James Burke predicted the future in 1973. Now he does it again
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"They don't care about ME! They only take notice of people when they're connected to an group or event that is being monitored"
Well no shit. Thats like saying a tyrannical government only silences those who oppose them. They don't care about you today, but as soon as you stick your head up everything you've said and all your human connections are immediately tagged. I find that discomforting! And what a poor showing from the interviewer not to mention this.
The key to foiling a tyrannical government is to prevent a tyrannical government from being created in the first place though the political process--checks and balances, rule of law, preservation of values, citizen involvement, democratic and fair elections. It is not by employing a few lame technological defenses or prohibiting specific practice X, Y, and Z. Those are useless against any sufficiently motivated government, and, if anything, they create a false sense of security. Government is not as it has, but as it does.
Also, I think we haven't seen all forms of tyranny yet. It is very difficult for a democratically elected government not to enforce something popular they are technically capable of enforcing. Even if there is rule of law and checks and balances there is also a tendency toward ever more detailed control and even prediction of individual behaviour.
I fear that the erosion of individual freedoms is possible even in perfectly good democratic societies if there are no technological barriers to that collective power grab. "Absolute power corrupts absolutely" remains true even if that power is legitimate.
And my last point is that breaking the law is necessary for the advancement of the law and our societies. Law is not something that falls from the sky or magically emerges from the moral conscience of wise men and women. It is often the result of conflict. If you give too much power to the enforcers of current law that conflict could become too unequal for society to advance and avoid tyranny.
As long as those checks and balances work it will never matter that anything any would be protester has said or done online can be recalled at a whim in the future for ad homimem attacks as needed.
The HN crowd could be considered worth monitoring.
It postulates that the key issue is assymetry of collection and usage of our personal information. NSA and other intelligence agencies are basically collecting data for malicious purposes from an individual's perspective.
The data banks have no benefit to us as individuals at this point of time. However NSA's databases and technology could be used for many wonderful things to improve our lives.
PRSM.com is just a tip of the iceberg. Even if it is just a joke.
something is going to change within 40 years to change our lives as greatly as the changes since we came from the caves to modern day.
The problem is that, as we try to solve privacy, feeding the world, etc we spend months of time discussing these short term problems in board rooms and parliament whilst labs around the world are working on nanotech
Richard Fynman said that there is "no physical law against creating a personal nanofactory", like a 3d printer, to print anything from basically air, dirt and some Acetylene gas (for added carbon).
Everyone will be able to make anything they need for practically nothing, and this will destroy current economic systems and government.
When nanofactories appear, they will address the problem of scarcity. All our years have been spent constructing organisations and systems to share everything. There will be no need for any social institutions, as they all exist to share things, to address scarsisty.
Why would we still live in massive cities, when we have no more factories, no more need for economies of scale? People will be able to then live by themselves on a mountain using solar panels for power and no need for utilities.
Physical contact between people will happen, but be rarer and and 3d holography will be used to allow this over great distance, to allow you to talk to someone as if they are there, no screen, but if you try to touch them you'll just go through them.
We are going to live through extraordinary times over the next twenty-thirty years!
Edit - Further good bits I missed on the first pass:
In response to "You seem as optimistic as you were in 1970":
* laughs * Well you know what they say about pessimists: They jump out of the window and they're no longer involved.
Just because there's no physical law explicitly prohibiting nanofactories in great mile-high letters of fire doesn't mean there actually exists a practical way to build nanofactories.
Worse, just because there's a practical way to build nanofactories doesn't mean there's a practical way to make them safe for the general population. Be prepared for the biggest, baddest DRM regime the world has ever known, because an unrestricted matter compiler is almost but not quite at the top of my list for "Sci-Fi Doomsday Weapons".
Physical contact between people will happen, but be rarer and and 3d holography will be used to allow this over great distance, to allow you to talk to someone as if they are there, no screen, but if you try to touch them you'll just go through them.
Why would you do that? People like physical contact. Living in a Real Place is interesting to many people, living in Real Nature is interesting to many people, but the in-between of sub/ex-urbia has basically universally failed to please anyone in particular.
There are only 57.5 million square miles on Earth and 7+ billion people so us all living in isolation seems physically difficult.
Welp, better get the town council to legislate it into existence, then! Population density is for people who read Asimov instead of Heinlein when they were little, the pig bastards!
They're all going to end up in a stinking hivemind when the negentropy runs out, anyway, while we'll die proudly on our lunar dirt-farms!
(Sorry, I'm just feeling snarky today.)
> You seem as optimistic as you were in 1970
> * laughs * Well you know what they say about pessimists: They jump out of the window and they're no longer involved.
More than a decade later Netflix recommended the DVD set to me based on my preferences—It was like running into an old flame. Watching them as an adult, they are even more amazing than I originally remember.
It is the simplest and clearest explanation of why nanotechnology matters and what's happening while we all play with Web 3.0
I can't agree it's all coming to pass as be says, nor in those timescales. But only a few technologies need to pay off and we will see an end to scarcity.
Human time will always be scarce, and it is valuable to each of us. We can also never have enough knowledge, so that is scarce in some senses, though it is a non-exclusionary good. Material goods fluctuate in scarcity, one can look at metals, silks, porcelain, and many other examples of commodities and their products which vary in price by region and era.
A true knowledge economy is what I would expect as the result of a "nano-factory" revolution. How much you know and what you know could be as valuable in direct terms as how much you earn is today in dollars.
I am sure I have heard this discussed in more detail before. Probably on HN.
Obviously we are several generations removed from such an event as the cultural shift would be profound. I don't think any of us would like it, me included. I always feel dumb so imagine I'd be part of the lower class in this world.
Power is desired in scarce societies when lack of power means lack of sufficient resources for survival and reproduction
Where those resources are available to all, then power be ones a function of aberration not necessity
With sufficient mobility and abundance invasion and tyranny will become like beating up water. Recently a guy in Syria asked advice on best European country for asylum. He had a job remote in Australia, so whilst looking like a refugee he was actually just moving house. Imagine is everyone on Syria right now had that option.
What if one day they gave a war, and everyone just left.?
On the other hand, the geopolitical argument is simple: all that needs to happen is that someone anti-scarcity takes over the world and enforces their tyrannical power on everyone looking to reimpose scarcity and resource competition.
You're welcome to have moral qualms with that, but it's basically just the capital-F Futuristic version of Communism.
No idea why they would host external to BBC - is it geo-restricted?
He is _so_ good at taking ideas from many sources and presenting them, showing how they might fit together or did fit together to create whole new ideas....
I’m not sure on the nanotechnology future that he has laid out though. Specifically, what is the source of energy to transform the air/water/dirt stuff into goods and what is the rational for saying that starting with water/dirt/O2 will be the cheapest route to getting whatever stuff we need. Not convinced on that front.
Nanotechnology will bring real personal manufacturing at the molecular level giving people the ability to produce nearly anything for virtually nothing. This will result in the destruction of current socioeconomic systems and government as there will be no need for any type of scarcity monitoring or control or labour.
People will trend away from cities, and live in smaller more natural close knit communities. Realistic 3D holographic projections will further enable this.
He attributed the nanotechnology factory idea to the great Richard Feynman.