Those who try to make a robot intelligent develop a huge amount of respect for the magnitude of human intelligence," he says.
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His company is called Udacity and it offers large numbers of online educational programs and credentials in so-called Massive Open Online Courses.
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Why education, a field that seems to have nothing to do with robotics and technology? "I would like to change society and I asked myself how I could maximize my positive influence on the world," Thrun says.
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Technological change is one of the drivers of increasing inequality in the world and Thrun is convinced that society must adopt concepts of life-long learning in response, affordable and accessible to all.
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Thrun was invited to speak at a dinner with German President Joachim Gauck, where he presented his vision of the world as it will look tomorrow and spoke about how Google Glass was an example of artificial intelligence that can augment our own brains.
After dinner at the president's residence in Berlin, German President Joachim Gauck came to him and said: "Mr. Thrun, you make me afraid." Thrun understands that viewpoint and its historical background, but wants the debate to be focused more on opportunities than on fears -- because the advance of technology, he believes, can't be stopped. "It's not the naysayers, but the optimists who will change the world," he says. "And the consequence is that such people will also amass more wealth and power."...Politicians don't come off looking particularly competent in Thrun's view of tomorrow's world. "Everything is happening globally, but laws are local," Thrun says. "That no longer fits."
yeah right, it doesn't fit ... and that's supposed to be a true road to equality and democracy ?.. really ...?
Or look at Peter Thiel: The Ideologue:
In the US political landscape, libertarians are often rather odd, with many of them tending to be staunch right-wingers like Ron Paul, the former presidential candidate who once wanted to get rid of the Federal Reserve.
But in Silicon Valley, Peter Thiel says, libertarianism is "quite strong." One might also say it's the dominant political philosophy -- and Thiel is its most prominent representative. He's a central figure in the digital world -- smart and controversial, a thought leader and a chief ideologist, an exceptional person even within the small leading group of billionaire tech giants.
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At the end of the 1990s, Thiel helped found PayPal,...Later, Thiel became the first person to invest in the company Mark Zuckerberg.
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If you speak to Thiel about libertarianism, it quickly becomes clear that this is not about daily politics to him or about having influence on the political process. On the contrary, like so many others in the Valley, he doesn't want to have anything to do with Washington or Brussels.
In fact, the tech elite have created a world view, a political philosophy that corresponds with their goals. They seek to create prosperity and satisfaction by way of the greatest amount of autonomy and the least amount of government possible. It holds that all authority should be viewed skeptically. Indeed, there is little room in this world for regulations or government guidelines.
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In 2009, Thiel published an essay called "The Education of a Libertarian". In it, he writes, "We are in a deadly race between politics and technology". The fate of our world may depend on the effort of a single person who builds or propagates the "machinery of freedom that makes the world safe for capitalism."
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Thiel is originally from Germany...(me:darn it)
Sigh, read more about him and weep ... I can't go on with it...ok, no I go on ...here:
It all ties in with an underestimated undercurrent that shapes the Silicon Valley more than anything else: the counter-culture of the 1960s and the deeply anchored roots of San Francisco's hippie movement.
Steve Jobs lived for a short time in a commune. His Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak recently repeated in a television interview something he has said before: "The counter-culture means so much to me. I wanted to be part of the revolution. Computers were the exclusive domain of the rich and I wanted to take that away from them."
In the past 20 years, an ideology has taken shape from this odd mishmash of New Age Utopianism, ultra-capitalism and the age-old American ideal of individual self-determination. It even has a name: the "Californian Ideology." Two British media theorists came up with the term in an essay published during the mid-1990s in an attempt to explore the results of combining the "free-wheeling spirit of the hippies and the entrepreneurial zeal of the yuppies." The essay had been intended as a cultural critique, but instead Silicon Valley co-opted it as the basis for its own ideology. It is a symbol of the Valley's role as a movement for humanity's advancement.
"For a long time, we weren't asking ourselves the right questions," says Thiel. "What has to happen in order to make the world a better place?"
He wrote a book Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future"aimed at helping company founders find those questions. Its main point is that monopolies are good even desirable. He argues that "creative monopoly means new products that benefit everybody," whereas, "competition means no profit for anybody." Thiel knows that monopolies have a "bad reputation," but argues that this is only because "competition is an ideology".
His ultimate advice for people founding companies is to find a market they can dominate, build a monopoly and try to maintain for as long as possible.
And you really think this has something to do with decentralization, democracy, equality and the pursue of happiness for the little persons? I don't see that. May be I need to check my glasses.
Then the article goes on to talk about Joe Gebbia: The Conqueror
Airbnb-Co-Founder Gebbia: "We knew that any new technology can be potentially misunderstood." Airbnb is the opposite of a monopoly -- indeed, it would be difficult to imagine a company having more competition. The company has taken on the task of revolutionizing tourism and challenging the entire hotel industry, a sector spread across the world with thousands of financially robust and well-established players.
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Airbnb views itself as being more of a movement than a business. Its aim is to blaze the trail for an improved global economic model that is fairer and more efficient than today's. It adopts a socioeconomic vision as its business model.
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Are we really supposed to buy that? "We are brought up with the belief that one should use this life to improve the lives of others and to try to make the world a better place," Gebbia says. "I could never invest years and years of hard work into something that didn't have a soul," he says.
Besides, he asks, why shouldn't it be possible to conquer the world and at the same time make it a little bit better?
So, here we are at my titles question, which I took from Gebbia's quote. Of course the answer to the question (if everything will turn out well the way people in the Silicon Valley like to claim or will it turn out badly as predicted by critics, with their eternal warnings and pessimism), comes through a novelist
Dave Eggers, the author of a book
"The Circle", one of the most talked about books of the past year.
The new "Masters of the Universe" may be looking to paradise on the road ahead, but what Eggers describes is sheer hell, built piece by piece and layered in stone like a giant digital prison.. In his novel, the digital powers fulfill many dreams for people, but they also strip them of their freedom -- and of everything that makes them human.
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The individual disappears in the world of Eggers' "Circle." He no longer counts. He disappears voluntarily into a totalitarian world in which there are no longer any politics or state. All that is left is the compulsion to happiness provided by a digital company
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It's about the freedom of the individual. The freedom to not be hyper-effective. The right to community. The right to not do something just because it is possible. The right to be human.
I would add also the right to be forgotten. So, now I am done excerpting. Read the conclusion of the article which refers to the political response to the major political questions posed by both the optimists and pessimists.
Thomas Schulz, the author of the article, writes:
It's a given that the conflict will escalate between the political class -- which itself is often overstrained and reactionary -- and a Silicon Valley elite that doesn't like being told what to do and prefers to write its own rules.
It's an unequal battle, too, given that these companies think and act globally and have only one goal in mind: Conquering one market after the other around the world. The others, the politicians, pursue an entirely different set of interests: They want to protect people from the companies' omnipotence, but also to protect their own economies, preserving existing jobs and creating new ones.
So, OPOL, given what I have read, I can't get enthused about the unfailing belief of
messianic prophets and ideologues and what I consider dreamers. Aren't you done with prophets and Ideologues?
I am glad to have read that article, the same way I am happy and grateful to always read your diaries, OPOL. I am just not an easy believer. May be I should pray to God he help me becoming one? But then isn't the answer given in the first commandment "I am the LORD thy God thou shalt have no other gods"?
Humans transcending biology and believing it to be possible by means of new AI technologies that can conquer the world and claim to help it to become a better one, means to me you have accepted another God, technology that is. I am not very religious, but the ten commandments I respect. Especially the first one.
Peace.
(And meanwhile we just go on and fall and use the technology as if there is no tomorrow :-))