Talk:Narrative connector
From Technomancer
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car from the raw materials once deilvered.I do however need to make a further point in this regard. The technology of a car, is not so evident when considering an actual specific car. I would argue that the technology lives not in the physical cars, but in the car's design or the manufacturing process design, and is what is truly valuable to society. Society would benefit more from owning the design of a car and its manufacturing process, than from actually having a car. This intellectual property is the true technology that is obsoleting human labour. While considering that, I would like to raise for you to consider, the possible importance of Open Source after the technology renaissance! Why should Open Source be limited to software? (I admit that there are many examples where it is not, but it certainly does not have the pervasive role I expect it could have.) Would it be possible for motor industry engineers to collaborate and create an Open Source car, or cell-phone, or piano, or Coke canning factory, or truck, or cement-mixer, or iPad, or inkjet printer, or vending machine? Sure, the first few versions may be lacklustre, but just as was with Linux or theGimp, over time there will be an almost perfect operating system, and being open it can be so easily adapted as to be used for network routers, android cell-phones, guidance systems etc. So would the design of an open source car become not only very advanced, but it would be able to form the basis for flexible related designs of trucks, buses, trains or even aircraft.The concept of Open Source, is a powerful clue, as to how we should formulate our future society. Imagine, if instead of all shares in all companies being owned by the stock markets or private individuals, they suddenly all became Open Source.If all the Coke canning factories, suddenly became Open Source, then all the units produced in that factory would also be the property of the people as a whole. If all the Reebok factories became open source, then all the shoes made there would too become the property of the people at large.Now if all these factories, and indeed all factories, and all human jobs, were fully replaced by technologies of various forms, there would be no (or very, very few) humans needed to produce all these products and services, but we would all be able to get the products or services that these factories produced.To clarify this idea, imagine for a moment, that society decided that it would benefit by allowing easy transport across a large river. So it plans, and constructs a great bridge across this river. The bridge is designed in such a way, that with minimal maintenance, it will stand against the elements for thousands of years. This benefit would be available to any person who desired it. You could get the full benefit of this bridge, by simply crossing it, and you could get this benefit whenever you wanted.Now imagine that a Coke canning factory is exactly the same as the bridge. Imagine it was a large monumental concrete cube. No doors or humans could ever enter. It has a large pipe into which rainwater is pumped, and a power cable which it accesses power, it has a large hole into which metal must be placed and a large hole where stacks of Coke cans are deposited as they are created. This huge concrete monument, so long as the inputs (minimal maintenance) are provided (water, sugar, electricity and metal) it will provide it's benefit to any and all who desire it. Our grand-children's grand-children will be able to benefit from it, and once made, all society benefits. No person will be expected to sell their labour in order to benefit from the Coke-a-cola Cube, and it is in the design of this Concrete Cube, that society benefits.This thought experiment is designed to highlight the idea of Open Source Economics, but our actual Open Source Factory would be able to benefit from many improvements, adding new technologies, and would not be a fixed unchanging cube, but rather a continuously improving system. Refrigeration, may be added, there may be a label printing system added, there may be an option to select can output sizes, there may be a packaging system added and so on.Ok, back to reality. For right now, the short-term solution to this problem will be to pump debt into the economy. But as time goes on, people will realise that they can never pay this debt off. There cannot be a slowing of the debt pumping, cos that would mean that there will not be enough people able to purchase goods which is very bad for the owners of technology. This will lead to people fighting, without the need for labour, for access to this infinite stream of debt.It will be the slowing and cessation of debt, that will ultimately cause companies to give up and give all they have to the public (this is already starting to happen, for example when Palm, a once successful electronics manufacturer, closed it's doors, it gave away Open Source, all the code to its Palm OS operating system. I suspect the same will happen to RIM with their blackberry.).One last concept I would like to discuss, that I feel would assist you in your view of things to come is the idea of the elasticity of demand. This, in economic theory, is how much does the demand for a good or service change in relation to a change in price for that good or service. That is to say how important or not, is a good or service, that a change in price, may or may not effect it's demand. Examples of items that are very inelastic would be medicines, oil or gas, addictive substances such as tobacco and alcohol. That is even if these things were doubled in price tomorrow, there would be a very similar demand (in units, barrels or pills) regardless of the new price. Other things, such as Coke-a-cola, may see a sudden drop in unit sales if the price were to double overnight. Most luxury goods, entertainment goods or processed goods are very elastic in demand and the amount that society demands of these goods is very sensitive to their price.What does this have to do with anything you ask? I suspect that those goods that are very inelastic, will be the last ones to hold on to the current state of demanding a price from the public. They are also the industries that most desire a monopoly, because they would benefit most from it, since they could then ask any price they wanted and still expect a similar demand. I also think that it will be the actions of these industries that will determine the future of mankind. It is to these industries that we could become enslaved. If the medical industry demanded anything of those who need medicines, those people would probably concede to the demands. The same can be said for the energy industry, the Addictive products industry, and indeed most of the inelastic industries. Even if a technology renaissance could provide for all other human needs, we could still be controlled by our needs for inelastic goods. Just some food for thought.All that said, I am confident that the economic forces are pulling us towards a new paradigm in economic prosperity. Weather we like it or not, we will eventually obsolete ourselves, and in so doing, we can forever free ourselves and our progeny from the necessity of labour.If you have any comments, would like to criticise anything I've said or have any further thoughts, I would love to hear them.I have thought in great depth about the possible future and what it may be like during and after the technological renaissance, so if you are interested in hearing more of my thoughts on this, please let me know.Stephen is.
