Learning in a post-scarcity environment II
david_c
For some reason - because it's over so many months old I guess - I
can't respond to the previous thread I started on this subject
( http://groups.google.com/group/postscarcity/browse_thread/thread/8aa83fba2c45eacb
), so had to start a new one.
I know the question of education might not be regarded as central to
this group, but it seems at related, and I thought some of you might
be interested anyway.
Have any of you seen the film "The War on Kids"? If so, I would be
interested in your responses (I've seen only the trailer - which can
be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nlnwm11d6II )
The Wikipedia article gives an overview:
"The War on Kids is a 2009 documentary film about the American school
system. The film takes a look at public school education in America
and concludes that schools are not only failing to educate, but are
increasingly authoritarian institutions more akin to prisons that are
eroding the foundations of American democracy. Students are robbed of
basic freedoms primarily due to irrational fears; they are searched,
arbitrarily punished and force-fed dangerous pharmaceutical drugs. The
educational mission of the public school system has been reduced from
one of learning and preparation for adult citizenship to one of
control and containment."
Paul D. Fernhout
Sorry, I did not see your comment until now.
I saw the movie at a screening at the last AERO conference.
http://www.educationrevolution.org/conference.html
Yes, it seems all too true. And yest, it seems very connected to
everything, if you read John Taylor Gatto.
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm
See also, by coincidence, my post today here:
"The smoking gun of teaching scarcity ideology in NYS "
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/browse_thread/thread/500c91252c95ff36
"""From page 23 of those NYS educational standards:
"Challenge of meeting needs and wants:
* Scarcity means that people's wants exceed their limited resources.
* Communities provide facilities and services to help satisfy the needs
and wants of people who live there.
* People use tools, technologies, and other resources to meet their
needs and wants.
* People in communities must make choices due to unlimited needs and
wants and scarce resources; these choices involve costs.
* Through work, people in communities earn income to help meet their
needs and wants."
...
No wonder it is so hard to make traction on something like a basic
income when kids have drilled into them in first grade the opposite,
that working for a living is the legitimate way to get money, and we
always will spend our lifetimes fighting over "unlimited" needs and
wants. :-( ...
So, there is the evil of scarcity ideology amidst abundance being
enshrined in the New York State educational standards. To my mind, this
is the "smoking gun" of how kids are being effectively brainwashed from
an early age into collective suicide by the NYS department of education
where these kids will later use 21st century technologies of abundance
(nuclear energy, nanotech, robotic, etc.) to kill each other fighting
over (mis)perceived scarcity."""
Lots more links and other comments in that post.
--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
====
The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies
of abundance in the hands of those thinking in terms of scarcity.
Roberto Verzola
wrote several very good books about the problems of education.
Greetings to all,
Roberto Verzola
Philippines
Paul D. Fernhout
> I first came across the idea of schools as prisons in John Holt, who
> wrote several very good books about the problems of education.
Yes, John Holt wrote a lot of great stuff:
http://www.holtgws.com/
His associate from back then has continued that sort of work:
http://www.patfarenga.com/
From his latest blog post there about a new book on homeschooling and
politics:
"A Matter of Conscience"
http://patfarenga.squarespace.com/pat-farengas-blog/2010/11/5/a-matter-of-conscience.html
"One of my favorite passages in this book deals with the issue of
government regulation of homeschooling. Green notes, �Suddenly, the
state is a member of your family, making sure that you are doing �it�
right, whatever �it� is. So instead of just living, you are living, like
the Truman Show, with a camera in your life, in your brain, watching
your every move. You find yourself stepping back from the moment, from
the experience, thinking how you will write this up in eduspeak to
please the �monitors,� the �authorities,� the teacher who has been
assigned to sign off on your educational provision. That�s not life;
that�s performance art.� ...
Further, there is, to me, an important point that gets muddled in
this book, namely, that education is not the same as teaching and
learning. Education is the professional commoditization of teaching and
learning, whereas teaching and learning are everyone�s birthright.
Teaching and learning are natural activities, two heads of the same
coin, that we can unconsciously engage in, such as when a parent coos
and babbles at their newborn child, or that we can consciously engage
in, when we have the need or desire to do so. Educators have
long-encouraged strong distinctions between informal learning and formal
learning, devaluing the former and promoting the latter. ..."
I think a big set of issues about "post-scarcity" (and reflected in much
recent sci-fi about it like by Iain Banks or James P. Hogan) is the
informality of abundance.
John Taylor Gatto takes the general theme of current compulsory schools
as dysfunctional prison-like institutions a lot further:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
"Before you can reach a point of effectiveness in defending your own
children or your principles against the assault of blind social
machinery, you have to stop conspiring against yourself by attempting to
negotiate with a set of abstract principles and rules which, by its
nature, cannot respond. Under all its disguises, that is what
institutional schooling is, an abstraction which has escaped its
handlers. Nobody can reform it. First you have to realize that human
values are the stuff of madness to a system; in systems-logic the
schools we have are already the schools the system needs; the only way
they could be much improved is to have kids eat, sleep, live, and die
there."
And also by Gatto on the dynamics of how things will change:
http://www.the-open-boat.com/Gatto.html
"A lot of the constraints on us, a lot of the ah, ah - strings that hold
us like puppets are really inventions of our own mind. I'm not saying
that there aren't armies and police and various ways to punish deviants.
But there isn't any way to punish a LARGE NUMBER of deviants. There
isn't any way to do that. It's too expensive to even try to do that,
unless you can colonize the minds of children growing up so they become
their own police. And they will report other children who are deviating."
And by Zinn on possible upcoming changes:
"Chapter 24: The Coming Revolt of the Guards"
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncomrev24.html
"However, the unexpected victories-even temporary ones-of insurgents
show the vulnerability of the supposedly powerful. In a highly developed
society, the Establishment cannot survive without the obedience and
loyalty of millions of people who are given small rewards to keep the
system going: the soldiers and police, teachers and ministers,
administrators and social workers, technicians and production workers,
doctors, lawyers, nurses, transport and communications workers, garbage
men and firemen. These people-the employed, the somewhat privileged-are
drawn into alliance with the elite. They become the guards of the
system, buffers between the upper and lower classes. If they stop
obeying, the system falls."
I think it is not reasonable to argue the "elite" keep us all in
scarcity. Certainly some of them try, but the bigger issue is just that
scarcity is a cultural paradigm woven throughout so many of our social
institutions, from First Grade Social Studies standards to competition
for "scholarships" to the MacArthur Foundation Genius Prizes and so on.
IBM's highest honor is that someone gets five years to work on whatever
they want (related to company business). Why does not everyone get that
indefinitely when they join the company?
Iain Banks says "money is a sign of poverty". Well, maybe "formality" is
a sign of poverty, too? :-)
Chris Watkins
The textbook seems to me like a reasonable representation of current reality.
--
Chris Watkins
Appropedia.org - Sharing knowledge to build rich, sustainable lives.
blogs.appropedia.org
community.livejournal.com/appropedia
identi.ca/appropedia
twitter.com/appropedia
Paul D. Fernhout
That's a terrific question.
There are multiple problems with that set of statements.
=== healthy people don't want to be financially obese
The first is, healthy people's wants are just not unlimited. Sure, sick
and alienated people may want to be financially obese and live in a big
castle all by themselves, but most people are content with far less. So,
factually, that statement is in error, and essentially is advising young
children to be mentally ill.
I quoted some comments here that connect to it:
"Debunking Postscarcity: 5 Reasons The Future Will Be Ruled By B.S."
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/browse_thread/thread/9cdbe063e4b7227d
"[Quoting David Wong
http://www.cracked.com/article_18817_5-reasons-future-will-be-ruled-by-b.s..html
] Now think about how many people you know who live in apartments or
trailers barely big enough to host a game of Twister but who don't care
because they spend every waking moment at home either playing World of
Warcraft or surfing the Internet. They're not looking for a two-story
house with a swimming pool and a white picket fence. With a $300 netbook
and a $20-a-month Internet connection they can connect with friends,
meet girls, get their entertainment, pursue their hobbies and stay in
contact with family or co-workers. They may even work from home. Look at
how many of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs they're getting digitally: ...
Everything from that second tier to the capstone, they can get at a cost
that rounds down to zero, if they so choose. We Internet types are so
busy haggling over video games with DRM that we're not grasping the
scale of this. We're like a dog who's been cooped up behind a fence his
whole life, and now a storm has knocked down the gate. The dog looks out
and thinks, "Wow, out there is the front yard!" No, Fluffy. Out there is
the whole world."
So, limited demand is the reality in healthy humans. From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs
"Maslow studied what he called exemplary people such as Albert Einstein,
Jane Addams, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Frederick Douglass rather than
mentally ill or neurotic people, writing that "the study of crippled,
stunted, immature, and unhealthy specimens can yield only a cripple
psychology and a cripple philosophy."[3] Maslow studied the healthiest
1% of the college student population.[4]"
So, basically, New York State is actively trying to turn its children
into "crippled, stunted, immature, and unhealthy specimens" by that
ideology.
=== Economics ideology can be a self-fulfilling prophecy
Now, consider the issues of self-fulfilling prophecies. I cite stuff on
that here:
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/a9ac9e5e63e596e3
Like this:
http://blogs.reuters.com/barbarakiviat/2010/11/01/its-not-the-economists-its-the-economics/
"As economist Robert Frank once wrote, Our beliefs about human nature
help shape human nature itself. I am indebted to Joe Magee for pointing
me to this fantastic paper (PDF), which explains how the economic world
view might be influencing us to act more in line with its
assumptions such as the primacy of self-interest in how people make
decisions. The paper includes a number of great examples, including how
the Chicago Board Options Exchange wound up conforming to option-pricing
theory and why companies often think layoffs are the path to maximum
value. Here s a more trivial, although particularly salient,
illustration that involves people playing the prisoner s dilemma: "[The]
game was called, in one instance, the Wall Street Game and, in the
other, the Community Game. This simple priming using different language
produced differences in participants choice of moves, as well as
differences in the moves subjects anticipated from their counterparts.
When the game was called the Community Game, mutual cooperation was the
rule. . .and mutual defection was the exception. . . . whereas the
opposite was the case in the Wall St. Game (Liberman et al., 2003: 15).
Both participants and those that nominated them did not anticipate the
extent to which this simple labeling or naming affected responses, and
subjects responses to the situation were much more strongly predicted
by the name of the situation than by the person s presumed likelihood
and reputation for being cooperative or defecting.""
So, the very name of the game changed how people played it!
As I documented, children in New York State are being taught from first
grade that there is not enough stuff to go around and they will have to
compete for it -- fight over it. That then becomes a self-fulfilling
prophecy, with more and more of our resources going into "guarding". So,
New York State is acting to ensure the state will always be poor.
=== We already have an economy based mostly on artificial scarcity
From:
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
"Only a small and diminishing fraction of work serves any useful purpose
independent of the defense and reproduction of the work-system and its
political and legal appendages. Twenty years ago, Paul and Percival
Goodman estimated that just five percent of the work then being done --
presumably the figure, if accurate, is lower now -- would satisfy our
minimal needs for food, clothing and shelter. Theirs was only an
educated guess but the main point is quite clear: directly or
indirectly, most work serves the unproductive purposes of commerce or
social control. Right off the bat we can liberate tens of millions of
salesmen, soldiers, managers, cops, stockbrokers, clergymen, bankers,
lawyers, teachers, landlords, security guards, ad-men and everyone who
works for them. There is a snowball effect since every time you idle
some bigshot you liberate his flunkies and underlings also. Thus the
economy implodes."
And, getting back to the article by David Wong again:
"5 Reasons The Future Will Be Ruled By B.S."
http://www.cracked.com/article_18817_5-reasons-future-will-be-ruled-by-b.s..html
"To keep all that stuff up and running, the publisher is resorting to
what experts call FARTS--Forced ARTificial Scarcity. Or they would call
it that, if they were as awesome at naming things as I am. Mark my
words: The future will be ruled by FARTS. ... It works the same way with
all digital goods -- from entertainment to communication to the software
you use to do your job. A significant chunk of our economy runs on FARTS
now. And as time goes on, more and more of what we use and rely on day
to day will be enveloped by that invisible cloud."
From Page 2:
http://www.cracked.com/article_18817_5-reasons-future-will-be-ruled-by-b.s._p2.html
"Work at a GameStop or some other video game store at the mall? The next
consoles will download their games directly, no store needed. Work at a
video store? Same thing -- Blu-ray is probably the last physical media
we'll ever see. Work as a cashier? Forget self-checkout lanes taking
your job -- soon they'll have RFID systems where customers can pile
groceries into a cart and wheel it out the door, and sensors will bill
their debit card on the fly. Work at Starbucks? What are you doing that
a machine couldn't do? Work for the post office? You're just a human
spambot at this point -- more than half of all mail is now unwanted junk
that goes directly into the trash, because in a world with email, direct
mailers are the only profitable customers the Postal Service has left.
... And so, here we are. We're celebrating that we don't need to pay
greedy corporations because technology means we can get more and more of
what we want for free, but at the same time, we're moving toward an era
when corporations won't need to pay us. Both of us are hoping that in
the future people will, for no tangible reason, simply choose to pay. If
you work at Gamestop, both you and corporate are hoping for the same
thing: that people will just 1) arbitrarily choose to pay for their
games, and 2) choose to get them from a human."
So, New York State is acting to preserve, in the face of change, a
social order that most (or maybe all) of its citizens (children and
adults alike) are suffering under. It is using a massive amount of tax
dollars, adding up to about US$20,000 per school-aged child to do that.
It is using the threat of legal force (even death) to force parents to
comply with that. Thankfully, homeschooling is an option. But, in
practice, it is an option closed to most families because most parents
are on a treadmill where they all have to work and so they can't find an
economic path to homeschool, even when the state is ready to spend
US$20,000 a year on their child if they turn the kid over to
well-meaning people who will brainwash the child
"State Controlled Consciousness" by John Taylor Gatto
http://www.the-open-boat.com/Gatto.html
to be competitive and despairing about the future, as I documented in
reference to the NYS educational standards. An alternative (by me):
http://www.pdfernhout.net/towards-a-post-scarcity-new-york-state-of-mind.html
=== putting those three points together
So, what is maybe more true, regarding your and my statements, is that
we live half-way towards a post-scarcity world already, and more and
more the problem is that we are building artificial scarcity into our
systems (including through schooling) to keep the old scarcity-based
approaches working.
=== post-scarcity tech is too dangerous to be used by scarcity-mongers
A big problem I see, ultimately, is that these post-scarcity forces are
so powerful, essentially a form of magic in an Arthur C. Clarke sense,
that to use them from a scarcity perspective will almost certainly
result in the annihilation of all humanity through malice, feuding, or
accident.
It's probably always been true that "War is a Racket".
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
"A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it
seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows
what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at
the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."
The wars documented and celebrated in the Christian Bible (mainly Old
Testament) were probably rackets in that sense. And even if they were
not, they involved the overall destruction of prosperity with burning,
smashing, looting, killing, and so on, generally in order to get a bit
of booty for the attackers (that's how soldiers used to get paid -- rape
and pillage). Maybe one can make an argument for some of the wars
leading to things like the Pax Romana or some sort of peace under
Alexander, but it's a problematical position, to justify continuous war,
rape, theft, and destruction as a quest for peace.
http://www.pdfernhout.net/the-lion-memo.html
But, my point is, those wars were not fought with nuclear weapons (or,
maybe soon, antimatter weapons).
"Antimatter Trapped For the First Time"
http://gizmodo.com/5692614/antimatter-trapped-for-the-first-time
Or even maybe someday, fought with black hole bombs:
"The CERN black hole "
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXzugu39pKM
Those wars were not fought with self-replicating war robots:
"StarGate SG1 - The Replicator War"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnbUzufkjMQ
Related:
"Company Denies its [military-funded] Robots Feed on the Dead"
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/07/company-denies-its-robots-feed-on-the-dead/
"�We completely understand the public�s concern about futuristic robots
feeding on the human population, but that is not our mission,� stated
Harry Schoell, Cyclone�s CEO. �We are focused on demonstrating that our
engines can create usable, green power from plentiful, renewable plant
matter. The commercial applications alone for this earth-friendly energy
solution are enormous.� (emphasis in the original)"
Those wars were not fought with bioengineered plagues:
"New weapons of ethnic cleansing"
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4156/is_19990509/ai_n13937769/
"GENETIC weapons capable of wiping out specific ethnic groups are no
longer the stuff of science fiction, military and scientific advisers
with the British and American governments have admitted."
I discuss that at length here:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
IMHO, we will be doomed if we don't upgrade our society to move past
scarcity assumptions. So, that's why I believe those standards show that
New York State is teaching all its school children to engage in a form
of insane collective suicide by teaching 18th century economic dogma in
the 21st century given the power of 21st century technology.
Gatto and others point out why children are just harmed routinely by
such schooling: http://www.thewaronkids.com/
I'm saying the kids are being forced from First Grade to buy a lottery
ticket with a 99% chance of paying off in the destruction of them and
the rest of New York State and our global society, too.
As Bucky Fuller said:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller
"Whether it is to be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay
race right up to the final moment. . . . Humanity is in �final exam� as
to whether or not it qualifies for continuance in Universe"
Do you want New York State citizens inventing black hole bombs to
"defend" an economic system built around artificial scarcity?
Or would it be better to teach them how to cooperate?
"Educating for a Peaceful World"
http://www.forums.alliance21.org/d_read/pax/articles/Deutsch.htm
New York State residents and others have been doing developing nuclear
bombs for decades. That has been ironic, since even while I'm a solar
fan because it fits our current social paradigm better and is lower
risk, I have to admit that nuclear energy used from a post-scarcity
perspective could render meaningless the need to fight over land and
material resources. As Albert Einstein said,
http://www.heartquotes.net/Einstein.html
"The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of
thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If
only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker."
That was one of many steps along the road to post-scarcity. It was
really obvious (a big explosion), but there are certainly less obvious
things like 3D printing, robotics, better materials, the internet, and
so on, that also change things a lot.
We have been so lucky the bombs have not been launched so far through
some computer glitches or misperceptions.
"99 red ballons - Nena "
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14IRDDnEPR4
How long will that luck hold with anti-matter bombs, self-replicating
robots, military AIs, 3D printers that can print anyone a ceramic robot
spider carrying a ceramic handgun loaded with neurtoxic darts, DIY
plagues, and so on? Even if we survive, what pointlessness to bring
forward 18th century Western imperialist ideology into the 21st century
and just use all that magic to fight over scarcity themes like who gets
to eat today.
Unfortunately, it is for the wrong reasons that:
"Obama Finds Predator Drones Hilarious"
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/features/view/feature/Obama-Finds-Predator-Drones-Hilarious-1171
Consider:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/10/26/091026fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all
"Still, the recent campaign to kill Baitullah Mehsud offers a sobering
case study of the hazards of robotic warfare. It appears to have taken
sixteen missile strikes, and fourteen months, before the C.I.A.
succeeded in killing him. During this hunt, between two hundred and
seven and three hundred and twenty-one additional people were killed,
depending on which news accounts you rely upon."
I guess some people would find the ineptitude funny. And others might
have a nervous chuckle about power or death from the skies or a parent
joking about protecting their daughters from celebrities using deadly
violence (the substance of Obama's joke). All those are problematical
things to be funny.
Still, those drones are indeed hilarious, but not because killing people
with them is funny, but because they are *ironic*. Technology that lets
people in New York State see and hear in real-time what is going on on
the other side of the planet, and manipulate events there using
enormously complicated mechanisms (generally to blow up innocent
bystanders) show that the entire rationale is obsolete of using such
drones for the purpose of destruction to enforce an economic order based
on scarcity ideology. Why is the USA even in the Middle East? To get
oil? When we would be better off without using it as far as pollution
and our electricity and natural gas use would even go *down* if we
switched to electric cars?
http://www.evnut.com/gasoline_oil.htm
It's just ironically hilarious, from that perspective. Even if what is
being done with those robots is terribly, terribly sad and immoral, of
course. I bring up the humorous aspects since the arguments based on
practicality, economics, morality, security, and common sense have all
failed. All we've got left is humor as our last great hope to redirect
the brilliance of people in New York State to healthier ends.
I would have said the same in WWII Nazi Germany. All those brilliant
Nazi Scientists (including the Jewish ones like Einstein who unlocked
the secrets of nuclear energy) could have made Germany a paradise in the
1940s. Instead, Germany worked from a scarcity paradigm and the world
(and most Germans) suffered. I can hope the USA does not proceed further
down that route, in defiance of all common sense, but the social trend
is worrisome. From 2005:
"Holocaust Survivor Leaving US - Sees What's Coming"
http://www.rense.com/general65/surviv.htm
"I have related this event to you in the hopes it will serve as a
cautionary anecdote about the state of our Union, and to illustrate the
path we Americans are being led down by a group of fanatics bent on
global economic and military dominion. When a man who survived the
fruits of fascism decides its time to leave THIS country because he's
seeing the same patterns that led to the Holocaust and other Nazi
horrors beginning to form here, it is time for us to recognize the
underlying evil inherent in the actions of those who claim they work for
all Americans, and for all mankind. And it is incumbent upon all
Americans, Red and Blue, Republican and Democrat, to stop them."
But, the roots of all this are centuries and even millennia old, it's
just that the USA is on the forefront of a lot of this these days:
http://www.maorinews.com/writings/books/myishmael.htm
"Ishmael acquires a new student to learn about the cultural heritage of
the Takers, the 10,000 year old, but very young culture that now
pervades the world. Ishmael, the teacher, identifies two rules of thumb
by which the people of that culture can be identified. Firstly, ".. the
food is all owned, if it's all under lock and key"
Ishmael contends that the real innovation of the so-called
agricultural revolution wasn't the growing of food, it was locking it up."
We had a pre-scarcity culture once (with few people and a relatively
infinite natural world relative to that). The story of Genesis, like
several other stories from non-Christian cultures, can be read as the
loss of that pre-scarcity culture. Discussed by me here:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/post-scarcity-princeton.html#A_history_lesson_pre-scarcity_times_Eden_then_scarcity_times_Dickens_then_post-scarcity_times_real_soon_now
Let's hope we get through these intervening scarcity times before our
abundant cleverness destroys us when used from a scarcity perspective.
I think most public school teachers and administrators are well-meaning
people who want the best for children, and much of the other stuff they
teach kids is potentially good and useful (ignoring how it is taught and
the medium of authoritarianism being the message). But, good intentions
are not enough if the system they are trapped in is very messed up, or
if the competitive scarcity ideology they are compelled to impart into
children is, in the 21st century with powerful technologies of
abundance, the equivalent of the Jim Jones suicide cult in Guyana (where
the phrase "drank the Kool-aide" comes from).
Related:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Jones
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=drink+the+kool-aid
"A reference to the 1978 cult mass-suicide in Jonestown, Guyana. Jim
Jones, the leader of the group, convinced his followers to move to
Jonestown. Late in the year he then ordered his flock to commit suicide
by drinking grape-flavored Kool-Aid laced with potassium cyanide. In
what is now commonly called "the Jonestown Massacre", 913 of the 1100
Jonestown residents drank the Kool-Aid and died. One lasting legacy of
the Jonestown tragedy is the saying, �Don�t drink the Kool-Aid.� This
has come to mean, "Don�t trust any group you find to be a little on the
kooky side." or "Whatever they tell you, don't believe it too strongly".
The phrase can also be used in the opposite sense to indicate that one
has embraced a particular philosophy or perspective."
Of course, believers in scarcity ideology will probably say I'm the "Jim
Jones' for advocating post-scarcity ideology and related ideas like a
basic income, a gift economy, and so on. :-) Another irony in life. Who
do you trust?
And people can go to great lengths to suppress alternative views of society:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potlatch
"At potlatch gatherings, a family or hereditary leader hosts guests in
their family's house and holds a feast for their guests. The main
purpose of the potlatch is the re-distribution and reciprocity of
wealth. ... Potlatching was made illegal in Canada in 1885[8] and the
United States in the late nineteenth century, largely at the urging of
missionaries and government agents who considered it "a worse than
useless custom" that was seen as wasteful, unproductive, and contrary to
"civilized" values.[9]
The potlatch was seen as a key target in assimilation policies and
agendas. Missionary William Duncan wrote in 1875 that the potlatch was
�by far the most formidable of all obstacles in the way of Indians
becoming Christians, or even civilized.�[10] Thus in 1885, the Indian
Act was revised to include clauses banning the Potlatch and making it
illegal to practice. The official legislation read,
�Every Indian or other person who engages in or assists in
celebrating the Indian festival known as the "Potlatch" or the Indian
dance known as the "Tamanawas" is guilty of a misdemeanor, and shall be
liable to imprisonment for a term not more than six nor less than two
months in a jail or other place of confinement; and, any Indian or other
person who encourages, either directly or indirectly an Indian or
Indians to get up such a festival or dance, or to celebrate the same, or
who shall assist in the celebration of same is guilty of a like offence,
and shall be liable to the same punishment.�"
That's all part of why I wrote: :-)
"Burdened by Bags of Sand"
http://www.pdfernhout.net/burdened-by-bags-of-sand.html
"This ironic story is about trying to talk the USA out of collective
suicide stemming from scarcity fears and misunderstandings when the USA
and the world otherwise has so much potential for abundance. Of course,
there is also always cause for optimism in any case. "
Chris Watkins
some very interesting ideas. I'll reply selectively below.
"would satisfy our minimal needs for food, clothing and shelter" - I think most of us, (even me, and I have much lower demands than most people) hope for much more than "minimal needs for food, clothing and shelter".
And, getting back to the article by David Wong again:
"5 Reasons The Future Will Be Ruled By B.S."
http://www.cracked.com/article_18817_5-reasons-future-will-be-ruled-by-b.s..html
"To keep all that stuff up and running, the publisher is resorting to what experts call FARTS--Forced ARTificial Scarcity. Or they would call it that, if they were as awesome at naming things as I am. Mark my words: The future will be ruled by FARTS. ... It works the same way with all digital goods -- from entertainment to communication to the software you use to do your job. A significant chunk of our economy runs on FARTS now. And as time goes on, more and more of what we use and rely on day to day will be enveloped by that invisible cloud."
From Page 2:
http://www.cracked.com/article_18817_5-reasons-future-will-be-ruled-by-b.s._p2.html
"Work at a GameStop or some other video game store at the mall? The next consoles will download their games directly, no store needed. Work at a video store? Same thing -- Blu-ray is probably the last physical media we'll ever see. Work as a cashier? Forget self-checkout lanes taking your job -- soon they'll have RFID systems where customers can pile groceries into a cart and wheel it out the door, and sensors will bill their debit card on the fly. Work at Starbucks? What are you doing that a machine couldn't do? Work for the post office? You're just a human spambot at this point -- more than half of all mail is now unwanted junk that goes directly into the trash, because in a world with email, direct mailers are the only profitable customers the Postal Service has left. ... And so, here we are. We're celebrating that we don't need to pay greedy corporations because technology means we can get more and more of what we want for free, but at the same time, we're moving toward an era when corporations won't need to pay us. Both of us are hoping that in the future people will, for no tangible reason, simply choose to pay. If you work at Gamestop, both you and corporate are hoping for the same thing: that people will just 1) arbitrarily choose to pay for their games, and 2) choose to get them from a human."
So, New York State is acting to preserve, in the face of change, a social order that most (or maybe all) of its citizens (children and adults alike) are suffering under. It is using a massive amount of tax dollars, adding up to about US$20,000 per school-aged child to do that. It is using the threat of legal force (even death) to force parents to comply with that. Thankfully, homeschooling is an option. But, in practice, it is an option closed to most families because most parents are on a treadmill where they all have to work and so they can't find an economic path to homeschool, even when the state is ready to spend US$20,000 a year on their child if they turn the kid over to well-meaning people who will brainwash the child
"State Controlled Consciousness" by John Taylor Gatto to be competitive and despairing about the future, as I documented in reference to the NYS educational standards. An alternative (by me):
http://www.pdfernhout.net/towards-a-post-scarcity-new-york-state-of-mind.html
=== putting those three points together
So, what is maybe more true, regarding your and my statements, is that we live half-way towards a post-scarcity world already, and more and more the problem is that we are building artificial scarcity into our systems (including through schooling) to keep the old scarcity-based approaches working.
Mostly agreed, I think.
Re schooling, what I'd really like to see is very sound education, including economic literacy - which certainly needs to cover issues of scarcity and non-scarcity.
=== post-scarcity tech is too dangerous to be used by scarcity-mongers
A big problem I see, ultimately, is that these post-scarcity forces are so powerful, essentially a form of magic in an Arthur C. Clarke sense, that to use them from a scarcity perspective will almost certainly result in the annihilation of all humanity through malice, feuding, or accident.
It's probably always been true that "War is a Racket".
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
"A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."
The wars documented and celebrated in the Christian Bible (mainly Old Testament) were probably rackets in that sense. And even if they were not, they involved the overall destruction of prosperity with burning, smashing, looting, killing, and so on, generally in order to get a bit of booty for the attackers (that's how soldiers used to get paid -- rape and pillage). Maybe one can make an argument for some of the wars leading to things like the Pax Romana or some sort of peace under Alexander, but it's a problematical position, to justify continuous war, rape, theft, and destruction as a quest for peace.
http://www.pdfernhout.net/the-lion-memo.html
But, my point is, those wars were not fought with nuclear weapons (or, maybe soon, antimatter weapons).
"Antimatter Trapped For the First Time"
http://gizmodo.com/5692614/antimatter-trapped-for-the-first-time
Or even maybe someday, fought with black hole bombs:
"The CERN black hole "
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXzugu39pKM
Those wars were not fought with self-replicating war robots:
"StarGate SG1 - The Replicator War"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnbUzufkjMQ
Related:
"Company Denies its [military-funded] Robots Feed on the Dead"
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/07/company-denies-its-robots-feed-on-the-dead/
"“We completely understand the public’s concern about futuristic robots feeding on the human population, but that is not our mission,” stated Harry Schoell, Cyclone’s CEO. “We are focused on demonstrating that our engines can create usable, green power from plentiful, renewable plant matter. The commercial applications alone for this earth-friendly energy solution are enormous.” (emphasis in the original)"
Those wars were not fought with bioengineered plagues:
"New weapons of ethnic cleansing"
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4156/is_19990509/ai_n13937769/
"GENETIC weapons capable of wiping out specific ethnic groups are no longer the stuff of science fiction, military and scientific advisers with the British and American governments have admitted."
I discuss that at length here:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
IMHO, we will be doomed if we don't upgrade our society to move past scarcity assumptions. So, that's why I believe those standards show that New York State is teaching all its school children to engage in a form of insane collective suicide by teaching 18th century economic dogma in the 21st century given the power of 21st century technology.
Gatto and others point out why children are just harmed routinely by such schooling: http://www.thewaronkids.com/
I'm saying the kids are being forced from First Grade to buy a lottery ticket with a 99% chance of paying off in the destruction of them and the rest of New York State and our global society, too.
As Bucky Fuller said:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller
"Whether it is to be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment. . . . Humanity is in ‘final exam’ as to whether or not it qualifies for continuance in Universe"
Do you want New York State citizens inventing black hole bombs to "defend" an economic system built around artificial scarcity?
Or would it be better to teach them how to cooperate?
"Educating for a Peaceful World"
http://www.forums.alliance21.org/d_read/pax/articles/Deutsch.htm
New York State residents and others have been doing developing nuclear bombs for decades. That has been ironic, since even while I'm a solar fan because it fits our current social paradigm better and is lower risk, I have to admit that nuclear energy used from a post-scarcity perspective could render meaningless the need to fight over land and material resources. As Albert Einstein said,
http://www.heartquotes.net/Einstein.html
"The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker."
That was one of many steps along the road to post-scarcity. It was really obvious (a big explosion), but there are certainly less obvious things like 3D printing, robotics, better materials, the internet, and so on, that also change things a lot.
We have been so lucky the bombs have not been launched so far through some computer glitches or misperceptions.
"99 red ballons - Nena "
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14IRDDnEPR4
How long will that luck hold with anti-matter bombs, self-replicating robots, military AIs, 3D printers that can print anyone a ceramic robot spider carrying a ceramic handgun loaded with neurtoxic darts, DIY plagues, and so on? Even if we survive, what pointlessness to bring forward 18th century Western imperialist ideology into the 21st century and just use all that magic to fight over scarcity themes like who gets to eat today.
Unfortunately, it is for the wrong reasons that:
"Obama Finds Predator Drones Hilarious"
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/features/view/feature/Obama-Finds-Predator-Drones-Hilarious-1171
Consider:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/10/26/091026fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all
"Still, the recent campaign to kill Baitullah Mehsud offers a sobering case study of the hazards of robotic warfare. It appears to have taken sixteen missile strikes, and fourteen months, before the C.I.A. succeeded in killing him. During this hunt, between two hundred and seven and three hundred and twenty-one additional people were killed, depending on which news accounts you rely upon."
I guess some people would find the ineptitude funny. And others might have a nervous chuckle about power or death from the skies or a parent joking about protecting their daughters from celebrities using deadly violence (the substance of Obama's joke). All those are problematical things to be funny.
Still, those drones are indeed hilarious, but not because killing people with them is funny, but because they are *ironic*. Technology that lets people in New York State see and hear in real-time what is going on on the other side of the planet, and manipulate events there using enormously complicated mechanisms (generally to blow up innocent bystanders) show that the entire rationale is obsolete of using such drones for the purpose of destruction to enforce an economic order based on scarcity ideology. Why is the USA even in the Middle East? To get oil? When we would be better off without using it as far as pollution and our electricity and natural gas use would even go *down* if we switched to electric cars?
http://www.evnut.com/gasoline_oil.htm
It's just ironically hilarious, from that perspective. Even if what is being done with those robots is terribly, terribly sad and immoral, of course. I bring up the humorous aspects since the arguments based on practicality, economics, morality, security, and common sense have all failed. All we've got left is humor as our last great hope to redirect the brilliance of people in New York State to healthier ends.
I would have said the same in WWII Nazi Germany. All those brilliant Nazi Scientists (including the Jewish ones like Einstein who unlocked the secrets of nuclear energy) could have made Germany a paradise in the 1940s. Instead, Germany worked from a scarcity paradigm and the world (and most Germans) suffered. I can hope the USA does not proceed further down that route, in defiance of all common sense, but the social trend is worrisome.
I would have seen this about "win-win" vs "zero-sum game" - that's certainly closely related to post-scarcity vs scarcity, but "post-scarcity" is a much bigger claim.
From 2005:
"Holocaust Survivor Leaving US - Sees What's Coming"
http://www.rense.com/general65/surviv.htm
"I have related this event to you in the hopes it will serve as a cautionary anecdote about the state of our Union, and to illustrate the path we Americans are being led down by a group of fanatics bent on global economic and military dominion. When a man who survived the fruits of fascism decides its time to leave THIS country because he's seeing the same patterns that led to the Holocaust and other Nazi horrors beginning to form here, it is time for us to recognize the underlying evil inherent in the actions of those who claim they work for all Americans, and for all mankind. And it is incumbent upon all Americans, Red and Blue, Republican and Democrat, to stop them."
But, the roots of all this are centuries and even millennia old, it's just that the USA is on the forefront of a lot of this these days:
http://www.maorinews.com/writings/books/myishmael.htm
"Ishmael acquires a new student to learn about the cultural heritage of the Takers, the 10,000 year old, but very young culture that now pervades the world. Ishmael, the teacher, identifies two rules of thumb by which the people of that culture can be identified. Firstly, ".. the food is all owned, if it's all under lock and key"
Ishmael contends that the real innovation of the so-called agricultural revolution wasn't the growing of food, it was locking it up."
We had a pre-scarcity culture once (with few people and a relatively infinite natural world relative to that). The story of Genesis, like several other stories from non-Christian cultures, can be read as the loss of that pre-scarcity culture. Discussed by me here:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/post-scarcity-princeton.html#A_history_lesson_pre-scarcity_times_Eden_then_scarcity_times_Dickens_then_post-scarcity_times_real_soon_now
Let's hope we get through these intervening scarcity times before our abundant cleverness destroys us when used from a scarcity perspective.
I think most public school teachers and administrators are well-meaning people who want the best for children, and much of the other stuff they teach kids is potentially good and useful (ignoring how it is taught and the medium of authoritarianism being the message). But, good intentions are not enough if the system they are trapped in is very messed up, or if the competitive scarcity ideology they are compelled to impart into children is, in the 21st century with powerful technologies of abundance, the equivalent of the Jim Jones suicide cult in Guyana (where the phrase "drank the Kool-aide" comes from).
Related:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Jones
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=drink+the+kool-aid
"A reference to the 1978 cult mass-suicide in Jonestown, Guyana. Jim Jones, the leader of the group, convinced his followers to move to Jonestown. Late in the year he then ordered his flock to commit suicide by drinking grape-flavored Kool-Aid laced with potassium cyanide. In what is now commonly called "the Jonestown Massacre", 913 of the 1100 Jonestown residents drank the Kool-Aid and died. One lasting legacy of the Jonestown tragedy is the saying, “Don’t drink the Kool-Aid.” This has come to mean, "Don’t trust any group you find to be a little on the kooky side." or "Whatever they tell you, don't believe it too strongly". The phrase can also be used in the opposite sense to indicate that one has embraced a particular philosophy or perspective."
Of course, believers in scarcity ideology will probably say I'm the "Jim Jones' for advocating post-scarcity ideology and related ideas like a basic income, a gift economy, and so on. :-) Another irony in life. Who do you trust?
And people can go to great lengths to suppress alternative views of society:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potlatch
"At potlatch gatherings, a family or hereditary leader hosts guests in their family's house and holds a feast for their guests. The main purpose of the potlatch is the re-distribution and reciprocity of wealth. ... Potlatching was made illegal in Canada in 1885[8] and the United States in the late nineteenth century, largely at the urging of missionaries and government agents who considered it "a worse than useless custom" that was seen as wasteful, unproductive, and contrary to "civilized" values.[9]
The potlatch was seen as a key target in assimilation policies and agendas. Missionary William Duncan wrote in 1875 that the potlatch was “by far the most formidable of all obstacles in the way of Indians becoming Christians, or even civilized.”[10] Thus in 1885, the Indian Act was revised to include clauses banning the Potlatch and making it illegal to practice. The official legislation read,
“Every Indian or other person who engages in or assists in celebrating the Indian festival known as the "Potlatch" or the Indian dance known as the "Tamanawas" is guilty of a misdemeanor, and shall be liable to imprisonment for a term not more than six nor less than two months in a jail or other place of confinement; and, any Indian or other person who encourages, either directly or indirectly an Indian or Indians to get up such a festival or dance, or to celebrate the same, or who shall assist in the celebration of same is guilty of a like offence, and shall be liable to the same punishment.”"
Interesting. Not sure how it applies here except in very broad terms, but interesting.
That's all part of why I wrote: :-)
"Burdened by Bags of Sand"
http://www.pdfernhout.net/burdened-by-bags-of-sand.html
"This ironic story is about trying to talk the USA out of collective suicide stemming from scarcity fears and misunderstandings when the USA and the world otherwise has so much potential for abundance. Of course, there is also always cause for optimism in any case. "
--Paul Fernhout
That was a very long email, and I confess I didn't follow the links. But I do follow you better now.
Chris
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
====
The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those thinking in terms of scarcity.
--For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/postscarcity?hl=en.
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Abundance" group.
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Paul D. Fernhout
> On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 21:33, Paul D. Fernhout<
> pdfer...@kurtz-fernhout.com> wrote:
>> From:
>> http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
>> "Only a small and diminishing fraction of work serves any useful purpose
>> independent of the defense and reproduction of the work-system and its
>> political and legal appendages. Twenty years ago, Paul and Percival Goodman
>> estimated that just five percent of the work then being done -- presumably
>> the figure, if accurate, is lower now -- would satisfy our minimal needs for
>> food, clothing and shelter. Theirs was only an educated guess but the main
>> point is quite clear: directly or indirectly, most work serves the
>> unproductive purposes of commerce or social control. Right off the bat we
>> can liberate tens of millions of salesmen, soldiers, managers, cops,
>> stockbrokers, clergymen, bankers, lawyers, teachers, landlords, security
>> guards, ad-men and everyone who works for them. There is a snowball effect
>> since every time you idle some bigshot you liberate his flunkies and
>> underlings also. Thus the economy implodes."
>>
>
> "would satisfy our minimal needs for food, clothing and shelter" - I think
> most of us, (even me, and I have much lower demands than most people) hope
> for much more than "minimal needs for food, clothing and shelter".
Sure, but since everyone can have the basics with only a few percent of
the work currently done, then any scarcity of the basics is artificial
at this point. Basically, if everyone was willing to live like a US
graduate student, there is enough to go around and also everyone could
be a graduate student (maybe with a coupl hours a week of "required"
labor which could be made into play or a perk of a more responsible
position in society).
>> So, what is maybe more true, regarding your and my statements, is that we
>> live half-way towards a post-scarcity world already, and more and more the
>> problem is that we are building artificial scarcity into our systems
>> (including through schooling) to keep the old scarcity-based approaches
>> working.
>>
>
> Mostly agreed, I think.
>
> Re schooling, what I'd really like to see is very sound education, including
> economic literacy - which certainly needs to cover issues of scarcity and
> non-scarcity.
Sure, a broader education would be good, but, the whole compulsory
aspect of it is problematical no matter what is taught. The
authoritarian competition-promoting medium is the message. From:
http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt
"Teaching means different things in different places, but seven
lessons are universally taught Harlem to Hollywood Hills. They
constitute a national curriculum you pay more for in more ways than you
can imagine, so you might as well know what it is. You are at liberty,
of course, to regard these lessons any way you like, but believe me when
I say I intend no irony in this presentation. These are the things I
teach, these are the things you pay me to teach. Make of them what you
will: ..."
>> It's just ironically hilarious, from that perspective. Even if what is
>> being done with those robots is terribly, terribly sad and immoral, of
>> course. I bring up the humorous aspects since the arguments based on
>> practicality, economics, morality, security, and common sense have all
>> failed. All we've got left is humor as our last great hope to redirect the
>> brilliance of people in New York State to healthier ends.
>>
>> I would have said the same in WWII Nazi Germany. All those brilliant Nazi
>> Scientists (including the Jewish ones like Einstein who unlocked the secrets
>> of nuclear energy) could have made Germany a paradise in the 1940s. Instead,
>> Germany worked from a scarcity paradigm and the world (and most Germans)
>> suffered. I can hope the USA does not proceed further down that route, in
>> defiance of all common sense, but the social trend is worrisome.
>
> I would have seen this about "win-win" vs "zero-sum game" - that's certainly
> closely related to post-scarcity vs scarcity, but "post-scarcity" is a much
> bigger claim.
Good point. Still, if we try for win-win, then we can have abundance for
all with today's technology with very little required work.
Robotics technology is spreading everywhere.
In recent news:
"China's New Drones Raise Eyebrows "
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703374304575622350604500556.html
"Chinese military drones pose Western challenge: Partnerships with
foreign companies help disseminate UAV technology"
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/chinese-military-drones-pose-western-challenge-2010-11-19
This is spreading everywhere.
And:
http://www.plasticsnews.com/china/english/headlines2.html?id=1278958338
"In the wake of labor unrest, Chinese factories are adding automation to
control rising labor costs. It was bound to happen."
I can guess that in ten to twenty years, China is about to have the same
problems the USA has with massive unemployment as long as it continues
down the capitalistic route.
>> And people can go to great lengths to suppress alternative views of
>> society:
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potlatch
>> "At potlatch gatherings, a family or hereditary leader hosts guests in
>> their family's house and holds a feast for their guests. The main purpose of
>> the potlatch is the re-distribution and reciprocity of wealth. ...
>> Potlatching was made illegal in Canada in 1885[8] and the United States in
>> the late nineteenth century, largely at the urging of missionaries and
>> government agents who considered it "a worse than useless custom" that was
>> seen as wasteful, unproductive, and contrary to "civilized" values.[9]
>> The potlatch was seen as a key target in assimilation policies and
>> agendas. Missionary William Duncan wrote in 1875 that the potlatch was �by
>> far the most formidable of all obstacles in the way of Indians becoming
>> Christians, or even civilized.�[10] Thus in 1885, the Indian Act was revised
>> to include clauses banning the Potlatch and making it illegal to practice.
>> The official legislation read,
>> �Every Indian or other person who engages in or assists in celebrating
>> the Indian festival known as the "Potlatch" or the Indian dance known as the
>> "Tamanawas" is guilty of a misdemeanor, and shall be liable to imprisonment
>> for a term not more than six nor less than two months in a jail or other
>> place of confinement; and, any Indian or other person who encourages, either
>> directly or indirectly an Indian or Indians to get up such a festival or
>> dance, or to celebrate the same, or who shall assist in the celebration of
>> same is guilty of a like offence, and shall be liable to the same
>> punishment.�"
>
> Interesting. Not sure how it applies here except in very broad terms, but
> interesting.
My point is that the US government has in the past created and enforced
laws against gift giving, backed by calls from religious people that
gift giving is immoral and uncivilized. (Even though, as Richard
Stallman says, sharing is at the core of civilization, and as is said
here, a gift economy predates the barter economy:
"Gift Economy: Refuting the Market Logic"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jy4hFVcl6Vo )
Now that I think about that, how is that much different than what went
on with Napster and with copyright laws and ACTA and so on? And with
moralizing lessons being created for K-12 about "don't copy that floppy"
and so on about sharing music, about being about morally preserving the
incomes of "artists", even as (ripping off someone else's math who said
it first :-), "Courtney Love does the Math';
http://www.salon.com/technology/feature/2000/06/14/love
"The controversial singer takes on record label profits, Napster and
"sucka VCs." "
Sure, one can talk about some differences with giving people copies of
information you have that someone else created (usually based on other's
work as well), as well as talk about the crazy artificial scarcity
systems we've created about digital content and argue for keeping them
up, but ultimately, such laws probably feel the same as laws against
potlach -- repressing sharing.
Related on "trusted computing" to enforce copyright through
hardware-enforced DRM and who it is who is not being trusted:
http://www.lafkon.net/tc/
> That was a very long email, and I confess I didn't follow the links. But I
> do follow you better now.
Thanks for reading through it. :-)
From:
"An Interview with Wendell Berry: "Everything Worthy is Under Fire" "
http://www.counterpunch.org/healy11082010.html
"TPH: What has degraded this current public discourse to the level that
it is right now where it�s basically people on all fours screaming?
WB: I don�t think such intellectual good manners are taught in colleges
and universities any more for one thing. For another thing, politicians
have degraded it. The speeches of Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln
were painstaking, eloquent and clear. I just don�t see that in our
politicians any more. I�m saying that at the risk, since I�m an old man
now, of talking about �the good old days.�
TPH: Well, let�s go back to even older days - my summer reading program
was Ralph Waldo Emerson and he made his living by and large besides
writing essays by lecturing.
WB: Yes. Emerson was going around lecturing and he was making as much
sense as he could, as carefully as he could. You may disagree with him,
and I think that�s quite possible. Henry David Thoreau was doing the
same thing, and you can find grounds for disagreeing with him. If you
can find grounds to disagree, you should. But the point that you�re
making, and that I would second, is that those people were talking
carefully to people willing to sit still for an hour or so and listen. I
don�t think you can dismiss the possibility that they had that kind of
attention span because they were, for one thing, used to listening to
careful discourse and, for another thing, a lot of them were readers who
were capable of sitting down with a book and reading for 2 or 3 hours at
a time. Or maybe even until they finished."
--Paul Fernhout
Nathan Cravens
I have not seen War On Kids, only the preview. I highly recommend
alternatives like self-learning online, contacting those with
knowledge that may not be online, to study with them for the purpose
of putting that information online, a membership to a hackerspace, and
having a talk with a rep at the local community supported garden about
working, thus learning by doing, in exchange for food, things like
that.
We need the ability to learn from the web detailing what we use in our
lives: how it works, how to build or fix it, the material at what
amount, location tracking, and the positive or negative impacts, so in
if materials are unable to meet demand or limit the use of other
production categories, or degrade living standards in some way, while
ensuring equal right to use resources, production should halt while
avenues are made to seek material alternatives. Anything scarce in a
post-scarcity world, like an original painting by Van Gogh, would be
kept in a museum, as the technology of (1) personal general robotics,
(2) autonomous transportation, (3) mobile warehousing, (4) smaller,
faster, and more energy efficient computation, (5) user friendly,
visually expressive, real-time mapping and tracking software (what
Google Maps will become) to show on screen where the autonomous
vehicles, bots, and materials are located as they move about, just to
name a few areas, all of which are crucial elements to having a free
web of materials (post-scarcity), ensuring basic needs are adequately
met without a work requirement or money anywhere.
What other categories of infrastructure are needed to ensure a
post-scarcity world? That question needs to be the learning focus now.
The examples of tech below are proprietary, except for parts of the
ARMAR project, but demonstrate the best of technologies in these areas
I've seen thus far.
1) Personal General Robots : ARMAR-III
Some of the software is open source, so the door is cracked here.
ARMAR-III, the robot that learns via touch (w/ Video)
http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-armar-iii-robot-video.html
2) Autonomous Transport : EN-V
This vehicle is designed for people, but an open source version like
this could easily be used to transport stuff as well.
2010 General Motors EN-V Shanghai launch video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=km7JQgSphgM
GM's EN-V Concept Car Tackles Urbanization Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6EFJ3862Ys&feature=related
3) Mobile Warehousing : Kiva Systems
If general robotics where added to these types of systems, it would be
a fully automated warehouse. :)
Kiva Systems: The Rise of the Robots
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_47/b4204047877696.htm
'
The robots are squat contraptions that resemble fast-moving orange
tortoises. They scurry around warehouses and bring shelves of
clothing, electronics, car parts—whatever a retailer sells—to
specialized workspaces called packing stations. There, humans pick out
products, pack them into boxes, and push them onto trucks.
'
'
In Kiva-run warehouses the robots continuously reorganize inventory
based on order flow. For example, if there's an uptick in sales of
corduroy pants, the robots place those items closer to the workers.
Less popular merchandise gets relocated deeper into the facility.
'
Kiva Systems Warehouse Automation at Quiet Logistics
http://www.youtube.com/user/KivaDirector#p/a/u/0/3UxZDJ1HiPE
4). Mobile computing : Nanowire 'racetrack' memory
'Racetrack' memory could speed computing
http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2010/11/16/Racetrack-memory-could-speed-computing/UPI-98591289961237/
'
Swiss researchers say they've developed shock-proof "racetrack"
computer memory 100,000 times faster than current hard drives that
will consume less energy.
'
--
S.C.L.C.S.
Nathan Wilson Cravens
Interests: http://p2pfoundation.net/Nathan_Cravens
Microblog: http://twitter.com/nwcravens
Video: http://www.youtube.com/user/nwcravens