3: PLENTITUDE, NOT SCARCITY
Plentitude will soon reach the level of zillionics.
We know from mathematics that systems containing very, very large numbers of parts behave significantly different from systems with fewer than a million parts. Zillionics is the state of supreme abundance, of parts in the many millions. The network economy promises zillions of parts, zillions of artifacts, zillions of documents, zillions of bots, zillions of network nodes, zillions of connections, and zillions of combinations. Zillionics is a realm much more at home in biology--where there have been zillions of genes and organisms for a long time--than in our recent manufactured world. Living systems know how to handle zillionics. Our own methods of dealing with zillionic plentitude will mimic biology.
The network economy runs with plentitude. It vastly expands the numbers of things, increases the numbers of intangibles with ease, multiplies the numbers of connections exponentially, and creates new opportunities without number.
Well just one problem here. What about pollution? What about metal/energy scarcity? Indium and Germanium are metals that are becoming increasingly scarce. Oil production hasn't increased for the last 5 years (which created the price spike last summer). Pollution of the atmosphere and oceans is reaching critical levels.
The network economy relies on plentitude and is therefore flawed. Hard ecological barriers are being reached and our network economy has no build in system to handle scarcity. Higher resource prices are supposed to unlock new resources for extraction but that is not how the system works. Metal/oil scarcity results in volatile prices that will destroy our network economy if we don't act accordingly. In the case of oil we have already seen the start of scarcity last summer when oil topped at $150. How about the idea that we have grown enough? Is that acceptable in order to preserve some resources for future generations?
Unlimited growth/expansion on a finite planet was a dumb idea right from the start.
I was reading "Swarm Intelligence" by R. Eberhart et. al. and your blog reminded me a lot about the points they are trying to make. Some thoughts inspired by the book on the topic of technology - it is a good read, if you find this interesting:
Technology is a materialization of ideas. The individual technologies that persist accross the population are adapted - due to this adaption, technology is a product of the mind of population not of an individual.
Analogous idea (ratchet effect) was expressed by Tomasello on the topic of cultural evolution: cumulative cultural evolution is a result of innovation and imitation producing an accumulation of problem solutions building on one another.
http://bit.ly/COY3q
It's clear that a consumption model for the global economy has serious weaknesses. While the technorati envisage the plenitude written above, the reality of shortage (and demand) means we are far from the golden plateau, where everything is 'free' and conflict a thing of the past.
However, the benefit of technology has been plenitude - in memes. It's this aspect of infinite supply that offers a solution to current crises.