3 Solutions for Saving the World

So what can we do about the environment, the third world, and the economic crisis?

By incorporating 3 attributes to our solutions, we can create powerful, lasting solutions to many of the world’s problems. These attributes are enemies to the money system and will help bring about its demise.

Automation
Efficiency
Generic production (Simplicity)

Automation frees us up to live our lives. Machines running on renewable power sources can slowly take over all of our physical responsibilities. This has so far only been allowed to happen when it can save a company money. But its increased usage today can introduce more people to the potential of a life without work.

Efficiency: Without planned obsolescence driven by greed and corruption, lifespans of products can seem immense to a civilisation used to items breaking down all the time. Without the need to constantly buy things, our need to work will reduce dramatically.

Generic Production has a similar aim. By simplifying manufacture using generic parts, we take the power away from the big corporations. Components can be mass-produced at a greatly reduced cost. More automation is possible due to the simplification of manufacture. Therefore the result is the same: less work for humans, less power for the corporations, more power for individuals.

Fri, Nov 13, 2009  Permanent link

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It's Time to Stop Aging. Now.

Imagine the person you love, someone you have known for decades, someone who has become the very meaning of your life, suddenly, and unexpectedly has a stroke. Their body is crippled to near uselessness, relinquishing them of their dignity. And, having lost the ability to communicate with them, you’re not even sure if their mind is as it was, if they’re even able to recognise you any more. Your best friend has become a dependent.

Then, come and tell me that campaigns and research to cure aging are “against god’s will”.

Curing aging is not about “playing god”. It is not about living forever. It’s about freedom from the suffering of aging. It’s about doing what mankind has always done: using the tools of science and technology to ease human suffering.

If “god” had wanted us to grow old, frail, and crippled, he would also want us to continue to die of the common cold, diarrhoea, or dysentery. Instead, we have created the means to easily prevent death from these illnesses, allowing us to live longer and healthier lives than we did a century ago. There is no difference in curing the seven causes of aging.

There is absolutely no reason we should not take every step necessary to give us healthier, longer lives, free from the frailty of aging. In fact, just like those old illnesses, it would be cruel and irresponsible of us not to.

Being a future enthusiast, there are many things I am interested in. I often talk about gadgets, social change, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, and space exploration. However, curing aging is by far the most important aspect of future technology. This is obviously so that we can have more time to explore all the other exciting aspects of the future.

Anti-aging must be our priority.

Mon, Jul 27, 2009  Permanent link
Categories: technology, politics, life extension

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Congratulations America on Your Independence

Sat, Jul 4, 2009  Permanent link
Categories: politics, freedom

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5 Things No President Will Ever Do

Denounce Religion for the Population Controlling Fraud it is

No politician would ever denounce religion. For one, they've done too good a job so far increasing its credibility. If the people realise religion is a fallacy, they will have to take responsibility for their own actions, to actually make decisions in their own minds, rather than simply misinterpreting religion for answers. Then they might realise that once they can do this, not only would they not need God to tell them how to live, but they wouldn't need politicians either.

Put More Effort into Life Extension Research

We all have to die. It's part of the natural order of things. If people realise they can live longer, who'll sign up for our money making wars? Old people are a burden on the economy, and stem cells make baby Jesus cry.

Legalize Drugs

Of course not. Drugs are evil, they kill children and destroy lives. Lets just keep them illegal, that way the only people who can profit from them can be drug dealers, criminal organisations, and the government itself. The authorities will stop drug wars one day, if they can just take a few more civil liberties away. It's worth it, for your children's safety, and it'll save you the hassle of educating them.

Disband Income Tax

This forced, unconstitutional and illegal robbery of the people is enforced at gunpoint on the good American people. If you don't pay it, you're being unpatriotic, which means you're also being blasphemous.

Outlaw RFID

You might think that RFID simply allows marketing companies to be able to tailor their sales to you. However, RFID is the ultimate dream of a totalitarian authority. Not only can they know where you are and everything about you, but eventually money will only exist on the chips. If you step out of line, your chip is turned off, essentially making you a prisoner, as everything you can possibly use will require the chip to work. It's already in your passport. Soon it'll be under your skin.

But it's OK - they'll stop terrorists.

Sun, May 24, 2009  Permanent link
Categories: freedom, politics

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Abundance For All

There is no reason, that with today's level of technology and resources, the whole world can't have the essentials of food, water, shelter, education and health care.

There is abundance of energy that can be converted into automation. There is abundance of human resources capable of advancing science and technology to help us, if they only didn't have to work in waste-of-time jobs just to keep us in mp3 players. There is abundance of materials if we make efficiency our way of life instead of planned obsolescence and waste.

Materials

The economy can't function without cyclical consumption so things are designed to break down as quickly as possible. If things lasted, companies would only need to make one of everything, and after that they would close down. Far better to keep the public buying continuously, either through products breaking down or by withholding features for a future release. 

It is because of this mentality that we continue to destroy our planet with shameless mining and waste.

With the efficient application of technology and without the problems of greed, waste, and false scarcity caused by the monetary system, we will have far more material resources that we have today.

While that still might not be enough, we will be distributing them in a fair and honest way to provide maximum benefits to everyone. This is one of the biggest issues that people bring up when discussing a Resource Based Economy: "Will there be enough to go around, or will we end up in a situation like we saw with communism?"

Well, unlike communism, a Resource Based Economy will not function on greed, politics, planned obsolescence or other practices that corrupt efficiency. Distribution of the resources will be done in such a way as to maximize efficiency. As a crude example, consider burning a tree to cook one meal, as opposed to burning it to power an automated manufacturing plant that would build a renewable-energy powered oven.

Efficiency

You would think that competition would cause companies to continue to improve efficiency, but it just doesn't work like that.

Using the cheapest parts and labour during manufacture doesn't just save money, it helps obsolescence. Forget safety (watch Fight Club), forget the environment (watch The Story of Stuff), forget keeping local people in work. Forget about making a longer lasting product than our competitors, providing it looks like it has better features. 

In addition, workers paid by the hour, work slower, while workers paid by their output, reduce their quality. Counteract this by demanding minimum hourly output levels, you say? By doing this, all you're doing is pretty much guaranteeing a maximum output level. Why would a worker do more?

There is only one kind of efficiency a company is interested in, monetary efficiency. This causes them to outsource cheaper parts and labour, creating less efficient products. 

In a Resource Based Economy, products, services and infrastructure would be designed to consider the following in order to increase their efficiency:

• Save/harness renewable energy


• Improve quality of life for both consumers and producers


• Be highly durable


• Ease of assembly


• Reduction of maintenance


• Simplicity


• Prepared for ongoing changes


• Standardised fundamental elements


• Facilitate automated assembly


• Allow easy duplication


• Be customisable and allow for options


• Be resistant to fire, weather and extreme conditions


• Implement electronic feedback for monitoring


• Be in tune with nature

We simply create the best products we possibly can at the time: efficient, long lasting and using the most advanced technology available. This would never happen in the current system. We need cheaper alternatives. 

Without competitors creating almost identical duplicates of everything, or products with various combinations of features, we would only create what was needed - the best possible product with all available features. Items could be built to order instead of to compete in a retail environment. 

Less Products = Less space, less transportation, less waste, less pollution, less work, less redundancy.

The implications of this are immense.  This means less waste, less time spent producing, less transportation needed, less space taken up, less pollution. And we're not just talking about a 5% reduction, the sort of figure you would expect to see in a monetary system. We're talking a new order of magnitude - thousands of percent. 

Let's take the humble toaster. How many toaster manufacturers are there? Now imagine if there was just one. They create the best possible toaster based on designs that are being constantly developed and published on the internet. They manufacture it in the most effective way possible, causing no pollution, no waste, out of as much recyclable material as possible. It is then put onto a truck with only protection, not expensive packaging, and transported directly to the homes of everyone who wants a toaster. 

Look at what would have been saved. There is no storage needed at the output end of manufacturing. The trucks are just loaded off the end of the line. There are no delivery company depots for the product to be sent to and sorted. There are no trucks driving back and forward to and from depots. There are no retail depots. There are no retail outlets (so hundreds of customers and workers aren't driving their cars into town). How much space, labour, and transportation has this saved? An absolutely insane amount, at every level.

At the other end of line, the assembly department is supplied with raw materials sourced from renewable sources, or recycled products. Either way, they are turned into the highest quality sub assemblies as possible. Products would be designed to be as generic as possible, allowing for reuse in other products. An assembly line would then be capable of creating an extremely wide variety of different products, automatically. This means less assembly lines, less labour, and less sub assemblies to be manufactured and stored. 

That was a very simple example, and I imagine the situation could be streamlined even more, with every home in a new city fitted with a toaster as standard. This would of course be planned into the production of the houses, allowing for even more time and space saving due to mass production. 

Of course, all products would be built to last, so that would be the last time the factory would have to create toasters for a very long time (a reserve of spares could be kept for occasional breakdowns, but this will be nothing compared to today's rate of consumption).

Energy

The sheer power of the sun should be enough to convince us that we have an abundance of energy, yet we continue to burn fuels like primitive cavemen. Solar power requires little maintenance and can be harnessed in the desert to supply most of the planet.

Then there is wind, tidal and wave power, natural movement given to us by the earth that can give us continual energy even if there is no sunlight. Less efficient due to moving parts, (although this can be improved on) these sources are as abundant as the air we breath.

Finally there is geothermal, the most abundant and easily harnessed energy of all.

With all this energy, we can power our homes and factories and transportation with no need for money. However, it can also be used to power the most significant concept ever conceived. Automation.

Labour

Automation will relieve our need for labour. This has already happened to a level of over 90% in agriculture, and it continues to grow in the service industry, construction, mining and manufacture. As this happens, there will be unemployment.

Although it may not eradicate all menial jobs, automation has far more potential than we currently give it credit for. While robotic intelligence is improving at a rapidly accelerating pace, there is a huge potential for solving problems using simple, task repeating, programmable robotics. The key is to standardize everything. We have to "put it on rails".

Automation creators need to simplify what a robot has to do, and design its environment to confine it, protecting it from the need to make decisions. This can be done by standardizing its interactions. This will allow us to bring automation into our lives in more ways than we ever thought possible, even at current technology levels.

Automation will free up many people and force them to question their role in society. We'll go into what they will do instead later, but for now, realise the potential for automation to massively reduce the need for labour.

Freed From Money

This massive increase in efficiency and relinquishment of labour frees up people at every stage. They can instead work on pushing technology forward. With so many people working on new solutions instead of just grinding the wheels, the rate of technology will radically accelerate. 

Mon, May 11, 2009  Permanent link

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What If We Could Be Saved?

What if we learn to read human brains down to the most intricate details?

What if we learn to record, in detail, every action that occurs within the brain, every synapse firing, every cell interaction, every memory?

What if if all of this data could then be stored on a computer and used to re-engineer a new, identical brain?

What if this brain could then be put into a new body, thus creating a new version of us when we die?

What if we knew for a fact that there was nothing after death?

What if we gain the ability to live forever using this, or some other mind transfer technique?

What if we then discover another civilization on another planet, who is still too primitive to save minds, and who still believes that death is natural and essential?

What if we then engineer a situation, for example we send swarms of microscopic probes to their planet to monitor, transmit via microscopic satellites, and then record their minds on our computers?

What if we can then use this data to re-engineer the brains of these people back on our planet so that when they die they can be resurrected?


Would we?

More to the point, is there a civilization already out there that is doing this?

Sun, May 10, 2009  Permanent link
Categories: ETI, life extension, mind upload

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Virtual Unreality

In the future, we may decide that a virtual existence, a life inside a fully immersive computer game where our every desire is fulfilled, is a more appealing option than the real world we currently inhabit. Many people have presented the idea that we are already in such a virtual reality, but I don’t believe this is possible. This is because virtual worlds provide us with many possibilities that the real world does not, so why have they not been “programmed” into the real world we know?

Since the early 21st century, the residents of the virtual world Second Life have been working hard to recreate real life as accurately as possible. Despite the virtual platform giving occupants the ability to fly and teleport, they still prefer to meticulously create staircases to walk their avatar up and down. At discos, people require the coolest dance animations and best looking clothes. In meetings, virtual characters sit down to rest their virtual legs. It seems the confines of reality provide a comfortable and familiar environment.

But virtual worlds are created by us – so why limit ourselves to reality? We could create entirely new realities. By realising that we are free of the rules of real life, the doors are open to incredible new possibilities. In many ways, virtual worlds already provide us with glimpses of alternate realities. Its time we took notice of these instrumental differences.

In Second Life specifically, we are introduced to many “virtual concepts”. These ideas exist only in the virtual world and they provide us with an insight into a possible future, exposing us to their possible implications.

Virtual Concepts

Immortality

In Second Life, you cannot die. Your avatar may still exist (although it won’t be “physically” present) in the virtual world even after your real body has passed away. Although it is possible to harm you by the use of scripts, you will always exist unless you are deleted by the administrators. People can always view your legend whether you are personally online or not.

Perfect History

It is entirely possible to record every action you perform in your virtual life (although, as far as we know, this feature has not yet been implemented into Second Life). All of your memories can be put into the virtual world by means of screen grabs, videos and saved conversations.

One can only imagine this becoming more and more sophisticated, recording thoughts, movements, emotions, desires, preferences, and more onto a central server to be accessed at any time. Perhaps with this kind of in depth recording in place, prediction of alternate futures within the virtual world might not be far behind.

Teleportation

Distance is not a real concept in virtual worlds, so can easily be circumvented. Transporting instantly from one place to another is easy. This is because everything’s location is catalogued, and then referenced in a more human way, via context. Just like the internet, we don’t care where a website is hosted, we just care about the content. In the same way, communication is not affected by physical distance.

Nanotechnology and the non-existence of the laws of thermodynamics

In the future, we may have desktop devices that can create any object instantly from a few basic raw materials. It promises to change the economy and the way we think about possessions.

In Second Life, it is possible to build anything you want, instantly, on the spot, from nothing. Providing you know how to build, it is a simple matter of putting together the polygons you require to create a new “physical” object in the virtual world. More sophisticated items require programming, however, so just like it will be in nano-fabrication, programmers are sought after for their creation skills.

Flying

One of the most fun things in Second Life is flying. Humankind has long looked up to the skies, wishing we could join the birds and see the world from another perspective. In virtual reality, this is not a problem. You can even use scripts to fly higher and faster. This is just one more showcase of possible future powers of humans, inspiring us.

Astral Projection

There is a technique that exists in Second Life called “Cam Scanning”, which involves manipulating the camera any way you wish. This allows you to “scan” the surrounding area, even seeing into private rooms, while your avatar is somewhere else. The people being observed cannot tell that they’re being watched, and people around your avatar can’t tell that you’re doing it. This feature completely undermines privacy and brings up some important social questions. Should it be programmed out of virtual worlds? Or should we just accept that our previous perceptions of body language, proximity, and presence, are obsolete?

Obsolete Concepts

In addition to exposing us to new concepts that do not exist in real life, virtual worlds also reveal some concepts that are made obsolete by the virtual reality paradigm, perhaps giving us a glimpse of the future.

Physical Pain

Although your avatar can experience harassment and “physical” effects such as “bumping” and being propelled by programmed projectiles, feeling physical pain is no longer an issue. This is profound in that those who enjoy hurting people no longer have any way to satisfy their desires. It demonstrates the primitive nature of physical pain.

Food

Obviously whilst still in possession of a physical body, we will always need fuel to keep us alive. But in the far future where we may have our minds completely uploaded to a virtual reality environment, there will be no need for food, other than virtual food for our enjoyment. Of course, the machines running the virtual reality interfaces would require fuel, but in the virtual world itself, we may have no concept of starvation or even eating.

Biology

Most aspects of biology aren’t relevant in virtual worlds at present. However, as the programming of these worlds is improved, it may be possible to incorporate biological aspects. Sex is a biological element we would almost certainly want to retain in a virtual environment, as would other positive physical sensations such as the benefits of exercise. However, none of these would be necessary, just desirable options for virtual living. Certainly, biological limitations and problems such as illness do not need to be present in a virtual world.

Government

In Second Life, there are rules to adhere to. The company who runs the servers create the guidelines and control the economy. There is no voting for new leadership. It is essentially a dictatorship. However, in the future, we may decide that we prefer a virtual world that is entirely open source, created by the public and run by the public, with no overall leadership. Could this demonstrate that liberty is a perfectly viable and highly desirable system once concepts such as sadism are nullified, or would it lead to anarchy on the virtual streets? Or most profoundly, would we be able to program outany chances of wrongdoing, thus creating (in the eyes of the creators) a perfectly behaved society – the dream of autocratic leaders?

Real Concepts

On the flip side, there are many concepts that we do not (yet) escape from in virtual worlds. Mostly related to the human element, these concepts illustrate what is important in life. Whatever “reality” we decide to live in, it is unlikely we’ll escape from our core humanity.

Social Interaction, Emotions, Humour

In a virtual world, we are still ourselves. We still have to talk to people as we would in real life. Our personalities aren’t changed by the fact we look like Spongebob Squarepants with a machine gun. All the vital elements of personal interaction, timing, humour, affecting other people’s emotions, debate and relationships, are impossible to escape from, no matter how the reality is programmed.

Art and Entertainment

No matter what the environment, art and entertainment will always be a vital part of humanity. People will always want to be entertained, and there will always be people that want to be creative. Creativity is a vital aspect of humanity that I see transcending all transformations of our environments, entities and existences. With infinite life spans, what else can hold our interest but an infinite array of possibilities?

The difference with virtual reality though is that the reality we know no longer confines these possibilities. Art no longer needs to represent reality, in a virtual world, art itself opens up a whole new world of possibilities. For instance, in today’s world, art is represented by a picture on a wall, a movie, a piece of music. But in a virtual world, it could be an experience, a highly abstract representation of a situation, or something else entirely.

Enterprise

In a virtual world where every fantasy and desire can be fulfilled, will there be any need for people to use trade to get things they want? Surely the point of a “Better than Life” simulation is to obsolete the need for money, work and business? This is an interesting point, but I believe that due to the need for new art and entertainment, enterprise will continue to have a place in a utopian reality, virtual or otherwise.

Creativity is something that we all possess, but everyone is different, so there will always be new ideas, new art, and new ways to entertain. This continuing need for entertainment, and the fact that there will always be those who want to create, will keep enterprise alive. Perhaps creative ideas themselves will become the new currency in a virtual utopia.

Cause and Effect

If you’re dealing with real people, you’re always going to have an effect on them with the interactions you have. There will be no way of turning back the clock on other people’s minds. However, if you were dealing only with Artificial Intelligences, their memories could be erased and you would be able to re-live situations, essentially going back in time. Which kind of world we would like to live in is up for debate. It may even be possible, in the case of the virtual world dictatorship, that the actions and memories of real people are undone for the benefit of elites within the world, thus giving a select few complete control over their lives at the expense of the rest of the population.

Conclusion

As you have seen, the idea of a virtual world goes far deeper than a 3D chat room. Looking from the perspective of a futuristic, perfect virtual reality, we are forced to question the very essence of our existence. What is the point of living if a utopia is provided for us? Once the superficial shell of reality is peeled from us, what is left of the human soul? What are the common denominators of our existence?

The virtual world paradigm opens up our eyes to the limitations of reality, and shows us the true essence of what it means to be human.

Mon, Apr 20, 2009  Permanent link

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A World With No Money?

A technocratic society has the goal of:
Producing optimum quality goods and services at the lowest possible energy cost, and distributing the maximum amount of goods and services to everyone.

Our broken economy has so far prevented this from being possible. The constant need for money has forced producers to continually produce poor quality goods, essentially, in order to keep the consumer buying. If you have to keep buying, you have to keep working. In today's developed world, we have far more than our parents did, yet we still continue to slave away, even massively increasing our debts to own more and more.

Essentially, all we really need is:

* Clean water
* Food
* Shelter
* Basic clothing

Secondary needs are:

* Consumables
* Electricity
* Communications infrastructure
* Transportation

Tertiary needs are:

* Luxuries
* Science
* Art
* Entertainment

The technocracy attempts to solve these needs from the bottom up, to rethink production and distribution without the need for money. While I don't agree with all the ideas of technocracy, 3 specific points cannot be ignored.

1. Too many people go without the essential needs.
2. Providing the essential needs, even the secondary needs, for everyone on the planet, is really not as hard as we've made it out to be. It can be done by technology, namely automation.
3. Once everyone has been provided with the essential and secondary needs, the need to work will be eradicated, changing the fundamental shape of society.

Whatever we all think about the political economic systems of the world is soon to become irrelevant. The days of the dollar are numbered, the fuse connected to the entire system of money has been lit. Shortly, the systems of capitalism and socialism will barely matter.

Lets focus on how to achieve step 2. We need to harness all the energy we need from renewable sources, storing and distributing it automatically. The sun, sea, wind and geothermals can provide more energy than we'll ever need, and it's all environmentally friendly. Maintaining these energy harnesses, as well as creating clothing and consumables, will eventually be taken care of by automation. However, these tasks will be minimal, due to the increase in build quality. Genetic engineering, nanotechnology and other new technologies are set to solve current issues of food and water shortage. Eventually, extraction of raw materials, creating consumables, and maintenance of machinery, will all depend on one thing - the one thing we have in abundance - energy.

Scarcity, which has so far fuelled our doomed financial system of debt and greed, will be replaced by abundance. Automation will be helped by exponentially increasing scientific and technological breakthroughs. Regardless of whether artificial intelligence becomes reality or not, we are already well on the way to destroying the current economic system. This is thanks to the increasing awareness of the potential for abundance.

Fulfilling the essential and secondary needs of the planet will then free us up to focus intensively on the tertiary needs of society. We'll work because we'll want to. Human beings will learn to reconnect with their creative sides, providing value for society with creations and discoveries.

Once this situation comes to pass, technocracy will have made socialism obsolete, as the previous generations will have paid for the essential needs of all future generations. Whether or not capitalism is also likely to be dissolved, is up for debate. There'll be no need to sell anything as you'll have all your essential needs, and many people will probably share their creations just "for the love of it", but perhaps competition in the creative industries could help continue to drive innovation and art. If a money system did still exist, it would only be applicable to the tertiary needs, and in this case, it would be beneficial to society.

What can I do?
Once built, the infrastructure for the technocracy will obsolete the money system, and this is what those in power are afraid of. This is why you won't see your politicians putting too much effort into fully renewable energy sources. There always needs to be a cost involved, some kind of maintenance. However, what's becoming apparent is that the ability to build this infrastructure is being taken out of the hands of politicians, and being put into the hands of individuals. This power needs to be realised.

As individuals, we can help this situation by creating technology that will bring abundance. Basically anything that is highly efficient, and preferably automated, falls into this category. We need to show the world how easy it really is to provide the essential needs to everybody. And we need to show them how technology will create abundance, obsoleting the money system in favour of harnessing the immense quantity of free energy available to us.

Wed, Jan 28, 2009  Permanent link
Categories: freedom, money, politics, technology

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Turning VR Inside Out

With the current state of virtual reality, it's unlikely that virtual supermarkets will take off in the near future. They're just too...clunky. However, one distinct possibility is a reversal. Computer controlled reality.

RFID will play a large part in this. The data it will provide will change the way we look at reality. By reporting and recording our locations and activities, it will digitise us - turning us into real life avatars.

In virtual reality, everything we do can be recorded. The software can record our every movement and interaction. This will soon be possible in real life, thanks to RFID and our interactions with computer interfaces.

Real life benefits will get us to adopt the data collection methods without question. Contact lenses or eventually brain modifications of some kind could provide us with a computer interface while in the real world. In the meantime, we'll have to make do with the iPhone. Right click a person on the street to see that person's shared details - subscribe to their Twitter feed or download their blog. Perhaps they could, from time to time, broadcast from their own eyes, allowing you to essentially inhabit their body. Extreme sports participants could make a fortune out of this, especially once physical sensations can be shared.

The information recorded about us will then take a similar shape to credit card records of the present, only far more in depth. This is not conspiracy paranoia, this is based purely on the corporations' desires (and our own) to record our data. Our purchases already provide a profile of us. In the future, our travel could be logged to provide "statistical data" for the authorities. Our work history and qualifications could be recorded in new and interesting ways. An extremely in-depth analysis of our health could be recorded on a continual basis and shared with our doctor. With enough information about enough of our actions, and the profile that is put together could eventually create some serious possibilities. What if our past could be mapped out so accurately that our future could be predicted?

Think about it; if you know the exact position, mass, and direction of every particle in the universe, in theory you should be able to predict their next moves, based on what is around them and the current laws of physics. Although chaos theory puts a dampener on this, human beings are far more predictable. With enough historical and psychological data on a person, which can be collected post hoc in a triple blind test method, we can provide immensely powerful speculation techniques. Prediction of entire populations needn't be far behind.

But you don't need me to tell you about this. Isaac Asimov's been talking about it for years. I just don't think he imagined we'd make it so easy.

Fri, Dec 5, 2008  Permanent link

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Technology - Will it Set Us Free?

When computers were first invented, users had complete freedom and power, there was no other option but to allow it. However, if they didn't follow the computer's strict set of rules, the computer would break or just not work. Even in the days of Windows 3.11, computers remained obscure and frightening to the masses.

Once computers infiltrated more and more of our lives, it became necessary to remove the need to for "user rules", computers had to become "user friendly". Computers were forced to shed their unforgivable interfaces in order to increase their popularity.

So now, computers, when used by the general public, no longer have that level of freedom. To avoid them being used wrongly, computers simply limit the options general users are allowed to access. Then, instead of telling users how to act, they simply guide users through their processes, anticipating rule-breaking, and absolving responsibility. Users lost their fear of computers, complying with the rules not because they are asked to, but because any possibility of breaking them is simply removed. General users no longer have raw power over computers, they just follow the guidelines provided for them to achieve what they need from the machine. As such, even the desire to break the rules is diminished.

A direct parallel can be applied to politics. Now, people are told not to speed on the roads because it's dangerous. Not everyone follows these rules so we need police and legal systems to deal with the rule breakers. In the future, technology will simply stop your car from being able to speed, absolving you of responsibility. In the future, and it's happening already, technology will remove the need for rules, because it will completely remove the possibility of wrong doing. It will absolve our responsibility.

Your car will be computer controlled and therefore it will be impossible to speed it, drive it off a road, or crash it. Your TV simply won't show adult content if it detects a child in the room. It will be physically impossible to steal, as all items will be installed with an RFID chip, tracking their location and ownership at all times. Alcohol dispensing machines won't work if, upon checking your RFID chip with the government database, it realises that you're underage.

In the even more distant future, nanobots will prevent us from damaging our bodies with unhealthy habits. They may even control our brains to remove criminal elements or immoral desires. Virtual reality could provide us with an environment where it is impossible to do anything wrong, because the computer interface doesn't allow it. Alternatively, virtual reality could provide the means for wrong doing to be carried out with no consequences.

It is often said that technology will set us free. Certainly the need for law enforcement and ruling government will diminish at the hands of technology. But is this destined to put us in a dictator's ultimate fantasy, or an incredibly free yet safe society?

Tue, Dec 2, 2008  Permanent link
Categories: politics, freedom, technology

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