Change Is As Change Does

• In 1959 Sputnik was no ISS.
• In 2009 mechanosynthesis and electron beam freeform fabrication (EBF3) are no Star Trek Replicator.

Yet.

There were many people who may have talked a good game about the promise of space and telecommunications 50 years ago, while privately despising and even undermining the very people who Actually Made These Changes Happen. Doubt and fear-bound humans have never understood change on that scale, much less at that velocity. Sputnik and the space race didn't cause that. However, they do provide a vivid depiction of technological change.

It's not entirely the doubters' fault. It's in our monkey genetic code. Different kinds of change frighten different types of monkeys (humans) on various levels. Even when we vote for change, we often don't really mean it. Often, what we really mean is: can I get that in blue instead of red? None of us is entirely immune to this desire for change that's not change.

Today, as in 1959, many continue to talk a good game about the promise of accelerating change, but privately they do not believe it for one second. They want to be perceived as hip and knowledgeable, while hedging their bets in private company; this, in order to not appear foolish, later. Ironically, that's the very strategy that ultimately exposes the timidity and indecisiveness that they attempted to hide.

We want change that's not change. We like our scarcity thinking. It's what we've always known. It puts some nebulous "they" in charge of the economy; the economy in charge of our everyday reality; and our dispassionate circumstances thereby dictate our every waking decision. Safe. Stagnant.

Postscarcity means that I may have to rethink all of that. I might have to make new decisions, based upon better conclusions, derived from closer inspection of the current situation.

What if postscarcity is not a cute little theory, but the long predicted result of the past 200 years of industrial development and success, the past five thousand years of cultural evolution and uplift? What if postscarcity brings with it today all the attendant organizational and institutional challenges that one might reasonably expect as we witness the last gasps of a dilapidated, pre-industrial ideological infrastructure that worked so very well, for so very few, for so long?

This is what cultural metamorphoses feels like; a gut wrenching transmutation of the vestigial, collective assortment of expectations and norms that forged the comforting mythological consensus reality affectionately referred to as emergent industrial America.

Scarcity and myth were our center, but the center didn't hold.

It's as if the forecasted inversion of the Earth's magnetic poles has occurred. East is the new West.

It's a confusing time. An uncomfortable time that just feels somehow unfinished, not properly planned, incomplete.

Value Flows from Abundance

"Plentitude, not scarcity, governs the network economy." -- Kevin Kelly

"Dealing with this plentitude is critical because the totals of everything we manufacture in the world are only compounding." -- Kevin Kelly

So this too is all brand new and shocking news, right? Wrong. Try 1998.

More Self-Destructive Addictions: Scarcity Through Coercion

Benjamin Abbot comments on Accelerating Future:

So far, human society has a poor track with abundance. We don’t know what to do with it, so we typically invent scarcity through coercion. We’ve had the technology to provide material comfort to everyone on the planet for decades now. It hasn’t happened.

Abundance: The Journal of Post-Scarcity Studies

"My friends, it is time to establish Abundance as a field of study.

Our task is dauntingly difficult, as most of humanity has slumbered in a scarcity stupor for so long they cannot be easily awakened. The goal is ambitious: From 2009-2010 to lay out the central concepts and theoretical foundations of Abundance Studies.

Establishing a journal is a way to focus our intellectual efforts, build a "brand" and create a home for this new field." - Joseph Jackson

How can I possibly express sufficient professional appreciation and personal respect for the groundbreaking work of Joseph Jackson and all of those involved in this rigorous trailblazing academic work? Mere words or actions can never suffice. May this essential community of scholars forgive my own early participatory negligence, born only of one's own human limitations; and may the coming transition for our emergent global community and subsequent history itself render their due recompense to these incomparably prescient and bold leaders.

Paul Romer: Many Hong Kongs

Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 12:28:40 -0700
From: Stewart Brand
Subject: Many Hong Kongs (Paul Romer talk)
Repost from: [SALT] mailing list

This talk was the first public launch of an idea that Romer has been working on for two years.

His economic theory of history explains phenomena such as the constant improvement of the human standard of living by looking primarily at just two forms of innovative ideas: technology and rules.

Technologies rearrange materials with ingenious recipes and formulas. More people create more technologies, which in turn generates more people. In recent decades technology has enabled the "demographic transition" which lowers birthrates and raises income per person even higher as population levels off.

Rules structure the interactions between people. As population density increased, the idea of ownership became an important rule. A supporting rule for managing violations replaced the old idea of deadly vengeance with awarding damages instead: simply shifting value replaced destroying value. For the idea of open science, recognition replaced ownership as the main event, which means that whoever publishes first is most rewarded, and that accelerates science.

Rules can amplify or stifle technological progress. China was the world leader in inventing new technologies until about a thousand years ago, when centralized dynastic rules slowed innovation almost to a stop

.Romer notes that business keeps evolving as new companies introduce new rule sets. The good ideas are copied, and workers migrate from failing companies to the new and old ones where the new rules are working well.

The same goes for countries. Starting about 1970, China took some of the effective rules of Hong Kong (which was managed from afar by England) and set up four special economic zones along the coast operating as imitation Hong Kongs. They worked so well that China rolled out the scheme for the whole country, and its Gross Domestic Product took off. "Hong Kong was the most successful economic development program in history."

Romer suggests that we rethink sovereignty (respect borders, but maybe import administrative control); rethink citizenship (support residency, but maybe import voice in political affairs); and rethink scale (instead of focusing on nations, focus on cities---on city
states like Hong Kong and Singapore.)

Paul Romer proposes that developing countries could invite instant Hong Kongs---new cities in new locations run by experienced governments such as Canada or Finland. They would enrich the country where they are built as special economic zones while also rewarding the distant government that makes the investment of building the new city state and installing a set of fair and productive rules. Over time, as with Hong Kong, the new city is turned over to the host country.

The idea is getting some traction in the developing world. This summer Romer is going public with a Bridge Cities Institute website for further exploration and eventual application of the idea.

One miracle of cities is that they sometimes renew themselves brilliantly. This could be a whole new form of that.

-- Stewart Brand -- The Long Now Foundation -- Seminars & downloads at http://www.longnow.org/projects/seminars/

Missed Paul Romer in Realtime

Darn it. Missing this event Right Now ... in realtime. Maybe it will be on the Video Podcast. 

Star Trek: Postscarcity Economics for Dummies?

As far as I'm concerned, it's generally the chickenshit Status Quo Credibility Hedgers that hide behind the word "utopian," mostly because they are just too lazy or afraid to make the effort required to promote, provoke, and perpetuation progressive change. However, knowing that the world is as it is -- at least until we so-called utopians make it better for all of you; no thanks to your ankle biting -- it's worth noting small advances of popular awareness like this from Salon.com:

[I]n the long run, suggests Romer and as potentially demonstrated by "Star Trek," the benefit of expanding knowledge and technological change will be widely distributed prosperity: an end to scarcity, a future where the fundamental challenge of providing for our basic needs has been solved.

Click to read the rest of the story ...