The Zeitgeist

Paul Saffo predicts the end of the US as we know it “by the middle of this century.” In this short YouTube snippet he briefly explains why the rise of City States (think: “Singapore” but hopefully with civil liberties) that are independent socio-economic zones are the future. It’s an interesting outtake from a clearly longer talk — and its something that most technologists who are on the cutting edge have seen for a long time.

It looks like we’re hurtling full-tilt towards Neal Stephenson’s Diamond Age.

Cyberpunk as Prologue?

Briefly, The Diamond Age is a cyberpunk novel that postulates a near-future where the world economy no longer revolves around traditional power projection/socio-economic rivalries, or energy power-plays (i.e., Oil) because development of nano-technology and the ability to construct anything from the atoms up, very, very cheaply. The development of nanotech destabilized the world’s social orders and people coalesce around neo-tribal affiliations; in Stephenson’s text, these are not so much ethic or religious tribes, but economic ones. In other words, you can buy your way in to any group you want, and that group is contractually bound to support you and protect both your person and your interests. Those that belong to no tribe are in essence the lowest class of society; they subsist on the government dole.

In Stephenson’s story, the world has become a true “libertarian” playground — governments basically exist only to enforce contracts for the elites, for everyone else they provide basic sustenance via the nano-tech feed. Education and status grant the ability to utilize the finest that the technological world has to offer and is the hallmark of the elite. The most powerful of these “tribes” are the “neo-Victorians” who are a wealthy educated tech savvy elite who live prim and proper public lives which mask their general debauchery and inbreeding. (Sounds a lot like the “Gilded Age” of the late 19th century, no?)

What’s interesting to me in Saffo’s piece is how close are we really to the dissolution of Nation-states, and the rise of this “Diamond Age” scenario.. let’s see what’s going on…

Social organization:

• A very serious divide between the digital haves and have-nots
• Massive interest in self-selected “tribes” as evidenced by the rise of FaceBook, MySpace and other so-called Social Network; the super-rich have even their own elite social network where they play and trade goods and services
• Self-selected re-segregation of many communities around the world along religious/tribal and political boundaries; this is amplified even more in the whole Liberal/Progressive .vs. “Conservative” divide in the US.
• Retreat of government (especially in the US) from support of a common social contract (e.g. Repeal of Brown v. Board of Ed. 1954, and other decisions) and the moves towards limiting of government’s roles to strict enforcement of economic arrangements
• Dissolution of traditional workplaces and job insecurity due to global outsourcing forcing people into sustenance jobs, shrinking the middle class while empowering and rewarding the rich far beyond their actual contributions

Technologies:

• Cost of computing falling faster; disappearing onto other functionalities and getting harder to for governments to control
• More and more technologies becoming mobile and less tied to place or even centralized services
• Biotech and nanotech systems and services moving as fast or faster than computing technologies

Politics:

• States (in the US) opting for a “go it alone” approach defying the Federal government. Both Connecticut and California have decided to pursue cloning and other biotech initiatives specifically banned by the Bush administration.
• California’s Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, as noted in the Saffo video, refused a direct order from the President to send California National Guard troops to the US Mexico border to quell illegal immigration.
• Political interest groups adopting technology and using it as a very effective lever to shape public opinion and dis-intermediate traditional media

What’s going to happen next?

Well, empires never die all at once. We’ve already seen massive infusions of gov’t money trying to put the technology genies back into the bottle. All doomed to failure of course… however the intelligence of the information-worker class is just accelerating, and in an analog of Barlow’s law, considers government attempts to corral what people do with technology to be “censorship” and promptly routes around it by inventing new technologies: Freenet, and Tor for example for privacy; Public WiFi networks and soon Software Defined Radios for network access that will operate outside of licensed bands yet provide networking faster than current broadband connections,… and so on.

All of this will further weaken the centralizing power of governments. And, interestingly any attempt to stop the process by any government will just penalize the economy of that society by forcing the people who create work/products/innovations to more friendly environments. Of course that won’t stop them from trying. I fully expect all sorts of software/internet/bandwidth taxes to take hold in the next 5 years… which will just accelerate the process.

Any Way to Reverse Course?

In my thinking the only thing that can stop the implosion at this point is a general cleaning house at many levels of government (at least here in the US) with the imposition of “punctuated term limits” (you can get elected as often as the people will have you, but after 3 terms in the house or 2 terms in the senate you must have the same number of years out of gov’t with no lobbying, etc. – modify as appropriate and apply to every state legislature); once out for the specified time, you can see if you can get elected again, but when you come back to government you’ll have a lot more real-world experience which will make you a better lawmaker and ensures we get smarter people with more experience to draw on who are actually interested in the future of their societies rather than just either their own personal aggrandizement or the monetization of their positions of power, which is,for the most part,  all anyone one in congress does these days.