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Techvolution: A New Philosophy - Intermission
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Intermissions are an excellent time to stretch our legs, buy a snack, and also ask some questions about the story so far. Here, I want to go more in-depth on some terms and characters. I especially want to emphasize why funding, making, and using open-source Internet Age levers of power will make the middle-class happy again.
Recap
The game of civilization never stops. It goes on forever because it's the game of life; evolve or die. Thus, we're always that person on Main Street trying to figure out what's right for ourselves while trying to help our civilization prosper. I think we all try our best. We try to educate ourselves, eat well, use green products, and join movements like sustainable agriculture and renewable energy.
Although we try our best, we have a huge problem—we're running out of time. Canada, Britain, France, America, and the rest of Western Civilization peaked in the Industrial Age, and we still haven't updated our ruling philosophy to the Internet Age.
Still obsessed with the era of mass-production, we've been digitizing our society using ideas designed to industrialize it.
That's why we still measure our success by Industrial Age stats like GDP growth, employment numbers, new road construction, population growth, college graduation rates, Dow Jones Industrial Average, and union membership rates. These numbers tell us little about ourselves. They don't say if we have fewer heart attacks, more reliable medical supplies, faster cyborgology growth, or in general, if we're living happier lives.
The Internet Age empowers us to measure our happiness and, therefore, our civilization's health. To get there, we must click a new philosophy. One that says antagonism is evil, and improving our lives with digital technology is everyone's right and duty.
You'll never hear this stat on CNBC, but it means so much wasted times and money. It's a number we'll be talking a lot about in the Internet Age. Credit: US Dept. of Energy.
COVID-19 Shows We Can Still Evolve
Like many people, especially office workers, I love the idea of remote work. I telecommuted for a year while going to night classes at university, and it was so helpful. Yet in university transportation classes, several workplaces, and in society as a whole, driving into work and school was always defended.
Pointing out that most people don't work on production lines anymore didn't matter. Neither did facts, figures, and books to explain why driving through gridlock helps no one. I was always told telecommuting doesn't work because "managers don't like it."
Now with the coronavirus, within a few weeks, every university, workplace, and bureaucracy is scrambling to distribute their workers with home offices. Although it's sad it took a pandemic to open up our minds, it's nice to see how easily our civilization can adapt when we decide to.
This doesn't mean any, and all work can be done from home. But, it does mean many of us stuck in traffic for decades didn't need to be.
Funny to note, by my back of the envelope math, this pandemic is actually improving long-held problems. Road congestion is gone, air pollution is improved, car accidents are far lower. The question is, how did a few managers and executives stop these upgrades from our society?
Because we let them control the rulebook.
The Rulebook
The rulebook is what governs everyday life. Since entering the Internet Age, our rulebook has kept growing. Government regulations have shot up, political correctness is spreading, workers often study for years to get absurd certifications.
Think of this, business lobbyists didn't even exist during the Industrial Age, now many people think special interests run our governments.
Our rulebook is enormous, and you're probably used to it being over your head. We've all signed loan contracts, terms of service, credit card agreements without reading them. We live under many by-laws, regulations, and laws who really knows how many. We buy products filled with so many copyrights, trademarks, patents that it's hard to understand how much of our stuff we own. We live under the jurisdiction of a massive rulebook. But big isn't always bad.
It is when the size is used against us.
The cards are stacked against Main Street. The Industrial Age is fighting to stay alive. Credit: JRE. Video.
The Death Star
A big rulebook makes rules convoluted. This is bad when rules become so open to interpretation, they need interpreters. Today, we keep many lawyers busy arguing what the rules "really mean." Having the right lawyers thus gives someone the power to win a disagreement.
But a big rulebook is still not automatically a Death Star.
It became one when Industrial Age powers wanted to keep themselves in power. Far removed from the original industrialists, they relied on controlling existing levers of power, instead of inventing new ones. This scene from Mad Men, taking place in 1960, shows it well.
This same conversation happened at car, clothing, appliance, entertainment, cosmetic, and other once upon a time cutting edge companies. After the Industrial Age ended in 1969, they wanted to keep their time in the sun going. To do so, the juniors of this world, with no idea how their industry worked, or how to innovate, paid for more "mad men" dark majic advertisements, car shows, and franchise movies.
And when that didn't work, a large, confusing, and ever-growing rulebook became their superweapon to defend their gates against new technology.
Only established Industrial Age companies and bureaucracies had the money to buy the lawyers who could interpret the rulebook in their favor. Henceforth, the massive rulebook of society became a Death Star to the Internet Age. While "junior" became Darth Blockbuster, who adopted antagonism as his ideology.
Antagonism can pay well. But it's always in the short-term. Because if the society printing the money fails, even the rich lose the game.
No one today is wealthy off of Confederate or Soviet money, are they?
Antagonism pays in the short-term, but never the long-term. Credit: VICE News.Video.
Polar Bears in the Amazon
The era of mass-production is over. But our society used dark majic to make people happy with living the Suburban 1969 lifestyle. Thus, to look like we're improving education, we put up more prestigious colleges. To deal with traffic-jammed and decaying roads, we sold more luxury cars. To make generic fries and burgers taste better, we added more sugar. To make people "happy," we built more generic suburban homes.
Can you guess where these pictures were taken? You can't because mass-production brought mass-uniformity that's very unusual in our history, and in Nature. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
If you'd see a camel drinking from the Great Lakes, eagles flying inside a cave system, or polar bears swimming in the Amazon, you'd stop and wonder, "why are these biologies here?"
Likewise, when we see the same modes of transportation, working hours, and houses in Boston and Phoenix, we should see something is out of place.
In Nature, different geographies, demographics, and weather give unique problems and thus force custom biologies. Thus, the human world's many differences should create different cyborgologies too.
If you're asking how humanity should evolve, I don't know. That's your choice. It's up to free lifeforms to adapt. But, I do know our cyborgology has none of the splendid diversity of biology we've all watched on BBC Earth.
If this was a Nature show, you could tell the difference between desert, mountain, or coastal ecosystems. You can't distinguish with us today. And that's a big problem. Credit: Office Space. Video.
The Western world's mass uniformity is why we're unhappy. We're forced to live in a world so interconnected with "just in time" economics our lives have few adaptions to make life easier. Our society's future profits depend on adapting new housing, work schedules, transportation methods, food supply, power generation, etc. to our local environment.
But because we're stuck in the Industrial Age's and its mass uniformity of 9-5, Monday to Friday, eight different bosses, we're as unhappy as a camel forced to live in the Amazon.
Being stuck in traffic is expecting a camel to enjoy swimming. Both are a hateful experience because living in a foreign environment is simply not what any lifeform is designed to do. Unsurprisingly, our society is bleeding money.
Because can you imagine all the money a polar bear would owe trying to live in the Sahara? Or a camel in the Amazon? You don't have to, just look down.
Industrial Age tools like suburban houses, gas cars, and junk food are too generic to give a return on their investment. We've borrowed from the future to avoid adapting ourselves. We'll only evolve more efficient lifestyles in the era of mass-collaboration. Because you know what makes a camel happy and rich? The freedom to adapt to their environment and live in the frickin desert. Credit: Wikipedia.
Ideologues Don't Care About Evolution
In the Industrial Age, when regular people thought of politics, they first had to think of ideologies. This was because government policy was society's biggest lever of power. To have any say in what that lever did, Main Street could only support Right or Left political parties.
The Internet Age changes the power dynamic. Now when you think of politics Stargazer, you should not think of nightly news broadcasts or what Left/Right commentators believe. You must think of apps, websites, and electronics. These are the new levers of power.
Progressive and Conservative extremists won't go easy. These ideologues don't know—or care to know—about upgrading to the Interner Age. Even now, they're fighting evolution to stay alive.
These fights get very serious. Above anything else, it was extremists who set Europe flame in the Thirty Years War between Protestantism and Catholicism. And now we have enraged Progressives and Conservatives blaming each other for our society's growing problems.
The result is fighting over trigger words, tea-party marches, woke culture, and "convince me I'm wrong" trolling.
The small section of our community that is prone to extremism will keep raising tensions until the rest of us click a new philosophy.
Watch out.
Made In America
Nature punishes replication over adaptation. But if that's true, how did Darth Blockbuster stay in business by re-selling the same products?
He lowered his labor costs by exporting our factories (which happened twice for me) and called it profitability.
There are endless pages of economic theory that justify exporting America's industry. All of its bullshit. If lowering customer costs was the reason for sending production away, why aren't trademarks, registered trademarks, copyrights, or patents filed in markets with cheap lawyers? Why aren't executives or marketing departments (nevermind pundits and columnists) outsourced?
Where would you rather penny-pinch, on marketing campaigns, or the person making your brake lines, or N95 masks?
In 1945 America held the world's largest and best manufacturing base. It had just finished the "Victory" production program helped win World War II. Even though Germany, Japan, and Italy prepared their economy for years, the American worker was twice as productive as a German, and four times more than a Japanese. The Ford Motor Company alone made more war equipment than all of Italy. General Motors did the same, with the help of 16,000 suppliers, all in America.
This marvel of manufacturing is what made America a superpower.
These types of people win the game of civilization. Credit: National Archives Catalog.
Within a generation, it was all sold by the "juniors" of the Industrial Age to buy themselves more time. China was especially seen as the promised land. A country so populated it could seemingly supply the cheap labor and untapped market needed to keep the era of mass-production alive forever.
Left and Right agreed. Their philosophy was unable to use the tools of mass-production to evolve to the era of mass-collaboration. They didn't mass-produce the seeds of the Internet Age, such as electric cars, wind turbines, and digital textbooks. Instead, Left/Right tried to use cheap labor to sustain the "American Dream" 1969 lifestyle they thought the public wanted.
Even if it meant outsourcing Main Street.
But, no matter how cheap anyone makes Industrial Age living, it's still outdated. Nature demands constant adaptation, not replication. That's why there's never been a time where the society of marketers, managers, and economists, defeated a nation of engineers, designers, and technicians.
The lesson is, we lost our manufacturing base and a robust local supply chain for no good reason at all. But we'll get them back. Once we start buying things, "Made In America." Buying each other's products is also a great sign we're controlling our society's new Internet Age levers of power.
I smile, thinking of all those bakers, tailors, designers, craftsmen, welders, and repairmen happily working on a new empowered Main Street.
A tale of two ruling philosophies. As Darth Blockbuster was selling America to avoid evolving, China was pressing itself forward. This is America's manufacturing centers versus and China's over the past 50 years, Credit Tech Insider, and Pion. Video.
New and Old Societies As Seen in Celebrities
New technology put two-way radios in all our hands. Like a person in a life raft, we now have a voice in our fates.
An example of this freedom is celebrities. In the Industrial Age society, our stars were often decided for us. The era of mass-production only let a few people make movies, release albums, or get their names in "the papers."
Internet Age celebrities are different. While we can make fun of Instagram models, silly YouTubers, Twitter trolls, and obscure podcasts, but at least we can follow who we want. Which also means we celebrate who we wish to.
Heck, with no gates to overcome, anyone can be a musician, artist, comedian, thinker, reviewer, or "celebrity."
Personally, I follow people like Sailing La Vagabonde, Historia Civilis, BatmanRealAccount, Dave 2D, Traversy Media, RealEngineering, Dr. Becky. I celebrate them because they're real people doing cool stuff who'd never consider themselves celebrities.
The next time you hear "celebrity," ask yourself if they're one of yours. Modern technology gives you that power.
I Want to Work at Blockbuster, I Want to Use Netflix
Stargazer, never let anyone call you an employee, consumer, or taxpayer. Those are all different names for a non-playing character. There's no achievement or responsibility required to be them.
Player gods call themselves workers, owners, and citizens. These are the roles where people have problems, and thus seek out solutions that upgrade themselves and their society.
With that in mind, let's think about our future.
Everyone knows the world is changing. We hear a lot of the computerization of work and the end of the "one job for life" mentality. What doesn't exist is the self-realization that your job is changing. There are still lots of Blockbusters in the world today. They sustain themselves on hidden fees, confusing sales contracts, and high mark-ups. Unfortunately, the people inside often think they'll be there forever, even though they watch Netflix every night.
This doesn't mean you'll lose your job tomorrow. But eventually, you'll have to adapt because society will get just as sick paying for your Blockbuster as it did the original one.
You can't work at Blockbuster and use Netflix forever. Don't worry, they'll be lots of patriots running around, teaching you how to make a great living with modern tech.
Modern Patriots
When I worked at the insurance call-center, my customers often had a paper invoice or report. When I told them I needed to see it, they'd usually ask themselves where they could get a scanner or fax machine.
I'd remind them their smartphone has a great camera, so they could just snap a photo and email me. This always sparked a eureka moment; "that's right, I can do that, thanks, John!"
We know about scanning and faxing, but there's still no word for snapping a photo of paperwork. Because this new ability of our cyborgology is still evolving.
Cool huh?
That's another example of cyborgology and majic. When a new tool is in our hands, it gives us a unique ability and therefore increases our cyborgology. But we need to be taught how to use it. We can learn this majic ourselves, or a majician can teach us.
To overcome things like climate change and government debt, we'll need lots of these majic lessons.
Because someone needs to teach Main Street, all the possibilities of artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics, 3D printing, and whatever else the protagonist wizards invent.
You know how Home Depot workers give "Do It Yourself" advice? Well, who does a plumber ask to find out which 3D printer makes the best custom water pipes? How does a roofer find out which drone and camera best inspect weather damage? How can a physiotherapist use machine learning to help her client's sprained knee? Who can help a farmer repair his computerized tractor?
While tech companies keep making and marketing excellent products, someone has to know all the options to help the frontline connect with the majic of modern levers of power.
Linus Tech Tips is an example of someone already doing this. There's a big job for someone doing this all day; modern patriots who "cross-pollinate" products on Main Street during the era of mass-collaboration.
Today's geeks, nerds, and gamers will be the ones teaching you how to make a better, more productive, and happier life in the era of mass-collaboration. Credit Civilization 6 and Linus Tech Tips. Video.
Does The World Need to Know
Internet Age player gods should be celebrating stuff like #madeinamerica, #staycation, #mainstreet.
That can be hard. Darth Blockbuster heads a hierarchy, so there are lots of underlings inside. Dealing with these BMW drivers, junior execs, or sales agents is sometimes rough. They define success as rising up the ranks and buying dark majic consumer products. If you're "beneath" them, they assume they're better than you and act like it.
If they ever intimidate you, just press the button below.
It randomly selects a Wikipedia article. With three taps, I got:
- Lorenz Nieberl, a German bobsledder.
- Sandamías, a village in northern Spain with 67 residents.
- Aartsenia arctica, a sea snail.
Anyone can make a Wikipedia article, yet no one has ever thought to make one about your personal Darth Blockbuster. You haven't, have you?
Ignore arrogant pricks and focus on the game. Anyone can earn a Wikipedia page if they inspire someone else to think "the worlds need to know."
What You Can Do Today
Writing a book is hard. One of the things that kept me motivating was realizing how many other people are out there working to build the Main Street economy too. Some small examples are below.
Galaxy Zoo: Gives anyone the chance to classify stars and galaxies. You might even be the first to discover something new.
Common Voice: Lets anyone donate their voice, anonymously, of course. Now even small companies can improve their software with audible commands.
Stack Overflow: People can ask any question and get a reliable answer from an expert.
Kickstarter: Lets the people be their own investment group and fund their own products.
These sites aren't perfect, of course. But they're young, getting better every day, and quickly put majical power of modern tools into the hands of the middle-class.
Add these communities to all the food trucks, singers, podcasters, painters, programmers, makers, and the rest of the awesome workers hustling to make an honest living doing what they love. You get the era of mass-collaboration.
To empower all these great people, even more, we need a new and improved rulebook.
The Era of Mass-Collaboration Is Only Waiting for a New Rulebook
The happier we are, the healthier our society. As shown above, we're making progress with new websites and apps. But, we'll be the happiest once we evolve to the Internet Age by clicking a modern philosophy. Because as player gods, we can install a modern rulebook. What I call the Life Star.
I'll show you an example of it.
When we buy a new house, we can't wait to move in, bring in our furniture, and start renovations. Soon enough, everyone's putting in decks, pools, fences, sheds, and whatever else we dream up.
Take a second and watch this clip of a player building backyards in the city-builder Cities: Skylines.
Credit: Cities: Skylines. Video.
Evolution needs us to buy solar-power roofs, install a Hydroloop water reuser, start a 3D printing business in the garage. These are the new technologies that upgrade civilization.
But there's a roadblock; do you know if your home insurance policy covers hail damage to newly installed solar panels? Do you even know where to find out if it does? Do you where to get your local business by-laws, building codes, tax laws?
Even without antagonists, our society's rulebook is so vast and dense, we all live under the threat of "not reading the fine print." At any time, we could be hit by a code violation, claim denial, warranty rejection, liability lawsuit, or tax audit.
And what if antagonists want to attack us? It's so easy for anyone with the resources to find "a problem" and use their Death Star to start a lawsuit, find a violation, or lobby government against you.
Technologically speaking, there's absolutely no reason for this. How is it that Linux software is worth billions, operates every Android phone, runs most of the internet's servers, and you can download it by pressing this button.
Instantly Download Billion Dollar Software For Free
But to access our health insurance policy, we do what? What does it take to get the blueprints to our home? How many people understand how their mortgage works? By what crazy regulation can a city by-law officer tell a business to take down their car lifts after nine years in operation?
The rules, regulations, contracts, and laws that govern our lives are a complete mystery to most of Main Street. And that makes us dependent on the bureaucratic creep of Big Business and Big Government inside city-halls, mortgage companies, and law offices.
The truth is, regular people and small businesses can work as freely as the Cities: Skylines clip above. With open-source software, GPS, smartphones, high-speed internet, AES security protocols, cloud computing, MySQL databases, the middle-class can literally put the power to read, understand, use, and question the rules in our own hands!
Once we hold Internet Age levers of power, we'll make a rulebook that's friendly and reasonable. We will understand what we should be doing, be able to ask informed questions when they arise, and of course, fight back if we think something is wrong.
Most vitally, with digital records of communication, everyone will be held accountable for their actions.
However, this new rulebook will only be a happy reality once Main Street uses Techvolution as our shield and motivation. Only then will we end antagonism and bring-on the era of mass-collaboration.
That's why we'll make the modern rulebook in the next chapter Techvolution II: Building the Life Star.
This scene is from the movie The Big Short. It's a movie about the 2008 housing crisis. The Industrial Age antagonists wanted to keep building the 1969 lifestyle. To get people to sign for the loans, they used underlings to sell a confusing rulebook. Credit The Big Short. Video.
We Can Forget How to Win the Game
The game of civilization never stops. Ancient Greece, the Persian Empire, the British Empire all played the game very well. Likewise, we've had a great run. But everything ends. Civilizations rise with protagonists and player gods and fall with antagonists and extras. And we've been the latter for decades now.
Most people know about ancient Rome. We've all seen the Roman baths, palaces, bridges, aqueducts, and especially the Coliseum. Most of that was made between 100 BC to 180 AD when the Roman Empire ruled over a third of the world's population. This era of "Roman Peace" was a time of great prosperity not seen again until about 1700. Most outsiders dreamed about becoming Roman citizens and flooded into its borders to prove it.
Rome's civilization won the Classical Age hands down. We still learn from their legal system, military organization, and civil engineering projects. And the Romans did all this with only several hundred state bureaucrats.
No kidding. Not a direct comparison because our times are much different, but that should make you think. Meeting a Roman bureaucrat was like us meeting a physicist. They're out there when needed, but aren't relied upon up to live a daily life.
The rest of society was busy building things. Early Rome was mostly farmers, shipwrights, cobblers, coopers, stonemasons, and especially engineers. Rome's military conquered the known world, and it didn't even have a professional school. Like most everyone else in society, people learned on the job and did just fine.
Yet, Rome fell.
And you can see it's decline in its infrastructure. You can't visit many Roman amphitheaters or mausoleums built after 250, because Rome stopped making new things. Romans started living under thatched roofs instead of tiled. By the time Rome fell in 476, Rome had over 30,000 bureaucrats and barely any builders.
Antagonists and extras replaced protagonists and player gods.
And, the same thing is happening to us.
As one professor of civil engineering at Princeton said to economist Paul Volcker in 2009, "I was up at Yale the other day and they've given up teaching civil engineering. There are just two old geezers like me up at Harvard, and once they're gone that'll be it. There's hardly an elite university in the United States that pays attention to civil engineering. What's the result? We hardly know how to build bridges; they tend to fall down."
Volcker responded, "Well The trouble with the United States recently is we spent several decades not producing many civil engineers and producing a huge number of financial engineers. And the result is shitty bridges and a shitty financial system!'"
The fact is, we have lots of lawyers, bureaucrats, and financial engineers who master an ever-increasing and ridiculous rulebook. Yet, when they vacation they visit museums filled with art, pottery, and technologies. Or, places like the Coliseum or the Pantheon. That speaks volumes to what really keeps a civilization great.
Today, we have far too few people who build things.
This is horrible because we've only started the Internet Age, and should be transforming society from top to bottom with modern technologies.
Even genius billionaires can't reverse the tide of our stagnation and decline. The lesson is we have to get rid of that Death Star rulebook now. Credit: JRE. Video.
Click
What makes something click in a person's mind? If only we knew. Sadly, we can't decide to cry, scream, or love. We all must wait for a connection.
Here's some stand-up. I'll make a point afterward.
Note, it's the extras of the Industrial Age who complain because they've forgotten how fun it is to play the game of civilization.
Here's my point. Nobody knows for sure how or why something clicks. However, we do fully understand when it does; when we can't go back. And could you ever drop Netflix and rent DVDs again? What about flipping through a phone book? Do you ever miss calling a taxi-cab and wondering when it'll arrive?
Of course not, and that's a good sign you're already a believer in the Internet Age.
Our civilization has fought many battles to liberate extras. The first was the fight against kings and their despotism. Then it was the fight against racism and sexism. At each stage, more people fought for the levers of power like books, telescopes, guns, and voting. Empowering more people created more player gods.
Liberating people works so well because, just like in Nature, the more lifeforms play the game, the more adaptations we evolve to frontline problems.
Now, as we upgrade to the Internet Age, we have another "ism" in our way; antagonism. Despotism, racial prejudice, and gender oppression will always need to be kept at bay. But, Darth Blockbuster's ideology is, by far, Main Street's most significant problem today.
Look at what antagonism has forced upon us during this pandemic. Limited medical supplies. A fragile supply chain. Getting informed via infotainment. Almost zero contact with medical professionals. A rush to work or study from home. An extremely bureaucratic healthcare system. Shaky information on who is sick and who should worry most.
Antagonism is why we're camels trying to cope in the Amazon during this crisis.
The good news is, we already have Internet Age technology. You already love it; it clicks in our minds. This book is merely asking you to increase your cyborgology with more modern tools using a philosophy you already believe in.
So, let's return to our mission. I want you to drop the era of mass-production and Left/Right politics for Techvolution. A new philosophy that gives you the right and duty to upgrade our civilization to the Internet Age and the era of mass-collaboration.
At the end of this book, I'd love it if you'd tell a claims adjuster one day, "Just to let you know, like you, I'm recording this conversation. I also already have a copy of the policy and know what section I'm claiming under. I look forward to collaborating with you."
Because that's what player gods say after a new philosophy clicks, and they've taken control of the levers of power.
Faster evolution is our savior. And antagonism is our enemy. Credit: Civlization 6, and Office Space. Video.
