A Comment on Era Transitions vs. Transformations

My friend T lends us his thoughts about the state of the era we're in. He also has some thoughts on hosting a good story.

“Writing about the rapid change of the era in which we are now has become almost trite these days. It was 1970 (the year of this author's birth) when Alvin Toffler put his finger on the idea that people are more behind the times than ahead of them in his book Future Shock. That was 34 years ago, and the pace of change that he was writing about is nothing compared to what has been happening since then. We all know the times are in rapid change. Fine.

A more interesting thought, is that not are we merely in the throes of all this change, but the true era change many talk about is only just approaching mankind. I would contend that what we are going through right now is merely the staging time for the era change that is about to rock the world in the next 15 to 25 years.

The reason that I write this is that we are in a time when we are starting to complete the technologies (or at least evolve them to such a level as necessary for the revolution) that enable the era change that is to come. With the abilities that we have been developing over the last 150 years, with the revolutions in metallurgy, biomedicine, communications and computational power, we are setting the stage for such things as the bio-technical and nanotech revolutions. Not only have we evolved the technology to support the coming massive leap, we are developing the mental/psychological necessities to do so.

It's been a long road. From developing a system of government, economics, security, mass production, distribution, transportation, communications, information management we can support the kinds of research that will bring sweeping revolution. We have moved beyond a time where we can only know what our god given senses limit us to. Now that we can measure the unseen, we are able to think far beyond our human condition.

The changes that we have seen to get us to this point will be, upon future reflection, small compared to how the human condition will change after the nanorevolution. The radical changes to human life will go far, far beyond the changes that we have recently seen. When achievements start rolling in from such fringe fields as biotechnology and nanotechnology, life will be almost so different as to be unrecongnizable from today. Hold on! We're just getting started!”

Now, we both think we're in an era transition. But we have a subtle disagreement on what really constitutes the era transition. T thinks it happens when a host of revolutionary technologies come on-line. I think it really happens before then, and the revolutionary technologies are the effect, not the cause, of the era transition.

Now, if I'm right, the era transition may have already happened and this is a moment of stasis before an explosive (and probably very difficult) period of near-chaotic change - as surely as Reformation followed Renaissance. Note that this period of stasis may be measured in decades (or may not, if we're especially unlucky), and the changes to follow will be spread out over many more decades. This, admittedly, is a pessimist's viewpoint.

T, on the other hand, is more of an optimist. He's talking about the cool stuff - the stuff that lets us be something more than we our today. And he believes that we're developing the mental and psychological facilities that will allow us to move beyond the flesh-and-blood limits of our current condition. And, in his view, that's the real transition - to what amounts to a posthuman age.

Some other very smart folks - like Vernor Vinge and Bill Joy - believe the same thing but interpret it in a way that makes me sound like a pollyanna. Vinge pulls no punches:

“Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.”

The implication is that we ordinary humans get replaced - very swiftly - with some super-intelligent post-human. I can't buy that. I think an era transition will be messy, dangerous, and difficult. But no more so than the original Reformation. And it'll probably be even be less hazardous than, say, the Black Plague of the mid-14th century (which harmed China and Islam even more than Europe). I think we'll transition into post-humanism in stages, and we'll bring most everyone who survives the wars/plagues/pogroms/riots (which will be a large majority) along.

I like what Bruce Sterling writes about a post-human future:

Posthumans aren't content with human achievements. They're better at posthumanity than we are...[But] The posthuman condition is banal. It is astounding, and eschatological, and ontological, but only by human standards. Oh, sure, we may become as gods, but the thrill fades fast...By the new, post-Singularity standards, posthumans are just as bored and frustrated as humans ever were. They are not magic, they are still quotidian entities in a gritty, rules-based physical universe. They will find themselves swiftly and bruisingly brought up against the limits of their own conditions, whatever those limits and conditions may be.

A condition that sounds so...human.

The Fiscal State and Our State
Peter Drucker:

“The two world wars of this (previous) century transformed the nation-state into a 'fiscal state'...They (nation-states) have all come to believe that there are no economic limits to what government can tax and borrow, and, therefore, no economic limits to what government can spend. Under the new dispensation, which assumes that there are no economic limits to the revenues it can obtain, government becomes the master of civil society. The sole result of the fiscal state has been the opposite of what it aims at...In every single developed country, governments have reached the limits of their ability to tax and their ability to borrow. The fiscal state has spent itself into impotence.

Worst of all, the fiscal state has become a 'pork-barrel' state...government spending becomes the means for politicians to buy votes...In the fiscal state, the looting [of the public treasury] is done by politicians to ensure their own election...Democratic government rests on the belief that the first job of elected representatives is to defend their constituents against rapacious government. The pork-barrel state thus increasingly undermines the foundations of a free society.

Joseph Schumpeter warned in 1918 that the fiscal state would in the end undermine government's ability to govern. Fifteen years later, Keynes hailed the fiscal state as the great liberator; no longer limited by restraints on spending, government in the fiscal state could govern effectively, Keynes maintained. We now know that Schumpeter was right.”

Peter Drucker, Post-Capitalist Society, quotes from pages 125-135

You can see this in the small - if the phrase "the fiscal state has spent itself into impotence" doesn't apply to California, I don't know what does - and in the large, as the federal deficit zooms out of control. Just look at the new Medicaid bill, which manages to spew pork in all directions while providing little to no actual benefits to ordinary citizens.

What got me on this track was reading about our Governor's new budget. As some wag pointed out, it's probably almost identical to the budget Gray Davis would have produced. The most salient points to me were the reliance on a $14 billion bond issue and the transfer of an extra $1.3 billion in property tax revenues from cities and counties to the state. There's very little that sounds like trimming the fat off the pork, unless you consider education and health services wasteful and unnecessary. I find it impossible to believe that there aren't billions of dollars in truly wasteful corporate and special interest welfare that can't be cut.

What would real reform look like? Well, it might start by dealing effectively with the problems described here. And it might end with a significant transfer of both funds and responsibilities out of Sacramento and back into local governments. It would be the end of the fiscal state.

And that end will come. It's just a question of whether it will be a difficult transition (the best case) or a painful, revolutionary upheaval.

I don't believe that our new Governor will lead us into that transition. For all the talk of a revolution in California politics, I think that Arnold's election is an end, not a beginning. It's an end because the only way one group of entrenched power interests in this state (the Pete Wilson Republicans) could get elected was to use a popular cultural icon as their frontman. But what happens if the frontman's administration is as ineffective and unpopular as the previous administrations?

“Meet the new boss, same as the old boss”
The Who, Won't Get Fooled Again

Is it just me, or does Instapundit seem to be getting a little meaner, a little more ideological, a little more self-righteous, and a little more poorly written as the months go by? It's all very predictable and tiresome. I read blogs to learn something new and/or to get exposed to different points of view, not to be beat over the head with someone else's ideology and agenda.

Nevertheless, it's fascinating to observe what Oliver Willis calls the "Instapundit crowd". To their opposites on the ideological divide, they're yet another right-wing conspiracy. But they're not. They're a damn good example of how a social network works. And their mass and influence should tell us all something.

Today, they're jumping all over Paul O'Neill (with a few swipes at liberal scum Molly Ivins and Wallace Shawn*). Meme Of The Day: He (O'Neill) gave out transcripts of a secret NSA meeting! That's as bad as outing an undercover CIA agent! No, it's worse!

Never mind that the document in question was released to the public 6 months ago. It's all about spreading the meme. And unlike Ivins, they never apologize for their gaffes or bad jokes.

Now compare that to what Josh Marshall writes:

“So now the White House has pilloried Paul O’Neill as a sorry doofus and, by all appearances, launched a punitive investigation against him.

How about denying any of his claims or those in Suskind’s book?

Just a thought ...”

An appeal to objectivity and facts? What, no slams of straw men or idiots? No simple-minded sound bites to stick in peoples' heads? This is why the left is losing.

*(And, yes, I think Shawn is an idiot. Ivins, on the other hand, is a terrific writer and journalist who occasionally sticks her foot in her mouth, an old and honorable Texas tradition. Her gaffes shouldn't obscure that fact that 95% of the time she's funny as hell.)