From: Michael Wiik (mwiik@messagenet.com)
Date: Wed May 21 2003 - 08:24:36 MDT
Anders Sandberg makes a handy chart:
> Tech Social Economic
> - - - Anti tech authoritarians (reactionaries)
> - - + Anti tech conservatives (Kass, Fukyama)
> - + - Anti tech liberals (Rifkin)
> - + + Anti tech libertarians (small is good?)
> + - - Pro tech authoritarians (high tech fascism,prometheans)
> + - + Pro tech conservatives (good for business)
> + + - Pro tech liberals (left transhumanism?)
> + + + Pro tech libertarian ("classical" extropianism)
Which is very good, but imho fails to consider the result of tech on the
social and economic scales, from a Lessigian (?) 'Code is Law'
perspective. The problem being that all this tech is patented or
copyrighted, and that the tech can use the tech to enforce such at the
level of the tech.
Anders chart considers these three as being of equal value, yet it seems
to me that a + on the tech side is currently promoting fascism, in the
Code is Law sense. That is, we have the political issues to resolve
before the tech side can be value-neutral. One might argue we need at
least a few decades of -/+/+ before we can hope to reach +/+/+
Again I reference my years-old SimEarth simulation, now seen thru this
chart: +/-/- (Pro tech authoritarians) led to a singularity in ~100
years, which was an escape from the hellish environmental conditions on
earth (80 hour workweeks, oceans boiling away, massive dieoffs, endless
wars). The -/+/+ (small is good) led to a singularity in ~1000 years,
but earth remained pleasant (few if any wars, no mass dieoffs, 20 hour
workweeks). My personal natural point seems to be close to the 20 hour
workweek, while another 20 hours of my leisure time is spent on
research. Which would you prefer?
Thanks,
-Mike
--
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed May 21 2003 - 08:35:11 MDT