[tt] [Open Manufacturing] My hypothetical H+ Summit presentation :-)

[Eugen Leitl]

----- Forwarded message from "Paul D. Fernhout" <pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com> -----

From: "Paul D. Fernhout" <pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com>
Date: Mon, 07 Jun 2010 09:43:17 -0400
To: Open Manufacturing <openmanufacturing at googlegroups.com>
Subject: [Open Manufacturing] My hypothetical H+ Summit presentation :-)
User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.24 (Macintosh/20100228)
Reply-To: openmanufacturing at googlegroups.com

Bryan Bishop and Joseph Jackson are giving talks at the H+ Summit coming up 
this weekend at Harvard University (June 12-13). I'm thinking of going to 
because it is within driving distance and it would be nice to meet them 
finally in person. :-)
  http://hplussummit.com/about.html
  http://hplussummit.com/jackson.html
  http://hplussummit.com/bishop.html

Thinking about that conference, I made a sketch of a little presentation of 
issues I've been thinking about. Not that I expect to give it this year at 
this late time with a full schedule already there; it was just something I 
was musing over, as in, what of all the things I've written, would I say in 
ten minutes if I did? Maybe next year. :-) It has some quotes and then some 
related talking points in six slides. Nothing much new here if you've read 
much that I've written here and elsewhere. :-) I'm sure I've left out really 
important stuff, like the transformation of certain Ivy League Universities 
to post-scarcity institutions. :-)
  http://www.pdfernhout.net/post-scarcity-princeton.html

== Slide #1 -- The irony of tools of abundance wielded by a scarcity mindset

"The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of 
thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If 
only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker. (Albert Einstein)"

* There is a deep irony related to nuclear weapons, military robots, 
bioengineered plagues, and even just the typical sophisticated gear of 
today's infantry and the sophisticated industrial base it implies.
* The same sorts of technology could produce abundance if designed and 
deployed in different ways (e.g. sustainable energy, self-replicating space 
habitats, 3D printing, biotech medicines), but instead it may bring ruin for 
us all if is designed and deployed from a scarcity mindset.
* Our current mainstream economics is mostly scarcity-based, and in that 
sense is defective by design if you want a world of abundance (whether of 
material goods or free time).
* Abundances can create a complementary scarcity (an abundance of 
information and a scarcity of attention?) but the phase change of our 
society to material abundance is still a big fundamental change.
* Security is of course always important; how do we collectively rethink 
security in terms of mutual security (Morton Deutsch) instead of unilateral 
security? How do we rethink our security in terms of intrinsic security 
(Amory Lovins) with infrastructure being designed to be robust and resilient 
rather than extrinsic security involving active defense of fragile 
infrastructure?

== Slide #2 -- The Tension Between Roots and Wings

"There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children.  One 
of these is roots, the other, wings. (Henry Ward Beecher)"

"No one else can give me the meaning of my life; it is something I alone can 
make. The meaning is not something predetermined which simply unfolds; I 
help both to create it and to discover it, and this is a continuing process, 
not a once-and-for-all. (Milton Mayeroff)"

* Issues of identity and transformation. Historically, these are addressed 
in great literature and in religion, in documents and stories that go back 
thousands of years
* Examples of roots: connections to family, nature, community, spirituality, 
sensuality, aesthetics, a desire to preserve some important pattern, humor
* We die of malnutrition and alienation when we lose our roots, and if we 
have weak roots the huge tree of our life may be blown over in any of life's 
storms.
* But, we are sitting ducks for predators when we lose our wings, given an 
ever-changing world where evolutionary processes and competition continue.
* How do we reconcile these two? An age old question... Humans have been 
evolving for a long time...
* How can we have a connection between the past and the future, between 
ancient literary roots and transhumanist wings?

== Slide #3 -- The tension of Yin and Yang, Meshwork and Hierarchy

"Indeed, one must resist the temptation to make hierarchies into villains 
and meshworks into heroes, not only because, as I said, they are constantly 
turning into one another, but because in real life we find only mixtures and 
hybrids, and the properties of these cannot be established through theory 
alone but demand concrete experimentation. (Manuel De Landa)"

* Competition and cooperation? Yin and Yang?
* Fundamental aspects of this material-seeming universe? Can we transcend 
that? Do we want to?
* Can we come up with a new synthesis or at least, minimize suffering and 
maximize joy?
* Religious implications related to purpose, assumptions about the afterlife 
(even if we are living in a simulation), and so on. Is this all there is? Is 
life a test? Are we all one? These are fundamental issues that have puzzled 
people for thousands of years, even if with a new computer-aided spin.


== Slide #4 -- Health and Life Extension examples

"Let your food be medicine and your medicine be food. (Hippocrates)"

* Treating vitamin D deficiency (the sunshine vitamin) can probably prolong 
your life (e.g. Dr. John Cannell).
*  Eating more organic whole foods (e.g. Dr. Joel Fuhrman) can also produce 
life extension and better life quality.
* Occasional fasting can prolong your life.
* These three things (sunshine, whole food, fasting) have been practiced for 
thousands of years, but their importance have been recently forgotten for a 
variety of reasons. Thus, we are now going full circle back to our roots, 
but with better information from our winged social networks.
* We already know that the major killers in our industrialized society, like 
type-II diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and cancer, can be mostly reversed 
and prevented by diet (along with moderate exercise, a positive outlook on 
life, functional communities, and the right amount of vitamin D) to give 
most people healthy active lives into their nineties and beyond (and with 
reduced sick care costs). We know how to build communities with physical and 
social infrastructure that foster these healthy things (e.g. Bluezones). 
But, that science is not being acted on institutionally yet in a big way 
(and is actively resisted by industry regarding excess salt, sugar, bad 
fats, and additives), even if this health advice has roots going way back 
and lots of scientific evidence backing it up, in part because it is not 
very profitable. The private profit motive is also sometimes a motive to 
cause confusion.
* How can one balance private motivation and the public good? An age old 
question...

== Slide #5 -- Participating in Finite and Infinite Games

"There are at least two kinds of games. One could be called finite, the 
other infinite. The finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an 
infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play, ...and bringing as 
many persons as possible into the play. Finite players play within 
boundaries; infinite players play with boundaries. (James P. Carse)

"A people, as a people, has nothing to defend.  In the same way, a people 
has nothing and no one to attack. One cannot be free by oppressing another. 
 My freedom does not depend upon your loss of freedom.  On the contrary, 
since freedom is never freedom from society, but freedom for it, my freedom 
inherently affirms yours.  A people has no enemies. (James P. Carse)"

* How do we build a future with many citizens engaging in cooperative 
endeavors involving science, design, manufacturing, health care, and so on?
* The previously mentioned whole foods and vitamin D example as showing why 
we need to develop better social processes if most people in our 
industrialized society are to have long, joyful, healthy lives.
* Also, we have a huge oil slick right now in the Gulf of Mexico in part 
because selling oil is very profitable (with privatized fiat dollar profits 
and socialized environmental costs). Renewable energy like solar-thermal 
coupled with energy efficiency has been cheaper than fossil fuels since the 
1970s according to Amory Lovins (e.g. Brittle Power), if you considered all 
external costs that you pay in your taxes, or on health care bills, or in 
terms of risk like environmental disaster as ongoing in the Gulf. Again, our 
scarcity-based ideology is leading to problematical infrastructure design.
* We also have an educational system based around schooling children with 
others of similar ages and abilities on a tight schedule in factory-like 
settings to transform them into obedient workers for 19th century factories 
and unquestioning soldiers for a 19th century Prussian military. But this is 
the 21st century, and our factories and security needs have changed.
* While there are a lot of great things happening all over the world, there 
is also a vast social dysfunction taking place in our core formal 
institutions, relative to the social and technological possibilities. Our 
informal associations also have issues, since they reflect the scarcity 
ideology too.
* What would be likely to happen with nanotech and biotech if it is built 
using the same scarcity-based social paradigms? For example, why force 
creative people though economic and social rationing to do DIY-Bio genitic 
engineering in their kitchen without containment devices when we have enough 
physical resources to make thousands of safer fancy labs, perhaps one in 
every community for everyone who wants to use them, the same as we have 
built schools, churches, post offices, and libraries everywhere?
* How do we create formal (hierarchical) and informal (meshwork) social 
processes that reflect the needs for a newly emerging (or re-emerging) 
participatory culture with broadly distributed social equity and an 
accounting for external costs? One where playing the infinite game (playing 
to play) is prioritized?
* This is the age old problem of democracy, or, alternatively, finding a 
balance of meshwork and hierarchy in whatever social form makes sense...
* What part of the transformation is technological? What part is social? How 
do the two interrelate synergistically?

== Slide #6 -- Course corrections going into the Singularity?

"You and I do not see things as they are. We see things as we are. (Henry 
Ward Beecher)"

"The continuance of the income-through-jobs link as the only major mechanism 
for distributing effective demand -- for granting the right to consume -- 
now acts as the main brake on the almost unlimited capacity of a cybernated 
productive system. (The Triple Revolution Memorandum, 1964)"

* Is the Singularity like Harry Potter's "Mirror of Erised"? ("Erised" is 
"Desire" spelled backwards.) What would we see in the mirror if we are a 
financially successful capitalist (hint, hint)? Does capitalist ideology 
dominate "mainstream" singularity thinking? What is the danger of seeing 
capitalism and competing over scarce resources as the way to build the 
future of abundance? Or could we see cooperation, or at least, balance, as a 
better way forward to a world that works for everyone, and where the 
capacity to collectively create, monitor, and respond outweighs the 
individual or collective ability to destroy and harm?
* What would the next Singularity look like if we put in place things like a 
"basic income" (social security and medicaid for all at any age), or a gift 
economy, or healthier local communities, or better resource-based planning 
*before* moving further into a Singularity?
* Marshall Brain suggested a "Jobless Recovery" is exactly what you would 
expect in a technological transformation as we are seeing -- but our social 
and economic paradigms are based heavily on distributing income via formal 
paid jobs (or, for a few, by the rent from significant capital ownership). 
That scarcity-based paradigm will change one way or another. How it will 
change is still up in the air.
* Can our path in to the singularity affect our path through it, like a 
gravitational slingshot effect of a space probe around a planet? If so, then 
is there is a potential for linking the movements for progressive social 
change and movements for transhumanism, as dissimilar as they may seem at 
first?
* Almost all the issues taking up the headlines -- Global Climate Change, 
Peak Oil, Social Security and Medicare funding issues, recycling, economic 
rationing related to most fiat dollar finance -- are just not very big 
issues when you have a lot of robots and a good knowledge of materials. :-) 
And many others, like the obesity crisis, have ready solutions that are 
known (better diet, breaking out of the "Pleasure Trap"), but not acted on. 
Various alternative communities have been talking about parts of this for a 
long time.
* Reprise: Our current dominant social paradigms (scarcity-based) are out of 
sync with our emerging technological possibilities (material abundance). 
People like Buckminster Fuller ("Comprehensive Anticipatory Design 
Science"), and Bob Black ("The Abolition of Work") have been saying this for 
decades, if not centuries. It just gets truer ever year. At what point do 
all the centuries of innovation by ancestors pay off for most people 
(whatever their form) in terms of a healthier and longer life with more time 
to spend on freely-chosen but seemingly "unprofitable" things like children, 
family, community involvement, hobbies, the arts, spirituality, exploration, 
self-education, slow food, and communing with nature and the infinite?

===

So, just some notes. I'm not sure this all could fit in ten minutes, anyway. 
:-) Especially if I got to rambling. :-)

--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
====
The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of 
abundance in the hands of those thinking in terms of scarcity.

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Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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