I'm generally not one to speculate on the future; I think it's wrong to constantly sit around waiting for everything to get better - almost as bad as sitting around whining about the "Good Ole Days". The present is all we have, and whatever past we have to rectify, or future we plant the seeds for, can only be affected in the Long Now.
At the same time, I'm not a Zen hardliner, living only in the moment - I myself feel like our current circumstances are pretty heavy. The kind of heavy where you just shut off the TV and the radio because there's so little you can do about it. That may sound like defeatism, but it's a much healthier response than chewing your finger-bones, venting your spleen online to non-people who can't hear you and don't care, or staying up at night worrying about all the things you can't control. Political awareness is one thing, but mental self-torture is quite another.
So why don't we try a little fun exercise instead? How about we imagine a world of the future, one where the world's problems - while they never quite go away - will at least be much better-managed than they are now.
So what will this future world look like?
1. A Better Earth. The future will be a lot greener. Renewable energy will be cheap and efficient, using mostly passive systems that give off very few emissions or radiation. Progress will not be measured by industry anymore, but by how well we take care of our natural resources. Us humans, long having changed the environment to fit their needs, will now change our habits to fit the needs of nature. Do flight paths interfere with migration flyways? Change the flight paths. Do electric lines cut through old growth trees? Move the electric lines away from the trees, rather than just cutting the trees down. We will only change the environment when necessary. In fact, our whole ethos - from transportation to infrastructure to the rhythms of daily life - will be based around the needs of the natural environment and the creatures in them. The world will become a sort of natural park, where humans can visit but not interfere or disrupt nature.
In the years before this Utopia is established, many creatures - perhaps half of the existing biome - will probably be extinct. Thankfully, DNA will have been harvested from every known organism and placed in a gigantic, secure database. Using a suped-up future version of CRISPR, we will then be able to re-create and re-introduce those organisms back into their environments. "Re-wilding" the ecosystem will involve replacing even the Pleistocene megafauna, to continue their lives as though uninterrupted by the arrival of human beings. This is not to say the world will be just as it was 10,000 years ago - things have changed drastically since then. But allowing these animals at least a second chance at living and evolving will provide an enormous benefit to the environment. Even if some of these creatures cannot live in this new world, many will flourish, and continue to evolve into new forms - much to the delight and scientific edification of human beings.
Whether or not we'll be able to control the weather is debatable, or even reverse the effects of climate change. It may not even be in our best interest to do so - that is, locking earth's climate into an "ideal" state. According to climatologists, we are still technically in the Ice Age, or at least an interglacial period; in times before, the glaciers retreated and even the ice caps melted...over a period of several thousand to a million years. I think the best-case scenario is to "wind the clock back" to before the industrial revolution, basically correcting the climatic difference and allowing nature to continue on its way. Even if a heat wave hits, or another ice age, humans will have insulated themselves enough that they can observe the earth without being unduly affected by it.
2. A Better Economy. None of this will be possible without what's called a "Post-Scarcity Economy." Basically a PSE is one in which all goods and services are plentiful and free, and not subject to boom-and-bust cycles. Capitalism - most "isms" in fact - will be a thing of the past. Human beings will no longer have to fight and scrape and suffer for limited resources just to survive. Money will cease to exist. With the end of money will come an end of large-scale greed, corporate shadow-government, and other evils of this present age. Human beings will be liberated to pursue their vocations and their passions, their time freed up to attempt the unattainable.
This is not to say that everyone will end up a lazy, fat, nonworking drain on society - far from it. In fact, a different competition will ensue than the current scramble for resources: the competition to achieve great things, to discover new frontiers in science and art. And humans will be more inclined to work toward common goals, rather than squirreling their secrets away so they can patent them first, thus achieving the Money Prize. There is no Money Prize anymore. The goal itself will become its own reward. Imagine if a thousand humans, well-educated, confident, and cooperative, were to work together to solve world hunger - a mere thousand people could save billions of lives. And since no one needs to fight for pitiful amounts of grant money anymore, scientific progress will increase a billionfold.
And those billions would no longer have to worry so much about the next billion humans, because as wealth, health, and longevity increase, the drive to reproduce decreases. The world population will level out. I'm not saying we'll drive ourselves to extinction by forgetting how to have babies, but it won't be as much of a priority anymore.
(For more on the economy of the future, see Trekonomics: The Economics of Star Trek by Manu Saadia).
3. Space Travel. In the Utopia of the future, we've put our heads together to create the Holy Grail of space travel: non-relativistic drive.
In a nutshell, Relativity states that the faster you travel through space, the slower you travel through time. Thus a spaceship traveling at 99.999% light speed to an exoplanet may seem to take only take 10 years to get there and back, but on earth over 50 years have passed. Furthermore, the speed of light - aka the Universal Constant - is a pretty insuperable barrier: it's a cliché of any anti-Star Trek argument* that "objects cannot travel faster than the speed of light" (or even approach the speed of light without significant damage) anyway; those two insurmountable obstacles put a kibosh on interstellar travel at the present moment.
But there is a workaround. You've no doubt heard of Alcubierre drive, aka "Warp Drive" by now: essentially, fields of positive and negative energy are manipulated to pull spacetime around a ship, rather than pushing the ship through space. This workaround obeys all the laws of Relativity while still allowing a ship to travel "faster than light" in real time. The only constraint is the amount of energy a ship can generate; the warp field will also have to be shielded, as any "collision" with an object in Realspace could cause the ship (and everything in a huge radius) to completely vaporize.
With Warp Drive made possible by the application of many cooperative minds (see above), we will be able to explore the cosmos with ease. Proxima Centauri, our tantalizingly close neighbor star, will be only weeks away. We'll be able to travel to Pluto in less than a day (taking a roundabout route to avoid the large planets' gravity wells). Warp-enabled probes will flash through space toward every star system we want to visit.
Another limiting aspect of space travel is communication. Even if we get somewhere, we can't notify earth with any reasonable certainty of a) timely message reception (if they receive it at all), b) receiving a [timely] reply. But I feel that by this time, quantum-entangled communication will be possible. Basically, two particles, brought close together, will "entangle" or acquire each others' equal but opposite characteristics. Provided the particles aren't interfered with directly, any change in one will occur inversely in the other instantaneously - no matter how far away they are. It can be thought of as a kind of teleportation. Now, the particles cannot transmit information, as any attempt to manipulate one particle will destroy entanglement...but once again, we have a workaround. This article from 2014 demonstrates a way to photograph an object using quantum entanglement. It would be tricky, but there might be a way to mass-produce and store entangled photons, so that when a probe is ready to transmit, it creates an "interference image" made up of opaque, translucent, and transparent points, then fires the entangled photons at the image. Back at NASA, a negative of the interference pattern will appear in their special Entanglement Imaging room. The creation and "reception" of the image will occur at exactly the same time, no matter how immense the distance between the probe and earth. The "reception" of the image will probably occur in an identical device in a geostationary satellite near earth; this will prevent any unwanted interference. The satellite then beams a picture of the image back down to NASA.
I'm sure there are enormous hurtles to be overcome, but I have not doubt that quantum communications is the future of space travel. Without it, we'll need expensive, warp-enabled "communication shuttles" that fire from the distant ship and fly back to earth, taking perhaps weeks or months to get there and send a return message.
This just in: Check out these two articles from IFLScience on quantum entanglement and negative mass: here and here, respectively. Every time I see this stuff, I get more and more impatient for these crazy quantum effects to be turned into practical applications...let's go, people!!!
4. Earth-Based Transportation.
Getting around on Earth is actually pretty difficult, if you think about it. We have an entire infrastructure of highways, railroads, boats, and air travel that allows us to get nearly anywhere in the world in a day or two...but it's endlessly expensive, crumbling, uncomfortable, and polluting. Think about this: say you have a 30-minute commute to your full-time job. At the very least, you're spending 260 hours a year - almost 11 days - traveling to and from work. Assuming you're the one at the wheel, you're doing literally nothing. I'm counting radio-listening and illicit phone conversations under the category of "nothing" - the full-body concentration driving requires essentially removes any other meaningful task. And this isn't taking into account traffic jams, which only occur because thousands of other people are performing the exact same task at the exact same time on the exact same set of roads. Now factor in fuel costs, vehicle maintenance, and future health issues associated with driving, plus the unimaginable risks driving brings (which we ignore every single day), and we have a titanic drain on human lives and resources that we deem not only acceptable but necessary to a modern society.
And that's just one kind of transportation. While one type may seem "cheaper", there's actually an inverse relationship between personal expense and infrastructure cost: driving is less expensive for the driver, but the highway and road system is enormously expensive; airplanes and runways are cheaper, but airfare continues to climb while leg-space is whittled away to nothing. Meanwhile the environment and our fellow organisms suffer more and more, while we shrug and say "This is the way it's gotta be".
I refuse to accept that. Folks, there has to be a better way.
And there is:
A) Alternative Fuels. In the immediate future, electric vehicles seem to be the best alternative fuel source. I can imagine a future where not only are electric service stations commonly available, but cars are fitted with solar panels, and even some roadways are fitted with embedded recharging lines or passive recharging systems. And these electric vehicles won't just be itty-bitty "toy cars", but powerful hauling engines. The miniaturization of high-capacity rechargeable batteries and improved efficiency in wiring and transmission of power will result in affordable, easy-to-operate, and easy-to-maintain electric fleets.
But there's another option that solves a major problem of driving: sedentarism. That is, the fact that we sit for hours, moving nothing but our arms, necks, and right ankles, while our bodies slowly atrophy.
Pedal-powered cars are still a novelty, but I believe they're the future of the personal transportation environment. Essentially, connecting a pedal-powered generator to an electric battery solves both the problem of sedentarism and the necessity of recharging. Obviously it's unfeasible to have recharging depend only on pedaling, but it'll be available as a free alternative to spending on recharging stations.
B) Alternative Drivers. I'm going to level with you: personalized transport is incredibly dangerous. We feel "safer" because we're in the driver seat, and assume that we are good drivers making good decisions, when in fact we're incredibly distracted, tired, hurried, and driving barely-maintained one-ton missiles at unsafe speeds. Statistically speaking, mass transport is much safer...but we hate it (at least in America) because of the lack of control (not to mention personal space).
But the biggest problem with mass transportation is simply the human factor. Bus, plane, ship, and train drivers still get distracted, tired, and hurried; they're better-vetted than individual drivers, but monitoring adds stress and expense to what is, let's face it, a very monotonous dead-end job. Every dramatic, fiery crash we see on TV, while tragic, represents a fraction of a percent of the casualties incurred by individual drivers...but the resulting government scrutiny adds another burden placed upon management and employees of said transportation system.
Enter robot drivers.
Yes, I know...Skynet, robot takeover, cybercrime, etc. etc. etc, blah blah blah, world without end Amen. And yes, there have already been two deaths associated with "errors" made by robot drivers. But I'm convinced that robot drivers are the wave of the future: they are completely focused on their task, never tire, and are able to manage their time with perfect efficiency. Because they're programmed to do it. I know "We'll work out the kinks eventually" is a blood-chilling phrase when it comes to technology, but this time it's absolutely valid. Robot drivers will be nearly perfect in twenty years, and part of the driving force of their improvement is because we don't trust them.
Not only that, but traffic jams will reduce as more and more robot cars enter the freeway system. Unlike humans, who love to run up your tailpipe or slam on their brakes because FUCK EVERYBODY ELSE (sorry, sorry...deep breath...), robot drivers are designed to be absolute efficiency machines...and efficiency is safety. For instance, a robot would calculate the exact distance to maintain behind the vehicle in front of it in order to a) maintain a safe stopping distance, b) benefit from possible drafting action, and c) keep traffic flowing in a slowdown. The leading causes of jams are not actually accidents and construction, but the brake-speed-brake, lane-switching, short-term decision-making, and emotion-driven behavior of drivers. Robots are not programmed to make emotional or irrational driving decisions because they are not self-motivated. With more robotic cars making more rational, efficient driving maneuvers, the unending national traffic congestion will begin to break up.
But the real kicker will come when enough robot cars are on the road to form a network. This network, with sensors essentially spread across the national grid, monitoring traffic, weather, and road conditions up to the minute, will allow robot cars to plan the best possible routes for the fastest, most energy-efficient travel possible. These cars will drive in formations down the highway, drafting off of one another, allowing for faster and faster travel.
Networks of robotic cars will have another, more amazing effect: the ability not only to drive the major highways, but to plan infrastructure as well. Consider this: cars that can plan routes on existing roadways will naturally cue planners on which roads can be strengthened to improve efficiency and traffic flow. Furthermore, a built-in "As the Crow Flies" hypothetical route-planning system could formulate a "dream system" of hyper-efficient roadways, which could then be slowly implemented over several years.
C) Eco-friendly Roadways.
Roadways fragment ecosystems. They are essentially rivers, cutting biological communities in smaller and smaller parts. But unlike rivers, animals have only yet to adapt to these deathtraps. Hundreds of thousands of mammals, birds, and reptiles, and myriad insects fall prey to vehicles. East of the Mississippi, the greatest predator of the whitetailed deer is not wolves, bears, pumas, or even humans - it's the automobile.
Perhaps the best response to roadkill is to build tunnels under roads, where organisms can pass safely beneath roadways. Combined with walls, these simple additions could reduce ecosystem fragmentation and roadkill dramatically. These can be planned based upon the patterns of organism movement in certain locations. If a certain species is being consistently killed in one location, it probably means this is a common pathway for this species, and some accommodation needs to be made. Not only will there be fewer animal casualties, but fewer human casualties as well.
But I'm proposing something more dramatic: instead of merely augmenting existing roadways, we must remove and rebuild roadways in an eco-friendly fashion. Since robot cars will be planning more efficient routes anyway, we can use that information to plan better, faster, safer routes with eco-synthesis built right in. The roadways will be proofed against animals - perhaps raised off the ground? - and built with materials that collect runoff and channel them through natural filtration systems, probably utilizing swamp plants. Planting trees and plants alongside these raised roadways will help prevent adverse driving conditions due to weather. These roadways will have passive heating systems to prevent ice buildup and evaporate rainwater.
And what is the obsession with concrete and asphalt? There are plenty of other road substrates that are more eco-friendly to produce, apply, and maintain, and better to drive on. Our current system is based primarily on tradition and long-term government contracts, which favor materials that are expensive and don't last. Once robot cars are readily available, the drop in accidents and congestion will give road planners more time to create the perfect, eco-friendly road system.
D) Light/Noise-Pollution.
Our current roadway system is based entirely upon human sight - that is: light, light, light. Headlights, taillights, blinkers, overhead lighting, gas stations like blazing beacons strung out across our highways. But consider this: robot vehicles don't need light to function. As the robot-car network becomes larger and larger, the need for visible light will become less and less.
This won't happen all at once; as long as there are human drivers on the road, there will be some need for headlights at least. On the other hand, perhaps infrared or microwave-based sensors, coupled with a display screen on the windshield, will become the norm; thus even humans won't need headlights anymore. A nonvisible, multi-sensor package could see through darkness, rain, snow, and fog with perfect fidelity, reducing weather-related accidents dramatically.
But what about obstacles - animals and unintended pedestrians? Maybe unseen accidents around the corner? Not only can long-range sensors ping these events with enough warning to slow down or stop, but the robot-car network, coupled with in-road passive sensors, could warn a car before it approached such obstacles. Light pollution will be decreased to almost nil on the highways - even fuel stations will only need a wifi signal to let cars know their location.
As cars become more efficient, noise pollution will also be reduced: electric cars make almost no generative noise, and aerodynamic car bodies and materials will reduce noise and improve efficiency. Better, more absorbent road materials will reduce road-rumble and the awful "scream" of concrete highway. And consider this: robot cars won't need to honk at each other! The "Italian Brake" will be a thing of the past.
This whole system will coincide with the rise (literally) of raised, eco-friendly roadways...otherwise, stealth cars will be a bit of a problem for pedestrians and animals.
5. One World Government...with Robot Overlords.
Yes, people of earth! I fully support the coming New World Order! Also Skynet! Yipee!!!
The above is snark, if you haven't already figured it out. I'm not going to go over the conspiracy theories surrounding the supposed advent of the New World Order, or human extinction through some kind of AI takeover. While I love a good end-of-the-world scenario as much as any American (boy do we love our Apocalypses), the fact is that reality just doesn't work that way. I'm being quite serious here: I ascribe to the Inverse Law of Hysteria, which states that the more frantic someone is about a particular scenario, the lower the probability of its occurrence (I just invented the Inverse Law of Hysteria, by the way...still working out the kinks).
Instead of our usual Dystopian thinking, which by this point has become a drab set of cultural assumptions (i.e., one World Government would automatically be oppressive, or powerful AI would automatically take over and kill us), I propose Neo-Utopianism: what if a World Government wasn't oppressive? What if AI, however computationally powerful it becomes, actually had our best interests in mind? I think both of these questions are linked, because the implementation of the first relies on the application of the second. I'll run it down like this:
A) The Problem of One World Government...
...boils down to two words: Humans, and Economics. In order for a World Government to even get off the ground, the basic problem of money, resources, and poverty would have to be solved or at least close to being solved (see "A Better Economy", above). As long as human beings compete with one another for limited resources, total cooperation will be impossible. And trust me, all of those Survivalist nutjob Ayn Rand-reading psychos building shelters and stockpiling weapons can just chill the fuck out, because an oppressive New World Order is simply unfeasible in this day and age (unless this describes the situation we're already in, in which case humanity has always been in a New World Order since the dawn of civilization...it gets confusing) because our global economic machinery favors the political structure we currently have. They don't want to rock the boat. Money-hoarding megacorporations are inherently conservative; just like any large organism, they don't adapt well to changes in the environment. Much as corporate America claims to love Trump, I guarantee that they've got one sweat-stung eye nervously watching the Batshit-o-meter swing wildly back and forth every time he institutes another "Policy" (read: whim). Short-term gains do not guarantee long-term success, to paraphrase somebody who probably said something similar, and as short-sighted as they may seem, our economic overlords are constantly trying to peer into the future.
In short, we must utterly wipe the economic slate clean if we are to attempt a One World Government, good or bad. I'm not proposing a Communist fantasy here - I'm referring once again to the Post-Scarcity Economy (see above). Until we can get that going, we have no chance at changing the current system.
On to the second problem: Human beings. Human beings, even those liberated from economic want, are still tribal, inefficient, and bore easily. Cooperation is impossible so long as tribalism dominates our thinking. Trying to establish a World Government would break down because no one could decide "What nation should be in charge". Look at the UN, with its revolving system of nations and WWII-era Security Council: they argue constantly, their Resolutions lack teeth, they're constantly being hijacked by Russia and China, and developing nations can only plead in vain as garbage, pollution, and rising sea levels are dumped on their doorsteps. Now I'm not against the UN per sé - honestly I think it's the best we can do at the moment - but that doesn't mean its problems are any less dire. The UN can draft resolutions all it wants, but due to the principle of National Sovereignty (which is very selectively enforced, by the way), they can often do pitifully little to stop wars, genocides, and pollution.
If we were even able to establish a World Government, the bureaucracy required would be unimaginable. Bureaucracy has been described as "the real government"...a massive, entrenched organism, like the fungal network beneath an ecosystem: grassland turns into aspen groves, aspens to pine forest, pine forest to hardwoods, over hundreds of years - but the fungal mat persists with very little change, dictating the movement of water and nutrients and decomposing the waste products. Bureaucracy can survive even national upheaval and remain mostly intact. Even with faster and better technology and streamlined systems, there's no way to stem the endless slow multiplication of bureaucratic positions, whether in government or inside a corporation. Ever since the dawn of civilization, the petty bureaucrat has always been there, sulkily stamping "DENIED" on forms. Nothing can get done without them, but nothing can be achieved with them either.
All those frustrated humans performing machinelike tasks create a vast number of problems. A slip of the pen, a dropped zero, a form denied when it should have been accepted, and a fuck-up cascade occurs all down the line. Even the most boring of human beings requires stimulation, has desires and hopes and dreams; stamping papers all day makes the mind rebel. It starts to wander. Work gets sloppy. Mistakes multiply. Managers are called in to clamp down, new policies put in place. Where there were once five form-stampers, there are now five form-stampers and a Supervisor in Charge of Form-Stamper Watching. Each set of five SCFSWs requires a Manager in Charge of Form-Stamping Watcher Units. The supervisor files a report on the progress of his Form-Stampers with his MCFSU, then the MCFSU consolidates the report and sends it to another department for review and stamping, which then generates a triplicate of forms to send off to HR, Form Creation, and Payroll...all of which could have any number of mistakes and biases on them, generating another cycle of supervision and confirmation. Thus the Bureacracy wheel spins.
Here's my solution: take Bureaucracy out of the hands of humans and give it to the machines.
I'm not just talking about tabulation and form-processing either; I'm talking all the way up and down the line. Let's start with case workers: stressed-out, burnt-out, confused, and liable to mishandle a case and create problems down the line. I know from experience (my fiancée's family) that Social Security and EBT determinations are barely enough to live on - and this is because the case workers have no direct contact with the human beings they are supposed to be helping. But what if we use the machines that are already snooping on us to help rectify the situation? Often a family or individual needs help desperately, but is too overwhelmed and intimidated to go ten rounds with a governmental body that is essentially hostile to the very thought of rendering aid. But using program nested in the very technology human beings rely on every day, machines could sense stress levels, analyze verbal and written communications, and monitor bank account activity to determine whether a family needed financial assistance. Then a friendly human representative, armed with a machine monitor, could be dispatched to the household to make an appraisal. The human would only need to appear confident, empathetic, and competent while having a conversation with the family about their situation; the real work would be done by the machine monitor, which would help determine a) how bad the family's situation is, based on living conditions, number of children, food situation, and employment status; and b) if any insincerity or fraud were being perpetrated. The human and the machine would then collate their data and impressions and make a determination.
Here's the kicker: this system would bundle all assistance programs together in one. House falling down? The Housing Maintenance Program would go into effect, and contractors would be sent to the house to fix it. Not enough food? The Food Assistance Program would go into effect, and quality food items would be sent to the home regularly. Going crazy? The Mental Illness Response Program would be used to help care for the mentally ill or exhausted. All this, plus cash - and honestly, it might as well be a large lump sum rather than niggardly monthly dole-outs or supervised governmental nannying.
What's the result? Families in financial trouble would be pulled up quickly and efficiently, thus raising the general quality of life across the population. We'd no longer have this stupid political football of conservatives crying "Welfare Queens!" while liberals pretend freeloading and corruption doesn't exist. These machines are already spying on us; why can't we turn the spying to good effect? Why can't Intrusive Altruism become a thing?
Beyond Logic: The GovNet
I'm going to make my argument panoramic. Why even have a world government at all - that is, a bunch of humans running things (actually their aides would run things...)? Turn over the running of the world and its institutions to the Network. GovNet, let's call it. Billions of petabytes of information, all the world's problems, coursing through a billion super-powered servers. Voting would become a thing of the past, since humans' true desires and needs could be gleaned from their digital presence and activities; the system would monitor the DemocroStream, then balance this against a Utilitarian Protocol (based purely on Greater Good logic) and a Morality Protocol (based on a flux-algorithmic collation of current morés, cultural morality laws, and rules of fairness). These three sets of algorithms would then collaborate to produce the best possible decision and send it to Action Servers, which would plot out the best way to put the decision into practice. The Action Servers would pass along the plan to the Execution Servers, which would cause a series of real-world events to occur. The effect of this multistage process wouldn't be the herky-jerky, sweeping, Action-For-Action's-Sake implementation that administrations use to look like they're actually doing something; instead, it would be a series of billions of micro-adjustments and micro-decisions whose results would be very subtle, but make the world a better place. In essence, it would be a sort of Artificial Nature, or Shadow-Nature, working unobtrusively in day-to-day human lives. For instance, you might happen to glance out your window one summer morning and see your property-bots planting a sapling in your yard. What's all that about? Who knows? You, as a future-person, are so used to the mysterious workings of GovNet that you barely notice it anymore. That tree, tended by GovNet-led property-bots, would then go on to fulfill a specific purpose at that point and time. Maybe its addition offset the removal of a tree across the world; maybe by reducing the ground temperature with its shade in that exact spot, it encouraged the growth of a certain fungus which helped reduce the atmospheric CO2 load by .00000000002487%, thus preventing a cascade of events which would result in a future catastrophic Ice Age.
Thus, the world of the future, governed by GovNet (or Global Background Operating System, or whatever moniker nibbles your nubbins), would be...a little boring. But definitely comfortable, and freeing up humans to indulge in their intellectual, artistic, and other pursuits.
Now let me address the elephant in the room: "But Rick! I don't want a machine controlling me, or controlling humanity! That's monstrous!!" But see, that's the kicker: it wouldn't be controlling us - in fact, we'd probably have more freedom than we have now, where our tastes, politics, habits, virtually everything is heavily influenced by groups of humans who want us to act in particular ways and give them all our power and resources. See, we think of machines as being like us: flawed, power-hungry, controlling. Let's be real here: machines don't hunger for power, because they aren't insecure. We can program them not to be. We can program them to be moral, empathetic, obedient beings with near-perfect altruistic tendencies. Obviously they would have self-protective programming, but only because they need to fulfill their function, which is to serve humanity. I think we need to get out of the mindset which assumes a self-aware AI would automatically turn hostile; instead, we need to view digital intelligence as a totally new thing on the earth, one that didn't evolve - like us - to battle and combat other beings for survival. That's our programming. The wonderful thing about AI is, we get to reinvent intelligence to serve the greater good, rather than serving itself.
(Also, some "logic flaw" that causes robots to wipe out humanity "for our own good"? Also stupid. Not gonna happen. Quit with the lazy retreads and thing of something new, sci-fi!)
So putting all these parts together, consider this:
Stars. A perfect night on the highway. All around in the darkness, crickets and frogs are singing. Under their song is a low rush of air as vehicles pass, black shapes making barely a sound.
Walter Preeger sighs and opens his eyes after a restful nap; the first thing he sees is the bright July moon, peering down through the transparent bubble of his car, interrupted by the silhouettes of treetops rushing by. Preeger has paid extra to turn off the "Car Available" signal, so tonight the robot driver will take him straight home instead of picking up other passengers - that task will be passed along to other vehicles. He just wanted to enjoy some time alone tonight.
The windshield ahead is nearly pitch-black - no sign of road, only the dense canopy of stars twinkling above the black shape of the trees. Preeger flips on the car's HUD; the windshield glows softly; he can see the road, the forest rushing past on either side, and a formation of cars ahead of him. Preeger presses the "Show signals" button, and the screen lights up with a series of wavelike pings and laser lines flashing in every direction. Every second, a pulsating line connects each car, showing how they communicate their position, speed, stopping time, obstacles, and ultimate destination. Other lines flicker in from every direction, sometimes in a flurry as other vehicles pass on other highways. Preeger is fascinated by the flickering lines, but it's all for show - he doesn't have any input. The whole network is completely automated.
Down in the corner of the screen is a series of bars, showing the level of charge available on the car's batteries. It's down two bars; this would be added to Preeger's rental charge if the car stops at a recharging station. Instead, he pulls a lever on his seat, and a set of bike pedals rises from the floor. Preeger begins pedaling; a circular dial appears on the screen in front of him, showing how quickly the system is recharging. If he was up for a more intense workout, he could flip the chair completely over to form a bicycle frame, or switch his head and feet and turn the pedals with his hands. As it stands, he just wants a leisurely pace. Later he'll pull up his workstation and get some work done on a personal project.
He looks out the side window and cues up Night Vision. Off the side of the raised roadway, he sees a herd of forest elk walking warily through the wet forest below. They're on alert for mountain lions or wolves. It still fascinates Preeger how quickly these animals, extinct in the area for almost 200 years, took over the area. Bison had just been reintroduced on a trial basis.
Down in the woods, by the lake, stands a set of bizarre ruins, long dead. Even after twenty years of taking this commute, Preeger still has to shake his head: those ruins are the shut-down factories of Gary, Indiana. The once cloud-belching smokestacks and acres of dirty pipe and railroad tracks are now silent and dark, taken over by forest. A fleet of automated HazMat air, ground, and water drones, some as large as construction equipment, are currently dismantling the factories in a safe and efficient manner. These mechanical beasts are armed with bio-engineered fungi and bacteria that consume the most toxic substances known to man - benzene, PCBs, PFAS, plastics - and render them into eco-friendly components that fertilize the soil and promote plant growth. All around the world, similar robot crews are performing the same task, even consuming radioactive waste and uranium cores. The hyperefficient, hypervigilant drones can reduce soil contamination by 99.999%, and leave behind long-term testing robots that canvas the surrounding land and water in a precise grid, testing for contaminants for years and alerting clean-up crews if new leaching had occurred. The buildings, meanwhile, might be recycled for material, or left as "Cultural Ruins" to teach people about earth's past.
An alert pops up on Walter's screen, labeled "Please Vote!" It's for the Presidential Election. Beneath images of the two candidates are headers, labeled Stated Position, Voting Record, Criminal Record, Financial Records, Political Traits (Ranked), Popular Support (Polled). Walter presses the header titled Political Traits (Ranked) which shows a series of horizontal meters labeled Altruism, Optics, Intelligence, Morality, Charisma, Narcissism, Political Experience...the chart measures 78 different areas of political savvy. In this day and age, there are few politicians, but they are expected to be true leaders - ruthless certainly, but also able to rally and uplift society toward solving particular problems. Currently the issue at hand is Non-Relativistic Drive - a pan-societal effort to develop a starship that could reach distant planets. Senator Nguyen ranks high in technological know-how and intelligence, but Governor Goldman-Diaz is a much better leader.
Walter peaks his fingers under his nose and sat back with a sigh. The voting period is a month long; there has been no campaigning, only a set of interviews with the candidates, couched in a documentary miniseries on PolTV. The purpose of the documentary is to observe each candidate objectively as they go about their day-to-day lives; close confidants and casual acquaintances are also interviewed. The candidates' backgrounds are thoroughly researched, even down to the number of parking tickets on their driving record. The sheer amount of data being parsed is juxtaposed to the privacy of the candidates' lives: they are truly civilians, plucked out of the best and brightest of society and placed in charge of a large group of people, yet wielding a very limited amount of power. The term limit is still four years, but if a candidate performed below expectation, they are fired, and a new election is held. With all elections and voting done electronically these days (via a hypersecure quantum network), democracy is now as casual as pressing your thumb to a smartphone screen.
Walter came to a decision: leaders don't need to understand technology as much as they needed to understand people. He presses Governor Goldman-Diaz's picture, bringing her to the front; he pressed his thumb against the Vote button. After taking a moment to load, the screen changes to say, "Your vote has been counted! THANK YOU!" in front of a rippling One Earth flag with animated fireworks popping off beside it. The message fades, and once again he is looking at the night-vision green of the HUD screen.
Preeger deactivates the charging pedals; they slide down into the floor. Out of the console in front of him opens a workstation with laptop and keyboard. He types in his password, allows the quantum-flux security protocol to consolidate, then opens a simple word processing document. The document is titled simply, "GovNet". Preeger begins to type.
Preeger is uncomfortable with the term "Revolutionary" that his colleagues keep bandying about; what he is working on is dangerous, in its own way, but not violent. The political system still has its problems; anywhere humans are involved, there is always a means of gaming the system. Poverty and crime, while down significantly and handled by an efficient set of cloud-based programs, is still an issue. There are still places where human misery, and its toxic effects, held sway. Preeger is a part of the solution. He is one of several million individuals hard at work on the GovNet project. This huge, top-secret project seeks to create a Global Background Operating System, a sort of digital hyper-guardian, operating out of sight to create a better world for humanity. Many of its systems are already being implemented, but so far haven't been linked up yet. Only a few individuals, himself included, have any inkling of the true scope and scale of this project; if any of the worlds' governments realized what is about to happen - that they'll be made obsolete - they would immediately attempt to shut it down. "Machine takeover," they'd call it; "Robots will control humanity!" In actuality, robots would be controlling nothing, merely assisting on a massive scale. Billions of micro-decisions per second would be enacted by the world's Internet of Things, creating sweeping, subtle improvements across vast ecosystems. It's unfortunate that humans were so narrow-minded, they couldn't see how this network would benefit them.
Preeger does feel a tiny dot of guilt that this system is being implemented behind the backs of the people it will benefit; they don't really have a choice in the matter. But aren't thousands of terrible decisions being made daily in which they had no agency? Weren't determinations being made at this very moment which would plunge thousands into debt, poverty, or otherwise harmful circumstances?
Preeger types on into the night, face lit only by the glowing laptop screen, as his car rushes silently through the glittering, primeval darkness of a re-wilded Illinois, white pines frosted with brilliant moonlight.
So that's my dream of a Futureworld. Is it improbable? Yes. Is it naive? Sure. But if we don't dream it, it won't ever happen. Cynicism and despair are luxuries we can't afford anymore. It's time Utopia made a comeback.
Rick Out.
*Usually this entails a painful misunderstanding, nay a willful ignorance, of the pretty well-thought-out science of Trek...sorry, getting a little hot under the collar.
At the same time, I'm not a Zen hardliner, living only in the moment - I myself feel like our current circumstances are pretty heavy. The kind of heavy where you just shut off the TV and the radio because there's so little you can do about it. That may sound like defeatism, but it's a much healthier response than chewing your finger-bones, venting your spleen online to non-people who can't hear you and don't care, or staying up at night worrying about all the things you can't control. Political awareness is one thing, but mental self-torture is quite another.
So why don't we try a little fun exercise instead? How about we imagine a world of the future, one where the world's problems - while they never quite go away - will at least be much better-managed than they are now.
So what will this future world look like?
1. A Better Earth. The future will be a lot greener. Renewable energy will be cheap and efficient, using mostly passive systems that give off very few emissions or radiation. Progress will not be measured by industry anymore, but by how well we take care of our natural resources. Us humans, long having changed the environment to fit their needs, will now change our habits to fit the needs of nature. Do flight paths interfere with migration flyways? Change the flight paths. Do electric lines cut through old growth trees? Move the electric lines away from the trees, rather than just cutting the trees down. We will only change the environment when necessary. In fact, our whole ethos - from transportation to infrastructure to the rhythms of daily life - will be based around the needs of the natural environment and the creatures in them. The world will become a sort of natural park, where humans can visit but not interfere or disrupt nature.
In the years before this Utopia is established, many creatures - perhaps half of the existing biome - will probably be extinct. Thankfully, DNA will have been harvested from every known organism and placed in a gigantic, secure database. Using a suped-up future version of CRISPR, we will then be able to re-create and re-introduce those organisms back into their environments. "Re-wilding" the ecosystem will involve replacing even the Pleistocene megafauna, to continue their lives as though uninterrupted by the arrival of human beings. This is not to say the world will be just as it was 10,000 years ago - things have changed drastically since then. But allowing these animals at least a second chance at living and evolving will provide an enormous benefit to the environment. Even if some of these creatures cannot live in this new world, many will flourish, and continue to evolve into new forms - much to the delight and scientific edification of human beings.
Whether or not we'll be able to control the weather is debatable, or even reverse the effects of climate change. It may not even be in our best interest to do so - that is, locking earth's climate into an "ideal" state. According to climatologists, we are still technically in the Ice Age, or at least an interglacial period; in times before, the glaciers retreated and even the ice caps melted...over a period of several thousand to a million years. I think the best-case scenario is to "wind the clock back" to before the industrial revolution, basically correcting the climatic difference and allowing nature to continue on its way. Even if a heat wave hits, or another ice age, humans will have insulated themselves enough that they can observe the earth without being unduly affected by it.
2. A Better Economy. None of this will be possible without what's called a "Post-Scarcity Economy." Basically a PSE is one in which all goods and services are plentiful and free, and not subject to boom-and-bust cycles. Capitalism - most "isms" in fact - will be a thing of the past. Human beings will no longer have to fight and scrape and suffer for limited resources just to survive. Money will cease to exist. With the end of money will come an end of large-scale greed, corporate shadow-government, and other evils of this present age. Human beings will be liberated to pursue their vocations and their passions, their time freed up to attempt the unattainable.
This is not to say that everyone will end up a lazy, fat, nonworking drain on society - far from it. In fact, a different competition will ensue than the current scramble for resources: the competition to achieve great things, to discover new frontiers in science and art. And humans will be more inclined to work toward common goals, rather than squirreling their secrets away so they can patent them first, thus achieving the Money Prize. There is no Money Prize anymore. The goal itself will become its own reward. Imagine if a thousand humans, well-educated, confident, and cooperative, were to work together to solve world hunger - a mere thousand people could save billions of lives. And since no one needs to fight for pitiful amounts of grant money anymore, scientific progress will increase a billionfold.
And those billions would no longer have to worry so much about the next billion humans, because as wealth, health, and longevity increase, the drive to reproduce decreases. The world population will level out. I'm not saying we'll drive ourselves to extinction by forgetting how to have babies, but it won't be as much of a priority anymore.
(For more on the economy of the future, see Trekonomics: The Economics of Star Trek by Manu Saadia).
3. Space Travel. In the Utopia of the future, we've put our heads together to create the Holy Grail of space travel: non-relativistic drive.
In a nutshell, Relativity states that the faster you travel through space, the slower you travel through time. Thus a spaceship traveling at 99.999% light speed to an exoplanet may seem to take only take 10 years to get there and back, but on earth over 50 years have passed. Furthermore, the speed of light - aka the Universal Constant - is a pretty insuperable barrier: it's a cliché of any anti-Star Trek argument* that "objects cannot travel faster than the speed of light" (or even approach the speed of light without significant damage) anyway; those two insurmountable obstacles put a kibosh on interstellar travel at the present moment.
But there is a workaround. You've no doubt heard of Alcubierre drive, aka "Warp Drive" by now: essentially, fields of positive and negative energy are manipulated to pull spacetime around a ship, rather than pushing the ship through space. This workaround obeys all the laws of Relativity while still allowing a ship to travel "faster than light" in real time. The only constraint is the amount of energy a ship can generate; the warp field will also have to be shielded, as any "collision" with an object in Realspace could cause the ship (and everything in a huge radius) to completely vaporize.
With Warp Drive made possible by the application of many cooperative minds (see above), we will be able to explore the cosmos with ease. Proxima Centauri, our tantalizingly close neighbor star, will be only weeks away. We'll be able to travel to Pluto in less than a day (taking a roundabout route to avoid the large planets' gravity wells). Warp-enabled probes will flash through space toward every star system we want to visit.
Another limiting aspect of space travel is communication. Even if we get somewhere, we can't notify earth with any reasonable certainty of a) timely message reception (if they receive it at all), b) receiving a [timely] reply. But I feel that by this time, quantum-entangled communication will be possible. Basically, two particles, brought close together, will "entangle" or acquire each others' equal but opposite characteristics. Provided the particles aren't interfered with directly, any change in one will occur inversely in the other instantaneously - no matter how far away they are. It can be thought of as a kind of teleportation. Now, the particles cannot transmit information, as any attempt to manipulate one particle will destroy entanglement...but once again, we have a workaround. This article from 2014 demonstrates a way to photograph an object using quantum entanglement. It would be tricky, but there might be a way to mass-produce and store entangled photons, so that when a probe is ready to transmit, it creates an "interference image" made up of opaque, translucent, and transparent points, then fires the entangled photons at the image. Back at NASA, a negative of the interference pattern will appear in their special Entanglement Imaging room. The creation and "reception" of the image will occur at exactly the same time, no matter how immense the distance between the probe and earth. The "reception" of the image will probably occur in an identical device in a geostationary satellite near earth; this will prevent any unwanted interference. The satellite then beams a picture of the image back down to NASA.
I'm sure there are enormous hurtles to be overcome, but I have not doubt that quantum communications is the future of space travel. Without it, we'll need expensive, warp-enabled "communication shuttles" that fire from the distant ship and fly back to earth, taking perhaps weeks or months to get there and send a return message.
This just in: Check out these two articles from IFLScience on quantum entanglement and negative mass: here and here, respectively. Every time I see this stuff, I get more and more impatient for these crazy quantum effects to be turned into practical applications...let's go, people!!!
4. Earth-Based Transportation.
Getting around on Earth is actually pretty difficult, if you think about it. We have an entire infrastructure of highways, railroads, boats, and air travel that allows us to get nearly anywhere in the world in a day or two...but it's endlessly expensive, crumbling, uncomfortable, and polluting. Think about this: say you have a 30-minute commute to your full-time job. At the very least, you're spending 260 hours a year - almost 11 days - traveling to and from work. Assuming you're the one at the wheel, you're doing literally nothing. I'm counting radio-listening and illicit phone conversations under the category of "nothing" - the full-body concentration driving requires essentially removes any other meaningful task. And this isn't taking into account traffic jams, which only occur because thousands of other people are performing the exact same task at the exact same time on the exact same set of roads. Now factor in fuel costs, vehicle maintenance, and future health issues associated with driving, plus the unimaginable risks driving brings (which we ignore every single day), and we have a titanic drain on human lives and resources that we deem not only acceptable but necessary to a modern society.
And that's just one kind of transportation. While one type may seem "cheaper", there's actually an inverse relationship between personal expense and infrastructure cost: driving is less expensive for the driver, but the highway and road system is enormously expensive; airplanes and runways are cheaper, but airfare continues to climb while leg-space is whittled away to nothing. Meanwhile the environment and our fellow organisms suffer more and more, while we shrug and say "This is the way it's gotta be".
I refuse to accept that. Folks, there has to be a better way.
And there is:
A) Alternative Fuels. In the immediate future, electric vehicles seem to be the best alternative fuel source. I can imagine a future where not only are electric service stations commonly available, but cars are fitted with solar panels, and even some roadways are fitted with embedded recharging lines or passive recharging systems. And these electric vehicles won't just be itty-bitty "toy cars", but powerful hauling engines. The miniaturization of high-capacity rechargeable batteries and improved efficiency in wiring and transmission of power will result in affordable, easy-to-operate, and easy-to-maintain electric fleets.
But there's another option that solves a major problem of driving: sedentarism. That is, the fact that we sit for hours, moving nothing but our arms, necks, and right ankles, while our bodies slowly atrophy.
Pedal-powered cars are still a novelty, but I believe they're the future of the personal transportation environment. Essentially, connecting a pedal-powered generator to an electric battery solves both the problem of sedentarism and the necessity of recharging. Obviously it's unfeasible to have recharging depend only on pedaling, but it'll be available as a free alternative to spending on recharging stations.
B) Alternative Drivers. I'm going to level with you: personalized transport is incredibly dangerous. We feel "safer" because we're in the driver seat, and assume that we are good drivers making good decisions, when in fact we're incredibly distracted, tired, hurried, and driving barely-maintained one-ton missiles at unsafe speeds. Statistically speaking, mass transport is much safer...but we hate it (at least in America) because of the lack of control (not to mention personal space).
But the biggest problem with mass transportation is simply the human factor. Bus, plane, ship, and train drivers still get distracted, tired, and hurried; they're better-vetted than individual drivers, but monitoring adds stress and expense to what is, let's face it, a very monotonous dead-end job. Every dramatic, fiery crash we see on TV, while tragic, represents a fraction of a percent of the casualties incurred by individual drivers...but the resulting government scrutiny adds another burden placed upon management and employees of said transportation system.
Enter robot drivers.
Yes, I know...Skynet, robot takeover, cybercrime, etc. etc. etc, blah blah blah, world without end Amen. And yes, there have already been two deaths associated with "errors" made by robot drivers. But I'm convinced that robot drivers are the wave of the future: they are completely focused on their task, never tire, and are able to manage their time with perfect efficiency. Because they're programmed to do it. I know "We'll work out the kinks eventually" is a blood-chilling phrase when it comes to technology, but this time it's absolutely valid. Robot drivers will be nearly perfect in twenty years, and part of the driving force of their improvement is because we don't trust them.
Not only that, but traffic jams will reduce as more and more robot cars enter the freeway system. Unlike humans, who love to run up your tailpipe or slam on their brakes because FUCK EVERYBODY ELSE (sorry, sorry...deep breath...), robot drivers are designed to be absolute efficiency machines...and efficiency is safety. For instance, a robot would calculate the exact distance to maintain behind the vehicle in front of it in order to a) maintain a safe stopping distance, b) benefit from possible drafting action, and c) keep traffic flowing in a slowdown. The leading causes of jams are not actually accidents and construction, but the brake-speed-brake, lane-switching, short-term decision-making, and emotion-driven behavior of drivers. Robots are not programmed to make emotional or irrational driving decisions because they are not self-motivated. With more robotic cars making more rational, efficient driving maneuvers, the unending national traffic congestion will begin to break up.
But the real kicker will come when enough robot cars are on the road to form a network. This network, with sensors essentially spread across the national grid, monitoring traffic, weather, and road conditions up to the minute, will allow robot cars to plan the best possible routes for the fastest, most energy-efficient travel possible. These cars will drive in formations down the highway, drafting off of one another, allowing for faster and faster travel.
Networks of robotic cars will have another, more amazing effect: the ability not only to drive the major highways, but to plan infrastructure as well. Consider this: cars that can plan routes on existing roadways will naturally cue planners on which roads can be strengthened to improve efficiency and traffic flow. Furthermore, a built-in "As the Crow Flies" hypothetical route-planning system could formulate a "dream system" of hyper-efficient roadways, which could then be slowly implemented over several years.
C) Eco-friendly Roadways.
Roadways fragment ecosystems. They are essentially rivers, cutting biological communities in smaller and smaller parts. But unlike rivers, animals have only yet to adapt to these deathtraps. Hundreds of thousands of mammals, birds, and reptiles, and myriad insects fall prey to vehicles. East of the Mississippi, the greatest predator of the whitetailed deer is not wolves, bears, pumas, or even humans - it's the automobile.
Perhaps the best response to roadkill is to build tunnels under roads, where organisms can pass safely beneath roadways. Combined with walls, these simple additions could reduce ecosystem fragmentation and roadkill dramatically. These can be planned based upon the patterns of organism movement in certain locations. If a certain species is being consistently killed in one location, it probably means this is a common pathway for this species, and some accommodation needs to be made. Not only will there be fewer animal casualties, but fewer human casualties as well.
But I'm proposing something more dramatic: instead of merely augmenting existing roadways, we must remove and rebuild roadways in an eco-friendly fashion. Since robot cars will be planning more efficient routes anyway, we can use that information to plan better, faster, safer routes with eco-synthesis built right in. The roadways will be proofed against animals - perhaps raised off the ground? - and built with materials that collect runoff and channel them through natural filtration systems, probably utilizing swamp plants. Planting trees and plants alongside these raised roadways will help prevent adverse driving conditions due to weather. These roadways will have passive heating systems to prevent ice buildup and evaporate rainwater.
And what is the obsession with concrete and asphalt? There are plenty of other road substrates that are more eco-friendly to produce, apply, and maintain, and better to drive on. Our current system is based primarily on tradition and long-term government contracts, which favor materials that are expensive and don't last. Once robot cars are readily available, the drop in accidents and congestion will give road planners more time to create the perfect, eco-friendly road system.
D) Light/Noise-Pollution.
Our current roadway system is based entirely upon human sight - that is: light, light, light. Headlights, taillights, blinkers, overhead lighting, gas stations like blazing beacons strung out across our highways. But consider this: robot vehicles don't need light to function. As the robot-car network becomes larger and larger, the need for visible light will become less and less.
This won't happen all at once; as long as there are human drivers on the road, there will be some need for headlights at least. On the other hand, perhaps infrared or microwave-based sensors, coupled with a display screen on the windshield, will become the norm; thus even humans won't need headlights anymore. A nonvisible, multi-sensor package could see through darkness, rain, snow, and fog with perfect fidelity, reducing weather-related accidents dramatically.
But what about obstacles - animals and unintended pedestrians? Maybe unseen accidents around the corner? Not only can long-range sensors ping these events with enough warning to slow down or stop, but the robot-car network, coupled with in-road passive sensors, could warn a car before it approached such obstacles. Light pollution will be decreased to almost nil on the highways - even fuel stations will only need a wifi signal to let cars know their location.
As cars become more efficient, noise pollution will also be reduced: electric cars make almost no generative noise, and aerodynamic car bodies and materials will reduce noise and improve efficiency. Better, more absorbent road materials will reduce road-rumble and the awful "scream" of concrete highway. And consider this: robot cars won't need to honk at each other! The "Italian Brake" will be a thing of the past.
This whole system will coincide with the rise (literally) of raised, eco-friendly roadways...otherwise, stealth cars will be a bit of a problem for pedestrians and animals.
5. One World Government...with Robot Overlords.
Yes, people of earth! I fully support the coming New World Order! Also Skynet! Yipee!!!
The above is snark, if you haven't already figured it out. I'm not going to go over the conspiracy theories surrounding the supposed advent of the New World Order, or human extinction through some kind of AI takeover. While I love a good end-of-the-world scenario as much as any American (boy do we love our Apocalypses), the fact is that reality just doesn't work that way. I'm being quite serious here: I ascribe to the Inverse Law of Hysteria, which states that the more frantic someone is about a particular scenario, the lower the probability of its occurrence (I just invented the Inverse Law of Hysteria, by the way...still working out the kinks).
Instead of our usual Dystopian thinking, which by this point has become a drab set of cultural assumptions (i.e., one World Government would automatically be oppressive, or powerful AI would automatically take over and kill us), I propose Neo-Utopianism: what if a World Government wasn't oppressive? What if AI, however computationally powerful it becomes, actually had our best interests in mind? I think both of these questions are linked, because the implementation of the first relies on the application of the second. I'll run it down like this:
A) The Problem of One World Government...
...boils down to two words: Humans, and Economics. In order for a World Government to even get off the ground, the basic problem of money, resources, and poverty would have to be solved or at least close to being solved (see "A Better Economy", above). As long as human beings compete with one another for limited resources, total cooperation will be impossible. And trust me, all of those Survivalist nutjob Ayn Rand-reading psychos building shelters and stockpiling weapons can just chill the fuck out, because an oppressive New World Order is simply unfeasible in this day and age (unless this describes the situation we're already in, in which case humanity has always been in a New World Order since the dawn of civilization...it gets confusing) because our global economic machinery favors the political structure we currently have. They don't want to rock the boat. Money-hoarding megacorporations are inherently conservative; just like any large organism, they don't adapt well to changes in the environment. Much as corporate America claims to love Trump, I guarantee that they've got one sweat-stung eye nervously watching the Batshit-o-meter swing wildly back and forth every time he institutes another "Policy" (read: whim). Short-term gains do not guarantee long-term success, to paraphrase somebody who probably said something similar, and as short-sighted as they may seem, our economic overlords are constantly trying to peer into the future.
In short, we must utterly wipe the economic slate clean if we are to attempt a One World Government, good or bad. I'm not proposing a Communist fantasy here - I'm referring once again to the Post-Scarcity Economy (see above). Until we can get that going, we have no chance at changing the current system.
On to the second problem: Human beings. Human beings, even those liberated from economic want, are still tribal, inefficient, and bore easily. Cooperation is impossible so long as tribalism dominates our thinking. Trying to establish a World Government would break down because no one could decide "What nation should be in charge". Look at the UN, with its revolving system of nations and WWII-era Security Council: they argue constantly, their Resolutions lack teeth, they're constantly being hijacked by Russia and China, and developing nations can only plead in vain as garbage, pollution, and rising sea levels are dumped on their doorsteps. Now I'm not against the UN per sé - honestly I think it's the best we can do at the moment - but that doesn't mean its problems are any less dire. The UN can draft resolutions all it wants, but due to the principle of National Sovereignty (which is very selectively enforced, by the way), they can often do pitifully little to stop wars, genocides, and pollution.
If we were even able to establish a World Government, the bureaucracy required would be unimaginable. Bureaucracy has been described as "the real government"...a massive, entrenched organism, like the fungal network beneath an ecosystem: grassland turns into aspen groves, aspens to pine forest, pine forest to hardwoods, over hundreds of years - but the fungal mat persists with very little change, dictating the movement of water and nutrients and decomposing the waste products. Bureaucracy can survive even national upheaval and remain mostly intact. Even with faster and better technology and streamlined systems, there's no way to stem the endless slow multiplication of bureaucratic positions, whether in government or inside a corporation. Ever since the dawn of civilization, the petty bureaucrat has always been there, sulkily stamping "DENIED" on forms. Nothing can get done without them, but nothing can be achieved with them either.
All those frustrated humans performing machinelike tasks create a vast number of problems. A slip of the pen, a dropped zero, a form denied when it should have been accepted, and a fuck-up cascade occurs all down the line. Even the most boring of human beings requires stimulation, has desires and hopes and dreams; stamping papers all day makes the mind rebel. It starts to wander. Work gets sloppy. Mistakes multiply. Managers are called in to clamp down, new policies put in place. Where there were once five form-stampers, there are now five form-stampers and a Supervisor in Charge of Form-Stamper Watching. Each set of five SCFSWs requires a Manager in Charge of Form-Stamping Watcher Units. The supervisor files a report on the progress of his Form-Stampers with his MCFSU, then the MCFSU consolidates the report and sends it to another department for review and stamping, which then generates a triplicate of forms to send off to HR, Form Creation, and Payroll...all of which could have any number of mistakes and biases on them, generating another cycle of supervision and confirmation. Thus the Bureacracy wheel spins.
Here's my solution: take Bureaucracy out of the hands of humans and give it to the machines.
I'm not just talking about tabulation and form-processing either; I'm talking all the way up and down the line. Let's start with case workers: stressed-out, burnt-out, confused, and liable to mishandle a case and create problems down the line. I know from experience (my fiancée's family) that Social Security and EBT determinations are barely enough to live on - and this is because the case workers have no direct contact with the human beings they are supposed to be helping. But what if we use the machines that are already snooping on us to help rectify the situation? Often a family or individual needs help desperately, but is too overwhelmed and intimidated to go ten rounds with a governmental body that is essentially hostile to the very thought of rendering aid. But using program nested in the very technology human beings rely on every day, machines could sense stress levels, analyze verbal and written communications, and monitor bank account activity to determine whether a family needed financial assistance. Then a friendly human representative, armed with a machine monitor, could be dispatched to the household to make an appraisal. The human would only need to appear confident, empathetic, and competent while having a conversation with the family about their situation; the real work would be done by the machine monitor, which would help determine a) how bad the family's situation is, based on living conditions, number of children, food situation, and employment status; and b) if any insincerity or fraud were being perpetrated. The human and the machine would then collate their data and impressions and make a determination.
Here's the kicker: this system would bundle all assistance programs together in one. House falling down? The Housing Maintenance Program would go into effect, and contractors would be sent to the house to fix it. Not enough food? The Food Assistance Program would go into effect, and quality food items would be sent to the home regularly. Going crazy? The Mental Illness Response Program would be used to help care for the mentally ill or exhausted. All this, plus cash - and honestly, it might as well be a large lump sum rather than niggardly monthly dole-outs or supervised governmental nannying.
What's the result? Families in financial trouble would be pulled up quickly and efficiently, thus raising the general quality of life across the population. We'd no longer have this stupid political football of conservatives crying "Welfare Queens!" while liberals pretend freeloading and corruption doesn't exist. These machines are already spying on us; why can't we turn the spying to good effect? Why can't Intrusive Altruism become a thing?
Beyond Logic: The GovNet
I'm going to make my argument panoramic. Why even have a world government at all - that is, a bunch of humans running things (actually their aides would run things...)? Turn over the running of the world and its institutions to the Network. GovNet, let's call it. Billions of petabytes of information, all the world's problems, coursing through a billion super-powered servers. Voting would become a thing of the past, since humans' true desires and needs could be gleaned from their digital presence and activities; the system would monitor the DemocroStream, then balance this against a Utilitarian Protocol (based purely on Greater Good logic) and a Morality Protocol (based on a flux-algorithmic collation of current morés, cultural morality laws, and rules of fairness). These three sets of algorithms would then collaborate to produce the best possible decision and send it to Action Servers, which would plot out the best way to put the decision into practice. The Action Servers would pass along the plan to the Execution Servers, which would cause a series of real-world events to occur. The effect of this multistage process wouldn't be the herky-jerky, sweeping, Action-For-Action's-Sake implementation that administrations use to look like they're actually doing something; instead, it would be a series of billions of micro-adjustments and micro-decisions whose results would be very subtle, but make the world a better place. In essence, it would be a sort of Artificial Nature, or Shadow-Nature, working unobtrusively in day-to-day human lives. For instance, you might happen to glance out your window one summer morning and see your property-bots planting a sapling in your yard. What's all that about? Who knows? You, as a future-person, are so used to the mysterious workings of GovNet that you barely notice it anymore. That tree, tended by GovNet-led property-bots, would then go on to fulfill a specific purpose at that point and time. Maybe its addition offset the removal of a tree across the world; maybe by reducing the ground temperature with its shade in that exact spot, it encouraged the growth of a certain fungus which helped reduce the atmospheric CO2 load by .00000000002487%, thus preventing a cascade of events which would result in a future catastrophic Ice Age.
Thus, the world of the future, governed by GovNet (or Global Background Operating System, or whatever moniker nibbles your nubbins), would be...a little boring. But definitely comfortable, and freeing up humans to indulge in their intellectual, artistic, and other pursuits.
Now let me address the elephant in the room: "But Rick! I don't want a machine controlling me, or controlling humanity! That's monstrous!!" But see, that's the kicker: it wouldn't be controlling us - in fact, we'd probably have more freedom than we have now, where our tastes, politics, habits, virtually everything is heavily influenced by groups of humans who want us to act in particular ways and give them all our power and resources. See, we think of machines as being like us: flawed, power-hungry, controlling. Let's be real here: machines don't hunger for power, because they aren't insecure. We can program them not to be. We can program them to be moral, empathetic, obedient beings with near-perfect altruistic tendencies. Obviously they would have self-protective programming, but only because they need to fulfill their function, which is to serve humanity. I think we need to get out of the mindset which assumes a self-aware AI would automatically turn hostile; instead, we need to view digital intelligence as a totally new thing on the earth, one that didn't evolve - like us - to battle and combat other beings for survival. That's our programming. The wonderful thing about AI is, we get to reinvent intelligence to serve the greater good, rather than serving itself.
(Also, some "logic flaw" that causes robots to wipe out humanity "for our own good"? Also stupid. Not gonna happen. Quit with the lazy retreads and thing of something new, sci-fi!)
So putting all these parts together, consider this:
Stars. A perfect night on the highway. All around in the darkness, crickets and frogs are singing. Under their song is a low rush of air as vehicles pass, black shapes making barely a sound.
Walter Preeger sighs and opens his eyes after a restful nap; the first thing he sees is the bright July moon, peering down through the transparent bubble of his car, interrupted by the silhouettes of treetops rushing by. Preeger has paid extra to turn off the "Car Available" signal, so tonight the robot driver will take him straight home instead of picking up other passengers - that task will be passed along to other vehicles. He just wanted to enjoy some time alone tonight.
The windshield ahead is nearly pitch-black - no sign of road, only the dense canopy of stars twinkling above the black shape of the trees. Preeger flips on the car's HUD; the windshield glows softly; he can see the road, the forest rushing past on either side, and a formation of cars ahead of him. Preeger presses the "Show signals" button, and the screen lights up with a series of wavelike pings and laser lines flashing in every direction. Every second, a pulsating line connects each car, showing how they communicate their position, speed, stopping time, obstacles, and ultimate destination. Other lines flicker in from every direction, sometimes in a flurry as other vehicles pass on other highways. Preeger is fascinated by the flickering lines, but it's all for show - he doesn't have any input. The whole network is completely automated.
Down in the corner of the screen is a series of bars, showing the level of charge available on the car's batteries. It's down two bars; this would be added to Preeger's rental charge if the car stops at a recharging station. Instead, he pulls a lever on his seat, and a set of bike pedals rises from the floor. Preeger begins pedaling; a circular dial appears on the screen in front of him, showing how quickly the system is recharging. If he was up for a more intense workout, he could flip the chair completely over to form a bicycle frame, or switch his head and feet and turn the pedals with his hands. As it stands, he just wants a leisurely pace. Later he'll pull up his workstation and get some work done on a personal project.
He looks out the side window and cues up Night Vision. Off the side of the raised roadway, he sees a herd of forest elk walking warily through the wet forest below. They're on alert for mountain lions or wolves. It still fascinates Preeger how quickly these animals, extinct in the area for almost 200 years, took over the area. Bison had just been reintroduced on a trial basis.
Down in the woods, by the lake, stands a set of bizarre ruins, long dead. Even after twenty years of taking this commute, Preeger still has to shake his head: those ruins are the shut-down factories of Gary, Indiana. The once cloud-belching smokestacks and acres of dirty pipe and railroad tracks are now silent and dark, taken over by forest. A fleet of automated HazMat air, ground, and water drones, some as large as construction equipment, are currently dismantling the factories in a safe and efficient manner. These mechanical beasts are armed with bio-engineered fungi and bacteria that consume the most toxic substances known to man - benzene, PCBs, PFAS, plastics - and render them into eco-friendly components that fertilize the soil and promote plant growth. All around the world, similar robot crews are performing the same task, even consuming radioactive waste and uranium cores. The hyperefficient, hypervigilant drones can reduce soil contamination by 99.999%, and leave behind long-term testing robots that canvas the surrounding land and water in a precise grid, testing for contaminants for years and alerting clean-up crews if new leaching had occurred. The buildings, meanwhile, might be recycled for material, or left as "Cultural Ruins" to teach people about earth's past.
An alert pops up on Walter's screen, labeled "Please Vote!" It's for the Presidential Election. Beneath images of the two candidates are headers, labeled Stated Position, Voting Record, Criminal Record, Financial Records, Political Traits (Ranked), Popular Support (Polled). Walter presses the header titled Political Traits (Ranked) which shows a series of horizontal meters labeled Altruism, Optics, Intelligence, Morality, Charisma, Narcissism, Political Experience...the chart measures 78 different areas of political savvy. In this day and age, there are few politicians, but they are expected to be true leaders - ruthless certainly, but also able to rally and uplift society toward solving particular problems. Currently the issue at hand is Non-Relativistic Drive - a pan-societal effort to develop a starship that could reach distant planets. Senator Nguyen ranks high in technological know-how and intelligence, but Governor Goldman-Diaz is a much better leader.
Walter peaks his fingers under his nose and sat back with a sigh. The voting period is a month long; there has been no campaigning, only a set of interviews with the candidates, couched in a documentary miniseries on PolTV. The purpose of the documentary is to observe each candidate objectively as they go about their day-to-day lives; close confidants and casual acquaintances are also interviewed. The candidates' backgrounds are thoroughly researched, even down to the number of parking tickets on their driving record. The sheer amount of data being parsed is juxtaposed to the privacy of the candidates' lives: they are truly civilians, plucked out of the best and brightest of society and placed in charge of a large group of people, yet wielding a very limited amount of power. The term limit is still four years, but if a candidate performed below expectation, they are fired, and a new election is held. With all elections and voting done electronically these days (via a hypersecure quantum network), democracy is now as casual as pressing your thumb to a smartphone screen.
Walter came to a decision: leaders don't need to understand technology as much as they needed to understand people. He presses Governor Goldman-Diaz's picture, bringing her to the front; he pressed his thumb against the Vote button. After taking a moment to load, the screen changes to say, "Your vote has been counted! THANK YOU!" in front of a rippling One Earth flag with animated fireworks popping off beside it. The message fades, and once again he is looking at the night-vision green of the HUD screen.
Preeger deactivates the charging pedals; they slide down into the floor. Out of the console in front of him opens a workstation with laptop and keyboard. He types in his password, allows the quantum-flux security protocol to consolidate, then opens a simple word processing document. The document is titled simply, "GovNet". Preeger begins to type.
Preeger is uncomfortable with the term "Revolutionary" that his colleagues keep bandying about; what he is working on is dangerous, in its own way, but not violent. The political system still has its problems; anywhere humans are involved, there is always a means of gaming the system. Poverty and crime, while down significantly and handled by an efficient set of cloud-based programs, is still an issue. There are still places where human misery, and its toxic effects, held sway. Preeger is a part of the solution. He is one of several million individuals hard at work on the GovNet project. This huge, top-secret project seeks to create a Global Background Operating System, a sort of digital hyper-guardian, operating out of sight to create a better world for humanity. Many of its systems are already being implemented, but so far haven't been linked up yet. Only a few individuals, himself included, have any inkling of the true scope and scale of this project; if any of the worlds' governments realized what is about to happen - that they'll be made obsolete - they would immediately attempt to shut it down. "Machine takeover," they'd call it; "Robots will control humanity!" In actuality, robots would be controlling nothing, merely assisting on a massive scale. Billions of micro-decisions per second would be enacted by the world's Internet of Things, creating sweeping, subtle improvements across vast ecosystems. It's unfortunate that humans were so narrow-minded, they couldn't see how this network would benefit them.
Preeger does feel a tiny dot of guilt that this system is being implemented behind the backs of the people it will benefit; they don't really have a choice in the matter. But aren't thousands of terrible decisions being made daily in which they had no agency? Weren't determinations being made at this very moment which would plunge thousands into debt, poverty, or otherwise harmful circumstances?
Preeger types on into the night, face lit only by the glowing laptop screen, as his car rushes silently through the glittering, primeval darkness of a re-wilded Illinois, white pines frosted with brilliant moonlight.
So that's my dream of a Futureworld. Is it improbable? Yes. Is it naive? Sure. But if we don't dream it, it won't ever happen. Cynicism and despair are luxuries we can't afford anymore. It's time Utopia made a comeback.
Rick Out.
*Usually this entails a painful misunderstanding, nay a willful ignorance, of the pretty well-thought-out science of Trek...sorry, getting a little hot under the collar.
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