I'm in the midst of parsing through some of the articles on www.edge.org (a collection of responses to general questions, posed to some of the greatest thinkers of our age), and I came across this one. It may be too long a read for NS, but try, its not technical, theres lots of metaphors, and the conclusions are somewhat startling. This is in response to the question "What do you think is the most dangerous idea?"
Anty Gravity:
Chaos Theory in an all too practical sense
Dangerous
Ideas? It is dangerous ideas you want? From this group of people
? That in itself ought to be nominated as one of the more dangerous
ideas...
Danger
is ubiquitous. If recent years have shown us anything, it should
be that "very simple small events can cause real havoc in
our society". A few hooded youths play cat and mouse with
the police: bang, thousands of burned cars put all of Paris into
a complete state of paralysis, mandatory curfew and the entire
system in shock and horror.
My
first thought was: what if any really smart set of people
really set their mind to it...how utterly and scarily trivial
it would be, to disrupt the very fabric of life, to bring society
to a dead stop?
The
relative innocence and stable period of the last 50 years may
spiral into a nearly inevitable exposure to real chaos. What
if it isn't haphazard testosterone driven riots, where they cannibalize
their own neighborhood, much like in L.A. in the 80s, but someone
with real insight behind that criminal energy ? What if Slashdotters
start musing aloud about "Gee, the L.A. water supply is
rather simplistic, isn't it?" An Open Source crime web,
a Wiki for real WTO opposition ? Hacking L.A. may be a lot easier
than hacking IE.
That is basic banter over a beer in a bar, I don't even want to
actually speculate what a serious set of brainiacs could conjure
up. And I refuse to even give it any more print space here. However,
the danger of such sad memes is what requires our attention!
In
fact, I will broaden the specter still: its not violent crime
and global terrorism I worry about, as much as the basic underpinning
of our entire civilization coming apart, as such. No acts of
malevolence, no horrible plans by evil dark forces, neither the
singular "Bond Nemesis" kind, nor masses of religious
fanatics. None of that needed... It is the glue that
is coming apart to topple this tower. And no, I am not referring
to "spiraling trillions of debt".
No,
what I am referring to is a slow process I observed over the
last 30 years, ever since in my teens I wondered "How would
this world work, if everyone were like me ?" and realized:
it wouldn't !
It was amazing to me that there were just enough people to make
just enough shoes so that everyone can avoid walking barefoot.
That there are people volunteering to spend day-in, day-out, being
dentists, and lawyers and salesmen. Almost any "jobjob" I
look at, I have the most sincere admiration for the tenacity of
the people...how do they do it? It would drive me nuts
after hours, let alone years...Who makes those shoes ?
That
was the wondrous introspection in adolescent phases, searching
for a place in the jigsaw puzzle.
But
in recent years, the haunting question has come back to me: "How
the hell does this world function at all? And does it,
really ? I feel an alienation zapping through the channels, I
can't find myself connecting with those groups of humanoids trouncing
around MTV. Especially the glimpses of "real life":
on daytime-courtroom-dramas or just looking at faces in the street.
On every scale, the closer I observe it, the more the creeping
realization haunts me: individuals, families, groups, neighborhoods,
cities, states, countries... they all just barely hang in there,
between debt and dysfunction. The whole planet looks like Any
town with mini malls cutting up the landscape and just down the
road it's all white trash with rusty car wrecks in the back yard.
A huge Groucho Club I don't want to be a member of.
But
it does go further: what is particularly disturbing to see is
this desperate search for Individualism that has rampantly increased
in the last decade or so.
Everyone
suddenly needs to be so special, be utterly unique.
So unique that they race off like lemmings to get 'even more
individual' tattoos, branded cattle, with branded chains in every
mall, converging on a blanded sameness world wide, but every
rap singer with ever more gold chains in ever longer stretched
limos is singing the tune: Don't be a loser! Don't be normal!
The desperation with which millions of youngsters try to be that
one-in-a-million professional ball player may have been just
a "sad but silly factoid" for a long time.
But
now the tables are turning: the anthill is relying on the behaviour
of the ants to function properly. And that implies: the social
behaviour, the role playing, taking defined tasks and follow
them through.
What
if each ant suddenly wants to be the queen? What if soldiering
and nest building and cleaning chores is just not cool enough
any more?
If
AntTV shows them every day nothing but un-Ant behaviour...?
In
my youth we were whining about what to do and how to do it, but
in the end,all of my friends did become "normal" humans,
orthopedics and lawyers, social workers, teachers... There were
always a few that lived on the edges of normality, like ending
up as television celebrities, but on the whole: they were perfectly
reasonable ants. 1.8 children, 2.7 cars, 3.3 TVs...
Now:
I am no longer confident that line will continue. If every honeymoon
is now booked in Bali on a Visa card, and every kid in Borneo
wants to play ball in NYC... can the network of society be pliable
enough to accommodate total upheaval? And what if 2 billion Chinese
and Indians raise a generation of kids staring 6+ hours a day
into All American values they can never attain... being taunted
with Hollywood movies of heroic acts and pathetic dysfunctionality,
coupled with ever increasing violence and disdain for ethics
or morals.
Seeing
scenes of desperate youths in South American slums watching "Kill
Bill" makes me think: this is just oxygen thrown into the
fire... The ants will not play along much longer. The anthill
will not survive if even a small fraction of the system is falling
apart.
Couple
that inane drive for "Super Individualism" (and the
Quest for Coolness by an ever increasing group destined to fail
miserably) with the scarily simple realization of how effective
even a small set of desperate people can become, then add the
obvious penchant for religious fanaticism and you have an ugly
picture of the long term future.
So
many curves that grow upwards towards limits, so many statistics
that show increases and no way to turn around.
Many
in this forum may speculate about infinite life spans, changing
the speed of light, finding ways to decode consciousness, wormholes
to other dimensions and finding grand unified theories.
To
make it clear: I applaud that! "It does take all kinds".
Diversity is indeed one of the definitions of the meaning of life.
Edge IS Applied Diversity.
Those are viable and necessary questions for mankind as a whole,
however: I believe we need to clean house, re-evaluate, redefine
the priorities.
While
we look at the horizon here in these pages, it is the very ground
beneath us, that may be crumbling. The ant hill could really
go to ant hell! Next year, let's ask for good ideas.
Really practical, serious, good ideas. "The most
immediate positive global impact of any kind that can be achieved
within one year?". How to envision Internet3 and Web3 as
a real platform for a global brainstorming with 6+ billion potential
participants.
This
was not meant to sound like doom and gloom naysaying. I
see myself as a sincere optimist, but one who believes in realistic
pessimism as a useful tool to initiate change.
Basically, whats stopping chaos? I cannot help but to think of the recent movie "The Dark Knight", but somehow the answer the movie gave seems half-assed. 19 hijackers changed the priorities of the entire world and sparked two wars. It just takes a few people, out of the billions of normal people enjoying everyday life, to create something that will effect these billions. Whats stopping our society from collapsing, and might we need to consider ways to restructure it so its not as vulnerable?
Anty Gravity:
Chaos Theory in an all too practical sense
Dangerous
Ideas? It is dangerous ideas you want? From this group of people
? That in itself ought to be nominated as one of the more dangerous
ideas...
Danger
is ubiquitous. If recent years have shown us anything, it should
be that "very simple small events can cause real havoc in
our society". A few hooded youths play cat and mouse with
the police: bang, thousands of burned cars put all of Paris into
a complete state of paralysis, mandatory curfew and the entire
system in shock and horror.
My
first thought was: what if any really smart set of people
really set their mind to it...how utterly and scarily trivial
it would be, to disrupt the very fabric of life, to bring society
to a dead stop?
The
relative innocence and stable period of the last 50 years may
spiral into a nearly inevitable exposure to real chaos. What
if it isn't haphazard testosterone driven riots, where they cannibalize
their own neighborhood, much like in L.A. in the 80s, but someone
with real insight behind that criminal energy ? What if Slashdotters
start musing aloud about "Gee, the L.A. water supply is
rather simplistic, isn't it?" An Open Source crime web,
a Wiki for real WTO opposition ? Hacking L.A. may be a lot easier
than hacking IE.
That is basic banter over a beer in a bar, I don't even want to
actually speculate what a serious set of brainiacs could conjure
up. And I refuse to even give it any more print space here. However,
the danger of such sad memes is what requires our attention!
In
fact, I will broaden the specter still: its not violent crime
and global terrorism I worry about, as much as the basic underpinning
of our entire civilization coming apart, as such. No acts of
malevolence, no horrible plans by evil dark forces, neither the
singular "Bond Nemesis" kind, nor masses of religious
fanatics. None of that needed... It is the glue that
is coming apart to topple this tower. And no, I am not referring
to "spiraling trillions of debt".
No,
what I am referring to is a slow process I observed over the
last 30 years, ever since in my teens I wondered "How would
this world work, if everyone were like me ?" and realized:
it wouldn't !
It was amazing to me that there were just enough people to make
just enough shoes so that everyone can avoid walking barefoot.
That there are people volunteering to spend day-in, day-out, being
dentists, and lawyers and salesmen. Almost any "jobjob" I
look at, I have the most sincere admiration for the tenacity of
the people...how do they do it? It would drive me nuts
after hours, let alone years...Who makes those shoes ?
That
was the wondrous introspection in adolescent phases, searching
for a place in the jigsaw puzzle.
But
in recent years, the haunting question has come back to me: "How
the hell does this world function at all? And does it,
really ? I feel an alienation zapping through the channels, I
can't find myself connecting with those groups of humanoids trouncing
around MTV. Especially the glimpses of "real life":
on daytime-courtroom-dramas or just looking at faces in the street.
On every scale, the closer I observe it, the more the creeping
realization haunts me: individuals, families, groups, neighborhoods,
cities, states, countries... they all just barely hang in there,
between debt and dysfunction. The whole planet looks like Any
town with mini malls cutting up the landscape and just down the
road it's all white trash with rusty car wrecks in the back yard.
A huge Groucho Club I don't want to be a member of.
But
it does go further: what is particularly disturbing to see is
this desperate search for Individualism that has rampantly increased
in the last decade or so.
Everyone
suddenly needs to be so special, be utterly unique.
So unique that they race off like lemmings to get 'even more
individual' tattoos, branded cattle, with branded chains in every
mall, converging on a blanded sameness world wide, but every
rap singer with ever more gold chains in ever longer stretched
limos is singing the tune: Don't be a loser! Don't be normal!
The desperation with which millions of youngsters try to be that
one-in-a-million professional ball player may have been just
a "sad but silly factoid" for a long time.
But
now the tables are turning: the anthill is relying on the behaviour
of the ants to function properly. And that implies: the social
behaviour, the role playing, taking defined tasks and follow
them through.
What
if each ant suddenly wants to be the queen? What if soldiering
and nest building and cleaning chores is just not cool enough
any more?
If
AntTV shows them every day nothing but un-Ant behaviour...?
In
my youth we were whining about what to do and how to do it, but
in the end,all of my friends did become "normal" humans,
orthopedics and lawyers, social workers, teachers... There were
always a few that lived on the edges of normality, like ending
up as television celebrities, but on the whole: they were perfectly
reasonable ants. 1.8 children, 2.7 cars, 3.3 TVs...
Now:
I am no longer confident that line will continue. If every honeymoon
is now booked in Bali on a Visa card, and every kid in Borneo
wants to play ball in NYC... can the network of society be pliable
enough to accommodate total upheaval? And what if 2 billion Chinese
and Indians raise a generation of kids staring 6+ hours a day
into All American values they can never attain... being taunted
with Hollywood movies of heroic acts and pathetic dysfunctionality,
coupled with ever increasing violence and disdain for ethics
or morals.
Seeing
scenes of desperate youths in South American slums watching "Kill
Bill" makes me think: this is just oxygen thrown into the
fire... The ants will not play along much longer. The anthill
will not survive if even a small fraction of the system is falling
apart.
Couple
that inane drive for "Super Individualism" (and the
Quest for Coolness by an ever increasing group destined to fail
miserably) with the scarily simple realization of how effective
even a small set of desperate people can become, then add the
obvious penchant for religious fanaticism and you have an ugly
picture of the long term future.
So
many curves that grow upwards towards limits, so many statistics
that show increases and no way to turn around.
Many
in this forum may speculate about infinite life spans, changing
the speed of light, finding ways to decode consciousness, wormholes
to other dimensions and finding grand unified theories.
To
make it clear: I applaud that! "It does take all kinds".
Diversity is indeed one of the definitions of the meaning of life.
Edge IS Applied Diversity.
Those are viable and necessary questions for mankind as a whole,
however: I believe we need to clean house, re-evaluate, redefine
the priorities.
While
we look at the horizon here in these pages, it is the very ground
beneath us, that may be crumbling. The ant hill could really
go to ant hell! Next year, let's ask for good ideas.
Really practical, serious, good ideas. "The most
immediate positive global impact of any kind that can be achieved
within one year?". How to envision Internet3 and Web3 as
a real platform for a global brainstorming with 6+ billion potential
participants.
This
was not meant to sound like doom and gloom naysaying. I
see myself as a sincere optimist, but one who believes in realistic
pessimism as a useful tool to initiate change.
Basically, whats stopping chaos? I cannot help but to think of the recent movie "The Dark Knight", but somehow the answer the movie gave seems half-assed. 19 hijackers changed the priorities of the entire world and sparked two wars. It just takes a few people, out of the billions of normal people enjoying everyday life, to create something that will effect these billions. Whats stopping our society from collapsing, and might we need to consider ways to restructure it so its not as vulnerable?
