I finished my first book, Engineering Paradise: Are You
Ready?, a book that illustrates how current trends in social thinking and
technology is changing our society in a fundamental way, recently. After I finished writing it, I had an
interesting thought: though I described
the many technologies that are already affecting change, I didn’t give readers
a clear idea of what an ideal world may looks like. The reason why our world is still full of
inequalities and violence is because we are currently mired in obsolete
infrastructures, social systems, traditions and ideologies that hold us
back. These systems have been around for
hundreds of years, slowly changing to adapt to different social, political and economical
movements. These are hard to change
because they are all embedded into our society and into each other. Not to mention most people are employed and
depend on the survival of each one of those systems for their welfare and livelihoods. Any significant change in social structures are
therefore scary to most, because individuals are afraid of what they cannot
understand or predict.
Under these conditions, suggesting how our world may function
in 10 or 20 years would be incredibly naive and speculative.
However, I was thinking about the following: what if, strictly as an intellectual
exercise, we imagined that all traditions, social resistance to change, social
systems and institutions were just swept out of the way and we just build
something better.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. It’s nice to dream about some sort of perfect
world where we don’t need to care about how things really are. That’s what science fiction is for, right?
That was the initial conclusion I had with the idea
too. But then it dawned on me. Even though what paradisiac world we may
build would be fantasy, at least it would be something we could shoot for.
One thing that I have learned as a serial entrepreneur is
that if we want to achieve a project that seems too big to be doable, we still
have a shot of achieving it if we have 3 things:
- A well-defined plan.
- Strong motivation.
- A dedicated team of individuals that believe in the project and are willing to work towards it step by step.
So, I decided to write this book to paint a picture of how
we could build the ideal future for ourselves.
Thus, I’ll prepare point #1 for us all.
At least I’ll be producing my version of it, supported by proper studies
and professional knowledge from experts.
Then, by publishing the book and directing other activities
aligned with the goal of engineering a paradise, I hope to gather a large enough
group of motivated people that believe in building an ideal world. There are already several organizations that
are working towards making the world a better place and I’m sure millions of
individuals in the world wish they could contribute to such a great
project.
Are you one of these people?
Finally, with those two pieces in place, together, we can
figure out a plan to engineer our current world and ultimately transform it to
fit the end goal: the ideal world.
I’m sure most of you have very different ideas of what the
ideal world would look like and that’s fine, but in this case, we’ll want to build
based on proper evidence. Using proper
research sociologists and other scientists have already documented over the
years, I’ll illustrate what is fundamentally best for human beings. Starting from that basis, I’ll elaborate on
how nations could be ideally governed to ensure the people are in the best
possible position to thrive. After all,
we have over 3,000 years of experimentation and trial and error under our belt
as a society and now we’re supported by artificial intelligence to assist us,
the Internet to connect us and sufficient comfort levels for at least half the
world’s population to collaborate on our common goal.
Then, I’ll go into a full section detailing how such a
governing system can be managed by the people and finally I’ll elaborate on how
an ideal economy would work within this new innovative system.
I’m hoping this detailed plan on reformulating our society
leveraging advanced technologies, will inspire many to work together, as a team,
with me or in independent groups. It’s
all good.
Fundamental
technologies
If you haven’t read my first book, you may be a little bit
lost in the next few chapters so here’s a bit of an update on certain
technologies that will support most of what I’ll be discussing.
We have been playing around with artificial intelligence
(AI) for the past couple years. AI is
not new. In fact, it has been around for
over 30 years but only recently has AI applications become part of our daily
lives. Not only toys used by large
companies, research laboratories and governments but in our living rooms and on
our smartphones.
It is like it was for computers in the 80’s. For the first time families started buying
them for their homes even though transistor computers had been around for at
least 30 years. Computers had become a
commodity after years of companies improving the basis of the technology and
finding ways to reduce costs enough to make the technology useful, small enough
and cheap enough to be purchased by families.
Now, we have AI like Alexa, Siri, Cortana, Watson and Google
Assistant, to name just the most popular AI in North-America, available to
consumers. They can understand native
language and can connect to our smartphones, security systems, our digital
information, home appliances, heating, lights and so on. We can control these systems through our AI
assistants, or by using our smartphones. The AI assistants are intelligent enough to
search the web for us, add items to our grocery lists, and learn who are proper
family members or strangers in our homes or front doors.
Today’s AI are learning AI, which means the more we use
them, the better they can perform. They
are just like children learning about their environment and after a while, they
don’t need as many explanations to achieve their tasks.
We’re also running automated devices and robots with AI
brains. The most obvious automated
devices that will take the world by storm will be self-driven electric
cars. Most car manufacturers will start
selling those on or around the year 2020[1],
which is very, very soon. These can be
considered robots with an AI brain since they will recognize passenger voices,
understand instructions and then be able to drive themselves on real roads,
dealing with unpredictable road conditions and the public. They just have wheels instead of limbs.
Self-driving cars will also likely be connected to the
Internet, just like AI personal assistants, so they can access useful information
and share with other AI-enabled robots and software in a networked
fashion. That will make them even more
efficient and instantly learn from other self-driving cars on the roads, making
them very good drivers and very safe faster than we can blink. At the very least, they will be better
drivers than any human can and keep improving 24-7 as we use them.
In the midst of these technologies supporting all industries
from education, health, economy, government, manufacturing, and others, it is
easier to imagine novel ways to structure our society than every before. I think it’s a good time to give it a try.
Exponential thinking
Here is something else to consider moving forward: we must stop thinking in a linear way. It is quite natural to do so since we are
built to experience the world through our senses and our bodies are designed to
seek balance (what biologists call homeostasis). We are built to change, but change in our
brain and bodies creates imbalances that our own biochemistry constantly tries
to balance out. The body’s rebalancing process
takes time. It never gets faster from
generation to generation, so there are hard limits in how fast we can change our
minds or adapt to physical situations.
Socially, there are even more pressures towards linear
thinking because everyone around us, ourselves included, measure time in the
same small increments and we balance each other out at similar rates. It is all tied into our biology as described
above.
It’s no wonder when we start thinking about the future, we
tend to see progress in a straight line, ergo if it took one generation to go
from cell phones to smartphones, the natural thought is that it will take one
generation to go from smartphone to the next generation of pocket communication
device.
Unfortunately, technology is built following the Law of
Accelerating Returns[2],
a term coined by renowned futurist and inventor Ray Kurzweil. The law describes how progress not only
depends on our linear creative selves, but it also depends on the body of
previously developed technologies. This
creates an exponential growth curve.
Kurzweil wrote in his 2005 book The Singularity Is Near, “Technology goes beyond mere tool making;
it is a process of creating ever more powerful technology using the tools from
the previous round of innovation.”
Kurzweil studied different tools in different industries and the trend
in each industry is exponential because every industry is using better and
better tools leveraging the previous generation and tools from other industries.
Thus, productivity keeps increasing exponentially in each
industry[3].
If we look at high tech innovation on its own, people work
on different aspects, namely software (AI, smart systems, application tools),
computer hardware (smaller microprocessors, quantum computing, organic
computing) and robotics (more efficient servo motors, new materials, gyroscopes,
miniaturization). Then each one of those
aspects are used by people to develop the other in a cyclical manner. Better hardware allows us to use create more
sophisticated software leveraging more information that achieves results faster
(see Moore’s Law)[4]. This software is used by engineers to design
better robotics. Then engineers use the improved
robotics to create smaller transistors at a faster pace and integrate them into
new better computer hardware.
The advancement of each component, hardware, software and
robotics, are then used in other industries where we could illustrate other similar
cycles.
The truth is, the world we’re living in is changing at an
exponential rate. We must then learn to
think exponentially.
So, if you think it is impossible to engineer a paradise in
our society within a single generation, you may be surprised. Methods of communication, production and
collaboration have never been faster and better suited for massive change. And they too will become better and allow
connectivity at an accelerated rate.
In some ways, since human beings are biologically linear, we
must get ourselves out of the way by allowing this accelerated ace of change to
occur, supported by intelligent technologies that are in fact improving at an
exponential rate: artificial
intelligence.
So, I suggest we expect things will change faster than we
can possibly imagine. It takes a measure
of trust but I’m hoping you will continue to read this book and perhaps contact
me to collaborate on projects that will help move things along.
Check my website for some projects that I have started or
some that are already underway.
I’m also available for any engagement that would allow me to
educate. I’m leaving it to you.
[2]
The Law of Accelerating Returns. Ray
Kurzweil - http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-law-of-accelerating-returns
[3]
Technology Feels Like It’s Accelerating – Because It Actually Is. Alison E. Berman and Jason Dorrier - https://singularityhub.com/2016/03/22/technology-feels-like-its-accelerating-because-it-actually-is/
[4]
Self-Driving car timeline for 11 top automakers. Dan Fagella - https://venturebeat.com/2017/06/04/self-driving-car-timeline-for-11-top-automakers/
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