I am a bit disappointed in the survey of our technological circumstances I have undertaken in the last couple days. The most notable lapse in innovation I encountered wasn't in hardware, but in software. Software is how hardware is used, and lacking appropriate software makes every hardware useless, no matter how wonderful it might be--if we could only use it.
In this post the author @tftproject laments the further incremental increase in power nasty corporations and thuggish forces are gaining over us: the networking of identification amongst themselves.
As I note in my comment there, it is ludicrous to lament the advent of a technology that can so eliminate the power of corporate thugs and increase our own over them. Who has more to benefit from having proof of who committed what act when, how, where, and why? We do. They have had such an unbalanced advantage in power over us for so long and to such a degree, that it seems we don't even realize this technology eliminates that advantage completely, and replaces the historical paradigm of identifiability and sharing that information with peers being solely the advantage of institutions with it now being something available to every single individual with internet access.
If we had the right software.
Consider that our persons, our knowledge, is our software. Technologies we don't have software adequate to take advantage of is stuff we haven't learned to do, and every lack is a way that others can haver greater power than we do. Education is writing the software that enables us to use the world.
Let's learn how to get this technology in the wild, where we can attain the power it brings us, by making the software necessary to do it.
That's the kernel, the pointy end, of my epiphany. Technology changes paradigms, and recently paradigm shifts potentiated technologically have become of both existential and utopian import--but only if we learn to use them can we gain their power and deprive our enemies of it.
It's time to upgrade our software.
How many will have the discipline and aptitude for such "software upgrade"? Many, if not most, are content to have the previlege of delegating the decisions of life to experts and specialists. Those who do not envision using technology to empower the peasantry are not lacking imagination or knowledge; they lack the willingness and desire to actualize such a future when man will be accountable for his life solely based upon his decisions, beliefs, and actions without a scapegoat or master to lay his miseries.
I reckon it will take time. Perhaps the broken generations will have to die before change fully sweeps societ(ies), but I have confidence that in time, there will be no avoiding the transition. Once such capabilities begin to be effected, it will be like trying to hide from Gucci or Louis Vuitton in the hood avoiding them.
The economic imperative is powerful. Coupled with the essential social need to join powerful social groups, I expect the transformation will be unstoppable.
We shall see.
Even such transition will require guides, teachers, kings. When the technical revolution you envision arrives, individuals, such as yourself, will posess tremendous advantage for and incalculable value to our masters. You will be in a position to shape our sociopolitical matrix in accords with your vision. Since gradual sociocultural change would eminently be preferable to sudden, immediate collapse of sociocultural matrix, would it not be logical to work with and become a part of our masters' representatives? In time, you could even hold the reigns of power, yourself. Eventually, you can guide the teeming mass of humanity into the light of freedom and responsibility, but are the current masses ready for such revolution at this time? For many, it may be better to be subject under a benevolent master than to be left facing distant thunders of an impersonal universe without any direction.
In the hurly burly of my life of late I missed this comment, and to my detriment.
I not only have no interest in the reins of power, money gets in the way of what I do, and I find it a nuisance. I avoid it as possible.
Factually considering the goals of masters and myself, as well as others who are at similar power disadvantage, I find it highly doubtful that any success I meet would be welcomed by those interested in power over others.
Every single thing I want to achieve will reduce their power.
As to the hazard of sudden discontinuity, it is lesser than the hazard of extant circumstances, IMHO. The sooner and more abruptly we transition to less subjugation through employing technology that replaces such benefits as may derive from masters the better. Any such benefits are inevitably accompanied by greater detriments, and every moment such poor management continues society and the living world suffer worse and increasing decline.
It is certain that transitioning to non-point source production (personal manufacturing) will require a new infrastructure to support and enable it, and this will take all too long to develop. Plenty of time to get used to the idea, save for those incapable of comprehending it to begin with.
As to those, they will choose their fate at their peril, and their predator's as well. In a world empowered to starve predators, the fate of predators will be mercifully brief.
Thanks!
Thanks for dropping the critical shoe in this comment, now I understand your basis for actual hope.
I have further questions, though.
The companies own the coal and other hydrocarbons we live above. Presuming we could develop local facility to process these raw materials into forms usable in printers (only a moderately difficult proposition, once adequate local power generation is implemented), I suppose all we need do is print the larger printers generationally to enable local manufacture of any of the larger items needed (large appliances, transport vehicles for people and freight, etc.)- but we'd need to trade with those companies to get the raw materials, as I said, and what would motivate willingness for them to deal with penny-ante accounts like a small town, or just a small group of mutual interest? This, of course, assumes they wouldn't have actively and completely prevented any local power generation. Even if we simply used old-school local manufacture, we'd still need the lots of available power.
They've clearly demonstrated for decades a clear predilection to steal and murder, and not always through their assets in governments (sometimes it's even cheaper to hire small subcontractors than to spread enough bribes around.) They've got well over a century of battle experience against inconvenient people and communities, I'm not as sanguine of our prospects locally in the long run.
That's one question. I'm sorry about the wordiness, I'm trying to supply enough backfill for the conversation, and I'll get back with other questions as time permits.
The extant mechanisms that determine who brings what to market are far more complex than that coal companies own the coal. Mostly, they actually don't.
There are great rivening cracks in the financial system they haven't the sophistication--they haven't needed it--to secure. There will be some desperate attempts to reform their system, and perhaps even quite successfully dangerous ones, but technology isn't based on madness, or will to power, but physics, and history demonstrates that improved tech is necessary to improve the quality of life of even kings, improvements in tech are inexorable, in part because of that, and tech always more increases the power of individuals over groups. The math is unquestionable. Freedom will eventuate, no matter what--short of human extinction--happens.
Security is an issue, and indeed a crux of what I intend, and why I am somewhat close about details. Firearms are quite ancient technology, similar to steam driven industrial equipment. There is much better technology to defend people today, and it is perhaps the greatest strength of the extant profiteers.
Despite their efforts to conceal, sequester, and monopolize security technology, the basic fact of how tech impacts society is that individuals are always far more empowered by new technology than groups, institutions, and thugs.
It is the truth that extant and nascent technology will enable individuals properly secured to be able to be secure against even thousands of conventionally armed assailants. I'm also sure that WMD's aren't going to be employed against decentralized communities, as the very reason that such tech empowers individuals more than groups also makes such tech far more hazardous to groups than individuals.
Even Trump won't nuke a tax dissenter!
Ask away, as your questions will cause me to seek the answers, and that will enable me to find answers I don't have. Particularly the hardest questions I haven't considered at all are the most useful. If you can stump me, I'll greatly appreciate it, as I'd prefer not to waste my time doing something that won't work.
Thanks!
Edit: I want to briefly touch on power. Tech is certain to improve efficiency more, and less power will be able to achieve more work, in time. This is a general trend we can count on continuing.
Another fact about power is that electricity isn't the only form it comes in. Pneumatic, hydraulic, chemical, and many others also exist, and good tech translates one form of power into another as little as possible--only as necessary--because every time you do so you lose about 20% of the power.
Solar, microhydro, geothermal, chemical (infernal combustion even), and various and myriad mechanisms are just laying there, relatively unused by individuals for most purposes.
That will change.
I got my engineering degree nearly 35 years ago. I spend approximately 20 hours a week reading to keep abreast with at least part of the field (and I'm far more advanced in condensed-matter physics than I was then.) You're right that technology only depends on physics- but its deployment rests almost completely on other factors, and its control nearly universally NOT under individual control.
Remember, you don't own ANY of that software you use but didn't write- even FOSS is a license, not any sort of ownership of what you haven't actually authored. Examine it closely enough and almost all hardware depends more on licensing than actual ownership theses days, we just don't hear too much about the downside of that.
Enough of being a bring-down, on the plus side there are enough very recent developments that potentially shift the balance towards decentralization if the right people make the correct end-runs around sequestration by the mega-corps, to deploy actually-developed tech that the fundamental science pointed to for the past 150 years.
LENR is probably the closest (as in, the next two years for commercial, albeit heavy commercial only,
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