Finally got around to reading this! I've been behind! Great, great job.
Here's what you inspired me to write today: Some immediate questions: how does capitalism and it's tendency to concentrate power in certain cases (eg: military industrial complex) fit into your vision of decentralized everything? What is the organizing principle integrating the disparate parts? In the brain, we have the self-model as subjective experience -- maybe it is Google? Given so much of our individual identity, behavior and experience is set in the stone of reality, and given a future without limits, what could be our anchor?
and In all our asking about,
in all our defining of --
that network of responses -- we find
the macro consciousness
emerges from the search
engine as itself, intelligible,
living.
I like what you are doing. I also think there's much more room to explore here, especially when it comes to the unrestrained futurism on display. Like books worth of exploration. We, the neurons
demand of our esteemed institutions
respect! Respect
of the unrecorded, the unsearchable,
the offline and the encrypted
information, in other words known
as subconscious
information, as sacred
in the face of the ever steady march
towards a concept
of absolute consciousness
resembling
that of an utter explosion!
Love your poem Floatbox! It's beautiful! I especially enjoyed the lines about neurons demanding respect of their institutions. This essentially sums up the entire industrial period. Well, it's not quite clear to me how the economy will be restructured... but I am confident with a few variables: a) Everyone will have more disposable income (because of more energy and more decentralized government which will prevent massive wealth inequality) b) A more advanced internet + more mature internet culture + our generation with more wealth = a good future for crowd sourcing of all kinds In terms of the military - I don't see defence being necessary in the conventional sense. I see a trend towards more things we would call "terrorism" and less nation-state wars. This will require a major shift in how we organize our military and our defence systems in general. The concept of the Global Brain relies on an understanding of self-organizing principles. The mechanism of self-organization will likely be through a social media that is quite intimately connected to our physical reality. We will be able to know what agents in the system are reliable, dependable, credible, efficient, effective, etc. just from their social media history/profile/statistics/reputation which will all be immediately knowable. These are all great questions - I don't know if I have the best answers for them yet. It would probably make for a great hangout/discussion.how does capitalism and it's tendency to concentrate power in certain cases (eg: military industrial complex) fit into your vision of decentralized everything?
What is the organizing principle integrating the disparate parts?
I'm still toying around with the possibility for part 5 - my ideas for it changed considerably after discussing the deep future with people at the Global Brain Institute.