More on the Transformation

Several interesting comments have been made recently as one of the messages of Polymathica, that of the imminent Transformation, begins to sink in. These comments, both agreeing and disagreeing, can be summarized by the basic question, ‘How will this all happen?’ We have dedicated an enormous amount of energy in trying to understand how the Industrial Age civilizations will turn into the Information Age civilization – The Transformation. So, although, we don't have a crystal ball, we do have a deep, perhaps the deepest, understanding of the forces and mechanisms at work.

If we are to learn anything from the prior transformations, it is that they are messy, often violent, affairs that really are not under anyone's control. As we have stated on a number of occasions, the recent string of crises, of which the financial crisis was one and the current nation state credit crises are the latest, are directly related to The Transformation. Here in the U.S. we have Herculean efforts of sweeping reform which are exactly ‘the status quo’ attempting to reassert itself.’ These efforts, like those of the European Royal families in the previous Transformation, will ultimately fail.

The Transformation is an extremely complex phenomenon that cannot be adequately explained in an article or, most likely, even in a book. Understanding The Transformation is more a matter of a dedicated, ongoing course of study. However, there are three major factors that we attempt to emphasize.

First, we are entering a period of unprecedented occupational displacement. Nearly all clerical, and many entry level professional, jobs are at risk to AI applications. The current AI state of the art can duplicate most clerical functions cost effectively. It’s really a matter of product design and marketing. It is happening right now, actually, with large corporations, such as Target and Wal-Mart, that are promulgating electronic invoicing and payments in their formats upon their vendors. We need a data interchange format for business paper with translators. Then, all clerks are basically out of a job.

The DARPA 2007 Urban Challenge, and the work of Stanford/Audi since then, has demonstrated that millions of jobs in the transportation industries are terminal and have years, not decades, to live. Audi has the stated goal of fully automated vehicles by 2028. Given the state of the art as demonstrated to date we conclude that, if they take that long, someone will beat them to it. It seems unlikely that the other manufacturers will not respond and instigate a technology race. Consequently, it is unlikely that this technology is no more than a decade or so from commercial applications.

There are few, if any, construction jobs that cannot be cost effectively replaced by robots with current technologies. Again, they will be gone in our twenty year time frame. There are even AI programs being marketed today that threaten the jobs of classical K-12 teachers and replace most of the diagnostic functions of physicians.

So, Factor One, is the emergence of huge worker displacements with no straightforward road to a replacement career. As we have often stated, paradoxically, all of the implemented robotics and AI will cause an explosion in GDP per capita. When we say that it will double in ten years and quadruple in twenty, we are actually being very conservative. The elimination of labor cost constraints to production results in no definite limit to incomes. Many people are beginning to understand that something very fundamental is going to need to change in the economic mechanisms of society in order to get all of the income of production into the hands of the consumer.

Second, the emergence of cable and satellite television created a situation where a few of the major cultural perspectives are now living in totally separate and robust memic universes. In other words, people who watch MSNBC for their news, analysis and commentary are being immersed in a culturally comfortable world view that is quite different from the one received by people who watch Fox News. Essentially, the Public Discourse is being undertaken by groups with different sets of 'facts'. There are no significant homogenizing forces and those that do exist are becoming progressively more overwhelmed by the forces of fragmentation.

Furthermore, as radio and television move to the Internet small print/audio/video enterprises, targeted at markets with total customer bases in the hundreds of thousands or several millions, rather than tens or even hundreds of millions, will become viable. Polymathica, a global community of refinement and erudition, Project Venus, Gaians, New Agers, Polyamorists, and many, many more will float their own news outlets and television networks. Some will undoubtedly fail. However, many will succeed and the march toward a massively heterogeneous, multicultural world will continue.

As ‘live anywhere’ economics take hold, combined with the Information Age Income Explosion of Factor One, an increasing percentage of the population will move to comprehensively designed communities that are facilitative of a specific set of values and lifestyle preferences. Because, at the time, the major nation states will be desperately trying to maintain a semblance of cultural homogeneity, many of these communities will be found in smaller nations who are welcoming the economic benefits of the new communities. The notion of cultural sovereignty will emerge. Along with it will come the concept of Market Based Governance.

So, Factor Two, the emergence of memic propagators that will cause the currently fragmenting cultures of the Industrial Age to coalesce around a relatively large number of new and old memically isolated global communities that will begin to express themselves in a growing number of culturally homogenous ‘bricks and mortar’ communities.

In economics and business there is a perverse, inverse relationship between industry stability and barriers to market entry. This is critical to the nature of The Transformation. The Internet is currently completely disorganized. Small businesses that are primarily information enterprises have as their primary barrier to success, the inability to efficiently find their customers. Polymathica has as affiliates some magnificent blogs that have readers numbering in the hundreds rather than hundreds of thousands, primarily, because they can’t efficiently find their readership. The very large information brokers such as NewsCorp and NBC like it this way. However, it will not last. As Internet television and radio create targeted networks, barriers to market entry will fall and, as the saying goes, ‘all Hell will break loose.’

So, Factor Three, the Mega corporations will experience increasing competition from networks of small enterprises that have affiliated in a non-corporate, non-hierarchical fashion. The large corporations of the Industrial Age will fight the process, of course. However, in the end, they will lose. The world economy will become far more organic.

Unlike The Singularity and other Transhumanist movements, The Transformation is not a vague, ‘someday this will happen’, kind of story. These three factors are all emerging today. They will accelerate over the next ten years and by 2030, the global Information Age civilization will be here. It will look far different than the world of today. The differences will be 'in kind' not degree.

It will most likely be a rough ride. The large, multinational corporations and institutions of geographic governance will not ‘go quietly into that dark night.’ National governments will attempt, as China and some of the more fundamentalist Islamic states are doing now, to build information barriers that will protect their citizens from the onslaught of myriad memic propagators of other cultural viewpoints. Mega corporations, which are generally proscribed from overtly predatory practices in most nations, will attempt to create multinational strategies to fend off the attack of the hordes of small, niche creating Information Age enterprises. They will search for, and most likely find, corporate havens where the local governments will turn a blind eye to these tactics.

For many the large, Industrial Age institutions seem too powerful to be displaced. However, as the feudalism and Nobility of the Agricultural Age gave way to the new institutions of the Industrial Age, the Nation State and Multinational corporations of the Industrial Age will succumb to new Information Age institutions. Ten years ago when some of us began telling this story, it seemed unrealistic and distant to most people. They believed that they had some time to watch how it all unfolded. They were correct. However, now, more people accept the story and time has run out. The Transformation is happening right now. Historians will view the U.S. taxation of worldwide income and the 2008 ‘Exit Tax’ legislation as important early salvos in the Industrial Age/Information Age conflict.

So, this is not going to be pretty. The people who have the easiest time with it will be the people who are anticipating it and acting upon it in real time. The person who sits back, feeling secure in their job as, for example, a clerk in a public library, will find themselves totally unprepared when public libraries become a virtual, Internet based affair, delivering their ‘borrowed books’ to people’s Kindles, Ipads, etc. They will lose their jobs and find that everyone with their skill set and occupational expectations are in the same boat. They will ultimately adjust, but it will be an uncomfortable time. Those, however, who begin now to craft a new Information Age career, will have a much easier transition.

People who are vested in the Industrial Age fiction of a bipolar political universe will find the new Information Age realities confusing. Republicans/Democrats, Conservative/Labour, et al will become false dichotomies. The new realities of ‘voting with your feet’ will completely confound Industrial Age thinkers. Liberal Democracies that have become comfortable in the political strategy of making promises to the majority, financed by the affluent minority, will find that the affluent minority is gone and no longer taxable. We suspect that the reaction will not be pleasant.

In conclusion, the greater your involvement in Polymathica, the more comprehensive will be your understanding of The Transformation. We are searching for all the refined, erudite people on the Internet. For the most part, it is an effort to create an audience and customer base for refined, erudite content, networks, products and services. However, the process of educating its Membership about the Transformation and mobilizing them to create Information Age strategies to address the problems and capitalize upon the opportunities is a non-trivial pursuit, as well.