Are We Ready for Post Scarcity? Part 3

So technology has brought us a new world.  The new technologies developed in the 20th and 21st centuries have created a world with changes as drastic as the invention of agriculture over 10 millenia ago.  This new world is awe inspiring in its productive capabilities.  Like the soviets upon seeing American grocery stores or backyard pools, those of us from the old worlds look in disbelief on the abundance the highly automated modern world offers.  Will that disbelief be an awestruck hopeful wonderment, or a horrified cringing at the dystopian nightmare on display?

What becomes of the human being, the individual in the post-scarcity world?  While objectively unanswerable, for now, science fiction and current trends can give us an idea.  Star Trek provides the most hopeful vision, a humanity that devotes itself to self improvement and growth, bravely venturing out to explore the universe or just starting a small restaurant to share the joy of old family recipes (like Joseph Sisko from DS9).  People engage in their passions and become the greatest captains, scientists, or chefs that they can thanks to the freedom from desire and from the struggle for the basic necessities of life.  While this optimism is one of the reasons we love Star Trek it doesn't strike us as realistic.

On the other side of the spectrum we see the 'dystopian,' or broken utopia, genre of fiction.  The lack of scarcity in information and communication enabled by the internet has made government surveillance and monitoring so easy that the protections for citizens seem to come only from law these days.  And that can easily fail, as the victory of the ACLU against ongoing programs of the NSA showed.  The NSA's activities have many shouting that, "1984 was not an instruction manual."  A conversation from the video game Deus Ex indicates another interesting, and all to realistic, future:

JC Denton: Some people just don't understand the dangers of indiscriminate surveillance

Morpheus (an AI system who is 'a prototype for a larger system'): The need to observed and understood was once satisfied by God.  Now we can implement the same functionality with data-mining algorithms.

JC Denton: Electronic surveillance hardly inspires reverence.  Perhaps fear and obedience, but not reverence.

Huxley's Brave New World gives us one vision of a post scarcity world that's also terrifying.  People are raised from conception to death to fill a certain role, with much of the population raised to lack mental faculty and drive so that they can be contented with menial jobs.  Innovation is suppressed if the rulers decide it doesn't support the economy.  The population is essentially drugged into compliance and acceptance of the system that promotes nothing but the status quo ad infinitum.  At least everyone has a job, though.

These uncomfortable futures are just fiction, for now, but sadly they seem to strike us as truer to reality.  One of the consequences of post-scarcity living is that power can evaporate.  It can also become much more concentrated.  Abuses by law enforcement that were once prevented by their sheer infeasibility now need laws in place to protect citizens (the supreme court decision on GPS tracking is a good example of this to add to the NSA's recent abuses of power).  However when laws are needed the question inevitably arises of who will write them.

The genius of American government is the idea of the powerful individual, that every citizen has strength enough to make their voice resonate in the halls of power.  The idea has caught on so strongly that it's easy to forgot how revolutionary and unthinkable this idea would be only 500 or so years ago when monarchs were the norm, and for basically all of human history before that when the strong took what they wanted without regard for whether or not the man they were taking it from cared to give it up.

The same power of technology that can eliminate scarcity could also conceivably eliminate freedom.  Corporate influence over lawmakers could barely be necessary if companies like John Deere, Apple, and Comcast continue along their trajectories.  Imagine the power the tractor company would hold if they were able to dictate whether or not their machinery were allowed to be repaired or you would just have to buy a new one to continue sowing grain.  Consider the power of a company with similar power over electronics and personal computers.  All the innovation and creativity in the world doesn't mean a thing if a company controlling the means of distribution for new products and stories can decide to refuse their service.

How can we dilute these powers, without only strengthening centralized government power, and while still providing opportunity and daily bread for the individual?  I don't know.  I have some ideas, but truly I can't say what I'd really do if I were ruler of the world, or even just the US.  What I can say is that no one else really can either.  There's a dearth of ideas and solutions floating around out there because we're not addressing the issue.

The idea of a post-scarcity economy and society is so revolutionary that it doesn't sound real.  Talking about robotics and computing replacing human beings as the driving force in the economy sounds like science fiction, despite the fact that we continually experience it as reality.  The whole issue is so massive and so out there that it's not addressed seriously in politics, and rarely in thoughtful conversation.  If this continues we'll find ourselves in a world clinging to obsolete social mores and struggling to make them fit in the modern world.  We can't let that happen, so let's think about getting ready for post-scarcity.

On Campus

Four years after graduating with a degree in physics I'm returning to school.  I've always loved learning.  New facts, viewpoints, and skills are a thrill to acquire and I'm ecstatic about the opportunity I'm carving out together with my wife to collect a new bushel of these in the field of radiology.  I'm counting down the days until classes start, and have already read the first chapter or two in the books I've bought.  I'm excited to be back on the university campus.

The campus, in particular, has turned out to be something I didn't even know I had missed.  When I walked around the campus recently to fill out financial aid forms and speak with an academic counselor I took in with glee just being on a college campus.  I adored looking over artwork and artifacts displayed in hallways and lobbies of the health professions building.  I enjoyed the bustle of the student union and looked over message boards to see if any clubs, bands, or activities would catch my interest.

The college campus is a great reflection of the community made up by a college or university.  So much of community is ethereal these days that the physical presence felt on a college campus is refreshing.  Being 'at the office' has this too, but so few workspaces also include socialization, recreation, or relaxation spaces in them as well.  All is devoted to getting the job done, whereas on campus the goals of creating a positive culture and promoting student interaction also seem very present in the consideration of the buildings and landscapes.

I also love the diversity of a college campus.  Diversity often refers to a high degree of heterogeneity in skin colors, sexualities, and other traits with which the human race sadly divides ourselves into factions, but that's not to what I'm referring to here.  I love that the art building is on the other side of the student union from the business school.  I like knowing the computer science building is across the quad from the mineral museum.  I love the diversity of opinion, of interest, of passion, of expertise, or of study represented by having buildings devoted to so many varied pursuits together in one place.

The university experience and the role of post-secondary education is changing rapidly in our society.  Online classes are quickly gaining traction and more and more people are realizing that the bachelor's degree often doesn't carry the same value it once did and may not be worth the price tag it often carries.  I support this and believe that post-secondary education and career training  needs to be more readily available in an assortment of forms (and that high schools need to teach more career training and less academic fluff seemingly only to fill the time until you finally go to college and learn something useful...hopefully, but all of that is a different discussion entirely).  That said, I hope there will always be a place for the grand college campus that seems to include a park or two, community message boards and meeting houses, and building after building devoted to disparate intellectual pursuits.

Ownership in the Modern Age

We all subscribe to several services today.  Streaming video, e-books, music, and probably any other media you can think of come from a third party.  These providers are replacing the traditional physical media which end users purchased to enjoy a song or show.  I personally don't really care to buy DVDs anymore, even though I used to enjoy buying them to watch great TV shows or movies.  This prompts an interesting question; what do I own with these services?

The answer is, nothing.  This is very clear in the legal documentation of these service providers.  They own the content, we own a very limited license to rent it on an ongoing basis.  I don't own anything, and oddly I seem to be OK with this.  Is the very concept of ownership changing, possibly for the first time in human history?

Ownership was very straightforward for a long time.  An object, if I owned it, was mine and this meant only I could access and use it without having to ask permission.  This was all well and good when what we traded was objects, which was true for pretty much all of human history up until the last 50 years or so.  Information couldn't be encoded usefully into anything without directly changing the structure of that object in such a way that they were inextricably connected (writing something down changed a slab of stone to an engraved slab of stone, or paper into an ink stained paper, for instance).  Reproducing a piece of information was even harder.  In the modern age the exact opposite is true, computers take in gigabytes of information effortlessly with only minor changes to how the computer is assembled (magnetic sectors or electric cells in hard disks or solid state memory changing slightly) and this can be changed again with a simple word of instruction.  Reproducing this information to copy somewhere else or play back for our enjoyment is trivial.

What will this mean to our concept of ownership?  Especially as even the 'personal computer' gives way more and more to cell phones and tablets that store much of their media 'in the cloud,' and even the defining characteristic of whether or not it was something we had physical possession of fades away?  I'm most interested in what the rising generation will come to understand about ownership.

Traditional ownership will still apply to clothes (at least until we install the self adjusting nano-fiber network in our bodies that can become any outfit possible that's been programmed in) I guess, but books, movies, media - which is so important in shaping our culture - will start to be something that we don't own ourselves, but is doled out to us by 'service providers.'  Even the devices we view this on may continue to fall into trends of two year, yearly, or more frequent upgrades.  I would be more sanguine about these possibilities if our copyright law were more reasonable and our relationship with convenience less like an addiction.  The phrase, "It's not on netflix" already seems to be finding it's way into culture as synonymous with, "I can't get access to it."

A common piece of wisdom is that individuals are, or at least can be, intelligent but large groups are almost always lacking in reason.  This may be part of the genius of the founding fathers framing of America as a country where the individual citizen has power and the government at large is limited.  I think this is why I don't want to see traditional ownership fade away.  The less we can possess media, the less we're able to work with, exploit, and use it for our own means and the more we are at the mercy of corporations, governments, and other large groups- that may be lacking in reason - to engage with the media that informs our life and culture.

Why I Like to Play Pretend

I've always loved to play pretend.  As a kid the most entertaining thing I could do was imagine myself as someone different in a vastly different world.  My parents have said that in my early years a teacher once, in reference to my independent imaginings of intrigue, said something like, "I was a little worried that Devon wasn't getting along with the other kids, but then I realized he just doesn't find playing with them that interesting."  And why would I have?  What possible competition could attempts to direct the motion of a ball around a field hold to the vivid flights of fancy surging through my mind?

I still like playing pretend, but with age have changed the ways I do so.  There's writing, which is fun in it's creativity but requires quite a bit of commitment to craft something really satisfying.  It's certainly not on par with running back and forth during recess freely directing the actions of whatever amazing character I had created.  Reading is even more restrictive, and movies and television more so still.  The best way I've found to recapture that adventurous imagining of childhood, and even build on it in some ways, is through tabletop role-playing games.

Tabletop RPGs aren't known for being creative and fun, except by those who've played them.  Their reputation has sadly been horribly slandered almost since their inception. The most popular tabletop RPG, Dungeons and Dragons, was criticized in early years, like many works of fantasy such as the Harry Potter series, as being something which promoted satanism and witchcraft.  This had the unfortunate effect of causing the game's creator, Gary Gygax, to feel he shouldn't admit to being a Christian.  As he told a convention of gamers in 2007, "I was reticent to say the fact, you know, that I was a Christian, mainly because I was afraid that I would give Christianity a bad name because I did D&D. So I did, I kept my mouth shut."

The problem wasn't helped by a mother who, in my-admittedly biased by persecution and somewhat uncharitable given the involved tragedy-opinion, rather than accept the sad truths of mental illness which caused her son to commit suicide decided to crusade against Dungeons as Dragons as the evil which stole her son away from her.  The result has been a society that largely feared the game (it even seemed a little creepy to me as a youngster after I got an email, probably an ad or invitation to an online game, that talked about how to hold 'death matches' and my father mentioned it sounded like "A D&D thing," which was reasonable but devoid of the now known innocuousness of pretend in those early days of both the game and the internet), and pushed only those sufficiently unbothered by the tut-tuts of society at large to be able to enjoy the game.  This turned out to be the "nerds," and has left Dungeons and Dragons in particular and tabletop role playing in general with a stigma of silly foolishness engaged in only by those who never go outside or shower that has persisted to this day.

All this is a shame, really, because the games are quite fun and have a lot to offer.  Tabletop RPGs provide a system for cooperative story telling.  They can be similar in some ways to the games of 'pass the story' one might have played around campfires or in grade school writing classes, though a major difference is that one person takes primary control of the plot and everyone else directs the actions and dialogue of the main characters.  The game rules help with this by creating a system for directing action, resolving conflicts, and defining a character's attributes.  If you want to play a character that's particularly strong, but kinda dumb you can put this in his ability scores.  The old playground fights, of, "I shot you." "Nuh, uh, I dodged it." are resolved with attack modifiers, armor classes, and dodge skill rolls.  Players give respectful smiles and cheers to one another as they roll high numbers on dice of varied shapes, meaning that their characters have landed heavy blows on fearsome foes.

That camaraderie is another great thing about gaming.  A group of friends being creative and enjoying one another's company.  They pepper the story with details, often humorous as it's always fun to joke with friends.  Friends come together in the game world to take on great evils and seek untold riches or amazing power, and they come together in our world to have fun and tell a good story.

I wish the hobby didn't have the baggage it does, because I think it adds a lot of value to one's life and could be used for many wonderful things, but it doesn't seem like I'll ever be able to get together that church group of gaming friends where an ecclesiastical leader guides the adventures of a group of holy warriors fighting the forces of evil and striving to live the principles of their faith, the professional group of executives playing characters who are always striving to gain treasure and power but must also protect the innocent and the weak to avoid alignment penalties, nor the student group adventuring to find the secrets of the universe.  Games are a painfully under-utilized tool to motivate companionship, self-improvement, and promoting good causes.  Tabletop RPGs are another unfortunate example of this.  I'll still have fun playing though, whenever I can find a few friends that also enjoy playing games and being creative together.

What to write when nothing comes to mind

So I like to post at least once a month, and here I am sitting on about an hour left to August and I still haven't written a thing.  There's lots to write about, I can always launch into another mathematics and society rant, or if I'm watching my blood pressure something about computer science and beauty has been ruminating lately.  A friend put forth the interesting idea lately that computer literacy is the new literacy, and I'd like to write on that but felt oddly compelled to do some research before doing anything with that idea.  I'm engaged now and should have lots of ideas and feelings about relationships, love, and weddings.  I've even thought about doing some amateur tech journalism, but the most interesting thing I can think of now the big moves Microsoft is making, and since I'm currently working for them I'd prefer not to get into NDA territory, even though I probably wouldn't say anything that hasn't yet been said on most other tech news outlets.

So, plenty of interesting things to write, but just can't bring myself to put the words down.  Why?  Well, writing is hard.  It takes a mental effort to organize ideas and thought, and even more if an idea isn't quite yet fully formed and needs additional thought to be complete.  I got home tonight, ate some snacks for dinner while putting on some TV shows I wanted to catch up with, and then started thinking about writing.  But I wasn't really thinking about writing, I was thinking about the show I was watching, and I'm only finally banging this out by pausing the show and focusing on writing.

My mom is a six time published (and that's just the novels) author, so I've picked up a thing or two about writing.  One thing about it, which I suspect extends to any art in general, is that the most important thing is to sit down and do it.  While the romantic thought of waiting for inspiration to strike and then whipping up a masterpiece overnight in a frenzy of artistic furor may be appealing, it's just not reflective of reality.  The Sistine Chapel ceiling was painted because the pope offered a large commission, and Michelangelo signed it "Michelangelo, a sculptor" to express his feelings that he didn't consider himself a painter and would rather be working on his statue of Moses.  The Sistine ceiling is well known as one of the greatest pieces of art in the world, and I've always liked the thought that Michelangelo didn't even want to paint it.  I think we can learn a lot about how we can do great work even when we really don't want to do it.

Torn between two loves

Today is the release of Mass Effect 3. Like most major modern video games it costs $60 new, or $80 for the collector's edition. I haven't purchased it, though I absolutely love the series and can't wait to play the latest installment. My mom pointed out earlier that I do have the money. I still have some money in my bank account and credit on my credit card. I could buy it, but I'm saving my money for something else. Specifically, I'm saving for someone else.

I started dating a long time friend on new years day. The near 400 miles separating us are frustrating. We'd like to be together, but she lives in Salt Lake city and I'm in Denver. There's not much tying me down here, though. I'm planning to move once I have enough money to pay my student loans and other basic costs of living until I can find a job (which, after seeking full time work for about a year I worry will be quite a while).

So, I find myself torn between two loves. Many reading this might find my love for a video game frivolous or even downright foolish, so let me defend my already scorned love. The Mass Effect series continues developer Bioware's traditional of strong, character driven, intelligent writing. As discussed here, the game has raised questions about the nature of life and what it is that makes us who we are. It's been called the Star Trek of our generation, and I dare say that's correct. It's an original and epic space opera, in an unfortunate age where well written fiction, let alone science fiction, often loses out to the latest iteration of milf island, some dude dates fifteen women, or watch the train wrecks when it comes to entertainment. Mass effect is one of the games elevating the medium of gaming, a hobby I feel is at least capable of being very uplifting and intellectually engaging but is so often maligned (and not always unfairly) as being a waste of time at best or a mind distorting influence of evil at worst. Mass Effect enriches things I enjoy (science fiction and video games) by adding to worthwhile examples, and its success is a proof to those who finance entertainment that intelligent video games and well written sci-fi make money.

My love for my girlfriend is somewhat less easy to explain, but many more have written about love of a woman than love of a video game so I probably don't need to belabor that point. I've chosen to save what I can to hasten a long term reunion of me and my beloved. I can only hope that I'll be able to earn enough to actually go through with the move, and work hard enough to make it worth it when I get there.