Specifications: An engineer’s approach to upgrading politics

Posted on July 14, 2015 by David Wood

By René Milan, Thelemic Transhumanist [see editor’s note[i]]

Introduction

When i first heard about the prospective title of this book i was baffled. Politics 2.0 – what might that mean? Like most people probably would, i immediately associated it with the numbering system commonly used in software releases, but having worked as a programmer for 30 years i could not see how this could be applied to something as complex and diffuse as politics. However if taken as something like a cognitive metaphor i still could not clearly grasp its meaning, beyond the vague implication of improvement over Politics 1.x, presumably what humanity is struggling with today.

As is my habit in such cases i forgot about this for the time being, and three days later as hoped a possible solution occurred to me. What if i simply maintained the software approach and regarded the task as coming up with an improved kind of politics according to user requirements?

And already i run up against a fundamental problem in business software development, which constitutes the bulk of my experience: user desires are taken into consideration, but mostly within the strategic framework of increasing productivity, which can under smarter management even, and at best, include user contentment. But the real driver is always some kind of business case for increasing profitability. “Who pays the piper calls the tune.”

However in this case only the user pays (the very minimal cost of this book), so i am free to assume the user’s perspective in presenting, not a completely deliverable solution, which would be way beyond any single person’s capacity, but at best a draft of specifications for an upgrade to current politics with the aim of providing an improved user experience. Unfortunately i can not query all seven billion users, but as i am one myself, and as the major shortcomings of current politics can be seen so clearly, i believe to have enough to go on.

Thus in the following i shall attempt to identify the drivers and mechanics of current politics, determine what effect they have on the people subjected to them (users, willy or nilly) and offer conclusions on how they could and should be improved for a Politics 2.0 release.

The current state of affairs

Sampling the currently prevailing conditions, unscientifically, simply from the common anecdotal user experiences gained by following international news, one can easily identify the main factors determining the ideas, the interests and the effects shaping the reality of current politics worldwide.

I Nation

The ultimate determinant of politics within a certain geographical area is, at least theoretically, the nation controlling this area, regarding the area and the idea of the nation as inextricably intertwined, as different aspects of the same national identity, which is claimed to be sacrosanct and tends to take on mystical proportions by associating itself with concepts of destiny, providence and even divinity. Two good examples of how the myth of the nation was, and keeps getting to be, reinforced over the decades are the films “Birth of a Nation”[ii] by Griffith from 1915, and “Triumph des Willens”[iii] by Riefenstahl from 1935. The current state of affairs is rather surprising considering that as recently as 500 years ago the idea played virtually no role in politics; the basic units then were empires, kingdoms and lower level fiefdoms. While even only 200 years ago, and in reality even now, fixed borders were not effective in large parts of Africa, the middle east and elsewhere, today everybody claims ‘national sovereignty’ to be the highest good, in practice only one’s own. The days of internationalism being part of anyone’s political agenda are long gone (early 20^th century communism). And even though there are international treaties and organisations, they are by design subservient to the interests of (the strongest) nations. A possible exception to this was initially the EU, conceived out of the fresh experience of what nationalism ultimately results in, but as time passed even that unique experiment seems to have become secondary to the interest of the nations who were supposed to be absorbed and dissolved into this new structure.

The effects of this common paradigm are obvious. In the name of ‘national security’ large proportions of the people’s wealth are endlessly spent on weaponry, subventions and trade preferences in order to make the nation ‘stronger’, but as this happens everywhere simultaneously in proportion to national wealth and moderated only slightly by variations in national ideologies, the effects of these efforts are largely cancelling each other out. But what are the effects on the objects of our deliberations, the users of politics 1.x?

It appears that among the users three distinct groups can be identified.

Those who directly or indirectly benefit from the expenditures generated under these conditions
Those who get some emotional satisfaction merely from abstract ideas like that of a ‘strong nation’
The rest

It also appears that ‘the rest’ constitute an overwhelming majority, and that they are therefore disproportionally exposed to the negative effects generated under current conditions, namely

an increase of influence of the small groups identified under 1. and 2. above, and the resulting decrease of influence of the majority, meaning that most users are deprived of their voice in these matters
the loss of resources wasted on this global zero sum game, which could otherwise be spent on truly beneficial endeavours such as improvements of health, educational, infrastructural and environmental conditions even in times of those destructive tools not being used
direct (death and wounding, loss of habitat) and indirect (loss of resources, property, income, health and home) effects in times and places when and where these tools are used

To stay within the metaphor this importance of the nation could be seen as a current operating system feature, and as a consequence of the above it seems obvious to this engineer that for an upgrade to Politics 2.0 with the aim of an improved user experience the first prerequisite would be an OS upgrade that completely eliminates the role of the nation from the operating environment.

II Religion

Increasingly we can observe over the last few decades the effects of religious influence on politics and beyond. This influence has been with humans at least since the agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago and the resulting congregation in large settlements (cities) and division of labour. Even before that time this influence was obvious and actually potentially useful, for instance in the chieftain asking the shaman for advice in matters of hunting, planting, moving or fighting. But in those days there was not yet a clear separation of religion and science. After that time it took the form of identification of political leaders as divine entities (egypt etc), which was, for reasons which to explore would be beyond the scope of this brief analogy, common in the three early human large cultural evolutionary centres based in Mesopotamia and along the Nile and the Indus. In the more off centre and smaller kingdoms it was less common. Through the Greeks and then the Romans Europe inherited many values and institutions of the earlier civilisations, but the Greeks establishing philosophy and science outside of the domain of religion constituted an early break of the religious monopoly on politics which was only reestablished, partially, when Theodosius I decreed, of all the choices, xtianity to be the new state religion of Rome, which then survived the collapse of the western empire and positioned itself to sanction, or not, subsequent european monarchies. This lasted throughout the middle ages and ended through the reformation, but was not ideologically questioned until the emergence of the enlightenment over a century later. Nonetheless, religious influence and privileges are still common in Europe, and more so in the u.s. Islam, being 500 years younger, is still at the beginning of its own reformation, and most countries in which it is dominant are explicitly defined as ‘islamic nations’.

Again let us examine the effects of this state of affairs on the users of politics 1.x.

The users are divided along similar lines and in similar numbers as under I. In simple and direct terms there are the beneficiaries (who gain material advantages), the ideologues (who gain ideological, mental advantages), and the victims (who gain nothing). And again we see a disproportional allocation of desirable and undesirable effects: too much political power for the first two smaller groups to the detriment of the third and largest group, a waste of resources on the privileges enjoyable by the first two groups largely paid for by the contributions of the third, and a host of policies restricting freedoms of users, most of whom are part of the latter group, as in marriage, abortion, political and sexual privileges.

Thus it becomes clear that a second OS upgrade is required in order to completely eliminate the influence of organised religion on the political domain, before implementation of Politics 2.0 with the aim of improving user experience can be undertaken.

III Greed

I had briefly considered giving this section the heading ´Money’, however money is merely a quantification of material value, created to have something approximating an objective measuring device for this value. Clearly ‘objective’ is meant in a very relative manner, only in the sense that many would, or are simply forced to, agree that certain material and even immaterial objects have a particular value that can indeed be expressed by using this device. In reality monetary value is defined by desirability, a very subjective concept, which in turn derives from real (biological) or artificially created (psychological) need. Another option could have been ‘capitalism’, but that is just the currently fashionable term for the underlying force, which is truly greed, and which has been a driver of economic activity for much longer (in fact since the concepts and activities of hoarding and raiding proved to be conducive to survival) than the term ‘capitalism’ existed.

Again the effects on the experiences of the vast majority of the users are dismal to say the least. As before, and more so than above, we have a subgroup of users who benefit materially, giving in to the genetic imperative of hoarding more than is reasonable, needless to say at the cost of the majority, many of whom do not have enough to even ensure material survival. In between we have what used to be called the silent majority, which is not so silent anymore, and on a global scale certainly not a majority, who get by materially, but get nothing more out of a bad deal than some sort of intellectual satisfaction for which they were psychologically conditioned by the media controlled by the material beneficiaries in the first place.

This then is the third, actually the most important, operating system upgrade that is a prerequisite of even being able to implement a set of policies that could qualify as Politics 2.0. I say the most important, because all the problems caused by ideologies such as nationalism and exoteric religion ultimately are maintained in the service of this same force, namely greed. I am well aware that to resolve this problem requires a deep intervention in what is generally perceived as ‘human nature’, in reality merely the current manifestation of a genetic configuration resulting from arbitrary biological and historical conditions, which humans are becoming finally able to change, if only agreements on these issues can be arrived at. But this subject is again beyond the scope of this piece. Nonetheless i must point out that this must and will be addressed in the appropriate context.

The Needs

Once these operating system changes are in place, meaning that we can work on a basis of not meeting fundamental resistance to changes in software, or in policies, we can try to determine what is actually needed in order to arrive at maximal user satisfaction.

What do users want? It might be helpful to take a fresh look at Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs [iv], as users want most what they need most:

The hierarchical nature of this concept seems to be quite obvious. Nobody will be too concerned with self esteem or even family if they can not fulfil their needs for food and drink. So it must be, contrary to currently prevailing conditions where certainly safety requirements are not guaranteed to be met for millions of users, paramount for policies meeting the specifications of Politics 2.0 to ensure that these needs are met. Then the question of priorities arises. As politics will consist largely in the art of applying still, even after eliminating the parasitical forces described above under III, limited resources equitably on a global scale, before the needs above the basic two lower levels can be addressed all users must be elevated to that level, explicitly the first global priority must be to create conditions within which all users can elevate themselves to level three, or in other words, everyone’s physiological and safety needs must be met.

On this basis let us examine how Politics 2.0 can and should impact the safeguarding of meeting these needs.

1. Physiological

On the physiological level it is clearly the first three items that are vulnerable to adverse political conditions. Even a partly commercial, partly scientific and purely adventurous project like MarsOne must include provisions to guarantee the users’ access to air, water and food, and to do so is a political decision. On this planet environmental conditions vary so widely that pressures are quite different between various places. Nonetheless given current population distribution it is the function of politics, and 2.0 in particular, to safeguard supply of these resources within the powers of current technologies, whose limits are increasingly tested as by rising sea levels and desertification.

Air is one of the oldest problems. In recent decades air pollution caused problems in the 20^th century, famously in L.A., Tokyo, Mexico etc, but these problems have been solved there long ago and the knowhow and technologies are easily available. Nonetheless we have seen recent recurrences, especially persistent in Beijing, and surprisingly in Paris. Other recent incidents were caused by burning of rainforest in Borneo and even volcanic eruption in Iceland. With the exception of the latter these occurrences can be more or less easily controlled, especially after elimination of the greed factor, and the will and means to do so must be part of Politics 2.0.
Food is a much more complex issue than the problems with air. It has environmental, technological, cultural and social components. Since its establishment 10,000 years ago agriculture has undergone, and caused, some profound changes. Its industrialisation throughout the 20^th century is perhaps the most important, and its results are mixed. Efficiency has increased, but its social effects (transfer of ownership to corporations), the impact on health and environment (large scale use of industrial chemicals, large monocultures and subsequent environmental degradation), and cultural consequences (establishment of an unprecedentedly large meat eating habit) are mostly negative. Even the potentially so positive impact of genetic modification technologies has under the current capitalist paradigm often had negative social consequences (but these should be eliminated by the measures recommended under III). To rectify these problems will constitute a major chunk of work writing low level requirements and coding for a release as part of Politics 2.0.
Water availability is strongly intertwined with the issues hinted at under b) as 70% of the water utilised in the context of human activity is used in the service of food production. Therefore some of the current problems with water shortage deriving from overuse of current resources, as practiced in the course of industrial meat production, will be alleviated by measures designed to improve global food supply. Nonetheless global aquifer depletion [v], which is currently gaining attention in California, besides the many places where it has long been an urgent issue, will remain a problem alongside political issues such as conflicts around water rights, such as in the middle east and along the Nile, and will have to be addressed when developing Politics 2.0. One hope i have in this context is large scale cheap implementation of new desalination technologies.
A resource not explicitly mentioned in the above hierarchy triangle but certainly closely intertwined with the three mentioned above is energy. Energy is needed in providing the other three, in transportation and communication, and even to provide creature comforts (making it warm where it is too cold and vice versa). But energy has been the subject of global discussions for quite some time, largely in a context of power politics (in the name of obsolete nationalism), but increasingly also as an environmental issue. Even after the recommended OS upgrades, which will eliminate the profit motive and the attendant manipulation of energy prices, a lot of creativity and effort will have to be applied to better provisions in Politics 2.0.
Health is listed on level two of the pyramid, but it really affects all the levels throughout. What is referred to as level two health, is probably something like the minimal health required to allow the individual to function reasonably well in its survival activities within nature and society. But if health is negatively affected by crippling or disabling, chronically painful, or fast progressing mortal disease, functionality even on the physiological level is denied. Of course there are cultural practices prevailing in some human and other mammalian societies designed to mitigate the effects, but they amount to palliative interventions at best. Therefore it must be addressed here. Like the four previously mentioned issues it is out of the control of individuals, and even the most advanced efforts by organised health institutions are still far from understanding aetiologies of, or developing therapies for, many diseases including death. Clearly political efforts in this area are also of the highest priority and must be a fundamental consideration in the process of upgrading politics.
The other listed items, sex, sleep, homeostasis and excretion, are, in a healthy individual (and society), pretty much self regulating physiological processes. One other issue relevant in this context and connected with health, education, infrastructure and last not least direct individual control is hygiene, but its centre of gravity lies probably on the next level.

2. Safety

Beginning on the level called safety things get somewhat more complicated. It becomes obvious that two factors, relevant throughout, that are not explicitly listed, assume increasing importance: education and infrastructure. Listed however are several items that are quite culture specific and do therefore not belong into this pyramid of needs at all.

Education beyond the level of basic survival skill is clearly a prerequisite for maintaining control of access to resources, specifically those pertaining to economic activity, caring for offspring, health and hygiene, and perhaps issues of morality. And its need goes way beyond this level, after all how can one currently fulfil one’s needs for esteem and self actualisation if one can not read or write or has not developed one’s capacity for logical and critical thinking? It is a prerequisite best met by society, not private enterprise with its overriding profit motive, which is also not exactly interested in maintaining and growing a customer base with capacity for independent thought as history has shown and does to this day, but we will have eliminated its influence already with the measures undertaken as recommended in III. But education itself is undergoing profound paradigm shifts. While in many places primary and secondary education still takes the form of assembling the youth of the village in (or at) one place for communal teaching, investigation, experimentation and conversation, or that of not yet technologically replaceable traditional individual teaching by experts or masters, in places with access to advanced technology education is becoming increasingly nonlocal and free of cost. This is very welcome in principle, but the difference in possibilities of access to the enabling technologies between these places raises another issue: infrastructure.
Infrastructure is even more important in the provision of health services than in education. Advanced knowledge and technologies are of no value to the users unless they can be delivered to where they are. Thus a complete network of operators (hospitals with physicians, equipment and personnel) within reasonable proximity to users, which is still widely lacking, must be established. This in turn is dependent on solid transportation facilities. If health and education services are provided online, as is becoming more and more common, requirements include a reliable and secure communications network. Needless to say, both types of infrastructure require availability of the energy to operate and maintain them.
Security of body is a concept subject to various influences. The most direct and often irresistible one is force majeure, as executed by natural disasters. Human technology may never be able to completely shield users against its impacts as long as life is based on physical substrates within this universe. But given that terra is a normally slowly changing environment compared to current user life spans, much progress has been made for example in adjusting construction technologies in earthquake prone japan or fending off the sea in the low lying netherlands. Much more must be done especially in the light of climate change and rising sea levels. Security threats caused by humans must be considered as criminal after military conflicts have been eliminated by overcoming the nation concept, and are being handled in two major ways: law and therapy. It is clear that both approaches are still in their infancy; therefore much research in these areas must be undertaken under the provisions of Politics 2.0.
Employment and property are both economic concepts and can be discussed together. The original function of both is to secure the user’s economic basis, in other words they are tools toward guaranteeing the fulfilment of the user’s needs, on all levels of the hierarchy, within the current system characterised by scarcity and the exchange of privately (lit.: stolen) owned property without which the user is totally dependent solely on the commodity of his physical productive capacity. A huge number of users are currently subject to this latter condition: without employment and without property. This of course is largely caused by the force described under III, which we assume to have eliminated before implementing Politics 2.0. Thus alternative ways to secure users’ material needs must be found. Many alternatives such as cooperative production and more recently universal basic income have been developed, tested and discussed for a long time. Building on this work developing requirements for an upgrade is one of the major issues in improving user satisfaction, as it affects billions, indeed the vast majority of current users.
I will be generous and interpret ‘family’ as code for ‘securing the survival of offspring’ since it is clearly not a biological but a cultural concept. Throughout history, in different human cultures and more so among other species, family is just one of the many social forms in which this function is being executed, and it is itself undergoing constant change. The last century saw a transition in developed regions from ‘Großfamilie’ (apparently there is no english term describing the typical 19^th century configuration with three or more generations and sidelines living together) to the currently common core family, and recently we are seeing the introduction of legally sanctioned non gender based models. Throughout history we have seen different social constructs that among others all have proven capable of executing this function, while none is guaranteed to do it well, such as single parents, institutions, communes, polygamous and polyandrous groups. Nonetheless i submit that groups operating on liberal principles tend to do a better job than those based on authoritarian ones. Complexities of this issue are defined by the gradual change of children’s capacities throughout development, which requires finely grained understanding of the development processes while avoiding the traditional, and current, underestimation of these capacities. The issues of child rearing are also closely related to those of education (addressed above under a), and to privilege (to be addressed below). In conclusion Politics 2.0 must include provisions to secure childrearing with the goal of enabling the highest physical and mental potential of children while abstaining from interfering in the social constructs providing this function for any other reasons than goal oriented ones.
Morality is an interesting issue for several reasons. An obvious one is that it occurs twice in this hierarchy, once here and again on the highest (self actualisation) level. This can be interpreted to mean that here we are discussing morality as something learned, in whatever framework and by whatever authority (do good, don’t do bad), while under the self-actualisation paradigm it is understood as something coming from a combination of character and experience, from ‘within’. But this interpretation implies a simplification that will not suffice to do the issue justice. First let us examine the meaning of the term ‘morality’. Derived from the latin ‘mores’, roughly equivalent to ‘custom’, meaning the way things are done, the term does not include any obvious legitimacy, other than perhaps that of evolutionary success. But evolution is equivalent to change, so the conservative notion of morality is already questionable. Then there is the question of the distinction of morality and ethics. A brief but plausible treatment i have come across in my perfunctory investigation is presented here [vi]. According to this morality would be the appropriate term here while under ‘self-actualisation’ it should read ‘ethics’. Consequently morality, being conditioned by culture, of which humans and other animals have many, should not be listed under ‘needs’. More precisely what is meant here is playing by the rules that prevent ostracisation of the user from the cultural context in which he happens to find himself. The value of this ‘in the wild’ is obvious, but it must be a point of importance in Politics 2.0 to liberate users from this constraint.

3. Love/belonging

Fortunately upwards from level three (love/belonging) the influence of politics diminishes. Policies can create or obstruct conditions conducive to meeting the needs of this level and beyond, but a lot of the required effort is dependent on the individual user.

Family here, as opposed to ‘the family’ (this brings up, perhaps not without reason, mafia associations, a social construct which indeed attempts to guarantee survival in exchange for playing by its rules) under 2.e, seems to indicate a sense of belonging and protection, and a construct that can respond to this need. Again, the traditional family is not the only social unit ensuring the desired outcome, and certainly not one to guarantee this outcome. My generation (i was a young man in the ‘60s) had to and did find, or build, other social entities to provide for this kind of need, and i do think this holds true today, but i do not know how successfully, or even if, this is undertaken these days. There is not much an upgrade can do beyond removing all systemic obstacles, which do currently still exist, toward letting individuals build these entities, fleeting and transitory as they often turn out to be.
Friendship and sexual intimacy can be addressed together. Friendship is equivalent to intimacy; if it takes on sexual qualities, and to what degree, is dependent on psychological configurations and definitely must not be subject to policy. In fact friendship is the overriding quality needed to ensure users’ needs are met on all levels of this hierarchy. There is not much point in having a ‘family’ if none of its members can offer friendship to the user, and the same applies to alternative social constructs mentioned above. Apparently sexual expression and conduct has been more or less subject to cultural conventions and pressures for a long time, and clearly since religion assumed its position of control of individual behaviour during the agricultural revolution. Currently we are seeing two contradictory trends. In more enlightened societies there is a steady retreat of powers attempting to regulate sexual behaviour of its citizens with one notable exception being the area of ‘underage’ regulation. Children are widely and falsely seen as asexual beings, and arbitrary age limitations are set by law. This is an important issue to be addressed within Politics 2.0 along the lines described under 2.e. Simultaneously there is a strong reactionary backlash against this increasing liberalisation observable even within, and stronger outside these societies. An upgrade of politics must include complete decriminalisation of these, and other, victimless activities.

4. Esteem and self actualisation

The needs described on the remaining two levels, esteem and self actualisation can be addressed together. Those listed under esteem (self esteem, confidence, achievement, respect of and by others), are all more or less dependent on the realisation of the quality of friendship, which was mentioned in the previous paragraph. Friendship appears to emerge from fulfilling the needs mentioned on this level and in turn to facilitate this fulfilment, as in a virtuous cycle. Friendship must include a well developed capacity for empathy resulting in knowing when and how to step in and when to keep out, and again it plays a beneficial role in this development. However empathy can, and should, apply beyond established friendship in relation to strangers, who after all are potential friends.

Of the six items listed under self actualisation, the latter three, problem solving, lack of prejudice and acceptance of facts, are all results of basic education, and should have been addressed and resolved long before this level is discussed. Thus they are the only ones mentioned in these two highest levels that are actually subject to politics.

Of the other three, morality, creativity, spontaneity the first one has already been mentioned under 2.f “as something coming from a combination of character and experience, from ‘within’”, and labelled as ethics rather than morality. Like ethics, creativity and spontaneity are properties of ‘character’ or ‘personality’, but how much they are also subject to a learning process is to be researched and discussed. Another open question is whether any or all of these three can be rightfully described as needs. One can lead a perfectly fulfilled life without being spontaneous, creative or having a finely developed sense of ethics. However much i share Maslow’s ideas about what it takes, for me personally, to become a fulfilled human, or transhuman, being, these ideas can not be automatically presumed to be true for others. What we are discussing here is politics, an activity with the potential to facilitate, and on the lower levels to guarantee, or as is widely the case today to obstruct, the possibility of living a fulfilled life. How that opportunity is used if attained must remain subject to individual choice.

5. Further discussion

There are two issues which are rightfully, as they do not constitute needs, not discussed within the preceding, but which are intimately connected with its content and with each other.

Taxes – this is here just meant as code for any number of ways in which societies take responsibility for issues that can reasonably and successfully only be addressed through a communal approach. All of the policies required by these specifications take resources, expressed in monetary value (money), and this money is usually raised through collecting taxes. Even after recovering the money currently drained into private holes by greed as well as that wasted on the nationalistic zero sum military game, and by sheer incompetence, there may be additional funds required to be raised as taxes, unless government, or better society, is set up as a wealth generator itself. This is a wide open issue which will however have to be discussed, agreed upon and included in the new version of politics.
Privilege (lit.: private law) is another huge factor currently draining resources from the community into the hands and pockets of the minority that benefits from these transactions, the privileged. These are mostly corporate, political and religious structures as well as wealthy individuals, which have managed to manipulate legislative processes in order to maintain or establish these privileges. Code within Politics 2.0 must ensure the elimination of all privileges. Law can only apply to all.

Conclusion

The list of specifications arrived at here through one of many models describing users’ needs is far from complete, and it is merely that: a list of high level specs. This must be discussed, revised and fleshed out in low level requirements, then coded and tested before being put in production. At least that is how it would work in a well designed and executed project which itself is a rarity in the real world.

And now it is time to give up the conveniently assumed illusion of Politics 2.0. The basic changes to ‘human nature’, that i nonchalantly presented above as prerequisite operating system upgrades, in reality will be, and already are being, hard fought over, mentally, politically, economically and militarily, and the outcome is far from clear. Those who think that their greed has served them well are not willing to give up the benefits it has allowed them to accumulate, and may not even be willing to give up the trait of greed itself, if and when genetic reconfiguration tools which can do this become available.

On the other hand many desirable policies described in these specifications are already, and have been, subject to attempts at introducing them, with mixed success, despite and against the unfavourable conditions of this faulty operating system that is human, but hopefully not posthuman, nature. If there has been progress or not over the last 100,000 years, when discussed from various utilitarian viewpoints, remains an open question. However we have no other starting point than the present, and in this sense the best i can hope for is that this list of specifications may contribute to the debate on where to go from here.

References

[i] Editor’s Note:

The author of this chapter has chosen to abide by his personal style which includes customised spelling, neologisms, minimal capitalisation, and other peculiarities, which may appear to the reader to be mistakes

[ii] https://youtu.be/PTDDcJaJz64

[iii] https://youtu.be/b0kwnLzFMls

[iv] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Maslow’s_Hierarchy_of_Needs.svg

[v] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/06/16/new-nasa-studies-show-how-the-world-is-running-out-of-water/

[vi] http://www.ethicsdefined.org/what-is-ethics/morals-vs-ethics/

Footnote

The article above features as Chapter 8 of the Transpolitica book “Envisioning Politics 2.0”.

Images via Wired and Wikipedia.

Why Politics 2.0?

Posted on July 1, 2015 by David Wood

By David W Wood, Executive Director, Transpolitica

Introduction

The single most important task of the next ten years is to find better ways of cooperating. In an age of unprecedented crowds – both online and offline – the global human community urgently needs social mechanisms that will encourage the wisdom of crowds rather than the folly of crowds.

Our existing methods of mutual coordination seem to produce more strife than harmony these days. We’re struggling to cope with ever larger tensions and disruptions on the shrinking world stage. The nation state, the multinational business firm, the free market, the non-governmental organisation, the various international bodies of global coordination set up after the Second World War – all find themselves deeply challenged by the myriad fast-evolving overlapping waves of stress of the early twenty-first century.

We’re facing tragedies of the commons writ larger than ever before. The actions that make good sense to smaller groups often add up, perversely, to disastrous outcomes for the larger community. But attempts to coordinate actions to avoid such tragedies are falling foul of numerous deep-seated conflicts of interest. These conflicts are made more intractable by the sweeping pace of change and by the burgeoning multiplicity of interconnections. For the way forward, we’re going to need more than “politics as usual”. We’ll need to move beyond Politics 1.0.

Politics 1.0 has worked wonders over the centuries, enabling productive human cooperation on impressive scales. We can look back in heartfelt admiration at the Magna Carta, Habeas Corpus, the separation of powers, declarations of rights, emancipation bills, market liberalisation, protection of minority interests, new deals, introductions of welfare states, and the gradual (although fitful) reduction of inter-state violence. In each case, the effort required people to set aside their narrow, personal interests, for the sake of an encompassing higher vision. Politics 1.0 has taken us a long way. But the multidimensional, intersecting nature of present-day issues and opportunities requires a new calibre of politics. For reasons I’ll explain shortly, I call that “Politics 2.0”.

The chapters ahead provide visions of what Politics 2.0 might look like. They express the thoughts, hopes, and fears from a diverse mix of futurists, political thinkers, academics, and think-tank members. They continue the discussion started in “Anticipating Tomorrow’s Politics”[i], the first Transpolitica book. It’s by no means the end of the discussion, but there’s lots of food for thought.

The future, if we can grasp it

In principle, we ought to be able to look ahead to a rosy future. In principle, sustainable abundance is just around the corner. Provided we collectively get our act together, we have within our grasp a profound cornucopia of renewable energy, material goods, health, longevity, intelligence, creativity, freedom, and positive experience – plenty for everyone. This sustainable abundance can be attained within one human generation, by wisely accelerating the green technology revolution – including stem cell therapies, 3D printing, prosthetics, robotics, nanotechnology, genetic engineering, synthetic biology, neuro-enhancement, artificial intelligence, and supercomputing.

In principle, the rich fruits of technology – sustainable abundance – can be provided for all, not just for those who manage to rise to the top of the present-day social struggle. In principle, a bold reorganisation of society can take place in parallel with the green technology revolution – so that everyone can freely access the education, healthcare, and everything else needed to flourish as a full member of society.

But these steps will involve a measure of coordination that seems to lie outside our present capability. What has brought us here, so far, isn’t going to get us there.

Politics opposing innovation

In principle, human innovation can create the solutions to provide a sustainable abundance for everyone. These solutions will take advantage of new technology to create new products and services – better food, better healthcare, better education, better sources of energy, better transport, better care for the environment, better waste-management, better leisure, better entertainment, and so on.

But new products often provoke disquiet. They don’t always work as expected. They can often have nasty unintended side-effects. They may fail to live up to the promises made for them, sometimes even ruining people’s lives or despoiling the environment. For these reasons, society needs to keep its collective eye on new products. Even when new products function as intended, they typically result in marketplace losers as well as winners. In other words, new products can threaten vested interests. These vested interests, therefore, also keep a collective eye on new products. The two sets of watchfulness – the legitimate concern for the well-being of users of the product, and the more contentious concern for the well-being of competitors to the product – often overlap. Handling this murky overlap, with discernment and objectivity, is a key task in society’s self-governance.

Society can, with justification, take two different stances towards a specific innovation:

The innovation is desirable, and should therefore be supported, perhaps by pricing subsidies, tax breaks, and provision of central funding
The innovation (as it stands) has undesirable aspects, and should be restricted or penalised until such time as it conforms to various standards.

Again, in each case, motivations to protect users of the innovation can overlap with motivations to protect the well-being of competitors of the innovation.

Consider some examples from recent news stories:

Unmanned aerial vehicles (“drones”) represent many booming business opportunities, with their capabilities for surveillance and transport. But in December last year, a drone almost collided [ii] with a commercial airliner near Heathrow. There are clearly safety implications if unregulated drones are able to fly without restriction. The same as there are rules to ensure motor vehicles are roadworthy, there’s a need for systems to prevent aberrant drones from causing havoc
Innovative car hire firm Uber is running into legal controversy all over the world [iii], as existing taxi drivers highlight cases of potential concern. For example, in Dec 2014, the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office issued a legal indictment against Uber (and against CEO Travis Kalanick) for violating a Korean law prohibiting individuals or firms without appropriate licenses from providing or facilitating transportation services
The Californian company 23andMe provide genetic testing services direct to the public, taking advantage of breakthroughs in technologies for DNA sequencing and analysis. However, the FDA have issued a warning letter to 23andMe, instructing the company to “immediately discontinue marketing”[iv] selected products and services. The FDA is concerned about “the potential health consequences that could result from false positive or false negative assessments for high-risk indications such as these”. It asserts: “a false positive could lead a patient to undergo prophylactic surgery, chemoprevention, intensive screening, or other morbidity-inducing actions, while a false negative could result in a failure to recognize an actual risk that may exist”
Growth in the usage of innovative “legal high” drugs has resulted in more than a doubling of the number of deaths [v] from these drugs in the UK over the last four years. As a result, the new UK government has tabled a blanket ban on the creation or distribution of “any substance intended for human consumption that is capable of producing a psychoactive effect”, with a prison sentence of up to seven years [vi] for people who contravene the ban. The legislation has generated lots of opposition, for its heavy-handedness, and also for its potential to obstruct innovative neuro-enhancement products
In response to popular concern about the negative visual appearance of wind turbines “covering the beautiful countryside”[vii], the new UK government is axing financial subsidies that were previously benefiting the wind energy industry
As an example of where government subsidies remain in place, supporting an energy industry, fossil fuels subsidies totalling $5.3 trillion will apply in 2015 [viii], according to a report released by the IMF (International Monetary Firm). For comparison, this figure is greater than the total annual health spending of all the world’s governments.

Other examples could be mentioned from the fields of banking, telecommunications, security, defence, and agriculture. I summarise the issues as follows:

Subsidies and regulations, applicable to innovative products, are a core and necessary part of how society governs itself
It is frequently a hard task to determine which subsidies and regulations ought to apply – and when previous subsidies and regulations ought to be changed
Legislation is often out-dated, being more concerned with avoiding repetitions of past problems, rather than enabling future development
Regulatory bodies are often “captured” by vested interests who have a strong desire to preserve the status quo
Politicians are frequently deeply out-of-depth in their understanding of the relevant technologies; like regulatory bodies, they can fall victim to over-influence from existing industries rather than enabling the emergence of new industries
The increased pace of change of technological innovation makes the above issues worse.

None of this is an argument to dismantle politics, regulations, or the system of subsidies. Instead, it’s an argument to improve these systems. It’s an argument for Politics 2.0.

Rather than technological innovation simply being the recipient of influence (both good and bad) from politics, the direction of cause-and-effect can be reversed. Technological innovation can transform politics, the same as it is transforming so many other areas of life.

Web 1.0 and Web 2.0

As a comparison, consider the transformation that took place [ix] in usage of the World Wide Web between around 1996 (“Web 1.0”) and 2006 (“Web 2.0”).

This transformation wasn’t just in terms of numbers of users of web browsers – moving from around 45 million to over one billion users over that period of time. Nor was it just that the web grew in size from around 250,000 sites to more than 80 million. Instead, it was a change in the character of the web, from a “mostly read-only web” to a “wildly read-write web”. (This analysis is due to pioneering Web 2.0 analyst Dion Hinchcliffe [x].) The result is that the web increasingly displayed collective intelligence. Users submitted their own content to sites such as Wikipedia, Amazon (book reviews), EBay, Facebook, YouTube, and so on. In turn, systems of collective evaluation highlighted the content that was worthy of greater attention.

In more details, the transformation between 1.0 and 2.0 can be described as follows:

Instead of the distribution of static intelligence through the network to its edges, P2P (peer-to-peer) connections enabled multiplication of intelligence within the network
Instead of a library (the readable web), there was a conversation (the writable web)
Instead of there being a small number of fixed authority figures (“oracles”), there were dynamic user-reputation systems, which enabled new figures to emerge quickly, with strong reputations as judged by the community as a whole
The model of “publishing and retrieval” was replaced by “collaboration and interaction”
Instead of innovation coming primarily from companies, it increasingly came from feedback and suggestions from users.

As for the improvement of the web, so also for the improvement of politics.

I’ve left probably the most important aspect of this analysis to the last. That is the critical role of technology in enabling this social transformation. Whereas Web 1.0 was enabled by the technologies of HTTP (hypertext transport) and HTML (hypertext layout), Web 2.0 was enabled by technologies known as AJAX [xi] – asynchronous JavaScript and XML. The details don’t matter, but what does matter is that powerful hardware and software were able to work together in combination to enable smoother user experience with “web applications” than had ever happened before. (Google Maps was one of the trailblazing examples. It’s hard to appreciate it nowadays, but the swift response to user interaction on the Google Maps webpage was a delightful surprise when first experienced.)

Innovation improving politics

The chapters in this volume explore various ways in which new technology might, analogously, enable improved politics:

With relevant expert knowledge being quickly brought to questions of subsidies, regulations, standards, and so on – rather than politicians being out of their depths
With a real “wisdom of crowds” supporting the decisions made by elected leaders, rather than leaders having to deal with the “folly of crowds” often displayed by present-day democracies
With automated fact-checking taking place in real-time, rather than mistakes and errant claims being allowed to influence political discussion for too long
With humans improving their own cognitive skills, as part of a process we can call cyborgization
With external artificial intelligence augmenting the decision-making capabilities of humans
With a competitive community of online educators creating ever-better communications systems that highlight more clearly the key decisions that need to be taken, shorn of their surrounding distractions.

To an extent, all political parties pay lip service to the idea that decision-making processes can be improved by wise adoption of smart new technology. However, it is the transhumanist contingent in politics that puts most focus on this possibility. Transhumanists vividly perceive the possibility of profound transformation. As stated in the Transhumanist FAQ [xii], quoting philosopher Max More [xiii]

Transhumanism is a way of thinking about the future that is based on the premise that the human species in its current form does not represent the end of our development but rather a comparatively early phase…

“Transhumanism is a class of philosophies of life that seek the continuation and acceleration of the evolution of intelligent life beyond its currently human form and human limitations by means of science and technology, guided by life-promoting principles and values.”

Pioneering Swedish transhumanist Anders Sandberg expressed it like this [xiv] (emphasis added):

Transhumanism is the philosophy that we can and should develop to higher levels, both physically, mentally and socially using rational methods.

I’ll end these introductory remarks by referring to an endorsement [xv] that was recently given by Robert Kennedy III – the grandson of the Robert Kennedy [xvi] who served as Attorney General in the administration of JFK. The endorsement was in favour of Zoltan Istvan [xvii], the candidate of the Transhumanist Party for the US presidency in 2016. It reads in part:

Why are we shackled to a system of government designed before there were telephones? … Zoltan Istvan is offering creative and innovative solutions to the urgent problems we face. We can choose to live in a technological nightmare, or to harness the power of science for the betterment of humanity.

As the energetic visible trailblazer for a new kind of politics, Istvan generates considerable feedback, including both positive and negative. As you’ll see, some of the chapters in this book cover and extend that feedback; other chapters explore different aspects of Politics 2.0.

The chapters ahead

Zoltan Istvan’s “Teleological Egocentric Functionalism”: a libertarian philosophical basis for “Transhumanist” politics

Roland Benedikter, Katja Siepmann, and Annabella McIntosh have collaborated to create a chapter with the following introduction:

The current foundation phase of “Transhumanist” politics deserves a critical discussion of the philosophical principles that implicitly underlie its new political organization. As part of the effort towards a self-critical evaluation of political transhumanism, which is undoubtedly still in a very early phase of development, this chapter discusses the philosophy drafted by the founder of the “Transhumanist Party of the USA”, Zoltan Istvan, in his bestselling novel “The Transhumanist Wager” (2013) dedicated to develop the vision of a better society. Istvan called the philosophy underlying his meta-national, if not global, vision “Teleological Egocentric Functionalism”.

We discuss the achievements, contradictions and dialectics of and within this philosophy; its possible relation to realistic social policy programs; as well as the potential implications and consequences. The goal is to achieve a more considered overall discourse at the contested new ideological interface between humanism and transhumanism which could define an influential zeitgeist of our time.

Roland Benedikter is Research Scholar at the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies [xviii] of the University of California at Santa Barbara, Senior Affiliate of the Edmund Pellegrino Center on Clinical Bioethics of Georgetown University, Trustee of the Toynbee Prize Foundation Boston, Senior Research Scholar of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs Washington DC, and Full member of the Club of Rome.

Katja Siepmann is a socio-political analyst, Senior Research Fellow of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs [xix] Washington D.C., Member of the German Council on Foreign Relations, and Lecturer at the Faculty of Interdisciplinary Cultural Sciences of the European University Frankfurt/Oder.

Annabella McIntosh is a freelance political writer based in Berlin, Germany.

Four political futures: which will you choose?

David Wood, Executive Director of Transpolitica, and chair of London Futurists [xx], introduces his chapter as follows:

Forget left wing versus right wing. The political debate in the medium-term future (10-20 years) will be dominated, instead, by a new set of arguments. These arguments debate the best set of responses to the challenges and opportunities posed by fast-changing technology.

In this essay, I’ll outline four positions: technosceptical, technoconservative, technolibertarian, and technoprogressive. I’ll argue that the first two are non-starters, and I’ll explain why I personally favour the technoprogressive stance over the technolibertarian one.

How do governments add value to society?

Bruce Lloyd is Emeritus Professor of Strategic Management, London South Bank University [xxi]. He argues in his chapter that, in the wake of current discussions about the future of politics, there is a fundamental question we all need to be asking. What are governments for? Alternatively expressed: How do governments add value to society?

He claims it is difficult, if not impossible, to find one simple answer to this question. In practice, there are two fundamentally different – potentially conflicting – pressures that need to be reconciled. The first pressure is the re-distribution dimension. The second is the need to effectively exploit potential and actual economies of scale.

There is also a third pressure, which needs to be integrated into policy initiatives: the need to develop structures that are the most favourable to effective positive innovation.

The chapter contends that, unless the interplay of these fundamental pressures is given greater attention at all levels of government decision-making, we are unlikely to be able to make progress on the other important challenges, mentioned elsewhere in this book, that we all face in the decades ahead. This will result in our future being much more precarious than it needs to be.

The benefits of digital democracy

Walter L.S. Burrough and Kay Firth-Butterfield introduce their chapter as follows:

This Chapter discusses the way in which U.S. citizens could be encouraged to re-engage with the electoral process and why such engagement will matter. In doing so consideration is given to the way in which such engagement can be facilitated by the development of an AI ‘trusted agent’, and the way in which true democracy reveals the uniqueness of the human characteristic to care about community.

The authors of this chapter note that the views they express in this chapter are their own and do not represent the views of any organizations for which they work, consult or teach.

Walter Burrough is a PhD candidate at the Serious Games Institute [xxii], University of Coventry. His research builds upon his Masters degree in Education, his work as a science teacher with “at risk” students in high needs schools, and his experience in database driven software development. He is interested in how to best design personalised interventions that enhance individuals’ behaviours and decision making using mobile technologies.

Kay Firth-Butterfield is the Chief Officer of the Ethics Advisory Panel of Lucid [xxiii]. Lucid is bringing to market Cyc which is, arguably, the world’s only strong artificial intelligence. Previously, she worked as a barrister, mediator, arbitrator, business owner, professor and judge in the United Kingdom. In the United States, she has taught at the undergraduate and law school levels and worked as a professional lecturer. She is a humanitarian with a strong sense of social justice and has advanced degrees in Law and International Relations.

Cyborgization: a possible solution to errors in human decision making

Dana Edwards and Alexander J Karran have collaborated to create a chapter with the following abstract:

Accelerating social complexity in combination with outstanding problems like attention scarcity and information asymmetry contribute to human error in decision making. Democratic institutions and markets both operate under the assumption that human beings are informed rational decision makers working with perfect information, situation awareness, and unlimited neurological capacity. We argue that, although these assumptions are incorrect, they could to a large extent be mediated by a process of cyborgization, up to and including electing cyborgs into positions of authority.

Dana Edwards is a Transpolitica Consultant.

Alexander J Karran is a Transpolitica Consultant and co-editor of this volume. Alex also has the distinction [xxiv] of being probably the first candidate for parliamentary election in Europe to stand under an openly transhumanist party banner – in the constituency of Liverpool Walton during the UK General Election of May 2015.

Of mind and money: post-scarcity economics and human nature

Stuart Mason Dambrot urges in his chapter for a “Revolution through evolution”. He summarises his chapter as follows:

In a medical model, our myriad problems can be seen as symptoms of a central underlying condition, rather than cultural problems that can be addressed by social policies
That causative condition is a direct and primary consequence of our hominid evolutionary neurobiological heritage
The path forward to an enlightened world is for each individual to physiologically evolve beyond that heritage
We can wait for thousands of generations (natural evolution is slow) or use the science and technology our brain has manifested to achieve that step in a matter of decades
The decision is ours to make.

Based in New York City, Stuart is an interdisciplinary synthesist, futurist and science communicator; the founder of Critical Thought [xxv]; and creator and host of Critical Thought | TV [xxvi], an online discussion channel featuring in-depth conversations with transformative individuals in the sciences, arts and humanities.

Voluntary basic incomes in a reputation economy

The abstract for the chapter by Michael Hrenka is as follows:

Advanced reputation systems provide the basis for an emerging reputation economy, whose functioning principles are explained in this chapter. In turn, a reputation economy provides unprecedented possibilities and incentives for voluntary basic income systems. There are multiple ways in which a mature reputation economy could make voluntary basic incomes feasible, and these different routes are explored in detail. Voluntary basic incomes have the clear advantage of not requiring large political interventions in order to operate successfully, and thus could be implemented faster and easier. These voluntary basic incomes could play an alternative or complementary role to a more conventional universal basic income. However, supportive political actions should facilitate the development of a highly functional reputation economy, in order to provide better conditions for the emergence of voluntary basic incomes.

Michael lives in Reutlingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, and describes himself as “a philosopher who studied mathematics and wants to upgrade the world”. He blogs at radivis.com [xxvii] and hosts the Fractal Future Forum at forum.fractalfuture.net [xxviii].

Specifications: an engineer’s approach to upgrading politics

René Milan has been a psychedelic transhumanist for forty years and a member of WTA (now Humanity+) for fifteen. He has worked as a clinical psychologist and transpersonal psychotherapist for twenty five years and as a computer programmer and technical analyst for thirty. He currently lives in Jerez de la Frontera in Spain.

In his chapter, René presents a draft of specifications for an upgrade to current politics with the aim of providing an “improved user experience”. He attempts to identify the drivers and mechanics of current politics, determine what effect they have on the people subjected to them (“users”) and offer conclusions on how they could and should be improved for a Politics 2.0 release.

Extended longevity: an argument for increased social commitment

MH Wake, a social anthropologist and statistician, argues in her chapter that

Recent improvements in life expectancy are the outcome of social forces – developments in medicine and in social welfare – which were specific to the twentieth century
There is a risk of increasingly fostering a mistaken focus on individual choices, as if these are the main determinants of public health outcomes
Continuing progress in life expectancy is by no means inevitable, without the adoption of deliberate policies to promote longevity.

Longevity, artificial intelligence and existential risks: opportunities and dangers

Didier Coeurnelle is co-chair of Heales [xxix] (Healthy Life Extension Society) and Spokesperson of the AFT (Association Française Transhumaniste) – Technoprog [xxx]. He argues in his chapter that:

Given the extraordinary difficulty of prolonging the maximal lifespan of human beings, focusing as much Artificial General Intelligence as possible on longevity could be the most useful goal of all at the beginning of the 21st century
If successful, giving the opportunity to live longer lives could be among other things a very important factor in decreasing the violent trends present in each and every of us
Successful or unsuccessful, giving the absolute priority to artificial intelligence to protect and to improve human beings will decrease the risk of artificial intelligence destroying or hurting us.

Prolegomena to any future transhumanist politics

Steve Fuller is Auguste Comte Professor in Social Epistemology at the University of Warwick [xxxi]. He graduated from Columbia University in History & Sociology before gaining an M.Phil. from Cambridge and PhD from Pittsburgh, both in the History and Philosophy of Science.

He raises in his chapter the provocative question: Can transhumanism avoid becoming the Marxism of the 21st century? The chapter concludes by recommending that transhumanists should ally with a proactionary ‘ecomodernism’, which specifically targets energy as a locus for innovation.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks are due to:

Alexander Karran, for his sterling work reviewing and suggesting improvements to the chapters in this book
The team of Transpolitica consultants who collectively reviewed many iterations of draft chapters on our shared Slack installation
All authors, for frequently processing change requests and answering queries in a prompt and courteous manner.

The book cover is based on a design by Alberto Rizzoli [xxxii].

Towards the future

The analysis in Envisioning Politics 2.0 will be continued:

Online, in response to chapters as they are made available on the Transpolitica website [xxxiii]
In the book “Anticipating 2040: Roadmap to sustainable abundance” which is scheduled for publication in early October 2015 (this book is being produced via Fast Future Publishing [xxxiv]).