Is an Economy of Leisure closer than we think?
I do feel like we are decades away from being able to create a leisure economy, and I think it's a necessity.
On the epoch of the information age, we have been doubling our ability to store, archive and create data. We do it on blogs, on social networks and as we browse each website, and as we search via google. We are creating data from satellites, from outside our solar system and we are creating data at home with phones, camcorders, games, and cameras.
As a software engineer I think that we are upon an age of personal manufacturing and automation like we can not even begin to imagine. With so much data, and so many opportunities to create, organize and discover what all of this data we are entering into an age that demands creativity. It won't be the means of 'work' or 'production' that enables great ideas to flourish, but how we share, discuss and appropriate resources to those ends.
We will demand creative solutions to existing problems rather than productivity. The means of creativity might be described as prolific, but not as something that can be measured in hours. I think going forwards as more jobs implore creative solutions, will will find that productive work will be taken over by systems that can be automated. Our network should start to fall, while our creative means will be required to increase.
Centuries ago economist and philosophers would talk of the leisure economy, but it was something that only the aristocrats could participate in, however, those that did, designed the 1st telescopes to explore the stars and the first microscopes to explore our cells. We had an age of enlightenment like never before in our history. Today we are on such a dawn, such an age where all of us should have the creative freedom to explore again, to investigate the vary nature of our world and to share in the tools to do it.
Software like Code Academy, Udemy, are putting classes online and disseminating knowledge like never before, while tools like 'Light-Table' will make it easier for anyone to understand how programing works. Did you ever wonder how someone might reconfigure a warp coil in 15 min on Star Trek? I can tell you that if they had to use the software debugging tools we have today, that it would always take hours. In the future we will have tools that as you work, as you create, as you think through a problem we will have smart agents that understand us and will test out millions of variants as part of that dialogue between us and our computer counterparts. Debugging and analytics of our designs will be a solve problem, we will measure everything in a simulation and we will be able to predict with ease the results of our creative effort.
The a new age of creativity and leisure is upon us. Those that wish to experience it first will find a way to limit their own 'productive' work, and will increase their creative means.
Efficiency and Independence, Mankind’s next giant leap forwards
It's July 4th, and it dawned on me today that so many of the things we grew up being futuristic actually depend on us getting greener. Look at any popular science, or popular mechanics issue from that last 50 years, and you'll see articles discussing leisure, space travel, or solving large problems like world hunger. If you look at it, system efficiency are the largest hold ups. As we approach more efficient processes, things will get cheaper and easier.
Greentech is not just what's needed to save us from a controversial end like, Climate Change, instead it's how we can make Mankinds next giant leap forwards.
When my great grand father was growing up he witnessed something amazing, he witnessed the moment when mankind learned how to fly. He saw us go from failed experiments to creating roadways, and a deep transportation network that could transport resources over great distances cheaply. He witnessed what it took for us to land on the moon. At the core of it all was a shift in engine power density, or rather the amount of mechanical power we could generate with less weight.
Our generation will witness fantastic changes in efficiency:
- Farming
- Water
- Computational
- Lighting
- Transportation
- Manufacturing
For us to approach many of the challenges that we need to travel into deep space, we will need to be masters at living on less. It's not about living with less, but that we might use less to do more. My hope is that we can look at green tech not as a way of scaling back, but as a way of reaching out.
Being green will allow us to leap farther, because we are weighed down less.
A clear and present danger
There is a growing danger in this country. We are granting centralized authority to commerce and communication. Today, we are not killing people to silence them, instead we bestow a digital death upon them. Digital silence and censorship is death nun the less to net citizens.
It's a scary time when you no longer can be assured to speak your mind. When what you say or do, could cost you your business and lively hood. It's a sad time when just talking about legal action with the US could grant you in major trouble, an act popularized by 9/11 and the patriot act. Today it seems like the government is using the fear of prosecution as a means to silence us by proxy of our digital services.
We need to have a constant, open and fair exchange of ideas between the people and our government. It is the freedom of speech that allows each of us to be seen as valued and heard.
Using centralized services like att, gmail, facebook, amazon, twitter and others have come under threat. The government has made it quite obvious that it's too easy to make threats at these large companies and have them compromise our constitutional rights. In the case of ATT the government admitted that it did so, and then gave them immunity. Think about that for a bit. They admitted to it being wrong, and then gave immunity to ATT for sharing data that would never have been allowed by our founding fathers.
It's clear that the government is loosing respect for us and our rights. We need to be a country of responsible and free people. We need to respect each other.
We built a government of the people and for the people to avoid revolution, and when it becomes US vs THEM, we are in danger of creating disparity and violence. We must be vigilant and true to ourselves, we must weather the storm of truth and we need to face the facts every now and then. We need to accept our short comings and work together to resolve conflict. Silencing the voices of others is unjust, and it will rally the battle cries of the unheard. The freedom of speech is not about an individuals right to speak, it's about a societies right to listen. We need to listen to those that want to be heard. I am not saying we need to agree, or to even act, but we do need to keep listening in the open as a united community.