Second Life | Commentary
Virtual Worlds Addiction
This observation follows from an article that made it's way into the daily Silicon Valley Newsletter about someone who had "burned out" from his addiction to playing World of Warcraft (WOW). I have discussed WOW and other Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) with others who have also noted the social stress brought about isolating themselves from their near "real world" friends, family and colleagues to join their distant partners in avatar form (who may sometimes be real world friends). One the one hand there is real learning accompanying the game playing while on the other there is a potential of addiction beyond a balance between real world work and virtual play. The likely future is that the virtual and the real worlds will converge for both work and play as my comments below to the SVN article show. For a sobering science fiction view of the possible convergence, I recommend reading at least the first of Tad Williams' paperback series Otherland (Vol. 1 - City of Golden Shadow). Silicon Valley Newsletter Article Comment |
Does it Take a Catastrophe?
Survive the Social Messes that are Shaping Your Future
Mankind is experiencing ever accelerating change and the dramatic effects of instant collaboration with others around the world. These phenomena are brought about by the exponential rates of change enabled by technology especially related to information technology that benefits from improvements in global communications connectivity and bandwidth, and the trajectory of Moore's Law related to cost efficient computing and technologies such as data storage. It is also clear that in our headlong rush for economic growth and bringing the well being of 6.5 billion people into standards of living established in the Developed Countries of the world that the resources of our planet are being stressed to the point of non-sustainability. Some note this as our squandering the services that our planet provides in terms of clean air, clean water, natural resources and a sustainable global environment like that which we enjoyed in the 20th Century.
Our living circumstances in just a short 100 to 200 years have changed from one of being able to consume natural resources with little concern for their dissipation to one in which consumption of raw materials to bring just China and India into the 21st Century is highlighting how our population and economic growth changes the rules of consumption in order to survive beyond our present century. Some have suggested that we need another Earth just to provide the necessary resources for the 2.5 billion people these two countries presently harbor. (Comment from the documentary "China") For those of us who were born before 1940 we will expect to see a four to five times increase in the global population - from about 2 billion around 1940 to over 9 billion around 2040. The numbers themselves are more important than the multiple because the freedoms we enjoyed on a planet of 2 billion humans are not the same as those than can be supported on a planet containing 9 billion humans. It is like growing up on an ocean liner and then having to live in a cluster of packed lifeboats. The rules for living, loving and leaving a legacy are definitely different and more constraining.
It is hard to pick up a major newspaper today and not find one or more articles related to some of the significant problems that mankind faces. The usual suspects include clean energy, global warming, environmental degradation, global pandemics, destructive geophysical events such as tsunamis and super volcanoes, aging populations, and economic migration. Lesser but still potentially significant concerns include increased intensity storms including tornados, hurricanes and typhoons, large meteor impact, the loss of many species, universal access to health care, effective education for a high-tech world, and even the preservations of seed grains in case of environmental disaster. It would be nice to say that we could afford to invest in solutions for all of these challenges, but the reality of life is that you can only prepare for so much. You can only afford so much insurance. There will always be the risk of being surprised by one of the possible mishaps that can befall us.
As a result the visions that often drive us in our youth become secondary as the demands of adult life channel our focus more on the near terms needs for food, shelter, education and the necessities of life for ourselves and our children. Our natural response is to acknowledge the possibilities of the misfortunes of life but to save our resources for those that become more than possibilities, those that essentially are in our face and can no longer be ignored. Given this fact of human nature and given our circumstance that there are always more hazards than we can reasonably protect ourselves against - how might we best deal with the challenges of the 21st Century and how might we recover that ability to imagine as in our youth, the possibilities for our future? These two questions are the catalysts to explore our situation and imagine our way forward well into the 21st Century.
The title of this project - Does it Take a Catastrophe? - is intended to capture the nature of our dilemma. Do we need some significant catastrophe, not devastating, but large enough for us to move beyond acknowledgement of the possibility to the necessity to allocate limited resources and take action? Historically, the answer has probably been "yes" more often than not. And there is the reality that no one catastrophe is likely to catalyze action in more than one or at most, a few of the many challenges facing us in the 21st Century.
The Project Brief
Part 1 of this web "wiki-book" project is to first highlights the major known challenges facing mankind in the 21st Century. These are sourced from a number of authors and organizations. Of course the list can be large, so some filtering by apparent priority is done to keep the list manageable. This is a somewhat subjective exercise that can be discussed and refined in the Wiki process.
Part 2 will focus on some tools for better finding acceptable solutions to the challenges for a majority of the stakeholders. This will include: 1) understanding the context of our circumstance in the 21st Century, 2) identifying relevant theories about how we might manage our way forward, 3) finding role models that suggest the more successful strategies, 4) picking the battles where we will use our limited natural and human resources, and 5) taking action. Note that these steps are repeated in reality because as the future unfolds, the feedback that is evident will shape our interpretation of what we should change to continue most effectively on our journey into the future.
Part 3 focuses on examples of applying the tools discussed in Part 2 to a few of the complex challenges (labeled ‘social messes” by Robert Horn) that face our national and global communities. The intent is to not advocate specific solutions but rather to focus on the tools and the processes that facilitate coming to acceptable solutions, solutions that inevitably involve compromises of deeply held beliefs and perhaps even principles. The idea is to broaden our understanding so that we better appreciate perspectives originating from alternative assumptions and experience, thus leading to better overall solutions. Challenges such as clean energy, preservation of the environment and health care are examples to be discussed. One assumption is that the individual is motivated by self-interest to make choices first based upon their essential needs as opposed to nice-to-have needs which can be subjugated to altruistic behaviors. The strategies for each of the 'social messes' is generally in the form of three steps: 1) mitigate the negative consequences with some agreed-upon tradeoff between costs, benefits and risks, 2) hedge the proposed solution by investing in potential solutions to recognized uncertainties of any solution which may generate unintended consequences, and 3 ) adapt to the realities that emerge and life goes forward. One good example is the impact of climate change and global warming. The uncertainties in the effectiveness of mitigation solution and the need to reduce green house gases rapidly, faster than economic change is likely, suggest that mankind will have to adapt to a warmer planet with rising seas, disappearing glaciers and generally a few degrees Celsius warmer temperatures. Islands are already suffering the encroachment of rising oceans and many countries that depend upon glaciers to feed their water supplies see a significant shortfall ahead. Crops will also have to be adapted to the changes ahead to continue to sustain a planet headed towards a population of 9 billion by mid-century.
Part 4 is where I speculate that based upon our "tool making" nature that has enabled us to advance and shape our environment we will evolve in directions only fantasized on in the science fiction of the 20th Century. Most of our tool making energy will be focused on managing our environment as best we can and adapting our infrastructure to meet the new constraints that come with a possibly warmer world. In addition, I speculate that a very small fraction of mankind will test five paths of evolution. First, there will be the main path based upon man's history of Darwinian evolution, untouched by our new human-enhancement "tools". The bulk of humanity in this century will be treading this path and depending upon our infrastructure changes to live on a changing planet. But there are other interesting possibilities emerging. Second, we have our new genetic manipulation skills that will first be used to "fix" our genetic defects and then to enhance desirable traits. Third, there is the adoption of electro-bio-mechanical attachments to our person. Again first to recover at least part of natural abilities that were lost due to disease or accidents and then to extend ourselves to become better because of our "implants". Fourth, in a world of constrained resources the importance of virtual worlds and personalized avatars that extend our identity will increase since it is more energy efficient as well as, eventually, a more extensible environment for expression of ideas and identity as well as bridging distance and fostering collaboration. Finally, we have our "intelligent" tools emerging as the power of computing continues to increase and we extend some human-capabilities onto machines in the form of today's simple robots and "expert systems" in the quest for usable artificial intelligence and utility bots that do routine tasks more efficiently than humans do.
All of these evolutionary paths have been the grist of science fiction but are likely to emerge as modest bits of reality as the 21st Century unfolds. It is important to note however, that these technologies will not diffuse rapidly to the billions of humanity. They will first be adopted by those who have both the need and social support and will be a bionic arm here, a genetic repair there, a specific robotic appliance, and my alter ego in just one of many virtual worlds. Each of these paths will be emphasized by way of a short fictional story that looks through the eyes of a protagonist experiencing this particular fork of human evolution.
Part 5 is a reflection on the first four parts. Is there some overall message or meaning in the results of this work? Since we appear to be growing to the limits of our planet where we can no longer be casual about our accommodation to its limits and its needs to remain as we have grown accustomed in our last few centuries of industrialized life, how will our responses discussed in Part 4 shape our definition of humanity? How might we use tools to continue to sustain ourselves? Of course, many science fiction authors have speculated on various futures for mankind. Do any of these look particularly more likely given our exponential evolution? These and similar questions will be addressed in this part.
Finally, I must respect the wisdom of crowds in contrast with the speculations of a single person. Many of us have found that there is often more wisdom in the commentaries to a post on the web than there is in the post itself. So, once the project is framed with my more detailed content for all five parts, it will be opened likely in the form of a Wiki for other interested and serious contributors to add their views. Hopefully, then it will become much more useful and representative of our community view of humanity's path into the future.