Death by Technology

And

 “The Super Technology Among Us” 

What if there was a technology that could cure all the ills of this planet? After all, most of the serious problems we face in the world today are man made. Surely there must be a way to cure our planet’s condition as it is sure only to worsen. The fate of 6 billion+ human beings and their descendants depend on it.

In just a moment I will lay out the case that not only does the cure exist, but the dangers of not preparing for the inevitable, the increasing break down of our societies and economic systems as a result of the constant acceleration of technology.

Never in the history of this planet have all the forces come together to allow the existence of a Super Technology. Minor and Major technologies like Electricity, the telephone, microprocessors, the steam engine, etc, have made an enormous impact on our world. One of the biggest problems with technology is getting them to play well together (convergence). In many cases we hamper that process even more with laws, ideology and turfdom because we don’t have the means to cope with the complexity that it would take to integrate technologies efficiently.  In the end no matter how fantastic a major or minor technology is, we probably will only get 40% – 60% convergence with other technologies. The capability to coordinate and build technologies for better use and integration just doesn’t exist. Or does it? Is there a technology that could raise the level of convergence to 90% or even 100%. The digital age brought on a movement and enthusiasm to converge all technologies. Another term for this is total convergence. The realization of this concept has eluded us. Can a Super Technology produce an environment to sustain total convergence? The first big step towards supporting a Super Technology was the invention of the computer. This gives machines the logical intelligence and the ability to do work. Then came digitization. This gave us a way to present our real world to computers in the form of 0 and 1’s. Now computers only need a way to touch our world. Yes you guessed it, the internet, the final and most crucial of the trinity. Now all the machines and our world are can be connected.

So what is wrong? We have computers, we have digitization and connectivity. The trinity is complete, so what is missing? Why isn’t the internet living up to its potential? Some might say “what potential?” Most of us take the internet for granted because we only see it being used in such trivial ways. The internet without a doubt is the most powerful medium of all time. It has the ability to run, connect and control every other medium/technology (TV, Radio, Telephone, electricity, Print, etc...) simultaneously and all this at the speed of light. It connects 1 billion soon to be many billion people and even more devices, governments, societies, business, homes etc. It is the only medium/technology powerful enough to set the human race free. It is without a doubt the most powerful force to be reckoned with on this planet. You could call it the Super Medium. So what is holding it back?

The best way to explain it is this. In a sense, it is lacking an operating system. In many ways it parallels the evolution of the computer. When the computer was invented we didn’t run out and start building operating systems for it. We did what came natural. We started building applications first. That is our natural thought process. We try to use new technologies to solve a specific problem. Then we came to an inflexion point. The complexity to build more useful applications was just too overwhelming. Something had to be done. Then we finally realized through experience and the drudgery of writing programs that we should probably build an operating system to help manage the computers resources and provide an enhanced environment for applications/programs. Operating systems changed everything. They gave us the ability to use computers much more efficiently.

When we built the internet, we did the exact same thing. We started building applications first. The first killer application on the internet was email and then came the World Wide Web. The point I’m trying to make is that these are merely applications. The Web is just a simple application. Over the years it has morphed into this overly complex quasi platform. This is exactly where the problem is coming from. It is coming from our myopic view of the internet through a Web clogged lens. The World Wide Web has totally distorted our view of the internet and its true capabilities. We are trying to use the web to do things it was not meant to do. It is not an operating system per se. It’s just an application with out the infrastructure or resources to carry on the more complex tasks we would like it to do. So, in a sense we need an operating system but an operating system of a type and structure that bares no resemblance to anything we can compare. 

We are yet again at a point of inflection. No matter what fix we introduce to enhance the net it will mostly likely add more layers of complexity.  What we are trying to do with the web is like trying to make Microsoft word into windows XP. It is insanity and will never work. No matter how much glue and elbow grease we tack onto it to patch things together. If we are to move forward we will have to build something much more substantial online than a Web.

The Super Technology

Any technology that has the ability to harness the most powerful medium of all time is the first one and only super technology. Why is this so significant or different from anything that has happened in the past?  It is important because of the realm of possibilities that most of us could only dream of. These dreams can become reality. The Super Technology will allow us to solve problems of complexity on a scale that is not natural for most of us to think of. We don’t live or think in such a paradigm. The Super Technology in itself is a major paradigm shift but it happens in a blink of an eye instead of 10’s, 100’s or even 1000’s of years.

What does all this mean for the human race?
The human race is fragmented into billions of little pieces. The internet coupled with a foundation will allow us to efficiently connect these pieces so that they become one. If we had the ability to work together, then anything and everything is possible. If we had the technology to work together, do you think we could eradicate hunger, homelessness, human suffering and despair? Of course the technology will generate more wealth than was ever possible. It is not just a matter of economics; it is a matter of improving the human condition. You have to wonder, with all this information highway, why can’t we do simple things like voting on line? Why do I still have to go to the DMV to get my license tags? These are simple things to do but they are not feasible in our present environment/paradigm. Today we have an information highway full of road blocks with the certainty of becoming much worse.

Well, that was the good news.

There is a bad side to all of this progress. As usual, we may not be socially mature enough to cope with such a technology. If the past is a half decent indicator then this will probably be the case. In any case a future without it is guaranteed to be much worse. Never the less it is here.

The Super Technology will bring a level of automation on a scale like nothing we have ever seen before. It will also bring along with it the largest and longest economic expansion in history. But this is just a honey moon period. Once the automation starts to take hold the effects will throw our whole civilization out of wack, similar to what is going on today but much worse.  Today the affects of automation are subtle but very significant. Today our society tends to ignore the drones of the silent stalking menace to the most important fabric of our social and economic being. The menace is automation and technology acceleration. Technology has been eating at our economic systems like a cancer.  We have pretty much ignored the symptoms, slow job growth, massive layoffs, jobless recoveries, globalization, outsourcing, the steady replacement of high paying jobs with low paying jobs and of course job eradication.  The Super Technology will surely add millions of jobs at first, then it will start to remove jobs like a hydrogen fueled chain reaction in reverse. This challenge will be the next inflection point.

So what does this all mean?
It means that our machines will relieve us of duty sooner than later. We will no longer be able to produce enough work for an increasingly larger number of the population. It has already started. You only have to look around you. There are more than 730 million human beings unemployed or under employed world wide. This can only get worse. If the population is exponentially increasing and adding more people that need jobs while the increasing efficiency of automation steadily removes jobs, then something will have to give. It has already started with higher and longer rates of unemployment and under employment. Now factor in The Super Technology and we are talking about a man made disaster if we choose to ignore it. Some try to blame it on the global economy, the influx of immigrants or even cyclical downturns. Many of us have not realized that something fundamentally different has changed. Many of us are still operating with a pre-information age mentality. There is no other killer of employment more devastating then technology. It has always been there. It is the unstoppable force that has always disrupted or destabilized our economies. We have always been told that our economy runs in cycles. That is true. The cause of these cycles had to have come from somewhere just like the waves on the ocean. These cycles are generated and sustained by the rise and fall of increased productivity facilitated by new and waning technologies. Technology has always been the wind fanning our economies just like the wind fans the waves on the ocean. The affects of a Super Technology will be like a tsunami if we continue to ignore the obvious. The Super Technology will eventually kill economics and all economies as we know it. Every economy in the world is currently experiencing a slow and painful “Death by Technology”. There will be some upturns in our economies  to lull us into a false sense of normalcy and then the downturns will come and put us back into perspective, except the downers will become longer and worse,  the uppers will become less and far shorter and then who knows how it all ends… A total economic collapse is certainly possible.