April 09 2008 / by Alvis
Category: Culture Year: General Rating: 15 Hot
Exponential
technology and information are
poised to transform the world, but can the human species muster the
social will to let that happen? 
To date we’ve created amazingly fuel-efficient cars, robust water
purifiers, revolutionary stem cell -based therapies, and
better, cheaper light bulbs, all of which have met with great
social and political resistance, greatly slowing the pace of their
spread. This has caused many to scratch their heads in confusion,
others to curse up at the sky, and some to chuckle at the naivete
of their fellow meme-monkeys.
Take for example Dean Kamen, the
Edison of our time who invented compact kidney dialysis, the
Segway human
transporter and most recently a water purifier that could save
upwards of 5 million lives in under-developed nations if widely
deployed. Kamen’s innovations have repeatedly encountered social
barriers, causing him to proclaim that creating new technology is
the easy part.
“I’m disappointed with every project I ever do. Because you work
on something for years that you think should take hours. You
finally get it done and you think, ‘Now the world’s going to be a
better place,’ expressed Kamen in a recent Newsweek article,
“Then you find out that as fast as technology moves, people move at
the same slow, cautious pace they always did. If anything, people
have gotten more cautious, more afraid of change, more skeptical,
more cynical.”
Sloth-like technology diffusion is nothing new. The late great
Everett Rogers
taught us that all technologies except for Interactive
Communication Technologies (ICTs) spread at an amazingly slow rate
due to cultural barriers. Seasoned futurists all point out a
consistent bias in favor of overly ambitious predictions and
sternly warn their fellow prognosticators to avoid similar
mistakes. And now Kamen has joined the ranks of those with enough
experience to back up the notion. (cont.)
Jamais Cascio at Open the Future is one of the
seasoned futurists that has seen enough. In an excellent
article about the future of resources he explains why it’s
difficult to get the masses to rally around sensical new
products:
“Often, the issue really isn’t technology, but expense and
willingness to change. Driving the cost of alternatives down to
make them competitive with the depleting resource can be difficult;
even more difficult can be getting people to accept a substitution
service that isn’t exactly like the old one (even if it’s
objectively ‘better’). Cultured meat would be far and away better
than today’s meat processing industry – environmentally, ethically,
health-wise – but, even if the product looked, tasted and felt just
like ‘real’ meat, a substantial number of people would likely avoid
it simply because it was ‘weird.’”
Still, while Cascio, Kamen, Rogers and the wide world of
futurists are indisputably correct about the pace of technology
spread to date, one has to wonder whether this fundamental social
barrier to diffusion is about to give way to force of widespread,
rampant innovation. As we enter the “knee” of the exponential
curves that drive society and economy, the doubling rate of
technology and information growth is due to shrink to less than 20
years, making it faster than the time it takes to raise one human
generation (22 years). For this to occur, the rate of new paradigms
and domain convergence must continue to accelerate.
Positive futurist and regular future blogger Dick Pelletier believes
there’s a good chance that acceleration will continue unabated by
human interference. Responding to an article comment
that points out the slowness of diffusion, Pelletier points to
virtual experimentation and artificial intelligence as
breakthroughs that could speed the pace of invention and
production:
“Much of Kurzweil and Freitas’ enthusiasm for this “magical
future” stems from exponential advances expected in future
technologies. This includes factoring in such things as the
development of quantum computer and artificial intelligence
technologies that will enable simulations to replace traditional
clinical trials. This will allow new drugs to be found safe and
brought to market in days or weeks, instead of years.”
He concludes that, “We cannot base how fast the future will
unfold by comparing it with how the past has progressed, or how
slow our present technologies seem to advance. The future will rush
forward at much more aggressive speeds.”
While it’s always risky to say that “this time it will truly be
different” it does look as though we’re about to enter a period in
which linear thinking and traditional barriers to diffusion finally
cave into the tide of change. In addition to AI and remarkably fast
computing, we’re also developing simulated 3D environments, brain
computer interfaces, powerful new pattern recognition algorithms,
and the ability to decode and harness the information contained in
biological structures, all of which are likely to accelerate the
pace of innovation. At the same time new social media applications,
protocols and behaviors are emerging that will enable all of this
new technology and information to be networked and to multiply the
value of our total datacosm.
Barring a disruptive event or a concerted effort to slow the
growth of this distributed global brain or super-computer, it seems
likely that we’ll figure out ways to innovate and implement at a
much faster pace. Why? Because, ultimately, it’s in our individual
interests (whether those include extending lifespan, developing
defenses against other accelerators, or pursuing new
compelling/addictive forms of entertainment or emotional
stimulation) and our global interests (survival as a species,
expansion, communication with other life in the universe) to do
so.
One way or another, we are in for some interesting and dramatic
times. The ensuing transformation of our social will to accelerate
may well manifest as a culture war (and perhaps physical war)
unlike any we’ve ever seen. At the same time, the promise of
acceleration will continually leave us amazed at magical structures
popping up all around us.
Whether you’re a luddite, a singularitarian or somewhere
inbetween, buckle up, this looks to be one hell of a ride.
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