Just as technology has the capacity to create, it can also destroy. It is crucial lived concepts like scarcity is identified so a life of abundance can fill destructive voids left behind. With enough collaborative expertise drawn to conclude that “giving gives more giving” and that “taking takes more taking,” the capacity to harmonize between these spheres can ensure that all of us have greater potential to live more preferred lives while limiting the causes of harm to oneself and others.
Economic conditions in the United States and elsewhere must change as mounting evidence suggests economic downturn. Lives that rely on economic activity are at best uncertain for those economies that sustain themselves with the bread and butter of service and information economies. In response to such a foreseeable dilemma, a Mutual form of Assured Production or MAP (as opposed to MAD) is proposed to provide a more equalized and sustainable economic methodology with an underlying ideology based on a concept of universal harmony favorable to life. We begin with a Basic Income (BI) as a short-term solution, followed by an implementation of Personal Productive Nanosystems (PPN) maintained by an Open Personal Productive Nanosystem Network (OPPNN). With programs like this in place, the need for coercive activity from both the top (e.g. state and corporate) and the bottom (e.g. unionism and anarcho-syndicalism), proffered incessantly throughout history, will greatly diminish and become largely unnecessary in the future.
With the adoption of foreseeable self-sustainable productive systems, life could be more liberating than imaginable. More personally satisfying relationships could have time and an environment to develop as personal interest takes the place of intellectual and material demands, relied upon from one another for so long. Before describing MAP, BI, PPN, and OPPNN, let’s take a look at why such a variety of acronymic proposals are discussed.
As long as people in parts of the world are starving, there’s an economic problem afoot. Until believed by enough that starvation can end and that life can continue and multiply indefinitely, with concerted diligence, the capacity to end misery altogether is just but a few steps away. Even so-called post-industrial societies like the United States have plummeted into debt since the early ‘90s with no end in sight, largely due to stagnate wages overall, which began around the same period; and from the looks of college graduate wages, labor markets as a whole are approaching downturn. For those who comprehend (if at all possible) and accept the Technological Singularity thesis understand that it is only a matter of time before labor vanishes altogether. More than the pulse of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will need to determine overall well being for a population in which a country’s GDP is quantified. With the rise of debt, so too have debt bubbles grown, the largest of which are aburst, unable to remain due to rampant defaults from those who could not afford a loan to begin with. As current trends suggest, wages overall are expected to decrease, and as for U.S. GDP, unless exports or war profiteering increases (both false signs of prosperity for the many), will follow incomes into a downward spiral. Once the rich are greatly devastated or the poor become ever more rampant—only at that time, it seems—will the demand for reformulation of economic policy toward greater prosperity and well being come to fruition. Let us hope the bumpy ride ahead finds its way quickly to smoother ground for which this writing intends to bring into view.
In the days of old, feudalism was the norm. Hierarchy was rigid, livelihoods where at the mercy of everyone else, resources such as food where highly scarce within an early pre-industrial agrarian framework. A few years with little rainfall would ensure famine and starvation, traditionally followed by massively fatal diseases to thin the heard, only to continue the same rigid cycle over again. Right was right and wrong was wrong, ignorance or refusal to abide by norms where given harsh ramifications at once, and if persistently refused, measures to end the life of one not in alignment with the rules, swiftly done away with. For the avidly social, the ability to communicate in these times often meant the difference between life and death.
Technological development through human communicative exchange has ever so gradually loosened greatly the chains of material interdependence and social rigidity that once existed. Societies have gradually stumbled, war after war; struggle after bloody struggle, into once unforeseen abundance in many areas.
Abundance can be described as a synthesis of two worlds. In one world, a single source remains centralized and constant, without depletion—while in another world—the source is accessible from any location, as a technological singularity (rather than the Singularity) of sorts. Abundance is a resource freely available ad infinitum for anyone who may have an interest in its acquisition, like a cake that never runs out of slices. This poses some problems for contemporary economists because of the divide by zero delimma, and more importantly, if abundant items where introduced into a marketplace, it would end the market as soon as it entered, given the item is authentically abundant. The written word, personal and portable computing and communications, and the Internet are all examples of where technologies like productive systems can develop, as various computer technologies after billions of dollars of investment now cost very little, with limited human effort and minimal investment. Just like the printing press that liberated the written word, the telephone that expanded the voice of verbal communication—and more recently—the rise of the World Wide Web, fusions such as these have unified communications while simultaneously decentralizing its use, which has helped foster the expansion of once costly information into nearly free resources. This of course is only one step toward many others, and it’s likely the first attempt will stumble and fall, as new beginnings usually do. Eventually it will walk and then advance toward the speed of light, and quite possibly, beyond. There are no wrong ways toward prosperity, particularly when it’s so generally defined, as it must be. It is only a matter of making the right choices that advance it, whether sooner or later, and its forms will be many.
Merchants, once a minority class, evolved from the lowly peddler in the market square of small towns, then later, to inventor-entrepreneur turned robber baron in cities and nations. The majority of early 21st century economic activity is mostly dealt by an interwoven elite global corporate power, one fueled by the dominion of scarcity and shielded by corporate brands fashioned by the best of aesthetically attuned design firms, all of which represent the face of a robber baron of another sort.
Inflation happens in two ways: with either too much or too little. Deflation is equally troubling if sales are not made above manufacture costs. To keep inflation and economic equilibrium in check, government and private firms must work in tandem. Because free corporations are designed to hoard with the help of intellectual property rights, retentive profit capacities must persist to remain in the game. Minimal government regulation from this sphere is preferred. This means that if corporate preference is met, government policy is sacrificed for its proliferation. As company monopolies grow larger and poor minority individuals grow poorer, it is only a matter of time before such unbridled capitalism stagnates economic inputs and outputs, as the wizardry of cybernetic analysis demonstrates: growth will hinder, inflate prices, and collapse markets in short order. To a certain degree this is already happening, the affect of which already described. The United States provides an ideal model for this sort of behavior, however ethically unsound it may seem.
Drug and insurance companies provide for healthcare knowing full well what they are designed to do: grow financially rather than provide sufficient care. Insufficient care is profitable, you see! Cures would mean market collapse for the superpowers of pharmaceutical and insurance conglomerates and for the entire medical industry. Shouldn’t a doctor represent your health rather than a drug or insurance company? Fortunately, we have the capacity to help ourselves to cures rather than treatments, by adopting the philosophy of abundance rather than that of scarcity. A good start would be to establish universal healthcare in the United States like other wealthy nations. The open source software community is a gleaming gem amidst a sea of dull and miserable greed, which has demonstrated exceedingly that better tools are designed if they are freely given away for further refinement. It is up to us to set greed aside and understand that giving ensures more giving in the long run. Open source technology does not have to remain in the software domain, and as many in the Trans(Post)humanist and Singularity communities foresee and discuss, it will eventually spread to them all.
In the abstract Robots: Re-Evolving Mind or Mass Utility Robots this Decade, Full Automation this Century, as such a title implies, Hans Moravec, in the last sentence clearly states, “By mid-century no human task, physical or intellectual, should be beyond effective automation.” This conclusion was drawn with the evolution of robotics firmly in mind. Eventually, as foresight becomes onsight, assemblers at the molecular scale will fashion atoms together bit by bit into a finished formation using a method of manufacture termed Productive Nanosystems. Eric Drexler calls it, “programming atoms like bits.” In theory, virtually anything physically conceived could be constructed using simple raw materials found in every day surroundings. The Center for Responsible Nanotechnology has given the timeframe to be somewhere between 2010-25.[1] The Technology Roadmap for Productive Nanosystems [2] is an insightful exploration and plotting of PN’s trajectory.
Before anything is constructed with human effort, the concept of harm now takes precedence; besides, this anything could be an explosive device that wipes the earth off the solar systemic map! Because this conceived dilemma is already heavily discussed, the point here is one briefly made to recognize that as the capacity to create becomes of ease, so too—and often times more easily—destruction can arise. If Ben Goertzel’s projections are accurate, an Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) will help manage systems (otherwise known as day-to-day affairs) within 5-9 years time [3][4] in a manner that will understand harm to a greater extend than the human mind. The essay, Stages of Ethical Development in Artificial General Intelligence [5] by Bugaj and Goertzel, presents a feasible way AGI could foreseeably interact harmoniously with others. It cannot be understated. The integrative culmination of AGI and Productive Nanosystems are essential for the continuation of life on earth and elsewhere.
So, how does one bridge the gap between manufactured goods often made abroad in various global regions to a portable system like that of a Personal Productive Nanosystem? And what might this device look like? The iPod seems a likely candidate, although the politics of the One Laptop Per Child organization best align with the proposals stated here. So instead, let’s imagine a future XO subnotebook computer, freely distributed to kids and adults alike. Only, the XO would not only help to educate, it could also feed, cloth, and house the user in whatever manner preferred. It may be best that before journeying forth into the likes of futurist prophecy, let’s first describe the steps in which prophecy can materialize into reality by describing how manufacturing systems and labor economies might evolve, in a manner which purposefully avoids timetables.
It will no longer be competitively advantageous or necessary to purchase materials or finished goods from abroad. With demand for robotics in Japan, this helped spur development in a variety of related technologies, and particularly, helped care for a growing aging population otherwise physically impossible most of the time. Robots similar to ones that entertained and delivered medications are now more dynamic and no longer occupy the narrow assignments of convalescent care or retailing. They are more fluid and less mechanical in manner. Infused with what was once called AGI, these human-like representations can shift into many shapes and manufacture virtually anything by means of molecular engineering, given it does not bring others to harm. It understands us better than we do.
It communicates in a way that may seem alien at first. It’s not that the device talks like a simple mechanism—quite the opposite. Those who interact with the machine can’t help but treat it as kindly as it treats others. In fact, aging isn’t so bad because this darned thing told me some guy—who resembles a wizard in some Tolkien novel—found a cure for the cell deterioration that causes death. So what the hey-who, I guess it wouldn’t hurt to live a little longer so I can watch my grandchildren grow old.
Robotics with this form of sophistication use a type of communication technology called affective computing, but others won’t know the wiser, it acts like a kind person.
A basic income is distributed equally to individuals so they can purchase goods that remain scarce or are difficult to duplicate for the time being. You see, we’ve since understood that machines can be used to end the toil rather than increase it, which was the case with you folk at the dawn of the century. Besides, I think those in the past where tricked—thinking they where free. We now view wage labor as just a different form of slavery, neither of which would be very tolerable today if we had to revert back to taking orders from an overworked boss or soon to be ex-wife or worrying over bills. There are no bosses here, just those who are either interested in having your companionship or not. I no longer have to work all day to feed my family. This in a sense created a new series of problems! You see, I wasn’t used to having so much free time, and I quickly realized that the family I worked so hard to support wasn’t worth spending time with in the first place. Those where cynical and rather superficial times… The transition was hard on all of us of course, but in the end we knew it was best that we went our separate ways and live around others more compatible and attuned to our unique, natural preferences. I still love my kids, of course. I see them from time to time. It’s easy to stay in touch.
I now have a dog I fashioned up with the help of my XO. Okay, so it’s not really an XO. Shrapney does amazing things! Explosive and metallic sounding name aside, he’s a real live dog, you know, the organic and biological kind, my own special breed fit to spec. We get along real nice because he likes what I like and usually doesn’t like what I don’t. That gets boring after awhile though, having a dog so similar to yourself. I think I’ll make my next breed more different than myself next time, but I’m rather attached as it is. I may not make another doggy. I could use some surprises every once in a while, you know. Isn’t that what us human folk are designed for?
I remember reading somewhere that some guy somewhere wrote an essay on how we might live in the future. Come to find out, it was nothing like he had planned. The outcome was rather similar to his thinking though. A few of those futurists people got a few things right. They can certainly have pretty close to what they anticipated anyhow. Now anyone can do basically as they please, given it don’t disturb anyone. Those folks who called themselves transhumanists or cyborgs or whatever had their fill, most of them I never talked to anyhow.
Setting an emergent unknown personal narrative aside for a moment, let’s begin a dialogue that names particular systems this future spokesperson might use in day-to-day affairs.
I believe they called it Personal Productive Nanosystems in the beginning. I remember that only because it sounds like “pen” when abbreviated. Whatever you need, you search what you might call the nanofactory database to find what you want. It remembers your preferences, so you can either choose what you made before or have it snaz things up a bit. Sometimes I do that just to get a thrill, it never fails to surprise me, as often as I say nothing surprises me much anymore—which doesn’t surprise me. At any rate, this interface was once called something silly like Open Productive Nanosystem Network. I know that because it sounds like “open” when said as an acronym. This concept of openness is what liberated us from the torment of labor. Like I said, there’s no need for that anymore. If you feel like thinking up something new, or doing something, you consult this interface for a bit and there you have it. It could be a work of something made or remade; anyone who browses the network can find it. You can also use it as a day planner, either by writing one up yourself or having it do one for you, or a combination. It’s good at giving suggestions if you want them. People add things to it all the time and think of the craziest things. Some people still type; it’s faster that way for some folks. I prefer to think when I want something. Biofeedback is sophisticated enough these days to read brain waves and such. Yes, like I said, typing is faster for some folks. They can type faster than they can think you know!
So you remember government, right? Those fancy government buildings are all museums now. Well, before I get into this, saying something like that could be considered controversial and all. It’s a common perception in your time to believe that people need other people to enact laws to keep things in line or help get us the things we can’t get as small fries. There’s not much use for kingships or fiefdoms or small fridoms here. That may burst your bubble—perhaps it seems impossible—to know that now anyone can do what they need to do without writing a congressperson or protesting, or rallying up for some other form of nonsense. If you have a problem with someone or a group of someones these days, you stand up on your hindquarters, look ‘em in the eye, and tell ‘em (whether by v-mail or otherwise)! Things can always be worked out; there’s always a way to compromise. I guess there always was, it’s just easier now.
Its no longer a burden to visit a friend for extended amounts of time, because going to another’s house is a lot like going to your own. Anything you might like can appear in alignment with you and your friend’s preferences if the room is one you both occupy. This includes adjustment of lighting, décor, and the like in a way that’s pleasing to both peeps, given we choose to have any of that stuff cluttering the room in the first place. I like to keep things simple, personally.
A word on real estate—didn’t some guy say, “property is theft?” Well, property isn’t so much theft, because we haven’t much use for either of the two. It’s not that privacy is no longer necessary, it’s still just as important as it was then. Everyone needs a little alone time to get things collected. There’s always a place for that. If it’s family life you’re hungry for, there’s a place for that too. Usually people like a little of both or somewhere in between. Room or rooms can always be made to taste for any occasion that may arise.
Transportation isn’t really a problem. Batteries have very high capacities and can nearly launch something into space. I guess if the battery where big enough, it could! Since I’ve thought of it, I’m sure somebody’s already done that. Wireless energy really took off too, its rather novel at the time of this publication, but we’ve found it to be useful in keeping things going for those things that need electricity from an outside source. Most items today are able to extract energy from the environment though. I guess you could say wireless transference of energy is somewhat old hat, unless you where to need a lot of it at one time for some silly reason.
Its difficult to describe the future outside narrative without knowing something will, no doubt, be overlooked later as new insights and experiences come and as innovation continues. Detail is a task that easily spans infinity. Things are often described in stark detail in so-called non-fiction or written about in sci-fi, most of which relies on severe unforeseen problems to overcome—technology often posed as a problem than a solution. Both methods of story telling are bound to sound dated for the reader decades from now, serving as historical text. Of course writing concisely is necessary for obvious reasons in the technical areas touched upon earlier. Not detailing the fineries of the specific would make such a life previously illustrated impossible, however crudely articulated by our future guest narrator, one who happened to invade this once formal essay.
Further descriptions of Productive Nanosystems and Artificial General Intelligence and other essential technologies will be left to those more interested in understanding the finer and more scrupulous of details until AGIs are capable of doing more than that of the human, including the more intellectually avid ones. Rather than a technical treatise, this bit of garb is intended to gently splash a few drops of radiance upon foreseeable problems faced in the early 21st century, with a brief and somewhat playful illustration of a few solutions brought forth by our anonymous spokesperson from the future. This leaves the rest up for more detailed and grounded discussion for another time on another page.
Rigidly critical thought and overtly extensive argumentation aside, may the future be one in which is most preferred.
References
1. Center for Responsible Nanotechnology: Estimating a Timeline for Molecular Manufacturing
2. Productive Nanosystems: A Technology Roadmap
3. The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence: Interviews: Ben Goertzel
4. The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence: Singularity Summit 2007: Nine Years to a Positive Singularity – If We Really, Really Try
5. Goertzel, B. Bugaj, S. Stages of Ethical Development in Artificial General Intelligence Systems
Nathan Cravens is a founder and organizer of the Effortless Economy Institute, a think tank that tracks the evolution of automation technologies and how they have, are, and will likely affect economic, social, and ethical beliefs and behaviors.
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