No Sh_t Dick Tracy

If there were any doubt remaining about our ability to properly prioritize what's really important, any more than to be able to apply value with at least some semblance of connection to the human condition, this article (linked below) from the MIT Technology review should dispel it.

I know, there is at least some element of being unfair here, but I have become more than a little jaded concerning the mind set of the purveyors of capital and commodity. I guess I should be thankful that, even if the question is as obvious as our role in making the planet unlivable, at least someone is asking it.

If only more of the overall creative potential in the rest of the American economy would ask more such obvious questions. And more to the point, wouldn't it be something if what was considered as "Thinking Big" could jump outside of any form of product, as well as its marketing, or consumption?

We have lost our way precisely because we do not pursue frontier any more as a general public goal. And by frontier I mean it in terms expressed both symbolically and literally.

Frontier is something that was both an essential life risk, as well as boundaries pushed in every aspect of what we strove to be curious about, and better understand. It was an ideal that expressed both the need for personal liberty and cooperation as neither the group, or the individual would survive otherwise. It was taking chances that very few take these days; recognizing that living just to be "safe" was not living at all.

This is not to say that previous expressions of how frontier was pursued were without mistakes, and grievous ones at that. We didn't understand the interconnected nature of things, any more than we appreciated how far too easy it is to dehumanize those who are different. The thing is, however, that, in my opinion, those mistakes were not a fundamental aspect of going after frontier, but simply our own ignorance, willful and otherwise.

We can pursue frontier as a part of national identity, we just have to be careful of how we go about it. This is why, as we gain new abilities, and knowledge, we must always ask questions of how best to proceed. Questions that must necessarily go to fundamental assumptions of how we work together to make both our personal, as well as collective, dreams as mutually cooperative as give and take, and compromise will allow.

As will come as no surprise here, from my perspective our current operating model is almost perfection in its currently evolved ability to thwart any desire to aspire in these directions. It is, in fact, pretty much diametrically opposed to such desires.

Frontier beckons at our doorstep now not only because the stars call out to us, but also because tyranny and injustice has taken on so many new guises. We are crowded by fences of the mind, of nations, and of ideologies, as well as outright space to flex every aspect of our nature. If we don't recognize that soon, and further recognize the changes we need to make to take back the quest of frontier, we will not survive as a species. It is that simple.

#CapitalismIsObsolete

'THIS TOWN USED TO THINK BIG'

The Purpose Of Silicon Valley

The European Union as Just One More Canary Dying in the Dark Mine of Human Cooperation

This comment was prompted by the Salon article linked below.

For my part he biggest take away here is the further demonstration of what "Supply Side" economics, and markets let loose of all responsibility, have become: Namely a sure fire formula for disaster (as is evidenced by the author's reference to the EU following the Reagan and Thatcher TINA stupidity.

The sad part here, however, is that even if "Demand Side" economics were pursued, the underlying system of employment linked, hyper consumption, would still not be sustainable. The planet won't allow it, and our ever diminishing sanity inside the American inspired "Dream Machine" of hyper marketing, won't allow it either.

The main problem here is that hardly anybody has yet fully comprehended that the alternative Thatcher mistakenly proposed didn't exist, actually does; the problem is that it has to be formed from a complete rethink of our relationship to production and consumption. A rethink that has been required the moment electrified experience retrieval made a mockery of the idea of human skill as commodity. As well as to say how the free flow of information cannot abide the fact that Capitalism turns information into counters of translative power that must be accumulated and used entirely for self interested gain.

The simple fact of the matter is, as I have been saying repeatedly, that social organization in the model of the factory cannot allow for the development of generally capable individuals to work truly integrated solutions to vastly complex, interrelated problems; the kind of problems that multidimensional, complex systems engender. Any more than such segmented groups of interest would allow such individuals to apply such answers even if they had the ability to find them. 

The fact that Europe is at risk of falling back to a semblance of old nationalistic forms of singular self interest only serves to put an exclamation point on power being seen only in terms of the ability to compete in the production/consumption game. And the fact that the Chinese model has been gaining favor, where they demand that only the other guys's markets be completely open, is not only not sustainable for reasons already mentioned, but because it will inevitably lead to war. It cannot be otherwise because it is not only your ability to sell where you want to, but your ability to continually find new feed stock sources to keep the impossible maw of production going, that allows you to survive in the game.

It is insanity. All of it. There is no other way to describe the various flavors of Capitalism now. Absolute insanity. And there is a great deal more than the EU at risk here.

#CapitalismIsObsolete

The fall of Europe: Why the European Union is teetering on the brink

The Ghost in the Machine May Well be Marshall McLuhan

This comment was prompted by the linked Salon article below

What I find interesting here is that, on the one hand, the author seems to recognize at least a bit of what McLuhan was talking about in how electrified experience retrieval (as opposed to typography) would change the working dynamics of the environments we now live within. But then, on the other hand, he still demonstrates virtually no clue as to the full extent of what is being demanded of us as regards the organizational model we have; the one still based on typographic thinking.

Context sensitive AI expert systems are now creeping up on the professions, turning them into the same wage slaves as mechanics, machine operators, and other factory workers have already been for quite some time. But the author still thinks that the factory/commercialized delivery of learning, as well as health care, will benefit the masses.

And in all of this the great take away is that the source for Progressives will shift way from where they used to come from.

Where in all of this is the fundamental realization that electrified experience retrieval has changed the entire basis on which Capitalism was founded? 

That, firstly, human skill as commodity is an absurdity. 

Secondly, that information cannot be allowed to remain the commodity it has now become by default. 

And lastly, that the segmented linearity so basic to social organization as a factory cannot work within massively complex, interactive matrices of process flow; especially when so much of it runs at the speed of light. 

In other words, complex systems and holistic thinking demand completely new ways to meet social needs; methods the old task bounded, assembly line, and commodity/consumption model is absolutely ill equipped to respond to. 

The whole notion of Progressive and Conservative is meaningless in that context. When a complete rethink of how to best balance personal liberty with collective needs is required all of the old labels should be thrown out. The questions now should be how do we make the best use of the way information can be applied now? How do we do that so we can not only govern ourselves but share in both the responsibilities and benefits of these new productive methods, as well as the results of that production. 

The sooner we realize this new reality the more we increase our chances of taking the next steps a sentient species ought to take as it leaves behind the economics of scarcity, as well as the primitive tribalism that we've always fallen back on to get us through it.

#CapitalismIsObsolete

The left’s changing personality: How progressives are changing from professionals to populists

The Metaphor of Sand and the Strictly Bounded Interests of Nations

Change, they say, within any system happens at the boundaries of one to the next. This is given a lovely bit of contrast in the article linked below about what has become of the intricacies of Sand.

Sand, it seems, has become a complexity of itself in the interplay of nations; especially as it concerns states such as Singapore and Malaysia. Counter intuitive though it might seem, you can build upon sand; either as simple fill, grouted, or mixed with concrete. More to the point, however is the fact that one nations sand can become another's expanded borders; literally taking the ground out from under a neighbor and using it to make new ground for yourself.

As the article makes clear, however, in the age of interdependent markets, extra national economic entities, and the fluidity of both information systems, as well as the physical systems we live within, the notion of the nation state as a specifically bounded object is seen for the illusion it has always been.

From my perspective it is but one more example of how problems can no longer be solved in isolation. Integrated solutions cannot be limited by arbitrary boundaries any more than any of they other flows that course through the grand matrix that is human kind on this planet now.

I urge you to read this article. It is quite thought provoking.

#CapitalismIsObsolete


Built on Sand: Singapore and the New State of Risk

The Problems we Face are Related. They Cannot be Solved In Isolation.

This post was prompted as a comment to the Daily Beast article linked below

See the Documentary "Dirty Wars"

You have to wonder at the contrast between what people like General Flynn indicates here, and what you learn in the above documentary. In the latter you are exposed to just how open ended, and self perpetuating, Special Operations have become as a part of American Foreign Policy. Questionable drone surveillance, ever expanding lists of individuals linked to other individuals merely by being seen in proximity, if not also in actual conversation. A lot of people are being killed and we have no real idea of whether they deserved it or not, any more than if those that did deserve it have served the purpose their death was supposed to serve. The lists just keep growing.  

We had the same kind of vehement outcry of supposed weakness to adherents to Communist ideology from the late fifties to the mid eighties, and whether you believe it alone brought down the Soviet Union or not, it certainly caused us a great deal of counter productive outcomes. So much so that you have to wonder how much more trouble we would be in today if we had simply worked around Communist governments as opposed to overt programs of subversion. After all, couldn't a major part of the "destabilization as a way of life" in Central America, Africa, Southeast Asia, as well significant parts of Eastern Europe, been avoided otherwise? Or, at the very least, our being seen as so culpable for so much of it?

I don't doubt that there is a real possibility that extreme religious groups could pose a serious threat to world peace. How we go about addressing that threat, however, needs to be seen as the very complex question it is. Just as poverty, in conjunction with corruption and the absolutely immoral distribution of resources, led may groups in a desperate search for alternative forms of social organization, so too do the bunching up of belief systems in close proximity, both physically and perceptually, cause people to react to various degrees of opposing horror; each seeing in the other blasphemy or cruel barbarity. Made all the worse because each, in its own self righteous outrage, stoops to the kinds of violence they seek to stop.

Humanity has been here before and the only thing I can see that it resolved is that there is no lasting resolution. There is only the competition to see who can out butcher the other for whatever temporary respite might be gained before the next go around. And we have certainly been quite clever in that competition. Anyone still sane can only be made ill in contemplating where we might yet go with it.

If that weren't bad enough, there is added complexity in the fact that the West, and in particular, The United States, is weighted down with a social operating system that makes being able to even prioritize problems a nightmare, much less being able to address them properly. It is a system where information is a commodity and, as such, is horded. And when it is distributed one cannot be in any way sure of what was intended in allowing its release. 

Then you add the horrible consequences of what being a part of a hyper consumptive, more people requiring more consumption for more jobs, kind of economy means. The dream machine environment to induce consumption in the first place, combined with the array of so many working at so much purpose in direct opposition to the needs, or purpose of not only their neighbors, but of the very complex physical systems we all live in. 

Is there any wonder at all why so many social systems are either grid locked, inconsequential, or out right destructive, now?

All of this is to say that all of our problems are interlinked and interdependent. The days when we could solve one or another independently are long over. If we don't start talking honestly about all of them, and how they interrelate, we will solve none of them satisfactorily; however much we might wish otherwise. 

The sooner we all realize this the better off we will all be.

Spy General Unloads on Obama’s ISIS War Plan

Distributed Autonomous Corporations (DACS)

The problem with the Aeon article linked below is that this software approach to add a layer of more egalitarian abstraction to currency creation, as well as translation, does nothing to address the more fundamental problems that Capitalism faces in the age of electrified information networks. It does this because the mind set behind it still seeks to preserve the essence of what Capitalism is: A product of late sixteenth, and early seventeenth, century typographic thinking.

This is the kind of thinking that turned feudal Europe, where formerly oral agrarians, spread out across productive land, produced everything they needed themselves, into centralized aggregates of specialized production; basically how social organization became chained not only to the factory, but the abstraction of currency in the first place. It certainly produced substantial material gain, as well as an explosion in the ability to gain further productive knowledge, but make no mistake, we had to pay dearly for it.

For all that the Libertarians complain about too much government, would it have evolved to nearly such extremes if private interest, and the ability to accumulate through net gain, hadn't also gone too far? And now that information and money are the same thing because of electrified information systems, Democracy itself becomes impossible; precisely because you can't ensure for a truly informed electorate when nobody gives anything away any more unless they expect a great deal more in return.

I understand that these visionaries are trying to ameliorate at least a part of the problem of the centralization of power, but they miss out completely on the more essential aspects of what makes a social organization viable in the first place. The age old questions of not only who makes important productive decisions, but on how we distribute both the gains accrued, as well as the responsibilities required to keep it going.

Poverty forced collectivism at the point of gun certainly didn't work. Not only because of how repressive such systems had to be, but also because they too couldn't see past using a specialized, commercial form of production. These were centrally planned, factory economies, but they still ran on specialized labor, and a currency to translate one skill into another. The fact that they also lacked, for the most part, sufficiently advanced industry and technical capability, only made the situation much worse.

But if the internet has taught us anything, with all of the "do it yourself" help sites, as well as the democratization of manufacture itself via 3D printing, it ought to be a visceral understanding that we don't need the extreme emphasis of specialization now, any more than we need abstract counters to force others to do things we find distasteful. 

The fact is, there is a way we could organize into semi-autonomous city states; self governed units where we share the load of what has to be done to support it. Entities that orient production towards making the basics of most of the things we need or desire in life, and from which each individual, using his or her equity share of same, builds what required end use items themselves.

It is, in other words, time to completely rethink how we go about the social coordination of what is produced, and how that production is consumed. Attacking one part of the problem, even with very clever software, just isn't going to cut it.

#CapitalismIsObsolete

RoboCorp

Marshall McLuhan was a Progressive Whether He Knew it or not

The Daily Beast article linked below is a good review of what has been a very slow realization of how perception, cognition, and the major means by which we move and store experience, work together.to form sentience.

The one sad part from my perspective is how this growing new realization has excluded the negative consequences of continuing with a social operating system based on the typographic mindset that followed the development of repeatable type. An operating system whose very organization epitomizes the linear abstraction, and disconnected objectivism that lies at the heart of factory thinking.

The fact of the matter is that we live in an completely new, electrified information environment. One that is quite different than the one that spawned Capitalism. The problem now, though, is that electrification has made for a mutated version of both the old factory system, as well as the idea of complex information matrices. Thus creating the worst of both environments in which we now evolve mentally and socially in. A better formula for insanity I doubt anyone could come up with.

Just another reason why I have been pretty much a broken record on the notion that Capitalism is Obsolete.

#CapitalismIsObsolete


Hacking the Tripping Mind: A Fantastic Voyage Through Inner Space