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Technology

Maria Farrell on Technology, Ethics, Stories and the Prodigal Techbro

December 13, 2020 by Socrates

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Maria Farrell is the author of some of my most favorite op-ed pieces of 2020. She is very smart, gutsy, genuine, feisty, generous, and Irish. Her writing is sharper, it penetrates deeper and she’s not afraid to go further than most others. I have already learned a lot from her and have become a total fan. So it was a blast to have her on my podcast and I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did.

During this 2.5-hour interview with Maria Farrell, we cover a variety of interesting topics such as: why she is a reader who eventually became a writer for crooked timber and elsewhere; the image and mythology of Conor McGregor as the Fighting Irish; the biggest issues that humanity is facing today;  stories as tools we think with; futurism as an interest of those happy with the present; what Feminism can teach us about our smartphones; how China is selling Autocracy as a service; why the internet must be more than Facebook; whether technology is a magnifying mirror; the importance and impact of story; why I wasn’t welcome at Google and CISCO; Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History; why the Agrarian Revolution is history’s greatest fraud; the Prodical Techbro phenomenon; my interview with Tristan Harris; the Tragedy of the Commons as a false narrative; why no one is coming to save us from ourselves.

As always you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the video interview in full. To show your support you can write a review on iTunes, make a direct donation, or become a patron on Patreon.

Who is Maria Farrell?

Maria Farrell is a writer and keynote speaker on technology and the future. An Irish citizen now based in London, Maria has worked in tech policy for twenty years in Europe, the US, and the UK. She was an Internet policy specialist at the International Chamber of Commerce, Paris, the UK’s Confederation of British Industry and The Law Society of England and Wales in the early 2000s, before being appointed deputy head of corporate affairs and policy officer at ICANN, based in Brussels, Los Angeles and Washington D.C. She then led communications and a government advisory project at infoDev, the World Bank/IFC program on technology and development.

Maria has been an invited speaker at the Royal Society, Chatham House and Royal Institute in London, European Forum Alpbach, and Estonia’s NATO cyber-security summer school. She opened the 2018 European Data Protection conference in the European Parliament. She weaves storytelling into speeches about how we can imagine and build technological and political futures we actively choose to live in, and not the dystopia currently on offer.

A graduate of University College Dublin, the Dublin Institute of Technology, and the London School of Economics, Maria taught politics and policy on Oxford University’s doctoral program in cybersecurity from 2014 – 2018. She is now completing a Ph.D. in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths University, London, and uses her fiction skills to write near-future stories and scenarios for technology clients who want to know how the future will really feel.

She has written for The Guardian, Slate, Medium, the Conversationalist, the Irish Times, and Irish Independent, and appeared as a tech expert on BBC, Sky News, NBC, and TRT.

Filed Under: Podcasts Tagged With: Maria Farrell, Techbro, Technology

Juan Enriquez on Right/Wrong: How Technology Transforms Our Ethics

October 30, 2020 by Socrates

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Juan Enriquez is a bestselling author, TED All-Star with 9 TED Talks, and countless TEDx talks. Juan is an angel investor and Managing Director of Excel Venture Management. He has sailed around the world on an expedition that increased the number of known genes a hundredfold and was part of the peace commission that negotiated the cease-fire with the Zapatistas in Mexico. Most recently, Enriquez is the author of Right/Wrong: How Technology Transforms Our Ethics.

During this 90 min interview with Juan Enriquez, we cover a variety of interesting topics such as: why he is a very curious and optimistic Cromagnon; his work as a venture capitalist at Excel Venture Management; the difference between the price and the cost of health and education; the story of how science, technology, ethics, and angel investment came into his life; his work with Ed Boyden; Catholic ethics and certainty in what’s right and wrong; the importance of humility and forgiveness; why those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities; intelligent design, homo evolutis, and transhumanism; his latest book Right/Wrong; veganism, techno-solutionism and personal development; the Abrahamic religions and adaptation; AI and the technological singularity.

My favorite quote that I will take away from this interview with Juan Enriquez is:

Just do it and enjoy the ride!

As always you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the video interview in full. To show your support you can write a review on iTunes, make a direct donation or become a patron on Patreon.

Who is Juan Enriquez?

Juan Enriquez is a leading authority on the economic impact of life sciences and brain research on business and society as well as a respected business leader and entrepreneur. He was the founding Director of the Harvard Business School’s Life Sciences Project and is a research affiliate at MIT’s synthetic neurobiology lab. After HBS, Juan became an active angel investor, founding Biotechonomy Ventures. He then co-founded Excel Venture Management. Author and co-author of multiple bestsellers including As the Future Catches You: How Genomics Will Change Your Life, Work, Health, and Wealth (1999), The Untied States of America: Polarization, Fracturing and Our Future (2005), Evolving Ourselves: Redesigning Humanity One Gene at a Time (2015,) and RIGHT/WRONG: How Technology Transforms Our Ethics (2020).

As a business leader, advisor, and renowned speaker, Juan Enriquez works directly with the CEOs of a number of Fortune 50 companies, as well as various heads of state, on how to adapt to a world where the dominant language is shifting from the digital towards the language of life. He is a TED All-Star with nine TED talks on a variety of subjects, as well as dozens of TEDx talks. Mr. Enriquez serves on multiple for-profit boards as well as a variety of non-profits including The National Academy of Sciences, The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, WGBH, The Boston Science Museum, Harvard Medical School, and Harvard’s David Rockefeller Center. Juan sailed around the world on an expedition that increased the number of known genes a hundredfold and was part of the peace commission that negotiated the cease fire with the Zapatistas. He graduated from Harvard with a B.A. and an M.B.A., both with honors.

 

Filed Under: Podcasts Tagged With: AI, ethics, homo evolutis, Juan Enriquez, Right/Wrong, Tech, Technology, transhumanism

Prof. Massimo Pigliucci: Accompany science and technology with a good dose of philosophy

May 2, 2020 by Socrates

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I have previously interviewed a few fantastic scientists and philosophers but rare are those strange birds who manage to combine together both deep academic training and the living ethos of those separate disciplines. Prof. Massimo Pigliucci is one of those very rare and strange people. He has 3 Ph.D.’s – Genetics, Evolutionary Biology, and Philosophy, and is also the author of 165 technical papers in both science and philosophy as well as a number of books on Stoic Philosophy, including the best selling How to Be A Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life.

During this 80 min interview with Massimo Pigliucci, we cover a variety of interesting topics such as: why Massimo is first and foremost a philosopher and not a scientist; the midlife crisis that pushed him to switch careers; stoicism, [virtue] ethics and becoming a better person; moral relativism vs moral realism; the meaning of being human; what are the biggest issues humanity is facing today; why technology is not enough; consciousness, mind uploading and the technological singularity; why technology is the how not the why or what; teleology, transhumanism and Ray Kurzweil’s six epochs of the singularity; scientism and the philosophy of the Big Bang Theory.

As always you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the video interview in full. To show your support you can write a review on iTunes, make a direct donation or become a patron on Patreon.

Who is Massimo Pigliucci?

Prof. Pigliucci has a Ph.D. in Evolutionary Biology from the University of Connecticut and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Tennessee. He currently is the K.D. Irani Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York. His research interests include the philosophy of science, the relationship between science and philosophy, the nature of pseudoscience, and the practical philosophy of Stoicism.

Prof. Pigliucci has been elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science “for fundamental studies of genotype by environmental interactions and for public defense of evolutionary biology from pseudoscientific attack.”

In the area of public outreach, Prof. Pigliucci has published in national and international outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal, among others. He is a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and a Contributing Editor to Skeptical Inquirer. He blogs on practical philosophy at Patreon and Medium.

At last count, Prof. Pigliucci has published 165 technical papers in science and philosophy. He is also the author or editor of 13 books, including the best selling How to Be A Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life (Basic Books). Other titles include Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk (University of Chicago Press), and How to Live a Good Life: A Guide to Choosing Your Personal Philosophy (co-edited with Skye Cleary and Daniel Kaufman, Penguin/Random House).

 

Filed Under: Podcasts Tagged With: AI, Massimo Pigliucci, mind uploading, singularity, Stoic, Stoicism, Technology

Technology is a Magnifying Mirror, Not a Crystal Ball

September 19, 2019 by Socrates

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“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the smartest species of them all?”
“You, oh Homo Sapiens, are smart, it is true. But AI will be smarter even than you.”
***

The most popular myth about technology is perhaps the myth that technology is a crystal ball. A crystal ball because it allegedly allows us to see the future. And to evaluate if that is indeed true, or not, we have to understand the etymology of the word technology – what it means and stands for, or at least what it used to mean and stand for.

The word technology comes from two Greek words – techne and logos. Techne means art, skill, craft, or the way, manner, or means by which a thing is gained. Logos means word, the utterance by which inward thought is expressed, a saying, or an expression. So, literally, technology means words or discourse about the way things are gained. In other words, technology is merely “how” we do things and not “why” we do them or “what” we should be doing. Because it is not an end in itself but rather merely a means to an end.

So technology is not a crystal ball because it does not help us see the future. Instead, technology is a magnifying mirror because it merely reflects our present and, more importantly, who we are.

Technology is a mirror because it reflects the engineers, designers, and programmers who make it. But it is also a mirror to humanity in general and all of our collective dreams, hopes and fears, our knowledge and our ignorance, our strengths, and weaknesses, our good, and our evil. But it is not a normal kind of mirror because technology magnifies and amplifies things – so it always has unforeseen consequences. And the key point here is that technology doesn’t have an essence of its own because it merely reflects our own essence.

So, instead of focusing exclusively on polishing the mirror – i.e. improving technology, we might want to invest some time and resources on improving the image we ourselves project in it – i.e. who we are being, what we are doing and why we are doing it.

Therefore, ultimately, it is not about technology. It’s about us.

Because, as I’ve said many times before, you can have the best possible How but if you mess up your Why or What you will do more damage than good. That is why technology is not enough.

And there are many historical examples of how better technology did not make our lives better but worse. For example, historian Yuval Noah Harari called the Agrarian Revolution “history’s greatest fraud.” [Because in every way measurable – i.e. health, longevity, work hours per week, nutrition, infant mortality, etc, we were better off as hunter-gatherers.] And today, if we are not careful, we are running the risk that our current technological revolution may also turn out to be our epoch’s greatest fraud. And you can see that nowhere better than in Silicon Valley and Facebook.

Why Facebook? Because Facebook started as magic, then it became manic and, with the Cambridge Analytica revelations, we realized it has become monstrous. And it is not hard to see that most technologies we have invented since the industrial revolution either already follow a similar path from magic through manic to monstrous, or are in danger of doing that. Because humanity is magic, manic and monstrous. And technology reflects us. Examples abound but I can’t think of anything better than plastic.

You see, in the early 20th-century plastic was literally marketed as the magic material. Because you could do almost anything out of plastic but cheaper, faster and easier. And so we quickly became manic obsessive with plastic and did build almost everything out of it. But today it is not hard to see that we are neck-deep in the monstrous stage because whole areas of our oceans contain more plastic pieces than fish. And, to give you a tiny example of just how bad it has become, check this out:

we now produce 1,000,000 plastic water bottles per minute on our planet.

What is worse is that, at best, only 9% ever get recycled. The other 910,000 plastic bottles per minute, end up in the environment. And, of course, water bottles are but a tiny fraction of the total plastic production on our planet. So it is no surprise that we are literally drowning in this originally magic, then manic and now monstrous technology. [Why would AI be any different?!]

So technology doesn’t help us see the future. It only helps us see ourselves. And if we put garbage in, we are going to get garbage out. Only this time it’s exponential. Ditto with stupidity, prejudice or evil.

Therefore, we can’t really fix technology unless we fix ourselves first. Because technology is a magnifying mirror, not a crystal ball.

Filed Under: Podcasts Tagged With: Magnifying mirror, Technology

Jonathan Taplin on Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy

May 15, 2018 by Socrates

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Jonathan Taplin is the Director Emeritus of the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab, and a former tour manager for Bob Dylan and The Band, as well as a film producer for Martin Scorsese.

If that is not enough to make him a worthy guest of Singularity.FM then let me add that Jonathan is a visionary entrepreneur who started the very first streaming VOD startup called Intertainer way back in 1996.

Finally, Taplin is the author of a timely book titled Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google and Amazon Cornernerd Culture and Undermined Democracy. In my view Move Fast and Break Things is a must read and we all should not only discuss but also take political action on the issues described by Jonathan. [At least to the extent that we want to have a sustainable and working democracy.]

During our 75 min conversation with Jonathan Taplin we cover a variety of interesting topics such as: becoming Bob Dylan’s music producer; becoming Martin Scorsese’s film producer; his biggest dream and biggest fear; the thesis of his book Move Fast and Break Things; whether Google, Amazon, and Facebook are monopolies; culture and the quality YouTube content; great amateur movies like Envoy and True Skin that were either worthy or already bought to be turned into feature films; Facebook and democracy; copyright, piracy, privacy, DRM and SOPA…

As always you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the video interview in full. To show your support you can write a review on iTunes, make a direct donation or become a patron on Patreon.

Who is Jonathan Taplin?

Jonathan Taplin is Director Emeritus of the Annenberg Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California. He was a Professor at the USC Annenberg School from 2003-2016. Taplin’s areas of specialization are in international communication management and the field of digital media entertainment. Taplin began his entertainment career in 1969 as Tour Manager for Bob Dylan and The Band. In 1973 he produced Martin Scorsese’s first feature film, Mean Streets, which was selected for the Cannes Film Festival. Between 1974 and 1996, Taplin produced 26 hours of television documentaries (including The Prize and Cadillac Desert for PBS) and 12 feature films including The Last Waltz, Until The End of the World, Under Fire and To Die For. His films were nominated for Oscar and Golden Globe awards and chosen for The Cannes Film Festival five times.

In 1984 Taplin acted as the investment advisor to the Bass Brothers in their successful attempt to save Walt Disney Studios from a corporate raid. This experience brought him to Merrill Lynch, where he served as vice president of media mergers and acquisitions. In this role, he helped re-engineer the media landscape on transactions such as the leveraged buyout of Viacom. Taplin was a founder of Intertainer and has served as its Chairman and CEO since June 1996. Intertainer was the pioneer video-on-demand company for both cable and broadband Internet markets. Taplin holds two patents for video on demand technologies. Professor Taplin has provided consulting services on Broadband technology to the President of Portugal and the Parliament of the Spanish state of Catalonia and the Government of Singapore.

Mr. Taplin graduated from Princeton University. He is a member of the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and sits on the International Advisory Board of the Singapore Media Authority and is a fellow at the Center for Public Diplomacy. Mr. Taplin was appointed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to the California Broadband Task Force in January of 2007. He was named one of the 50 most social media savvy professors in America by Online College and one of the 100 American Digerati by Deloitte’s Edge Institute.

Filed Under: Podcasts Tagged With: Amazon, Democracy, Facebook, Google, Jonathan Taplin, Move Fast and Break Things, Privacy, Technology

London Futurists Hangout On Air: Will science & technology save the world?

March 6, 2018 by Socrates

The green revolution in agriculture has freed hundreds of millions around the world from the risk of starvation. The Internet is providing knowledge-on-tap to people as never before. Lifespans have doubled due to remarkable progress in medicine. New desalination techniques are poised to solve problems of shortage of fresh water. Our remaining resource problems can be solved by synthetic biology, nanoscale molecular manufacturing, and asteroid mining. The threat of climate change can be tamed by carbon capture and geoengineering. Although doomsayers are distracted by rolling news stories that highlight human failings in graphic terms, the big picture is that science and technology are changing the world into a much better place. Right?

Not every futurist is convinced by this techno-optimistic narrative. Here’s a forceful critique by renowned speaker, blogger, and interviewer, Nikola Danaylov:

I am tired of hearing that science and technology will save the world.

It is almost the same as saying “Jesus will save you!”

It evokes the very same passive quasi-religious hope that something or someone out there will magically solve all our problems, bring abundance in our lives, help us live forever and bring back the dead.

I am sorry to break this to you but science and technology will not save the world. Never have…

Our civilization is like an alcoholic with a failing liver – we hope we can 3d bio-print a new one just in time, while failing to acknowledge our self-destructive habits and our own responsibility, thereby failing to address the actual problem, rather than the symptom.

It’s like hoping to win the lottery – it’s not totally impossible, but it is almost certain we won’t. (And even if we do, then what? It will only provide more time, not necessarily a solution.)

And so we sit, and wait, and hope for science and technology to come save the world. And we are getting both fat and lazy as we are eating and driving ourselves to death. Both personally and collectively.

(You can read the full article at https://www.singularityweblog.com/technology-is-not-enough/.)

In this London Futurists online video conference, a number of futurists from around the world will be debating questions such as:

  • What are the risks of over-reliance on technology?
  • What are the risks of under-reliance on technology?
  • What goals should be set for the use of science and technology?
  • To what extent is it desirable to try to regulate the development and use of technology?
  • What are the most effective methods to steer the development of technology? Politics? Public advocacy? Or what?

Panelists

Nikola Danaylov – aka “Socrates”, host of the popular Singularity.FM podcast, and author of Conversations with the Future: 21 Visions for the 21st Century

Kim Solez, Director of the course “Technology and the Future of Medicine” at the University of Alberta

Jay Friedenberg, Psychology Professor, Manhattan College, and author of Humanity’s Future: How Technology Will Change Us

Seth Weisberg, Graduate Research Assistant, Department of Neuroscience, University of Texas at Austin, previously worked at the Center for Complex Systems and Brain Science at Florida Atlantic University

The discussion is hosted and moderated by David Wood, the Chair of London Futurists, and the author of Transcending Politics.

Related Articles
      • Technology is NOT Enough!
      • Technology is the How, not the Why or What
      • Why the politics of the future is technology and technology is the future of politics
      • The World is Transformed by Asking Questions [draft]
      • Our Future, AI and Veganism: 6 Reasons Why I Went Vegan
      • On Singularity University and the Danger of Being Exponential

Filed Under: Video Tagged With: London Futurists, Nikola Danaylov, science, Technology

Technology is the How, not the Why or What

January 30, 2018 by Socrates

Technology is the new religion, Silicon Valley is the new chosen land and entrepreneurs are the new chosen people. They promise a future that is better than we think – a techno-heaven of abundance and, naturally, immortality. And we are all believers now.

But we seem to forget that technology is merely the how and never the why or what. It is not an end in itself but rather a means to an end. And that we should always start with why. At least this is the etymology of the word: technology comes from two Greek words – techne and logos. Techne means art, skill, craft, or the way, manner, or means by which a thing is gained. Logos means word, the utterance by which inward thought is expressed, a saying, or an expression. So, literally, technology means words or discourse about the way things are gained.

Unfortunately, today we have forgotten the original meaning and technology has started to mean something different. But the bigger issue is not the change in definition. Rather the problem lies in that technology seems to have now stopped being a means to an end and has become an end in itself.

“I am a big believer in technology” – we hear people profess as if technology is God. And thus we forget that there is a difference between using or liking something and worshiping it. I myself am a huge fan and user of technology. But I don’t worship it. Because worship is the path to mindless slavery. And I want to be the master of my technology, not a slave to it. But, our civilization may already be walking on a different path than naive romantics like me:

We used to do things because God wanted them done. Today we do things because it’s  “what technology wants.” God’s will on earth was supposedly inevitable. Today what technology does or creates is supposedly “inevitable.” [Philip K. Dick noted once: “Just because something bears the aspect of the inevitable one should not, therefore, go along willingly with it.”]

And so, just like with Christianity, where fulfillment comes through following God, today we “follow” technology. But we miss the fact that in both cases we can end up enslaved. Are we the masters, or are we the tools of our tools? Are we exhibiting religious fetishism for technological objects? Are we creating personality-cults around techno-prophets? Are we falling for new techno-religions – such as dataism? Is Nassim Taleb correct in saying that “The difference between technology and slavery is that slaves are fully aware that they are not free.”?

Those are the questions I want to ask here. And I hope you ask them too. Because the world is transformed by asking questions. And because technology is not enough. But the moment we stop questioning is the moment we become slaves. As Arthur C. Clarke presciently warned:

“Before you become entranced with gorgeous gadgets and mesmerizing video displays, let me remind you that information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, and wisdom is not foresight. Each grows out of the other, and we need them all.”

Technology is pretty good at giving us what we want but it is terrible at giving us what we need. It’s good at supplying information, even knowledge, but terrible at providing wisdom. It helps us live easier, more comfortable and longer lives, but it does not tell us why we should live or what to do with our lives in the first place. Most importantly, technology does not make us happy. There is no app for happiness. At least not yet. [And if or when there is one, then I would agree with Nassim Taleb that the path to slavery lies that way.]

So, while intelligence may help us get what we want, it is wisdom that helps us figure out what we should want [or not] in the first place. Intelligence can be useful only in that case. Because lacking the wisdom to know what we should and should not want but having the intelligence to get it is a common path to self-destruction.

And the day humanity becomes the how, and technology ends up being the why or the what is the day that our freedom ends. Because the tool will become the purpose and the purpose will become the tool. That is why it is important to keep a proper perspective of our priorities. And to fight for them.

Technology in its original techne meaning was merely a tool, a means to an end, never an end in itself. It is useful as a crutch but, as with all crutches, we can become slaves to its use, unless we condition and develop our own strength. It can, therefore, enable just as much as it can disable us. So the danger is not that computers will become like humans. The real danger is that humans will become computers. As Gerd Leonhard says: “Embrace technology but do not become it.”

Maybe I’m just a naive romantic in thinking that technology is not enough. That ethics is the best operating system – present or future. And worrying that a society with infinite technological power but no ethics is doomed. Because while technology may be the path to our destruction or to our salvation, it will not be the reason as per why we end up there. And so we ought to start with why. The how is needed later.

Filed Under: Op Ed Tagged With: ethics, Technology

Why the politics of the future is technology and technology is the future of politics

March 10, 2017 by Socrates

Technology drives change. And, by definition, change turns the world upside down. So it takes a perfectly good blue-blood nobleman and turns him into a pauper. It takes a king and, at best, makes him a ceremonial figurehead with no real power. It takes a shepherd and makes him a laborer, hopefully a member of the middle-class or, occasionally, a capitalist. And so, in the end, technology, as a bringer of change, is about politics. Because, as my undegraduate textbook defined it, politics is about “who gets what, from whom, under what conditions, and for what purpose.”

To those who know history this is no revelation. Every time we’ve had a technological change we’ve had both social and political change. Karl Marx was but one of a few who has pointed out that our socio-economic system, and therefore our politics, is determined by and derived from the mode of production. That was the case with the Industrial Revolution when we replaced muscle power with artificial power. And it will be the case with the AI Revolution when we replace human intelligence with artificial intelligence.

So if you think that 4 million truck drivers going out of business because of self-driving vehicles is merely a limited technological change then you are fooling yourself. We are all truck drivers now. And it is not just a matter of education or re/training. It is a matter of time. And that is but the beginning of the most seismic political and therefore dangerous period of our civilization. The kind that will dwarf the previous Industrial and Agrarian Revolutions. And the signs are easy to see.

Take Brexit or the election of President Trump. Those are not just the misguided votes of the stupid and uneducated. They are the protest vote of the excluded, marginalized and disregarded millions of people who are struggling to make ends meet. The people who can’t connect with a cocooned LA multi-millionaire telling them we live in an age of abundance. Or hope to attend his elitist organization where a couple of months cost more than what they make per year. The people who couldn’t afford to care about “humanity’s grand challenges” because they know that feeding their families, paying their mortgage or medical bills, and sending their kids to school are their daily economic grand challenges. Now ad 4 million truck drivers. And keep adding more occupations and people. Millions of them. Where does this take us?

It takes us to politics.

Neoliberalism has failed. And it is no mere coincidence that it has failed worst where it all started – Ronald Reagan’s United States of America and Margaret Thatcher’s United Kingdom. Because the world order we live in was born in 1980 with the wholesale global introduction of Thatcher-ism and Reaganomics. And their ideological promises that:

A rising tide lifts all boats.

If the rich have more money, they will create more jobs.

Lower taxes will lead to more prosperity.

Increases in housing and stock market prices will increase prosperity for everyone.

Trade deals and globalization will make everyone better off.

These Laissez-faire neo-liberal promises turned out to be lies. It’s that simple. For most of the UK and US voting population the last 3 or 4 decades were either an experience of stagnation or an experience of decline. And that is why people have lost faith in mainstream media telling them that the economy has recovered. Or Silicon Valley millionaires telling them we live in a world of abundance. Because people can see for themselves.

Noone is too stupid to know if their lives are better today than they were 30 or 40 years ago. And no statistics, mass media or rose-glassed-books can change that reality for them. But politics can. And so it is natural to be compelled to take political action and vote away from the current system and personalities. Because it’s become abundantly clear the current system is a global casino where the people in charge have loaded the dice. Yes, a few can win this game every once-in-a-while and keep the myth that winning is possible but most are sure to lose. Because the casino never loses. And so voters desperately want to stop gambling and change the game to one where they can actually start winning. And are thus compelled to believe the sales pitches of political opportunists and demagogues who promise to reform the system. It is what happened in Germany and Italy after WWI. And the whole world paid a high price for it.

Economic polarization leads to discontent, social instability, upheaval, and eventually, if left unchecked, revolution. In fact, we know that economic polarization is arguably the best indicator for an impending revolution. And the statistics of the past 3 or 4 decades are pretty clear that the middle class is being decimated. And freedom and democracy follow economics. But economics follows technology. As Elon Musk said at the recent Asilomar Conference on Beneficial AI: “Freedom consists of the distribution of power and despotism in its concentration.”

So if you think that a few dozen people, controlling more data and more wealth, than any government ever has in the history of our civilization, is merely a technological change, think again. It is profoundly political because it ultimately is about the distribution, or rather the concentration, of power. More power than we have ever had in the history of the world. In fewer and fewer hands. And people have not failed to notice that this trend has coincided with an exponential explosion of technology. So, at the very least, it is by now pretty clear that technology on its own doesn’t necessarily have a positive effect on democracy or the standard of living. And that we need to have a few other factors in place to spread more evenly the accumulated surplus, rather than watch passively as it concentrates.

Peter Diamandis often talks about the coming of the world’s first trillionaires. And I have no doubt he is correct. Though I somehow fail to see this as a necessarily good thing for many others than those trillionaires. In fact, it is a clear sign of the further concentration Elon Musk was talking about. But there is another, more important trend happening at the same time.

In the past capital needed labor in order to perpetuate and multiply itself. Just as much as labor needed capital in order to earn wages. This long-standing mutual co-dependency gave bargaining power to labor and allowed for an equitable distribution of the consequently produced economic surplus. Which in turn gave us the most prosperous period of capitalism during which both capital and labor were benefiting from the above arrangement.

Today, a new era is beginning. An era, when with the rise or robotic automation and AI, the super rich can control not only capital but also labor. Thus human labor is no longer necessarily needed by capital, at least not at a price which would pay for AI and robots. But that price itself is constantly shrinking, while the cost of living is rising. So the incentives are clear. And the trends are not likely to change. To the point when trillionaires can literally build private armies of robot laborers and soldiers to do their bidding. And change doesn’t get more political than this.

So we are currently experiencing a backlash against the above trends. And yet it is easier for economists to see the end of the world rather than the end of capitalism as we know it. And Silicon Valley struggles to understand the rest of America that elected Donald Trump but insists that what both the USA and the world at large need is simply more of Silicon Valley. Failing to recognize the facts that California, with its crumbling infrastructure, environmental mismanagement and 20.6% of the population living in poverty, is hardly a good role model of anything.

Yes, the “Golden State”, where you have the highest congregation of both billionaires and high tech, is the nation’s poorest state. So clearly neither technology nor a large number of hyper-rich people are sufficient to make a difference for the public good. But yet poorer countries, with less technology and less wealth, somehow do. Then doesn’t it make more sense to be humble and seek lessons that California can learn from the rest of the world? Rather than push to export yourself abroad “to save the world.”

And most of those lessons California has to learn are, of course, not technological but political. Furthermore, every grand challenge that humanity has is, at some level, a political one. That is why the idea that Singularity University will “solve humanity’s grand challenges” within the current political realm is utterly self-serving and ridiculous. The new world will be new because it will not be just a bigger and better version of California’s prized horse – aka Silicon Valley. The new world will be fundamentally new because we’ll have to go beyond horses. So the idea that the coming exponentially disruptive change can occur without equally disruptive political, social and economic change is dangerously short-sighted or even delusional.

And, in a country where the presumption that those who don’t work don’t deserve to eat reigns unchallenged, things are only going to get more and more unstable in the face of further concentration of power, technological unemployment and economic polarization. And that is why not focusing on changing the current political and socio-economic paradigm but rather on “monetizing” it as much as possible, is not only selfish. In the long run, it might turn out to be potentially suicidal, not just for California, but for humanity in general.

So what do we do? Where do we begin?

Even the longest journey starts with a single step. In this case it is to recognize that technology is not enough. Because it is as much about politics as it is about technology. It always has been. And that the politics of the future is technology just as much as technology is the future of politics. And, most importantly, that we may get the technology right but if we get the politics wrong, then, we are all doomed. The sooner we wake up to that basic truth the better chance we have. Because if the current trends persist the people will likely rise up in revolt long before the machines do. They already have. Only next time the revolt may not be happening at the voting booth.

And while Rome is burning there is always someone having a party or trying to make money. Or both. So it is time to get very clear about our mission – be it personally or collectively: are we here to party, to make money or to put down the fire, build a new world order and make a dent in the universe?!…

Filed Under: Op Ed Tagged With: Future of Politics, Politics, Politics of the Future, Technology

Technology is NOT Enough!

October 14, 2016 by Socrates

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I am tired of hearing that science and technology will save the world.

It is almost the same as saying “Jesus will save you!”

It evokes the very same passive quasi-religious hope that something or someone out there will magically solve all our problems, bring abundance in our lives, help us live forever and bring back the dead.

I am sorry to break this to you but science and technology will not save the world. Never have.

For example, we have all the science and technology to provide water, food, shelter and sanitation – the mere basic necessities, to every hungry and homeless person on our planet. And yet 800 million people are starving. 800 million lack access to clean and safe drinking water and another 2 1/2 billion do not have access to adequate sanitation. An estimated 100 million people are homeless worldwide and as many as 1.6 billion people lack adequate housing.

Global warming is another obvious example: we know the science – it is pretty uncontroversial and conclusive.  And we do have all the technology to move beyond both fossil fuels and meat consumption – the two most damaging factors not only to our environment but also to our own health. And yet we are not taking action. Hoping that the science will turn out to be wrong. That someone else will give up driving an SUV or eating meat three times per day. And that artificial intelligence will come and solve all of our problems.

Our civilization is like an alcoholic with a failing liver – we hope we can 3d bio-print a new one just in time, while failing to acknowledge our self-destructive habits and our own responsibility, thereby failing to address the actual problem, rather than the symptom.

It’s like hoping to win the lottery – it’s not totally impossible, but it is almost certain we won’t. [And even if we do, then what? It will only provide more time, not necessarily a solution.] And so we sit, and wait, and hope for science and technology to come save the world. And we are getting both fat and lazy as we are eating and driving ourselves to death. Both personally and collectively.

We are destroying ourselves and our planet and we put our hopes and fears in things like God, science and technology:

Our techno-deity aka “science and technology” will save us. [sic]

Or the wrath of God-like super-intelligent AI will destroy us.

And we keep telling ourselves that convenient story. That lie. So that we can keep avoiding an inconvenient truth:

That humanity is the greatest threat and hope for humanity. Not some omni-present, all-knowing, almighty force residing outside of us.

No.

It is us who are the greatest force on our planet – the real destroyers and creators. It is us who ought to take the blame for where we are today and the problems we have. It is us who are driving the train towards the trainwreck. And, it is only us, who can move our own foot off the gas pedal and hit the brakes to save ourselves.

So what would Socrates say?

Technology is NOT enough!

And neither is science.

P.S. Many thanks to my friend Sven Mastbooms for the original cartoon he made specially for this article.

Filed Under: Op Ed, Podcasts Tagged With: science and technology, Technology

Nature Is Not Your Friend

May 17, 2016 by David Filmore

3112011Kesennuma0478It’s the start of the third act and explosions tear through the city as the final battle rages with unrelenting mayhem. CGI robots and genetic monsters rampage through buildings, hunting down the short-sighted humans that dared to create them. If only the scientists had listened to those wholesome everyday folks in the first act who pleaded for reason, and begged them not to meddle with the forces of nature. Who will save the world from these ungodly bloodthirsty abominations? Probably that badass guy who plays by his own rules, has a score to settle, and has nothing but contempt for “eggheads.”

We’ve all seen that same movie a million times. That tired story doesn’t just make movies look bad, it makes science look bad too. It’s an anti-science viewpoint that encourages people to fear the future and be wary of technology. This common narrative isn’t just found in movies, it’s a prevalent belief that is left over from the industrial revolution. Over a short period of time, people went from quiet farm life to living in cities with blaring traffic, and working in factories with enormous and terrifying machinery. The idea that nature is good and safe, and that technology is bad and dangerous, was deeply ingrained in our collective psyches and is still very much with us today.

You see it anytime someone suggests that it is somehow more virtuous to “unplug” and walk barefoot along the beach, than it is to watch a movie, play a video game, or work on your computer. Some of the most valuable things I’ve ever learned have come from watching documentaries and researching topics online. I love hiking as much as the next guy, but staring at a tree gets old pretty fast. People have this notion that nature is healing, and that technology, while useful, will probably end up giving you cancer sometime down the line.

This general fear that people have, that the future will be full of really powerful machines that they will never be able to understand, is the main reason why they are so wary of The Singularity. Nature seems like a safer bet. You can look at a tree and be perfectly okay with not fully understanding how it works. Because even on its best day, you know a tree isn’t going to band together with all the other trees and have a decent chance of taking over the world and enslaving humans.

But the real threat to humans isn’t from technology, it’s from nature. Our genomes are riddled with errors and predispositions to countless diseases. Most creatures on this planet see you as nothing but a lovely source of protein for them to eat. Mosquito-borne diseases alone gravely sicken 700 million people a year. Not to mention all the viruses, bacteria, parasites, floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, you name it, that want a piece of you. We should be far more scared of nature than technology.

The only reason why we have been successful in extending human life expectancy is because of the gains we’ve made in technology. If we stripped every form of technology from our lives and all went to live in the forest, our population numbers would drop like a rock. Not because we lacked the necessary survival skills, but because the human body just didn’t evolve to live very long. I’ve lost count of how many times antibiotics have saved my life, and it’s the same for each of us. Sure, we have pollution, plastic, radiation, climate change, and mountains of garbage, but if technology and modern life were so hazardous to humans we would be living shorter lives not longer.

Technology isn’t an intrusion upon an otherwise pristine Garden of Eden, it is the only reason we as a species are alive today. And it isn’t new either, we’ve been using technology since the first caveman prevented himself from getting sick by cooking food over a fire. That is the narrative we should be focused on as we discuss how to deal with the challenges of The Technological Singularity. People need to be reminded that rejecting science in favor of nostalgia for “the good old days” won’t keep them safe. There are over 7 billion people alive on Earth today because of the health and sanitation systems we’ve put in place. History proves to us that the greater we integrate technology into our lives, the safer we are and the longer we live. It’s as simple as that.

But if you ask any random person on the street about artificial intelligence, robots, or nanotechnology, chances are the first word out of their mouths will be “Skynet”. The dastardly machine that unleashed killer robots to extinguish the human race in the Terminator movies. Mention “genetics”, and you’re likely to hear a response involving killer dinosaurs resurrected from DNA trapped in amber, or a mutant plague that spun out of control and created a zombie apocalypse.

Now, no one loves blockbuster movies more than me! But the movies we need to be watching are the ones where the products of science aren’t seen as the enemy, but are the tools that lead to humanity’s salvation from poverty, disease, and death.

Nature programmed each of us with an expiration date built into our DNA, and stocked our planet with hostile weather, and hungry creatures with a taste for humans. Understanding the urgency for humans to get over their bias for all things “natural”, and to meld with technology as soon as possible, will be the difference between The Singularity being a utopia and just another disaster movie. It’s the only chance we have to write the happy ending we deserve. The one where science saves us from nature.

 

David FilmoreAbout the Author:

David Filmore is a screenwriter, producer, film director, and author. His latest book is Nanobots for Dinner: Preparing for the Technological Singularity

Filed Under: Op Ed Tagged With: nature, singularity, Technological Singularity, Technology

Resources Are Not Something We Consume Like Sweets

January 3, 2013 by Steve Morris

I keep reading that we are using up the world’s resources at an unprecedented rate. We are selfishly consuming and there will be nothing left for future generations. But in fact the opposite is true.

What is a resource? It’s a raw material we can turn into something more useful. We can turn wood into paper. We can turn land into food. We can turn coal into electricity. Resources are fixed and finite, surely? Wrong!

It has famously been said that the Stone Age didn’t come to an end because people ran out of stone. Instead early humans learned how to make better tools out of metal. Hunter gatherers didn’t stop hunting and gathering because they ran out of berries, or hunted all the rabbits. They developed farming and settled down. People didn’t stop using wood fires for heating and cooking because they chopped down all the trees, and we didn’t phase out steam engines because we ran out of coal.

At each stage, a new resource became available. Something that was previously unknown, unavailable or unusable suddenly became a valuable commodity. In other words, key developments in technology created new resources. The quantity of available resources has continued to expand throughout human history.

Resources are still expanding today. It’s true that there’s pressure on land, and that oil is becoming more expensive. But resources like computing power, medicines and knowledge are becoming more and more abundant.

The reason why the total forested area in Europe and North America is increasing year by year is because we no longer need to burn the trees.

One of the most important things to recognise is that each technological breakthrough depended on an existing resource. Water power was needed for the mining revolution that gave us coal. Coal-powered steam engines were used to extract oil. Electricity from burning oil was essential for the development of nuclear power.

The lesson is simple: we have to use today’s resources to create new and more abundant resources for the future. Resources are not something we consume like sweets, but can be turned into something greater. We can create resources as well as consume them.

If you agree with me, you’ll understand why the worst thing we could do for our children and grandchildren would be to slow or halt technological advancement. We need to multiply the available resources so that we can share out more for everyone.

 

About the Author:

Steve Morris studied Physics at the University of Oxford and used to do research in nuclear physics. These days he runs an internet company and writes about consumer technology at S21.com.

Filed Under: Op Ed Tagged With: Abundance, scarcity, Technology

William Gibson: Technology is the driver and ideology is an attempt to steer

April 8, 2012 by Socrates

William Gibson, the iconic sci fi author who coined the term cyberspace – i.e. the “mass consensual hallucination” of computer networks, talks about a wide variety of topics such as the occupy movement, technology, the Internet, the growth of cities, the relationship between drugs and creativity, and having a time-machine. While Gibson does not talk directly about his newest collection of essays titled Distrust That Particular Flavor, during the 12 minutes of the interview he still focuses almost entirely on the present rather than the future.

My two favorite quotes from William Gibson’s interview:

“Technology invariably trumps ideology. And I am inclined to think that history increasingly suggests that human social change is more directly driven by technology than by ideology. I think we develop ideologies in an attempt to cope with technologies and that in fact we’ve been doing that all along. Technology is knowing how to grow, harvest and store cereals without which you can’t really do a city. Technology is knowing how to build efficient sewage infrastructure without which you can’t build a slightly larger city. So I think of technologies as the drivers and ideologies as an attempt to steer.”

“Life is a succession of altered states.”

Filed Under: Video Tagged With: Technology, William Gibson

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Ethos: “Technology is the How, not the Why or What. So you can have the best possible How but if you mess up your Why or What you will do more damage than good. That is why technology is not enough.” — Nikola Danaylov

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