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ArtBarCamp (3/16/08)
A standalone event or co-located at BarCamps or SciBarCamps, ArtBarCamp would have an emphasis on doing art in workshop formats, experiencing different kinds of art and talking about art. TED and SciBarCamp include artists and the audience has an opportunity to experience art, but not create it. In an increasingly 3d data work, it is necessary for everyone to develop and use visual display skills, an integration of art and design (shaping and making our environment in ways without precedent in nature to serve our needs and give meaning to our lives).
Feedhavior (12/17/07)
Deciding actions or status updates exactly based on that or how they will turn up in the activity feed; behaving in ways that will look nice in the activity feed.
TextOops, NIMing
Accidentally IMing/texting the wrong person
PhantomCall; Deux ex Machina;
Cell phone not on lock-down dials someone unintentionally
NotYourFriend (NYF)
NonFriendSter; monster, NonSter, AlienSter, EnemyRequest, (NoI)DontKnowYouRequest,
When someone you don’t know wants to be your friend on a social network
InternationalDontKnowYouRequest, When someone you don’t know from a foreign country wants to be your friend on a social network
FlickrSpeak (10/15/06)
First Flickr
The first photo to arrive on Flickr from an event (especially a Web 2.0 event), usually seconds after the event starts; attendees snapping away in competition for the First Flickr.
Premature Aperturation or Pre-Flickr
Being overzealous in trying to get a First Flickr such that the event has not actually started yet.
Flickr ADD: Attention Distribution Dichotomy
Conflicts in distributing one's attention between being present to a physical world event and getting it recorded and uploaded to Flickr.
Over-flickring or Flickr Surfeit
The additional Flickr photos that only replicate information on previous photos of the same dog, event, place, etc. after the Great Asymptote of Usefulness has been reached.
Nomenclature cloud
Popularity crush
More people interested in a certain area than contributing to the area
Etiquette for VW chat and behavior
Commenting on someone’s blog to get yourself noticed (that blog commenters are either (small %) making relevant comments, friends/supporter (high) and fame-seekers (highest)
Repli-trash – MMMIs (mmmmmmeS!)
Massively multiple media instances
The duplication of audio and video media files all over the net; a movie clip uploaded to ten video sites, an audio file uploaded to ten podcast sites, etc. Free storage has led to ineffective usage - some high percentage of all content must be duplicates.
Web Trash (Tr4sh)
The great unwashed, untagged, un-meta'd information out on the web; text, audio, video, etc. that is dead even to the user; orphaned personal and corporate intranet pages and other data that is invisible to higher levels of indexing, identification, organization and use.
Authenticity Charlatanism Grabbing a URL, group name, tag, or other web content category without having the traditional world authenticity to do so, e.g.; the Prosper Harvard and Wharton MBA Lending Groups are brand leeching; they have nothing to do with real Harvard and Wharton MBAs.
OK TV
Validation to watch UGC (user-generated content) videos by dint of employment at a UGC video site.
Future Economy Roadmap
Future Economy: Roadmap 2050
Future Economy: Roadmap to 2050
Roadmap for the Future Economy of 2050
Future Economy: What will the economy be like in 2050?
Melanie Swan
Research Staff
MS Futures Group
March 24, 2008
m@melanieswan.com
Introduction to the Future Economy. 2
General Definition. 2
Phases of the Future Economy. 2
Utility vs. Public Goods Delivery Model 3
How could the Future Economy arise?. 3
Biotechnology. 4
Molecular Nanotechnology. 4
Artificial Intelligence. 4
Other Technologies. 5
Timeline of economic evolution. 5
Dynamics of the Future Economy. 5
Economies persist 6
Multi-currency society. 6
People keep “working”. 6
Offerings expand. 6
Leveling of the BOP. 6
Evolution of Economic Systems. 7
Roadmap to the future economy. 7
Key Forces Driving what the Future Economy will be like in 2050. 7
Participants and their level of participation. 7
Rate of technology innovation and adoption. 7
Scenario Matrix. 8
Participation dimension. 8
Technology innovation dimension. 8
Scenarios. 9
Conclusion. 9
The long-term future economy is generally held to be a post-scarcity economy (PSE), where substantially all human material needs are easily met at low cost or for free. The term post-scarcity economy is a bit of a misnomer since only the scarcity of material goods is likely to recede. The economy itself and scarcity as an economic dynamic will probably persist. Scarcity will be perceived in the finite resources of time, energy, processing power, reputation and other factors. The term future economy is used here to denote this concept of an economy.
Is a future economy without a post-scarcity economy for material goods possible? Yes, however it would be a status quo economy but not a future economy as defined above. The point of this analysis is to explore the potential transition to the post-scarcity economy whenever it occurs, not a status quo or incrementally changed economy.
The future economy will likely be realized in phases. Some material goods would be replaced or provided at near-zero cost at the outset, perhaps certain classes of items or goods like fuel, then more items such as food, then substantially all material goods. Fancier items like high-end designed objects and medical treatments would probably not be available in the earlier phases.
There are several component levels of the economy, material goods are just the first:
- Material goods
- Services
- Public services (police, fire, military, courts)
- Virtual goods and services
- Non-traditional goods and services
What will happen to services as material goods are increasingly provided at minimal cost? Initially services would be unchanged, but over time, nearly all current services could be replaced by technology-advanced near-zero cost alternatives. As Josh Hall suggests in the book Nanofuture, nanobots could provide daily hair-trimming and nano-foglets could create new hairstyles on demand. Robots are already available for lawn-mowing upkeep. Telemedicine could be used for medical diagnostics and treatments. Artificial Intelligences (AIs) may be consulted for tax and stock advice.
Eventually, public services such as police and fire protection could be provided by trusted AI networks and other mechanisms. Wireless sensor networks, the Internet of Things and cams may shift the nature of crime and policing activity. Future building materials may be impervious to fire and possibly self-reconstruct following earthquakes or other damage.
New virtual and other non-traditional services requiring intelligent attention from AIs or human minds, particularly in providing entertainment, learning and means of interesting and productive engagement, will probably be a growth area. The Future Economy will likely be transacted with multiple currencies, money and additional supplementary currencies such as time, attention, intention, reputation, ideas and effectiveness.
There are two main delivery models by which the Future Economy could be achieved: direct and indirect. The direct model is the utility model, consumers would pay for metered usage in the usual utility model known from electricity, gas, heating oil, water and telephone offerings. Payment could be in money or another resource, such as by community contract signature, agreeing to comply with local covenants which could include pro-active obligations (recycling, etc.). Mobile home campgrounds have this type of arrangement now, providing free water hookups as long as visitors abide with local rules.
The indirect model is the public goods model where material items or inputs would be so inexpensive and easy to provide that they would be ostensibly free and any cost to provide them would be borne by the community via tax revenues. For example, implicit in the “free” right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" in the United States is the cost of the court system to enforce these rights. Even if Artificial Intelligences were used to provide near-free material goods, they would still need to be maintained and upgraded, and probably operated with some sort of back-up system in case of failure which would entail some cost.
Pursuing direct or indirect models could engender an intense public policy debate. The utility model would seem to be a higher resolution solution since it both avoids the welfare moribundity problem of the public goods model and encourages more efficient usage as individuals are cognizant of their metered consumption. A utility model may also render people more literate about the issues when voting or making policy decisions.
Following the introduction and wide-spread adoption phases, it is quite possible that there would be little practical difference between the direct and indirect models, however, during adoption, the comfort and acceptance provided by traditional metaphors such as the utility concept can probably not be understated in the face of cultural reaction to dramatic technological change.
The Future Economy could arise as a series of ongoing incremental improvements in technology over time or from one or more dramatic increases in technological capability. The onset timeframe could be gradual or rapid. There are several fronts of dramatic technological advances underway that could trigger a move to the Future Economy:
Biotechnology is understanding and managing all human and non-human biological processes
- Biofuels - synthetic biofuels such as Craig Venter’s fourth generation fuels made by bacteria from C02 could have a substantial impact on global energy as early as 2009
- Bioremediation – synthetic biology has other promising applications in the form of bioremediation substances that could consume environmental and other waste including greenhouse gas emissions
- Bionourishment, biofood – synthetic biology and other bioengineering mechanisms may be used to create abundant inexpensive healthy food and water
- Human biotechnology – managing all human genomics, proteomics, and other biological processes for repair and enhancement could substantially improve human quality of life
Molecular nanotechnology is the spatial placing of atoms in 3d to build precise structures from the bottom up.
- A molecular assembler is a countertop-based home appliance supplied by water, element canisters and electricity. It would make items on demand such as food, clothing or other objects personally created or generated from designs found on the Internet (such as from Ponoko, the Open Architecture Network and other design-sharing sites). The advent of molecular synthesizer would revolutionize how goods are provided and trigger a bigger impact than the industrial revolution.
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Figure 1: Molecular Assembler, e-Drexler.com
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Artificial Intelligence has already proven more capable than humans in specific applications such as chess, checkers, fraud detection and oil exploration data analysis. The breath of areas where AI contributes is likely to grow and one day become the most efficient means of outsourcing a large variety of tasks.
- Data Collection and Analysis - Not only could AIs be used for many information economy data collection and analysis jobs, the capacity of what AIs could handle would be improving much faster than with humans
- Robotics – A notable recent advance is Boston Dynamic’s quadruped walker BigDog and improvements in the ROOMBA, PackBot, Robomow and DARPA Grand Challenge Winners are quietly accumulating
Huge chunks of the future economy could be offloaded to AIs freeing humans in new and unexpected ways.
Many other technologies including wireless sensor networks and currently unforeseen areas could have a big impact on human ability to understand and manage matter.
A few key factors can be tracked over time to understand what the future may be like. Generally speaking, in 1800, most people were working sixteen hours a day, had little or no leisure time and needed to spend the majority of their resources on survival and basic needs. Fast forward about 200 years to 2008 where, again in gross generalities, most people in the industrialized world work eight hours a day, have eight hours a day for commuting, leisure and other projects, have some percentage their resources (~25-50%) available for saving or luxury spending (expenditures beyond the most basic survival requirements).
So there has already been a dramatic cultural shift, a halving of the amount of time many people in the developed world are required to work to meet survival needs. What would the world be like with another halving of the normal work week, or quartering, or removal of work as an exigency?
The politician’s fear and the sociologist’s curiosity is how people will spend their non-work time. There is probably little surprise here, people will spend their non-work time as they do now, in some mix of active and passive leisure: relaxation, family and friends interaction, hobbies and alternative projects.
Absent biological editing (despite it being likely that this will occur simultaneously with other technological changes in the next forty years), human needs and behaviors, and therefore culture and established society, are not likely to change significantly from the way they have evolved over hundreds of thousands of years. A desire to own real estate, live in communities, reproduce, compete for status, learn new things and have interactions with people with shared interests will persist and keep society structured as it is now.
The key steps in the timeline for the Future Economy are the “utilitization” of one or more key areas such as fuel and food, meaning its extremely low cost abundant availability. Material goods needs are somewhat and then substantially replaced, services and public goods are replaced by new models and there has been an incremental transition to more “non-work” time for individuals who are increasingly focused on entertainment and productive engagement in other projects.
What is a closer understanding of how the world of the Future Economy might be? The key dynamics below could interlace into a situation that is not entirely different from the present.
Economy as a construct and a tool seems to continue to be useful. Economies are a good way to assign, create and exchange value, a mechanism for price discovery and an efficient means of resource allocation. The currencies and goods and services offerings may change but the mechanism for their transfer, the economy, seems likely to persist.
Society is already evolving to a multi-currency situation with money, status, reputation and other factors behaving as currencies. Many people optimize their actions around or at least with a heavy weighting towards reputation and status over money (academia, open-source communities, for example). Bhutan measures gross national happiness (GNH) as a more important metric than the traditional GDP. Other possible future currencies include additional/alternative monetary currencies, time, attention, intention, reputation, ideas and other wellness measures like happiness.
There seem to be more reasons that people will keep “working,” in the sense of being engaged in some sort of productive activity, rather than the converse. First, there will still be a number of costs: whatever low cost is required for material items, the cost to buy whatever goods and services are not yet provided at low-cost and the ability to purchase more refined tiers of the basic offerings. Second, people are likely to keep themselves at their traditional jobs if possible or engaged in productive activity for a variety of other reasons including to compete with each other and for mates, for security as the new system remains unproven, out of habit and a need for normalcy and emotional comfort in the face of significant change. In later stages of the transition to the future economy, social segmentation by activity could arise, ranging from passive entertainment, hobbies, learning, technology-creating, science pursuits and other areas.
Some goods may commoditize but overall product and service offerings would likely expand and become more targeted as people have more time and tools to focus on providing meaningful offerings in niche areas. Also, there will be more tiers offerings, the basic/free plus many levels of increasing refinement for the discerning customer. In an era of material abundance, consumption can be driven by values and interests rather than resource limits.
The Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP), the 4 billion people in emerging economies living on less than $2 per day will reach a sustainable level. This will not just equalize the BOP but will have multiplier effects that trickle up to the whole world. Immigration demand will increase as different areas of the industrialized and developing world apply technological advances heterogeneously.
It could be naïve to think that the two currently known economic systems, capitalism and socialism, would persist in the face of dramatic economic change in a world with more tiers of free, low-cost and expensive goods and services, a multiplicity of currencies and treasure chest of technology-driven market management tools. It is difficult to make specific predictions, but future economic systems may have some form of aggregated crowd preference assessment (bottom-up socialism could work in some cases), automatic market creation for any variety of economic or non-economic transactions and reliance on simulation.
Asking what the economy will be like in 2050 is like asking what the economy will be like next year or in ten years and adding more time and uncertainty. It is hard to make a linear forecast and estimate, even for next year. Evaluating a list of key driving forces and shaping the two most important into four quadrants of the possible future states of the world, a futurist technique called scenario planning or foresighting, can be helpful in assessing what the future economy will be like in 2050.
The many possible driving forces that may be shaping the future economy in 2050 can be distilled into two main areas:
Who are they, how diverse are they, what are their needs, perceptions, actions, imaginations and participation capabilities as goods and services providers and consumers
o what drives their behavior; e.g; including when AIs are participants
· Ability of individual agents to perceive and act upon opportunity and participate
· Aggregated perceptions and actions, diversity of views possible; transparency of actions, [aspect of market mechanisms?]
· Degree of inclusion (BOP), political models, resource distribution, resource allocation models (relates to ability/capacity to participate) Offering: what are the goods/services, their value
· Market mechanisms, infrastructure
o Presence/stability/trustability of mechanisms enabling markets; e.g.; escrow, payment, authentication, security, protocols, accessibility, recourse (contracts and enforceable legal regime)
o Is there a structure with trustable norms for being agents in the economy
· Many factors influence the rate of technology innovation and adoption including available funding for innovation, useful mechanisms for commercializing technology, generally stable political situations allowing focus on technology development, cultural, political, societal regulatory openness and public debate regarding technology issues and allowing for their implementation
· Catastrophic/existential risk management
· Rate of cultural evolution
Taking these two most important diving forces, level of participation and degree of technology innovation and adoption, a matrix of four possible scenarios of the future economy is drawn. The breadth of the matrix dimensions are designed to be a big enough canvas that all possible future scenarios are captured, a more comprehensive guide to thinking about the long-term and uncertain future than a point forecast for example.
Figure 2: Scenario Planning Matrix Dimensions
The participation dimension means how many people and organizations are participating and to what level. A high participation is when all possible agents are able to contribute and be a part of the economy. Appropriate market mechanisms are in place. There is an abundance of offerings. Low participation is when there is not full participation of all possible interested participants or constrained participation capability in participants (e.g.; would like to but don’t have education, startup resource inputs)
The key driver dimensions plotted in a matrix create four future scenarios: High Participation/High Innovation, High Participation/Low Innovation, Low Participation/Low Innovation and Low Participation/High Innovation.
Figure 3: Scenario Planning Matrix – Future States of the World
New Renaissance: High Participation/High Innovation
Web 2.0 World: High Participation/Low Innovation
Stagnation: Low Participation/Low Innovation
Police State: Low Participation/High Innovation
Low tech innovation and adoption (SLOW) vs. High (FAST)
Low Participation (lack of market mechanism infrastructure, offering paucity)
(available market mechanism infrastructure, offering abundance)
May shift between different states of the world as get there.
There are already steps in motion towards the future economy with the increasing progress in many fields of human understanding and manipulation of matter. It does not seem at all unlikely that a point will come where all human material needs can be met at very low cost. Any or multiple advances from biotechnology, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence and other areas could lead the effort.
The earlier stages for the transition to the future economy are likely to proceed in an orderly and not radically changed fashion. Later, considering the impact of radical human biological transformation, for example, editing out social status competition drive and contemplating post-biological reproduction are what could more profoundly change the structure of society. The technological advances enabling the future economy are radical technologies but may not as radically impact what it is to be human and the nature of human society.
Economies, scarcity, targets product and service offerings, participating agents and the rate of technology innovation is all likely to continue.
A smooth transition can best be achieved by/with…..from political, economic institutions, environmental, social, technological…
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