The Impossible Dream - Engineering Paradise

Transforming the world into something akin to what is described in this book would be almost impossible.  Almost.

But as the saying goes, nothing worth having comes easily.

Starting from the structure of the world we have today, with all its inequalities, inefficiencies, injustice, and making it into an ideal world would require huge amounts of work from all layers of society.  It would also take some measure of coordination between nations, as a transforming nation will obviously affect others.

We are living in a global economy, within a global population that is increasingly connected to information from all over the world.  According to the website eMarketer, at the end of 2017, over 47% of the world’s population used the Internet regularly.  They project that in the next three years that number will increase to close to 54%.[1]  With planetary information flowing so freely, despite attempts by a few governments to shield their citizens from outside information, all the world witnesses socio-cultural and economical changes elsewhere.  One positive change in one area of the world affects all of the world’s citizens, and as Internet penetration continues to rise, this will become increasingly true.

I believe every single person reading these lines is hoping we can make our world into something better.  Every single person reading these lines wants their own lives and community to be well.

However, we cannot expect some sort of messiah will appear somewhere and convince all the world to make the world into something like what is described in this book.  No.  Change occurs in small incremental steps, one action at a time.

The young have idealism and energy to initiate change and they are always active, but they lack wisdom and experience to influence most of the time.  On the other hand, the experienced among us are better connected and are more influential, but we sometimes lack the conviction that progress may occur.

Everyone has value and experience to put on the table to help make this world better.  If everyone gains the conviction they can take a single positive step in the right direction every day, then we’d have 7.5 billion steps of progress daily.

This is how a seemingly impossible dream becomes reality.

As a pragmatic futurist, what I do best is educate and providing solutions.  You are administrators, politicians, caretakers, nurses, plumbers, post workers.  You can help by improving your own world, whatever you have some control over.  You don’t need to look far to see injustice, or things in the world that require improvement.  Just do it and let others know what you are doing.  Let others imitate your actions in their own way.

7.5 billion simple actions a day.

This way, one day, we live in an ideal world of our own making.

Let this book be a target and a guide for you.  Whether our future society looks like what is described here or not, any movement towards this model is a positive change for humanity.

Are you ready?

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[1] eMarketer Report (December 2017)  Worldwide Internet and mobile users:  eMarketer’s updated estimates and forecast for 2017-2021.  - https://www.emarketer.com/Report/Worldwide-Internet-Mobile-Users-eMarketers-Updated-Estimates-Forecast-20172021/2002147

Ministry of Immigration & Citizenship - Engineering Paradise

Being a citizen of a nation means being counted as both a resource and a burden.  It is only natural since citizens both produce value and consume resources.  Of course, over the whole population, this dichotomy needs to be balanced to have a healthy society and an environment that will not deplete over the long term.  Thus, most modern nations are careful to account for each one of their citizen as one would calculate a budget.  When the count is incorrect, it is harder to anticipate needs, resources that need to be expended, taxes collected and so on.  

Since our modern ideal world will be operated by artificial intelligence, and AI requires data to calculate and predict needs and resources, it will be important to keep track of everyone living in the nation.  We don’t want our ideal civilization to revert to manual self-reporting or physical census to make those types of calculations when there are automated ways to achieve the same goal, with more precision.

Thanks to an increasing number of sensors, automated recognition software all around us, keeping track and recognizing who is living or visiting in any jurisdiction will be easy.  Since the whole nation will be connected to the internet most of the time, there would also be a massive amount of transactions and communications attributed to each person, allowing the system to better understand social patterns, approximately what each citizen does during their day and so on. 

In our future, people will constantly take self-driving transportation, buy products and services online, work and play on the internet through multiple devices.  Therefore, our presence will be felt in the network of AI, government services and private services everywhere.   These traces will allow government ministries to know approximately how many people are actively drawing and contributing resources from the nation.  The ideal practical situation of course, would be for the government to track exactly what everyone is doing all the time, but that would be quite uncomfortable and an invasion of privacy.   What the ministries will need is only general information to account for everyone.  It is important for each citizen to feel free to share their private information and the details of their activity with the government however.   Perhaps citizens would be able to turn on or off detailed tracking in exchange for some additional benefit from the government, like slightly reduced taxes equal to the benefit the ministries’ AI systems gain for being better informed.  After all, additional data provided to the AI will save resources over time and allow the whole automated system to be more productive as well.

The Ministry of Immigration & Citizenship’s duty is to properly account for everyone in the nation this way so that other ministries can be better informed and distribute national resources.  Aside from serving as a census and information gathering entity about everyone in the nation, it’s other purpose would be to take care of the needs of citizens and of those who wish to immigrate.

In other words, this Ministry will have the task of processing immigration applications, integrating new immigrants and refugees from other nations into the nation.  Much of this can be automated, such as the paperwork and the background checks.  However, citizens and future citizens are people with feelings and thus agents of the Ministry of Immigration & Citizenship need to be human beings too.  We can therefore expect this ministry to have distributed centers staffed by people whose purpose is to make others feel comfortable, find the proper resources they need and to ensure everyone within their jurisdiction has basic needs provided.

The Ministry would also take care of any citizen services that deal with people’s feelings.  We can imagine it would recommend regulations to the Lawmaking Ministry and provide personal or automated services regarding family life, children and counseling.  Ultimately, its responsibility would be to ensure everyone in the nation is happy and safe. 

In that respect, the Ministry would be constantly watching the citizen’s online system for citizen’s feedback, suggestions and mood to initiate proper programs that would help. 

Also, not every nation would deal with immigration and refugees in the same way.  It really depends on what each nation considers proper based on the nation’s resources and citizen’s mood and even within nations, the needs and desires of specific regions within nations.