Are We On The Brink of Something Big...

[Lenina Rosenweg]

Reading tech and science magazines and blogs-Singularity Hub, PC World, Discovery, Wired, and others it seems like we may be on the brink of major technological and scientific breakthoughs and accomplishments which could have a liberating effect on humanity. Recently there have been things such as Google glasses (augmented reality), Google driver less cars,the Occulus Rift immersive VR, 3 D printing,the incremental but continuous breakthoughs in quantum computing, and rapid developments in human genome sequencing. Moore's Law is still holding with Intel putting out 14 nm chips and there is talk of 10 nm chips in a few years.There have been breakthoughs of sorts in DNA computing or at least storage-literally using a DNA molecule to store information.To use an expression I usually hate, "How cool is that?"

The Greek geneticist Dienekes chronicles genetic evidence of early human migrations, as does the Basque anarchist Maju and the obnoxious but interesting Discover blogger Razib Khan

http://dienekes.blogspot.com/

http://forwhattheywereweare.blogspot.com/

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/

It seems that we are on the brink of an explosive increase in technology and science within, at the least, the next 20-30 years. Being a Marxist, of course I know that this is only part of the equation, we need to change our mode of production as well.

Anyway, is this technical and scientific optimism basically hype-blogs and popular journals have a vested interest in keeping optimism high, especially in a bad economy, or is there truth to this?

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

I think advances in 3D printing definitely represent a possible avenue towards the abolition of work, although whether that would be allowed to happen is something else entirely. Peter Frase has written some interesting stuff for Jacobin along these lines. His anti-star trek and Four Futures pieces are enjoyable to read on that topic.

I'm less enthusiastic about augmented reality. I could see it growing into a very powerful resource for information sharing however just like the Radio, Television and Internet it seems more likely that it will just further entrench the spectacle of our society.

[Lynx]

Existing technology has had a liberating effect on humanity, and would have an even greater effect if capitalism were superseded.

[Kotze]

incremental but continuous breakthoughs

What are you doing to the English language here?

I found the last decade much more boring than the decade before that, the 10s can't be more boring than that.

Eh, VR. Maybe there is some video-game enthusiast out there somewhere who fell into a coma in 1993 and hasn't awakened since. I am sure such a person would be surprised by how uncommon VR stuff is. Why didn't VR goggles become the standard around the year 2000?

As for cars I don't have to steer myself, they already exist here in Europe, we call them buses :P

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

The technology market is centered around relatively useless consumer goods, so yeah the last few decades have produced derivative shit in different 'revolutionary' form factors for he most part. So PC -> Laptop -> Smaller Laptop -> Phones -> Tablet, and recently Tablets back into Laptops . But I would say some of the things in the OP do represent legitimate progress but primarily just the 3D printing imo. I don't trust the automated cars to be honest and I don't look forward to them being on the street.

[Mr. Natural]

Yes, there have been some technological developments, but as the OP eventually suggested, capitalist relations rule technology. How 'bout them predator drones, coming soon to a neighborhood near you!?

I am very negative as concerns developing technologies, as they will inevitably be used by capitalism to develop and defend The System.

However, there has indeed been a potentially revolutionary sea change in the development of science. Science, beginning with evolution and continuing through Einstein and the new physics, cosmology, cybernetics, chaos theory, and systems-complexity theory, has learned much about the organization of life--the organization we who must consciously organize our lives must learn.

The book to read for revolutionaries who wish to understand this science and learn to organize revolutionary processes is the theoretical physicist Fritjof Capra's Web of Life (1996). This is a groundbreaking, potentially revolutionary masterwork.

My red-green best

[Sea]

Yes, there have been some technological developments, but as the OP eventually suggested, capitalist relations rule technology. How 'bout them predator drones, coming soon to a neighborhood near you!?

Exactly. Strictly speaking, as far as revolutionary potential goes, the point isn't whether the technology exists or not nor is it if the tech is intended (it's not) to chance the mode of production, rather it's whether or not it is used to help change the mode of production.

I do doubt that such things as predator drones, or any tech of such invasiveness would be used except in times of severe crisis, though. The bourgeoisie knows very well that there must be a balance struck between the degree of enforcement and the degree of agitating intrusion. But again, things that seem like quantitative threats can have their qualitative nature effectively nullified (or vice-versa), as demonstrated by the prevalence of CCTV outside of museums, funny farms and other places where their use is justified, and relatively small amount of public disgust so as long as it's in the name of crime-fighting. Not that I'm advocating some liberal "right" to privacy, of course, I'm merely using the example of a society that otherwise expects their privacy to be respected.

Dangle a carrot in front of a mule to make him walk to exhaustion, and he may cease to go after carrots that he actually can catch.

[bcbm]

Existing technology has had a liberating effect on humanity, and would have an even greater effect if capitalism were superseded.

yeah like when automation got big and we all got to work less hours for more money.

oh wait

I do doubt that such things as predator drones, or any tech of such invasiveness would be used except in times of severe crisis, though. The bourgeoisie knows very well that there must be a balance struck between the degree of enforcement and the degree of agitating intrusion.

um have you seen what has been happening in the last decade? surveillance is more pervasive now than ever before and extended over almost every corner of the globe

[Lenina Rosenweg]

I fully agree that advances in technology can serve to make things much much worse as long as capitalism exists. I'm not a technological determinist and I fully understand the contradictions inherent in advancing technology while the means of production are oriented towards the enrichment of a few.I also have thought much about Marx's "tendency of the rate of profit to decline" as the organic composition of capital shifts.

What I tried to convey in the OP and what I'm intrigued by, is what seems to me as the imminence of a technological/scientific takeoff point which which could dramatically accelerate the abilities of humanity.Whether this will be actualized to the benefit of humanity is another matter. I am not a "Singulatarian" or a technological determinist. I am intrigued though by scientific or technological breakthroughs. Our understanding of the world and the universe will be that much greater and there will be that much more things we can do.Who will benefit by this, well that's up to the class struggle.

[Lynx]

Yep, we're still waiting. The Third World is still waiting for infrastructure we take for granted.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

yeah like when automation got big and we all got to work less hours for more money.

oh wait

I take it you missed the bit where Lynx said "if capitalism were superceded".

[bcbm]

I take it you missed the bit where Lynx said "if capitalism were superceded".

i take it you missed the point i was making, which was existing technology does not always have a 'liberating effect' on humanity. often the opposite

[mew]

i'm scared.

self-commodification and things.

[Sea]

um have you seen what has been happening in the last decade? surveillance is more pervasive now than ever before and extended over almost every corner of the globe

Did you even read the sentence I wrote immediately after that? Here it is in case you missed it:

But again, things that seem like quantitative threats can have their qualitative nature effectively nullified (or vice-versa), as demonstrated by the prevalence of CCTV outside of museums, funny farms and other places where their use is justified, and relatively small amount of public disgust so as long as it's in the name of crime-fighting.

[black magick hustla]

there are some technological advances that had obvious liberating effects, like the birth pill. however i agree that it is more complicated than the old positivist notion of technological advancement = something better.

however hatred for technology seems awfully boneheaded and limiting. i mean, i rather dream about technological utopias and the capacity of humanity to imagine new horizons and creating new things and i will gladly embrace the tradition of scifi and utopian writers in general, than those who would rather lower their heads and look at their feet. modifying hp lovecrafts racist quote and turning it humanist,

"The ape merely looks about his native forest to find a mate; the exalted man should lift his eyes to the worlds of space and consider his relation to infinity!"

[ckaihatsu]

there are some technological advances that had obvious liberating effects, like the birth pill.

This is always a valuable topic -- how technological developments have decisively improved the human condition.

(The attached diagram is for reference, to frame the question as to how the right-sided developments -- the sciences -- relate to the left-sided aspect, the human experience and the humanities.) (It does not indicate the left-right *political* spectrum. It is better thought-of as the humanities being central, with technological developments being added to the radial periphery, just as a person uses tools in outlying physical space.)


Humanities-Technology Chart 2.0

http://postimage.org/image/1d4ldatxg/

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

yeah like when automation got big and we all got to work less hours for more money.

oh wait



um have you seen what has been happening in the last decade? surveillance is more pervasive now than ever before and extended over almost every corner of the globe

You're not wrong, the proliferation of a lot of tech has meant that work just follows everyone home. People put their outlook accounts on their phone for ease of use and then feel responsible for answering the emails that come in at 10:30 at night. So in that case technology has successfully rolled back the 40 hour work week and even undermined the wage system as you're unlikely to get compensated for that time. More distressing is that it did all this without a fight.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

i take it you missed the point i was making, which was existing technology does not always have a 'liberating effect' on humanity. often the opposite

I'm not as certain as you seem to be. In a previous post you cite surveillance technology as an example of our liberty being restricted by technology, but maunderings about a "Panopticon society" do not change the fact that shit like CCTV actually does precisely fuck-all in terms of preventing people doing things.

Facial recognition? Hellooooooo false positives! Snooping on electronic communications? Well, putting aside the fact that someone who talks openly of illegalities is a disaster waiting to happen to anyone who wants to break the law and get away with with it, there is the non-trivial problem of dealing with the great gushing torrents of data that flow back and forth across the vast digital domain. The signal-to-noise ratio is ludicrously high, false positives abound (algorithms find it harder than people to distinguish between talking about terrorist acts and planning them), and of course this assumes that the "bad guys" haven't encrypted their messages or are not talking in some kind of code, or anything that would require more than mere surveillance from the counter-intelligence lot. Of all the billions of tape-hours of security footage recorded, how much of it ever actually gets seen by human eyes again after the initial recording? Then of course there is the amusingly common scenario of the £200 CCTV camera being foiled by a £5 hooded top.

Given the above, we have good reason to suspect that surveillance is part of the ruling classes' growing predilection for security theatre (see: Transport Security Administration AKA gropers in uniform), which provides the appearance of making people "more secure" but is in fact just a handy way of appearing to do something while one's corporate buddies cash in. I would not be surprised at all if it turns out there are significant amounts of fraud and even outright quackery in the "security" industry, obviously it's not an industry that is very open about their practices, but that same secrecy can be used to hide incompetence and bury overly-grandiose claims from those hawking (in)security systems.

[bcbm]

Did you even read the sentence I wrote immediately after that? Here it is in case you missed it:

i still thought your sentiment was that this isn't a serious concern or issue, and a little too trusting of the bosses to be nice sports about things

I'm not as certain as you seem to be. . . obviously it's not an industry that is very open about their practices, but that same secrecy can be used to hide incompetence and bury overly-grandiose claims from those hawking (in)security systems.

for one i don't think it is ever wise to underestimate your enemy. for two i think you raise good points but painting the picture that its all corrupt businesses peddling more or less worthless technologies is way off the mark, especially with the massive consolidation of information and security resources we've seen in the last decade. is it perfect or even close to being some nightmare totalitarian shit? probably not. but its obvious the direction it is moving towards and obvious that those in power find some use in these technologies beyond 'appearing to be doing something.' this shit does work and that is why there is a multimillion dollar industry behind it and why those in the security-intelligence apparatus rely on it.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

for one i don't think it is ever wise to underestimate your enemy.

That's a good point worth making, but I'm finding it increasingly difficult to discern the difference between sheer malice and outright stupidity in the actions of the ruling classes.

For example, although I can see that the presence and functioning of the TSA is useful in creating a climate of fear making some people more amenable to cooperation with "the authorities", among similar effects, I'm not entirely certain whether that is "worth it" in terms of the economic damage caused - I keep hearing a litany of horror stories from those American flyers and many non-Americans who have become subject to the tender mercies of the TSA. They report the experience as putting them off the idea of traveling through US airspace, to put it mildly.

Even if they have done the sums and have considered the economic impact worth it, their calculations could be incorrect or fail to take into account something that's less easily quantified.

for two i think you raise good points but painting the picture that its all corrupt businesses peddling more or less worthless technologies is way off the mark, especially with the massive consolidation of information and security resources we've seen in the last decade.

What I think is probably of more concern is not so much new technologies, but more efficient communication and cooperation between the various ruling class agencies. A major problem for large organisations of any kind is the left hand not knowing whatever the fuck the right hand is doing. Technology can help in this instance, but only if there are also workable protocols for intra-agency operations.

is it perfect or even close to being some nightmare totalitarian shit? probably not. but its obvious the direction it is moving towards and obvious that those in power find some use in these technologies beyond 'appearing to be doing something.' this shit does work and that is why there is a multimillion dollar industry behind it and why those in the security-intelligence apparatus rely on it.

Sure they find it useful, otherwise they would have stopped doing it a long time ago. But useful for what purpose? I don't think even the ruling classes themselves are totally sure.