There has been much commentary on peak oil and rising crude oil costs in the near future. In fact, there seems to be a general anxieity about the future supply of energy. For the Polymath, the consideration of Energy Futures will at a minimum, involve demographics, Economics, technology and energy resources. Peak oil alarmists, such as Matt Simmons, are not wrong in their analytical techniques. They are wrong in their scope of considerations. Matt Simmons draws the very correct conclusion that if oil consumption patterns continue and no ‘unconventional’ oil or fuel switching opportunities present themselves, we are headed toward a persistent and economically devastating oil crisis.
However, a Polymath, asking the general question, ‘What will energy supply and demand look like in the future’ ignores subject and industriy boundaries to pursue a comprehensive answer. Because of this, when Matt Simmons was predicting $500 oil, we were predicting $85 oil. As oil prices ran up to nearly $150 per barrel subsequent to the predictions of Simmons, et al, we stuck to our guns and continued to state without equivocation that oil would oscillate around an $80 to $85 per barrel price. The more polymathic approach proved to be correct. It generally will.
A full consideration of Energy Futures is well beyond the scope of this article. However, because of its pervasive effects on the shape of future world economies, it is considered by the Polymathica Academy within the course work of The Future 101. Put simply, a superior knowledge of futurity is one of the benefits of Polymathica Institute Fellowship. Here we will consider the twin opportunities of Coal to Liquid (CTL) and Enhanced (tertiary) Oil Recovery (EOR) Technologies. We will do so, because its impact is imminent and the technologies are fairly well developed. It shapes the near future in several ways and is not particularly susceptible to claims of unwarranted and overly optimistic speculation.
Coal Liquefaction has an estmated cost between $30 and $45 per barrel. Its first use was by Nazi Germany when the Allied Forces interfered with their access to petroleum. It is currently implemented in commercial scale operations in South Africa. Because China has large coal reserves and very little oil, it is under active development there. The potential supplies of CTL oil equivalents are huge. U.S. Coal reserves are equivalent to approximately 4,116 billion barrels of oil. This compares to world oil reserves of approximately 1,365 billion barrels. Consequently, the U.S. alone has more than three times the oil reserves of the world with this technology.
The criticism of CLT has been that it produces approximately twice the CO2 as conventional oil production. Environmental interests are insisting that if this technology is deployed, it must be done with CO2 sequestering. The sequestering process adds to the cost and reduces industry and investment interest in the technologies. There is, however, a much better and undoubtedly feasible solution.
This brings us to CO2 Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR), a method by which up to an additional 50% of the oil recovered through primary and secondary oil recovery methods can be recovered. A DOE review of just six regions concluded that they contained 43.3 billion barrels of additional reserves utilizing this method. From this, it is estimated that the onshore reserves of the U.S. are 89 billion barrels. The upside estimates are as high as 240 billion barrels of stranded oil that can be recovered in the U.S. alone by this method. Costs vary, however, the DOE funded study, dated February 7, 2008, estimated typical costs in the $45 - $55 per barrel range. Again, we emphasize that this is not speculative technology. It has been used on a limited basis since the 1960’s.
There are a couple of important considerations in determining the practical impact of the CTL/EOR couplet. One is the issue of how many barrels of oil can be gotten in EOR from a barrel of CTL. The answer limits the total production by this method that does not require CO2 sequestering of CTL production. Estimates vary between two and three barrels of EOR that can be produced from the CO2 created by liquifying coal to produce one barrel of oil. What this means is that, by the upside estimate, we have 80 to 120 billion barrels of CTL and that this will recover 240 billion barrels of EOR. The additional 320 to 360 billion barrels of U.S. oil is more than the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia and would make the U.S. the number one oil producer in the world. Even by the estimate of 89 billion barrels, based upon no technological advancements in the processes, the CTL/EOR couplet increases U.S. oil reserves from 21 billion barrels to 140 to 155 billion barrels. This would place it behind only Saudi Arabia and Canada in oil reserves.
While the U.S. has, by far, the greatest potential for increased reserves through CTL/EOR, other regions, most notably Russia and Venezuela also have significant exploitable reserves. Consequently, rather than a impending oil crisis and price run-up, in reality, the world oil market has a massive supply overhang below $100 per barrel, and probably below $80 per barrel. In other words, if the price of oil remains above $80 per barrel for a sustained period of time, the CTL/EOR Couplet will become progressively more commercialized, placing downward pressure on oil prices. In this way, the conventional oil supply and the CTL/EOR oil supply will find a dynamic equilibrium between $75 to $85 per barrel. We emphasize that there will be price shocks both above and below this price range as markets speculate in advance of short term supply/demand disequalibria. From there, the price will fall to around $55 to $65 per barrel over the next twenty years as consumption per GDP dollar decreases, demographic shifts impact consumption and other oil supply and fuel switching opportunities become economically and technologically feasible.
This is just one small example of how practiced Polymathy leads one, over time, to a different and more informed world view. None of the preceding is unavailable to the mainstream media. Its significance, however, is not properly appreciated and communicated because it runs counter to a world view fabricated from compartmentalized pieces of information. This is a temporary situation and recent publications, such as the 2008 DOE piece will allow the opportunity to slowly diffuse into the public awareness. We strongly encourage the serious Polymath to follow the links in this article, especially the 2008 DOE study, to gain a more complete understanding of this issue.
Showing posts with label future. Show all posts
Showing posts with label future. Show all posts
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Polymathicans as Transformationalists
In a prior post we touched upon our skepticism with regard to ‘The Singularity.’ Since the purpose of the post was to introduce the idea of the Information Age Income Explosion, we did not deal comprehensively with the problems inherent in Singularitarianism. We will discuss The Singularity in more detail in future posts. Again, it is only tangentially related to this post. Presently, we will discuss Information Age Transformationalism. In other words, because we believe that the near future will be characterized by a cascade of endogenously related S-Curves, we incorporate into our vision of Polymathica the notion that a transformational global Information Age civilization is emerging.
Polymathica is about creating a global community of refinement and erudition. Our analysis suggests that a universal awareness of Polymathica and a robust selection of refined and/or erudite content, networks, products and services, will result in between 2.0 and 3.0 million Polymathicans. So, while a small percentage of the population from which it is drawn, Polymathica is potentially significant in absolute terms. However, its growth and development needs to be considered within the context of the profound global transformation that will reach its greatest rate of change between today and 2030. In this article we will summarize the major points of that transformation and its significance to Polymathicans.
As we discussed in our prior post, implementation of state of the art robotics and business related AI software will lead, over the next twenty years, to an explosion in incomes. At a minimum the GDP per capita in the developed world will double by 2020 and quadruple by 2030. At the same time, the majority of current job descriptions will disappear. We will likely find ourselves in the peculiar situation where income will be increasing at an unprecedented rate while, simultaneously, unemployment will be skyrocketing. We cannot overemphasize the importance of our constituency staying ahead of this curve by entering an Information Age knowledge profession as soon as possible.
As incomes explode, work weeks will shorten. This will happen because nearly all jobs will become robotically or AI assisted. At the same time domestic chores will become robotically or AI assisted as well. Robots will clean our house, wash our clothes, tend our yards and cook our meals. This dramatic increase in leisure time will precipitate an existential crisis for many people. However, for Polymathicans, it will enable their pursuit of refinement and erudition – what we refer to as A Finely Crafted Life. We have likened the sociology of the coming age of automation to the Antebellum South of the U.S. What we mean by this is that the cultural emphasis will move away from productivity and toward self-actualization. We understand that many will consider the Antebellum culture to have been effete and we don't disagree that it was immediately prior to the Civil War. However, it also spawned Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.
Aubrey de Grey has been soundly, and unfairly, criticized for his SENS.org. While detractors are correct that he is not engaging in science, they are incorrect in using the pejorative, pseudoscience. He is engaging in a systematic metascientific inquiry into the essential nature of the problem of aging and death. He is rejecting the fantastical claims of simple solutions in favor of the more realistic expectations of incremental improvements in life expectancy. Over the next twenty years society will be fundamentally transformed by the growing expectations that life spans will routinely exceed one hundred years. We can expect that people will more readily accept the notion of evolving careers. The portion of life dedicated to rearing children will dramatically decrease. Preparation for retirement will be de-emphasized. Continuing adult education will become normative and, parenthetically, one of the lifestyle changes enabled by the increase in leisure time inherent in The Transformation.
The transformation of the Internet into a multi-media, global communication system that will support the market demands of smaller, more diffuse communities will also transform civilization. From a theoretical viewpoint, memic propagators are decoupling from geographically defined communities and thereby decoupling culture from geography in general. In other words, in the past people absorbed their culture from local sources such as schools, churches, parents, neighbors, etc. Now, culture is being absorbed from remote, often globally distributed sources. We discussed a theoretical structure of analysis in our article, ‘The Cultural Calculus.’ Because culture informs one as to morality and morality informs one as to the justness of laws, we are entering a period when geographically defined institutions of governance will become progressively less effective. A full exploration of what will replace them is beyond the scope of this article and will be addressed in future articles. However, generally, governance will be bicameral, with one legislative institution granted geographic sovereignty and the other cultural sovereignty.
Each year, approximately ½ of 1% of the population finds that they can live anywhere. In tandem with the decoupling of culture from geography, this will dramatically transform the demographics of civilization. New, culturally defined, communities will form in locales chosen for purely environmental and lifestyle reasons. Each ‘live anywhere’ person who chooses to move to such a community will create five or six other residents, primarily by creating demand in the service sector. It appears that this process will take place over about one generation and follow an S-Curve development. Over the next 30 years, we expect that Industrial Age cities will lose approximately 30% of their population to new communities comprehensively designed to facilitate the lifestyles idiosyncratic to specific values and cultures. EcoVillages and CoHousing are the beginning, not the culmination, of this process.
This blog is currently being read by people in over 40 countries. When we described Polymathica as a global community, we chose the words carefully. Polymathica is part of an overall trend toward a growing transnational intellectual elite. We are seeing in Polymathican profiles many people who are currently living far from where they were born and raised. Polymathicans are not only polymathic, they are, of necessity, polyglots. Assuming that future communities facilitative of polymathic values and lifestyles mirror the Membership in Polymathica, we can expect that these communities will have a distinctly international flavor. This is part of an overall process by which cultural and community identification slowly supplants national identity.
The next twenty years are best considered using the analogical model of a system of endogenously related time series equations where the individual equations without the effects of other equations would describe S-Curves. Each of the transformations described here would be one of those equations. However, because they are endogenously related, the system, as a whole, can experience periods of profound discontinuity. For those readers who prefer non-mathematical analogies, we would simply state that these imminent transformations will result in what historians will consider to be the core of the Information Revolution. While we believe that The Singularity is a flawed prediction, we do believe in The Transformation.
The observation made on the pages of Project Polymath that we may be entering a second Renaissance is not without validity. However, it is not a renaissance; it is a nascence. The emergence of an international community of polymaths, will be similar to the Renaissance in its intellectual energy. However, it will be unlike anything that preceded it in fundamental ways. In the Industrial Age, the civilization did not well utilize its most exceptional members. This was partially due to the social dynamics of organizational structures and partially due to the rejection of the Polymath model that we discuss in our articles, ‘The Polymathic Method and the Research Polymath’ and ‘The Enterprise Polymath.’ One of the characteristics of the Transformation will be the emergence of polymathic knowledge professions. While a footnote for future historians, this eventuality portends profound intellectual, social and lifestyle transformations for Polymathicans.
Consequently, the concept of Polymathica as a global community, is inextricably entwined with the considerations of the emergent knowledge professions, a rigorous development of a superior understanding of futurity and the Transformation that we believe is far more likely than the Singularity. We understand that for most Polymathicans, the fraternal associations and the intellectual stimulation derived through Member interaction is a sufficient level of involvement for them at this time. However, for some, the pursuit of polymathic research, education, enterprise and/or lifestyles are matters of significant, if not primary, lifestyle concern. Consequently, we have, on several occasions attempted to bifurcate the organization into two levels of interest. To this end, we will be establishing a Polymathica Institute that will have among its parts, an Academy, a professional network similar to LinkedIn.com and an enterprise development and financing organization. At its core, its purpose is to participate, on behalf of Polymaths, in the imminent Transformation.
Polymathica is about creating a global community of refinement and erudition. Our analysis suggests that a universal awareness of Polymathica and a robust selection of refined and/or erudite content, networks, products and services, will result in between 2.0 and 3.0 million Polymathicans. So, while a small percentage of the population from which it is drawn, Polymathica is potentially significant in absolute terms. However, its growth and development needs to be considered within the context of the profound global transformation that will reach its greatest rate of change between today and 2030. In this article we will summarize the major points of that transformation and its significance to Polymathicans.
As we discussed in our prior post, implementation of state of the art robotics and business related AI software will lead, over the next twenty years, to an explosion in incomes. At a minimum the GDP per capita in the developed world will double by 2020 and quadruple by 2030. At the same time, the majority of current job descriptions will disappear. We will likely find ourselves in the peculiar situation where income will be increasing at an unprecedented rate while, simultaneously, unemployment will be skyrocketing. We cannot overemphasize the importance of our constituency staying ahead of this curve by entering an Information Age knowledge profession as soon as possible.
As incomes explode, work weeks will shorten. This will happen because nearly all jobs will become robotically or AI assisted. At the same time domestic chores will become robotically or AI assisted as well. Robots will clean our house, wash our clothes, tend our yards and cook our meals. This dramatic increase in leisure time will precipitate an existential crisis for many people. However, for Polymathicans, it will enable their pursuit of refinement and erudition – what we refer to as A Finely Crafted Life. We have likened the sociology of the coming age of automation to the Antebellum South of the U.S. What we mean by this is that the cultural emphasis will move away from productivity and toward self-actualization. We understand that many will consider the Antebellum culture to have been effete and we don't disagree that it was immediately prior to the Civil War. However, it also spawned Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.
Aubrey de Grey has been soundly, and unfairly, criticized for his SENS.org. While detractors are correct that he is not engaging in science, they are incorrect in using the pejorative, pseudoscience. He is engaging in a systematic metascientific inquiry into the essential nature of the problem of aging and death. He is rejecting the fantastical claims of simple solutions in favor of the more realistic expectations of incremental improvements in life expectancy. Over the next twenty years society will be fundamentally transformed by the growing expectations that life spans will routinely exceed one hundred years. We can expect that people will more readily accept the notion of evolving careers. The portion of life dedicated to rearing children will dramatically decrease. Preparation for retirement will be de-emphasized. Continuing adult education will become normative and, parenthetically, one of the lifestyle changes enabled by the increase in leisure time inherent in The Transformation.
The transformation of the Internet into a multi-media, global communication system that will support the market demands of smaller, more diffuse communities will also transform civilization. From a theoretical viewpoint, memic propagators are decoupling from geographically defined communities and thereby decoupling culture from geography in general. In other words, in the past people absorbed their culture from local sources such as schools, churches, parents, neighbors, etc. Now, culture is being absorbed from remote, often globally distributed sources. We discussed a theoretical structure of analysis in our article, ‘The Cultural Calculus.’ Because culture informs one as to morality and morality informs one as to the justness of laws, we are entering a period when geographically defined institutions of governance will become progressively less effective. A full exploration of what will replace them is beyond the scope of this article and will be addressed in future articles. However, generally, governance will be bicameral, with one legislative institution granted geographic sovereignty and the other cultural sovereignty.
Each year, approximately ½ of 1% of the population finds that they can live anywhere. In tandem with the decoupling of culture from geography, this will dramatically transform the demographics of civilization. New, culturally defined, communities will form in locales chosen for purely environmental and lifestyle reasons. Each ‘live anywhere’ person who chooses to move to such a community will create five or six other residents, primarily by creating demand in the service sector. It appears that this process will take place over about one generation and follow an S-Curve development. Over the next 30 years, we expect that Industrial Age cities will lose approximately 30% of their population to new communities comprehensively designed to facilitate the lifestyles idiosyncratic to specific values and cultures. EcoVillages and CoHousing are the beginning, not the culmination, of this process.
This blog is currently being read by people in over 40 countries. When we described Polymathica as a global community, we chose the words carefully. Polymathica is part of an overall trend toward a growing transnational intellectual elite. We are seeing in Polymathican profiles many people who are currently living far from where they were born and raised. Polymathicans are not only polymathic, they are, of necessity, polyglots. Assuming that future communities facilitative of polymathic values and lifestyles mirror the Membership in Polymathica, we can expect that these communities will have a distinctly international flavor. This is part of an overall process by which cultural and community identification slowly supplants national identity.
The next twenty years are best considered using the analogical model of a system of endogenously related time series equations where the individual equations without the effects of other equations would describe S-Curves. Each of the transformations described here would be one of those equations. However, because they are endogenously related, the system, as a whole, can experience periods of profound discontinuity. For those readers who prefer non-mathematical analogies, we would simply state that these imminent transformations will result in what historians will consider to be the core of the Information Revolution. While we believe that The Singularity is a flawed prediction, we do believe in The Transformation.
The observation made on the pages of Project Polymath that we may be entering a second Renaissance is not without validity. However, it is not a renaissance; it is a nascence. The emergence of an international community of polymaths, will be similar to the Renaissance in its intellectual energy. However, it will be unlike anything that preceded it in fundamental ways. In the Industrial Age, the civilization did not well utilize its most exceptional members. This was partially due to the social dynamics of organizational structures and partially due to the rejection of the Polymath model that we discuss in our articles, ‘The Polymathic Method and the Research Polymath’ and ‘The Enterprise Polymath.’ One of the characteristics of the Transformation will be the emergence of polymathic knowledge professions. While a footnote for future historians, this eventuality portends profound intellectual, social and lifestyle transformations for Polymathicans.
Consequently, the concept of Polymathica as a global community, is inextricably entwined with the considerations of the emergent knowledge professions, a rigorous development of a superior understanding of futurity and the Transformation that we believe is far more likely than the Singularity. We understand that for most Polymathicans, the fraternal associations and the intellectual stimulation derived through Member interaction is a sufficient level of involvement for them at this time. However, for some, the pursuit of polymathic research, education, enterprise and/or lifestyles are matters of significant, if not primary, lifestyle concern. Consequently, we have, on several occasions attempted to bifurcate the organization into two levels of interest. To this end, we will be establishing a Polymathica Institute that will have among its parts, an Academy, a professional network similar to LinkedIn.com and an enterprise development and financing organization. At its core, its purpose is to participate, on behalf of Polymaths, in the imminent Transformation.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
The Singularity is Not Near. But the future is going to be really cool anyway
If you kick around the intellectual community for any time at all, you will undoubtedly encounter the Transhumanists and Singularitiarians. If you look at our suggested reading list for polymaths, you will see Ray Kurzweil’s book, ‘The Singularity is Near’. That is because the book is influential, not because it is particularly accurate.
Kurzweil accepts that technologies develop and mature along a path known as an S-curve. He then makes the claim that, in cases such as computing capacity, S-curves follow one another sequentially to form a geometric curve. (page 43) In this, he is mistaken. The same forces that cause an individual technology to follow an S-curve applies to the function, such as computing capacity per constant dollar, itself. Consequently, it will follow a super S-Curve.
When electromechanical computation began to reach its maturity, it was relatively easy to find a technology that had more potential. It was the relay. When the relay began to reach its maturity, it was a little more difficult and costly to find a new technology with greater potential. It was the vacuum tube. When the vacuum tube began to reach its maturity it was even more difficult and costly to develop a new technology. It was the transistor.
The current technology, the silicon based integrated circuit, is approaching its limits. The number of components that can be put on a chip will continue to increase at least until 2019. However, the computing power that can be purchased for a constant dollar amount appears to be reaching its limit by 2014. In other words, after 2014, you will be able to get a more powerful CPU, but it is going to cost you more.
There is a replacement technology, carbon nanotubes, that appears capable of exceeding the performance of silicon based chips. However, the most enthusiastic proponents do not claim that the cross-over point will occur before 2020. Additionally, there is currently no strong evidence that their price performance can exceed current technology by then, if ever. It appears that we are reaching the flex point of the Super S-Curve of computation. In other words, human equivalent computing capacity for $1,000 is likely by 2030. However, after that progress is likely to slow down dramatically.
While the future of immortal humans and god-like computers is not likely in the 21st Century, the next twenty years are going to be extraordinarily exciting. Due to a number of economic and technological forces, robotic performance in practice is lagging far behind theory. The computing capacity that can be purchased today for $1,000 would have cost $250,000,000 just twenty years ago. However, in the same period, the cost of a similar robot has only decreased by 75%.
This is about to change. Robotics and artificial intelligence are about to explode. The 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge, for robotics and artificial intelligence, was something like the Apollo Project for space exploration. It was ahead of its time, but it demonstrated just how far behind we were in the implementation of robotics.
By 2030, even households of moderate means will have robots cooking their meals, washing their clothes, cleaning their house and chauffeuring them around. In fact, their home will be primarily robotically built. Manufacturing plants will not only be completely automated, the production of robots will be completely automated as well. In the office, purchasing, inventory control, accounts payable, accounts receivable, cash management and more will be performed by intelligent computer programs with nominal human oversight. Civilization will literally become a slave economy. However, unlike the first round of slavery, robots are completely uninterested in consuming to a level proportional to their production. They are not interested in asserting their will or exercising freedoms. And, if anyone built such robots, people wouldn't buy them.
We are just now entering the bottom of the geometric growth of installed robotics and artificial intelligence. It should be expected that the process will be messy and contentious. However, it will take place. In fact, between 2000 and 2005, Japan’s growth in robot exports was increasing at a rate of 20% to 35% per year. While the global economic slowdown hit robot sales hard, the recovery will begin in 2010 and is expected to be significant.
It is only a matter of time before this level of growth will over-run a GDP per Capita growth rate of under 3%. Conservatively, we would expect household income to double by 2020 and quadruple by 2030. For those who wish to enter the Information Age knowledge professions the increase in standard of living will be even more pronounced and happen even faster. When we state that people who choose to enter a knowledge profession today will be earning 250K within three years and 500K within five years, that is not hyperbole or hype. It is simply what knowledge professions will be earning in the Information Age.
So, while significantly less dramatic that what is predicted by Singularitarians, we still expect a dramatic and positive next twenty years. Singularitarians seem to make the admirable error of assuming that everything that can go right, will go right. It won’t. However, much of it will, though generally later than expected. Even now, we are beginning to see that S-Curves aggregate to make a Super S-Curve, not a geometric curve. However, the generally pessimistic view of the future promulgated by many of the more mainstream media is even more unrealistic. As Polymathica grows and expands the assumption that an Information Age Income Explosion is imminent is critical to proper planning.
In addition to inviting comments on our blog, we will be setting up a topic on the discussion board of our facebook group. Please follow us here and on facebook.
Kurzweil accepts that technologies develop and mature along a path known as an S-curve. He then makes the claim that, in cases such as computing capacity, S-curves follow one another sequentially to form a geometric curve. (page 43) In this, he is mistaken. The same forces that cause an individual technology to follow an S-curve applies to the function, such as computing capacity per constant dollar, itself. Consequently, it will follow a super S-Curve.
When electromechanical computation began to reach its maturity, it was relatively easy to find a technology that had more potential. It was the relay. When the relay began to reach its maturity, it was a little more difficult and costly to find a new technology with greater potential. It was the vacuum tube. When the vacuum tube began to reach its maturity it was even more difficult and costly to develop a new technology. It was the transistor.
The current technology, the silicon based integrated circuit, is approaching its limits. The number of components that can be put on a chip will continue to increase at least until 2019. However, the computing power that can be purchased for a constant dollar amount appears to be reaching its limit by 2014. In other words, after 2014, you will be able to get a more powerful CPU, but it is going to cost you more.
There is a replacement technology, carbon nanotubes, that appears capable of exceeding the performance of silicon based chips. However, the most enthusiastic proponents do not claim that the cross-over point will occur before 2020. Additionally, there is currently no strong evidence that their price performance can exceed current technology by then, if ever. It appears that we are reaching the flex point of the Super S-Curve of computation. In other words, human equivalent computing capacity for $1,000 is likely by 2030. However, after that progress is likely to slow down dramatically.
While the future of immortal humans and god-like computers is not likely in the 21st Century, the next twenty years are going to be extraordinarily exciting. Due to a number of economic and technological forces, robotic performance in practice is lagging far behind theory. The computing capacity that can be purchased today for $1,000 would have cost $250,000,000 just twenty years ago. However, in the same period, the cost of a similar robot has only decreased by 75%.
This is about to change. Robotics and artificial intelligence are about to explode. The 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge, for robotics and artificial intelligence, was something like the Apollo Project for space exploration. It was ahead of its time, but it demonstrated just how far behind we were in the implementation of robotics.
By 2030, even households of moderate means will have robots cooking their meals, washing their clothes, cleaning their house and chauffeuring them around. In fact, their home will be primarily robotically built. Manufacturing plants will not only be completely automated, the production of robots will be completely automated as well. In the office, purchasing, inventory control, accounts payable, accounts receivable, cash management and more will be performed by intelligent computer programs with nominal human oversight. Civilization will literally become a slave economy. However, unlike the first round of slavery, robots are completely uninterested in consuming to a level proportional to their production. They are not interested in asserting their will or exercising freedoms. And, if anyone built such robots, people wouldn't buy them.
We are just now entering the bottom of the geometric growth of installed robotics and artificial intelligence. It should be expected that the process will be messy and contentious. However, it will take place. In fact, between 2000 and 2005, Japan’s growth in robot exports was increasing at a rate of 20% to 35% per year. While the global economic slowdown hit robot sales hard, the recovery will begin in 2010 and is expected to be significant.
It is only a matter of time before this level of growth will over-run a GDP per Capita growth rate of under 3%. Conservatively, we would expect household income to double by 2020 and quadruple by 2030. For those who wish to enter the Information Age knowledge professions the increase in standard of living will be even more pronounced and happen even faster. When we state that people who choose to enter a knowledge profession today will be earning 250K within three years and 500K within five years, that is not hyperbole or hype. It is simply what knowledge professions will be earning in the Information Age.
So, while significantly less dramatic that what is predicted by Singularitarians, we still expect a dramatic and positive next twenty years. Singularitarians seem to make the admirable error of assuming that everything that can go right, will go right. It won’t. However, much of it will, though generally later than expected. Even now, we are beginning to see that S-Curves aggregate to make a Super S-Curve, not a geometric curve. However, the generally pessimistic view of the future promulgated by many of the more mainstream media is even more unrealistic. As Polymathica grows and expands the assumption that an Information Age Income Explosion is imminent is critical to proper planning.
In addition to inviting comments on our blog, we will be setting up a topic on the discussion board of our facebook group. Please follow us here and on facebook.
Monday, April 5, 2010
The Cultural Calculus: An Example of Polymathic Methodological Transfer
Psychologist Charles Spearman hypothesized that for every intellectual task the performance of an individual is determined by traits specific to the task (s) and traits general to all or most intellectual tasks (g). Suppose we chose 100 people at random and gave them a test on number progressions. A performance rank order would result. Now suppose we gave the same 100 people an analogy test. There are three distinct relationships the two results could have to one another.
The first is that they are inversely correlated. In other words, a person who scored in the top 50 on one test would have a greater than random chance of scoring in the lower 50 on the second test. This is the constant intelligence theory that says that everyone has about the same amount of intelligence and if a person is better than average in one task it is because they are applying more of their intelligence to it. Consequently, they have less to apply to other tasks and they can be expected to score below average on those tests.
The next theory is the random theory. In other words, g=0 and all the proficiency a person has in a specific intellectual task is related to traits that only affect that intellectual task. If Spearman is correct, the rank order of a person on one test will have predictive value on the other test. The greater the predictive value the more g dominates the explanation of intellectual performance.
The problem of determining the predictive value between many tests was a difficult one and Spearman developed Factor Analysis to deal with it. It turned out that Spearman was correct. In fact, it turned out that g explained most of the difference in intellectual performance between people. Thus, a new and more rigorous definition of IQ was born. IQ is a measure of g, which is extracted from the results of questions diagnostic of many types of intellectual tasks.
Factor Analysis has been utilized polymathically in geochemistry, ecology, hydrochemistry and economics. Marketing analysis has used a simpler form by creating correlation matrices. Here we are going to give an example of an intentional rather than accidental use of polymathy to develop a Cultural Calculus. In doing so, we will provide a theoretical basis for a new way to evaluate history, understand the present and contemplate the future.
Suppose we gave a number of people a questionnaire that explored their attitude toward abortion. We could then assign values to each person with 1 representing someone who believes that abortion should be illegal in all circumstances and that anyone involved in an abortion should be considered to have committed or been accessory to murder and 100 representing someone who believes that abortion should be legal at all points in a pregnancy and, nobody, including the father or the courts, my abridge that right. We would expect that this questionnaire would result in a bimodal population if plotted on a graph where the x axis is the value between 1 and 100 and the y axis is the number of people with the specific rating. We would expect the left mode to be represented by people who believe that abortion should be illegal except in the cases of incest or rape or to save the life of the mother. The right mode, we expect would be centered on people who believe that abortion should be legal in the first trimester of a pregnancy.
Now suppose we gave the same people a questionnaire that explored their attitude about welfare. We, again, would expect a bimodal population with one group centering around a view that welfare should be limited, locally administered and with significant assistance from the philanthropic and religious communities and the other group centering around a federally mandated suite of government entitlement programs.
Let us expand our graph to three axes, with x being the rating on the abortion scale, y being the rating on the welfare scale and z being the number of people at each particular (x,y). We believe that now we will find a conical mound centering around those who take a low numbered position with regard to both abortion and welfare and another centering around those who take a high numbered position to both. We are not sure whether those not among the two major nodes will be evenly distributed or if there would be one or more smaller nodes. Some people might argue that the graph would have more than two modes. Others may argue that concentrations would be small and the majority of people would reside on a 100 X 100 plane of relatively little topography. We are unaware of any studies of this nature and, consequently, the disagreement cannot be definitively resolved.
Since very few people can visualize hyperdimensional objects, we are going to add one more questionnaire and then stop. Now we will include a questionnaire on the degree to which government should abridge the freedom of action of citizens and enterprises for the sake of preserving the ecological status quo. At the low end will be people who believe that the government has no right to abridge such actions at all and on the other extreme are people who believe that the government has an absolute obligation to proscribe and assess fines for any act that may disturb the current environmental conditions. Now, since we need the z axis for our third questionnaire, we will need to do this a little differently. We will make a volume comprised of 100 X 100 X 100 = 1,000,000 cubes each of which represents one unique (x,y,z) and capable of holding many dots. We believe that this exercise would render two very dense centers surrounded by a halo of loci of decreasing density as the radius from the center increases. For those familiar with astronomy, it would look like two globular clusters, one centered around moderate positions in favor of abortion, welfare and environmental restrictions and one that centered around moderate positions against abortion, welfare and environmental restrictions. Again, we are unsure whether there would be smaller clusters at different locations.
We can imagine that the same questionnaires are given to a statistically valid and consistent group of people over time. We now can see our concept space evolving. Perhaps clusters will become more dense or less dense. Perhaps a piece of a cluster will break off and travel to a different locus, picking up members as it goes. Perhaps portions of our concept space will develop a new attractor and start growing and increasing in density spontaneously. Perhaps we can see the distance between the two major clusters become closer or farther apart. In other words, we will be watching a movie of cultural fragmentation, coalescence and evolution.
Of course, Cultural Analysts, well versed in the more complex mathematical methods required to extract meaning from a larger number questionnaires will take this several steps further than we will here. They will create hyperdimensional models that will move, transform and evolve in ways that can only be approximately represented in three dimensional models. Using factor analysis, they can create a kind of central definition of culture, perhaps extracting central or core factors that define each culture. Even though not easily visualized, characteristic statements, then, can be made about the conformation of the concept space and how it has changed over time.
Not only is this an example of methodology transfer being utilized in the Polymathic Method, it also allows us to provide a more complete explanation of the meaning of Polymathica. If questionnaires were given to people to assess their sense of refinement and erudition, we consider it obvious that few people would find themselves in the 90’s on a scale of 1 to 100. Most of civilization has become rather crass, crude, hedonistic, vulgar and anti-intellectual. Consequently, Polymathica is creating an attractor at one end of the refinement and erudition dimensions of concept space that, we hope will begin to grow through accretion and become more defined through shared cultural literacy.
This post also gives us a common pattern language with which to discuss issues of culture.
The first is that they are inversely correlated. In other words, a person who scored in the top 50 on one test would have a greater than random chance of scoring in the lower 50 on the second test. This is the constant intelligence theory that says that everyone has about the same amount of intelligence and if a person is better than average in one task it is because they are applying more of their intelligence to it. Consequently, they have less to apply to other tasks and they can be expected to score below average on those tests.
The next theory is the random theory. In other words, g=0 and all the proficiency a person has in a specific intellectual task is related to traits that only affect that intellectual task. If Spearman is correct, the rank order of a person on one test will have predictive value on the other test. The greater the predictive value the more g dominates the explanation of intellectual performance.
The problem of determining the predictive value between many tests was a difficult one and Spearman developed Factor Analysis to deal with it. It turned out that Spearman was correct. In fact, it turned out that g explained most of the difference in intellectual performance between people. Thus, a new and more rigorous definition of IQ was born. IQ is a measure of g, which is extracted from the results of questions diagnostic of many types of intellectual tasks.
Factor Analysis has been utilized polymathically in geochemistry, ecology, hydrochemistry and economics. Marketing analysis has used a simpler form by creating correlation matrices. Here we are going to give an example of an intentional rather than accidental use of polymathy to develop a Cultural Calculus. In doing so, we will provide a theoretical basis for a new way to evaluate history, understand the present and contemplate the future.
Suppose we gave a number of people a questionnaire that explored their attitude toward abortion. We could then assign values to each person with 1 representing someone who believes that abortion should be illegal in all circumstances and that anyone involved in an abortion should be considered to have committed or been accessory to murder and 100 representing someone who believes that abortion should be legal at all points in a pregnancy and, nobody, including the father or the courts, my abridge that right. We would expect that this questionnaire would result in a bimodal population if plotted on a graph where the x axis is the value between 1 and 100 and the y axis is the number of people with the specific rating. We would expect the left mode to be represented by people who believe that abortion should be illegal except in the cases of incest or rape or to save the life of the mother. The right mode, we expect would be centered on people who believe that abortion should be legal in the first trimester of a pregnancy.
Now suppose we gave the same people a questionnaire that explored their attitude about welfare. We, again, would expect a bimodal population with one group centering around a view that welfare should be limited, locally administered and with significant assistance from the philanthropic and religious communities and the other group centering around a federally mandated suite of government entitlement programs.
Let us expand our graph to three axes, with x being the rating on the abortion scale, y being the rating on the welfare scale and z being the number of people at each particular (x,y). We believe that now we will find a conical mound centering around those who take a low numbered position with regard to both abortion and welfare and another centering around those who take a high numbered position to both. We are not sure whether those not among the two major nodes will be evenly distributed or if there would be one or more smaller nodes. Some people might argue that the graph would have more than two modes. Others may argue that concentrations would be small and the majority of people would reside on a 100 X 100 plane of relatively little topography. We are unaware of any studies of this nature and, consequently, the disagreement cannot be definitively resolved.
Since very few people can visualize hyperdimensional objects, we are going to add one more questionnaire and then stop. Now we will include a questionnaire on the degree to which government should abridge the freedom of action of citizens and enterprises for the sake of preserving the ecological status quo. At the low end will be people who believe that the government has no right to abridge such actions at all and on the other extreme are people who believe that the government has an absolute obligation to proscribe and assess fines for any act that may disturb the current environmental conditions. Now, since we need the z axis for our third questionnaire, we will need to do this a little differently. We will make a volume comprised of 100 X 100 X 100 = 1,000,000 cubes each of which represents one unique (x,y,z) and capable of holding many dots. We believe that this exercise would render two very dense centers surrounded by a halo of loci of decreasing density as the radius from the center increases. For those familiar with astronomy, it would look like two globular clusters, one centered around moderate positions in favor of abortion, welfare and environmental restrictions and one that centered around moderate positions against abortion, welfare and environmental restrictions. Again, we are unsure whether there would be smaller clusters at different locations.
We can imagine that the same questionnaires are given to a statistically valid and consistent group of people over time. We now can see our concept space evolving. Perhaps clusters will become more dense or less dense. Perhaps a piece of a cluster will break off and travel to a different locus, picking up members as it goes. Perhaps portions of our concept space will develop a new attractor and start growing and increasing in density spontaneously. Perhaps we can see the distance between the two major clusters become closer or farther apart. In other words, we will be watching a movie of cultural fragmentation, coalescence and evolution.
Of course, Cultural Analysts, well versed in the more complex mathematical methods required to extract meaning from a larger number questionnaires will take this several steps further than we will here. They will create hyperdimensional models that will move, transform and evolve in ways that can only be approximately represented in three dimensional models. Using factor analysis, they can create a kind of central definition of culture, perhaps extracting central or core factors that define each culture. Even though not easily visualized, characteristic statements, then, can be made about the conformation of the concept space and how it has changed over time.
Not only is this an example of methodology transfer being utilized in the Polymathic Method, it also allows us to provide a more complete explanation of the meaning of Polymathica. If questionnaires were given to people to assess their sense of refinement and erudition, we consider it obvious that few people would find themselves in the 90’s on a scale of 1 to 100. Most of civilization has become rather crass, crude, hedonistic, vulgar and anti-intellectual. Consequently, Polymathica is creating an attractor at one end of the refinement and erudition dimensions of concept space that, we hope will begin to grow through accretion and become more defined through shared cultural literacy.
This post also gives us a common pattern language with which to discuss issues of culture.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Polymathica Bloggers and Talkers
Based upon research by Hollingworth, Simonton, Dennissen, et al, we conclude that the upper five percent of the population in intellectual and cultural sophistication does not have sufficient access to appropriate news, analysis and commentary. This is a market of approximately 35 million English speakers that, in the Industrial Age, was left substantially underserved. Of these, at least 2.5 million will self-identify as holding the values of refinement and erudition. One of the primary purposes of Polymathica is to create a place similar to The Huffington Post or Townhall.com. However, in our case, rather than being for liberal or conservative news, analysis and commentary, it will provide a broad spectrum of topics presented with refinment and erudition.
Because Polymathica subscribers are erudite, they are also prodigious consumers of information compared to the general population. Consequently, Polymathica, once constructed, can support a broad spectrum of content. By way of example, 2.5 million people creating three page views per day at $.01 per page view will create a little over $27 million of ad revenue per year, which, at Technorati’s estimate of top blogger income of $200,000 per year will support 136 top bloggers. This is sufficient to satisfy the expectations of even the most engaged Polymathica subscriber. However, we believe that Polymathica will be able to support an even larger population of top bloggers.
Bloggers are currently morphing into media personalities and media personalities into bloggers. In the near future, instigated by the emergence of Internet delivery of audio and video content, people who currently are bloggers, columnists, radio talk show hosts, television news personalities, etc. will begin to consider themselves as multimedia personalities. Some will write books. Some will tweet. Some will produce an audio news magazine. Others will produce a video round table discussion. Each will consider the vast and ever expanding array of technologies for delivering their thoughts to the market and choose the ones that work best for them. Rush Limbaugh attempted television and failed. Bill O’Rielly tried radio and failed.
This means, that, because their income is coming from several sources, the number of top bloggers that Polymathica will eventually be able to support is greater than 136. Also, many bloggers who cater to the upper 5% of the population in intellectual and cultural sophistication will find readership in the 90% - 95% of this population that is not a Polymathcia subscriber. We also emphasize, as is the case with the Huffington Post and Townhall.com, that there will be a place for what Technorati refers to as the ‘Citizen Blogger.’ In other words, in the Information Age, people will interact with their community in many ways, one of which will be a blog. It is not done primarily for profit, but rather serves as a super-elaborated personal profile page. Because non-professional bloggers are perfectly capable of making cogent observations, the line between citizen blogger and professional blogger is vague.
The Internet tradition today is that blogs are ad supported and audio commentary is a premium membership feature. The typical 24/7 membership fee is between $30 and $55 per year. As Internet radio becomes the norm, we expect the cost of these premium memberships to go down, probably to about $10 to $15 per year. In this way, people will custom design their news, analysis and commentary access. It may include a video hard news feed, an audio hard news feed, a half dozen audio and video analysis and commentary products, another ten or twelve subscriptions in the Humanities, Science and Technology, Business, Sports, Fashion, Lifestyles, and Spirituality, along with free ad supported print content.
In conclusion, we believe that Polymathica will be of sufficient size to provide its subscribers with a broad spectrum of blogs, audiocasts, videocasts, produced video content, etc. as well as a social architecture that will allow them to share and discuss what they have read, heard, viewed or thought. It won't be easy, but it will be worthwhile for those of us who have found current options sophomoric and superficial. We heartily encourage you to join our facebook page or follow us here.
Because Polymathica subscribers are erudite, they are also prodigious consumers of information compared to the general population. Consequently, Polymathica, once constructed, can support a broad spectrum of content. By way of example, 2.5 million people creating three page views per day at $.01 per page view will create a little over $27 million of ad revenue per year, which, at Technorati’s estimate of top blogger income of $200,000 per year will support 136 top bloggers. This is sufficient to satisfy the expectations of even the most engaged Polymathica subscriber. However, we believe that Polymathica will be able to support an even larger population of top bloggers.
Bloggers are currently morphing into media personalities and media personalities into bloggers. In the near future, instigated by the emergence of Internet delivery of audio and video content, people who currently are bloggers, columnists, radio talk show hosts, television news personalities, etc. will begin to consider themselves as multimedia personalities. Some will write books. Some will tweet. Some will produce an audio news magazine. Others will produce a video round table discussion. Each will consider the vast and ever expanding array of technologies for delivering their thoughts to the market and choose the ones that work best for them. Rush Limbaugh attempted television and failed. Bill O’Rielly tried radio and failed.
This means, that, because their income is coming from several sources, the number of top bloggers that Polymathica will eventually be able to support is greater than 136. Also, many bloggers who cater to the upper 5% of the population in intellectual and cultural sophistication will find readership in the 90% - 95% of this population that is not a Polymathcia subscriber. We also emphasize, as is the case with the Huffington Post and Townhall.com, that there will be a place for what Technorati refers to as the ‘Citizen Blogger.’ In other words, in the Information Age, people will interact with their community in many ways, one of which will be a blog. It is not done primarily for profit, but rather serves as a super-elaborated personal profile page. Because non-professional bloggers are perfectly capable of making cogent observations, the line between citizen blogger and professional blogger is vague.
The Internet tradition today is that blogs are ad supported and audio commentary is a premium membership feature. The typical 24/7 membership fee is between $30 and $55 per year. As Internet radio becomes the norm, we expect the cost of these premium memberships to go down, probably to about $10 to $15 per year. In this way, people will custom design their news, analysis and commentary access. It may include a video hard news feed, an audio hard news feed, a half dozen audio and video analysis and commentary products, another ten or twelve subscriptions in the Humanities, Science and Technology, Business, Sports, Fashion, Lifestyles, and Spirituality, along with free ad supported print content.
In conclusion, we believe that Polymathica will be of sufficient size to provide its subscribers with a broad spectrum of blogs, audiocasts, videocasts, produced video content, etc. as well as a social architecture that will allow them to share and discuss what they have read, heard, viewed or thought. It won't be easy, but it will be worthwhile for those of us who have found current options sophomoric and superficial. We heartily encourage you to join our facebook page or follow us here.
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