There’s two kinds of people asking me about the economy lately: people with money wanting to know how to keep it “safe,” and people without money, wanting to know how to keep safe, themselves. Maybe it’s the difference between those two concerns that best explains the underlying nature of today’s fiscal crisis.
The Other Half
by Mike TrederChina is often depicted by the traditional media as a nation with a booming economy, a thriving middle class, and an unlimited future. We’re led to expect that it soon will become the world’s unchallenged economic and geopolitical superpower.
Is Wage Labor Becoming Obsolete?
by Edward MillerA majority of unskilled jobs are completely unnecessary even with current technology. We are already very much a Robotic Nation
Structuring a Decentralized World
by Edward MillerIEET Intern Edward Miller argues that we can have a more democratic world by embracing the decentralizing and liberatory potentials of open source or P2P approaches to biotechnology and informatics.
Could universal health insurance be an engine for entrepreneurial innovation?
by Jamais CascioI don’t mean innovation in the healthcare space in particular, although that’s possible. I mean more generally, as an unanticipated benefit, an “economy of scope,” if you will, of universal health coverage. It may well be that a shift to broad health coverage could trigger a period of surprising economic growth. This may actually be an argument that would win support for single-payer insurance among those not persuaded by the moral or social aspects.
Doug Rushkoff teaching “Technologies of Persuasion”
IEET Fellow Doug Rushkoff reports on his new book project on corporatism and his upcoming class on “technologies of persuasion”.
One Revolution Per Child
by Jamais CascioI wish that Nicolas Negroponte had never referred to it as the “one hundred dollar computer.”
Why Our Emerging Robotic Nation Needs a Basic Income Guarantee
by Marshall BrainThe articles Robotic Nation and Robotic Freedom, as well as the book Manna, have only been on the Internet for a short period of time, and already the response has been startling. Here are answers to the most frequently asked questions about my proposals to provide all human beings with a basic income guarantee in order to facilitate our transition to a fully automated economy.
Precarity and Experimental Subjection
by Dale Carrico
Demography and Emerging Technologies
by Marcelo RinesiIf demography is fate, then emerging technologies’ political fate looks bright indeed.
Transhumanist jobs of the future
by George DvorskyEver wonder what jobs will be like 40 years from now? Roma Luciw takes a stab at predicting future vocations in her article, Job prospects charting new territory.
The burden of global misery - let’s actually do something
by Russell BlackfordOne of the most obscene things about the burden of global misery - the extremes of poverty and disease we see in the developing countries - is that the money is actually there to relieve it. All that we need is the political will. Every rational calculation shows that the resources available to richer nations could be put to work with truly massive impact in improving the plight of the world’s poorest people, and with no real harm to the lifestyles of any well-to-do Westerners.
RoboFactory
by Jamais Cascio(Cue ”Powerhouse," by Raymond Scott)
Nanofabbers are on my mind right now. They’ve shown up in some work I’m doing with IFTF; they’re the focus of a project underway with CRN; and they’re one of the manifestations of the “software control of matter” conversation underway at the EPSRC Ideas Factory.
Robots and Jobs
by Marshall BrainThe following image was scanned from a science book for kids entitled “Mysteries and Marvels of Science”, published by Usborne.
Philanthrocapitalism or philanthrobabble?
by George DvorskyMy libertarian socialist sensibilities were both tickled and agitated this week when I learned that Warren Buffett, the world’s second richest man, donated virtually his entire $31 billion fortune to the Gates Foundation. Buffett is known for his philosophical opposition to dynastic wealth, but the donation was also emblematic of his support for what is coming to be regarded as ”philanthrocapitalism” – the increasing trend toward entrepreneurial approaches to philanthropy.
World Without Work?
by Dale CarricoWorld Without Work?
According to an article over at BBC News, “[r]esearchers from Gothenburg University in Sweden have been studying published data on what makes people happy… They believe working to achieve a goal, rather than attaining it, makes people more satisfied[.]”
Diagramming Sentences of Value: Evolving Human Rights and the Terms of Geoethical Nanotechnology
by Wrye SententiaTalk at 1st Annual Workshop on Geoethical Nanotechnology, July 20, 2005 by Wrye Sententia, Ph.D., Director, Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethic.
BIG and Generational Equity in an Automated and Life-Extended Future
by J. HughesPublic policy analysts have been raising the alarm for a decade about the changing ratio of seniors to workers in the 21st century, the “old-age dependency ratio.” One symptom of the growing alarm about the old-age dependency ratio is the Bush administration’s unpopular effort to create private pension accounts to supplement senior incomes in the 2040s when the U.S. Social Security system is predicted to exhaust its trust accounts. Defenders of public pensions, in the U.S. and Europe, have argued that there is no problem in the system of social insurance that can’t be fixed by marginal changes. Unfortunately both sides in this debate profoundly underestimate the imminent and rapid change in the demographic variables that determine the dependency ratio: birth rates, death rates, senior disability, and labor force participation. This is equally true for the demographers advising the United Nations. The linear assumptions underlying most demographic and economic models are belied by the emerging technologies already driving rapid exponential change. Emerging technologies will drive a dramatic increase in the dependency ratio. Only a basic income guarantee (BIG) can establish a new social contract that addresses the problem of “intergenerational equity,” by expanding egalitarian social security to all and preventing a slide to a more atomistic and impoverished future. BIG will also need to be accompanied by a re-negotiation of the way the labor market is structured and the way the state is financed.
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The Future Starts Now
by Dale CarricoTechnoprogressives Cannot Postpone the Redress of Poverty and Treatable Illness
The Third Axis
by Ben HyinkTech-progressivism: A stance of active support for technological development in general and for human practices of genetic, prosthetic and cognitive modification in particular. Tech-progressives believe that technological developments can be profoundly empowering and emancipatory when they are regulated by legitimate democratic and accountable authorities to ensure that their costs, risks and benefits are all fairly shared by the actual stakeholders to those developments."
- Dale Carrico, Fellow, IEET
Embrace the End of Work
by J. HughesUnless we send humanity on a permanent paid vacation, the future could get very bleak
Getting Paid in Our Jobless Future
by J. HughesOnly a guaranteed basic income can ensure economic growth, technological innovation and social welfare
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