NEW WORLD TRILOGY (Trilogy Title) (35 page)

“Well, perhaps on special occasions.  But, generally, no.  You make yourself more vulnerable that way for sure.”

Samuel considers this point.  “There was a collateral death toll and incidence of violence projected for the early stages of the revolution, which is still ongoing, I might add, albeit steadily declining, but that was always supposed to be short-term, not enduring.  Good social policy was supposed to take over ... ‘is’ supposed to.”

“Mm, exactly.  But what we need to do, apart from ‘aiming’ to become omniscient and omnipotent — and this is what I’m pretty sure Ikaros would have supported from what I know about him and his work — we need to prepare for the nigh-on inevitable and hopefully buy us some more time by doing so … if at all possible.”

“How long do you think we have, then?” asks Samuel.

“No one can say for sure — we’ll just have statistics and models of chaos to help us out.  I mean that more than just a catch phrase that could apply to almost any situation.  It’s more amplified and extensive than earlier in the century, particularly at any time last century or earlier, specifically because of the short-term potentials of science and technology that are now before us … the way I see it, anyway.”

“Sure, you mean that what we’ve created will be lucky to last as long as the Roman Empire, and so on.”

Henry chuckles.  “Very lucky.  It’s inherently unstable for a range of reasons — a set of powerful interacting factors related to the state and future prospects of technoscience and social organisation.”

“So, it’s not special to the political system.  It’s special to the world system’s period of development, and the phase transition associated with it … which comes with no guarantees, of course.”

“Or something like that.”

“So, what you’re saying,” continues Samuel, “is that we may not … if … I mean,
when
an attempt at a counter-revolution or some masterstroke does occur, we probably won’t even see it coming, even though we know it probably will — sooner rather than later — and even if we try to prevent it the best we can.”

“Just like your little world revolution.  You gotta admit … it was inspiring.”

Samuel laughs.  “It was definitely that.”

“We just don’t know how, when, where or what — the details.  That’s what’s going to be surprising.  Anything else would just be naïve, even ignorant.  But, instead of feeling hopeless and sitting down and waiting for the possible coup de main that gets us before we pass over the elusive threshold down the track, we need one hell of a plan.”

“A plan filled with prevention and containment techniques … and escape clauses.”

“Now we’re talking, Samuel.”

• • •

Over the following four years, Henry and Samuel joined forces and merged their programmes, the activities of which largely occurred in the background.  The core values of the World Representative Democracy provided a framework to increase social and economic inclusion, healthcare provision and a range of other prosocial development outcomes; however, progress was slow not because of a lack of political will but because of the limits of economic and material resources and the available science and technology.  In response to this, several new institutions were established in order to foster the acceleration of R&D outcomes that had the best hope of leading to a much-needed, post-scarcity reality; this was an essential programmatic focus since the limits on resources associated with the scarcity environment they were living in was evidently holding back humanity from establishing sustainable and complete coverage, which was forcing large swathes of the population to continue existing on much-less-than-adequate resources needed to lead a fulfilling life as a human being.  Additionally, the speed of socio-technological change within the scarcity framework was still resulting in socio-economic tumult and disorder, and environmental destruction, causing the marginalisation of hundreds of millions and the untimely deaths of tens of millions every year.

What Samuel came to realise fairly quickly upon engaging with Henry’s programme and its knowledge of the state of technoscience, its trends and possible future directions was that they really were on the cusp of a series of a large set of important breakthroughs that would lead to dramatic shifts to the way that their whole reality was organised in terms of energy generation and provision, infrastructure development, technology manufacture and distribution, resource allocation, healthcare provision, cognitive augmentation, and more.  All these had far-reaching outcomes that would soon likely be available for implementation on a global scale if and only if they were given relatively frictionless conditions in which to thrive and come to fruition.  Samuel and Henry knew that they were in just the right position to provide and facilitate those conditions…

In the early stages of their collaboration, Henry took Samuel to meet with experts in various specialist areas and organisations that were preparing for the potential threats associated with the period of progress in science and technology that was about to occur.  Samuel sat in on a series of presentations outlining this territory they were attempting to deal with, and needless to say, he was perturbed, even though he had previously thought that he had a handle on some of the possibilities and the context
— being exposed to so much detail and such elaboration over so many areas and possibilities left him awestruck in a way that he never thought was possible, although he gradually forced himself to come to terms with the reality that they faced and set about pragmatically doing his utmost to avert disaster.  He had known all along the tenuous nature of the road ahead following the revolution, but he had always been optimistic — until meeting Henry, at least — that their new world order would have the potential to last a considerable amount of time and would ultimately result in a stable post-scarcity civilisation that was peaceful, socially inclusive and promoted tolerance, creativity, freedom and human dignity for all.  Admittedly, this was an ambitious and laudable yet fanciful ideal that would likely fail, in the short-term at least, due to the prevailing conditions and trends inherent to the world system and the psychology of the population.  Although he had been aware of this years earlier, he had largely managed to suppress it.  After the revolution, however, he found himself experiencing continuing unease about their situation, except for lingering periods of numbness and exhaustion.

As the months turned into years, Samuel found himself waking up on some mornings wondering whether that day would be the day a counter-revolution would catch them drastically underprepared, showing their current response mechanisms and even those still in development to be totally inadequate for the task.  With his heart pounding, he would turn on his computer and scan his updates, which were streaming straight from the heart of all the primary hubs of his distributed organisation.  But nothing happened; instead, new technologies continued to be released in worldwide rollout programmes, and Samuel found that much of his time was spent just trying to learn what was happening on the ground and understand what it all meant.

Five years after Samuel and Henry met, R&D was on the verge of delivering a techno-social revolution.  Significant to this were the sets of technologies aimed at the mind and body.  The medical industrial complex was set to be reconfigured and largely disestablished as simple, effective and cheap technologies would provide continuing, home-based healthcare provision by managing the full rejuvenation and the maintenance of optimal cellular and systemic health and vitality through a variety of synthetic biological applications; this eliminated age decline and, importantly, the massive expenses and limitations associated with the soon-to-be-obsolete healthcare system, particularly in old age.  Furthermore, awaiting approval were artificial intelligence technologies: nasal sprays were to deliver nanotechnologies that would find their way to the cortex, multiply and develop into multi-layered networks, and interface with cortical regions, supplementing intelligence in any and all dimensions required and preferred.  Semantic web interfaces were to provide access to preferred niche areas of content on demand that would interface directly with and be digested by the cognitive enhancement applications; the information would then be made available through attention/consciousness duplication programs that were to allow subjects to sub-divide and multi-task and re-merge as requested, providing the user with the subjective experience of total information capture, integration and consciousness expansion all at once.  All this entailed that the educational institutions would need to be transformed accordingly in order to accommodate not just the enhancements in learning but also the creativity and productivity potentials of students.

While these technologies and more in other key areas were still in development, Samuel and a few select colleagues had access to prototypes of the new cognitive and semantic web applications.  It was during this experimentation phase that Henry and Samuel had the following remote conversation:

Samuel:
Henry … you there?

Henry:
Sure.

Samuel:
I want to continue where we left off discussing the rollout of the nano- and AI technologies.

Henry:
Go for it.

Samuel:
After doing some modelling, it seems that we need to revise down our restrictions on technology distribution still further.

Henry:
That’s not totally surprising.  What are your results?

Samuel:
Here you go.

Henry:
Oh, I see…  That really does provide a massive reduction in the potential for turbulence.

Samuel:
I know.  We just have to work out how to provide a series of intermittent augmentations that edge gradually towards the thresholds without ever actually reaching them, and …

Henry:
As long as the augmentations are perceptible and satisfying in terms of the new functionalities provided, they have a chance of being accepted as being genuine developments — they’ll need to be propagandised intensively and extensively as we go, of course.

Samuel:
Let me simulate that…  My results indicate that this will provide us with an extended window of opportunity to make adequate preparations with minimal risk.

Henry:
In fact, your results demonstrate that this approach is safer than maintaining the scarcity model as well.

Samuel:
Substantially.

Henry:
It’s the space in between.

Samuel:
It appears so.

Henry:
It’s still just probability.

Samuel:
That’s all we have.

Henry:
I know.  Let’s take it for what it is, then.

The rollout of the new technologies made available for the general public proceeded quickly due to thousands of dedicated production facilities with extensive regional distribution channels that had been put in place in preparation for the event.  The augmentation of personal and social life, physical and mental health, and cognitive functioning that resulted from the new technologies was staggering to many: healthy and fit, indefinite longevity with a range of intellectual enhancements dramatically transformed the lives of hundreds of millions of sick, disabled and elderly people all over the world.  The publicly available technologies were promoted as being cutting-edge, and further enhancements were scheduled on a specified timeline; importantly, the AI augmentations contained built-in programs that modulated perceptions and judgments in certain sensitive topic areas — particularly those regarding the state-of-the-art technology available to the establishment — which assisted in placating the majority’s curiosity.  This allowed the general acceptance of the reasons for the relatively slow rate of techno-social progress elaborated on in the five-year plans of the World Representative Democracy, much of which was informed by the information and technological resources provided to it by the Global Domination Corporation.

As far as transitioning towards a post-scarcity world system was concerned, a range of developments in the sourcing of raw materials and the building and re-building of the general infrastructure of society was made available worldwide under the purview of the World Representative Democracy at its local, regional and global levels.  Centrally controlled nano-infrastructure programs provided the computational power via quantum computing developments and the propagation proficiency to guide a range of nanotechnology to source, deconstruct, and restructure elements and compounds as required and at scale, allowing the worldwide redevelopment of urban, rural and natural environments.  The rollout of the full set of technologies occurred over a six-month period, after which city environments, for example, were programmable and alterable according to urban planning and community values, evolving needs, and environmental protection standards; this ultimately resulted in the provision of adequate housing and a global standard of living, albeit with idiosyncrasies associated with the local environment, multiculturalism and historical roots.