Here are some notes for my talk at the Virtual Citizenship Symposium at Wayne State University, 30Nov2007. At the moment, these notes can be found at: http://rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/vinge/vcs

No one knows the future, so scenarios are much preferred to predictions. (And for some of the most important issues, scenarios are more useful than elaborate probability analysis.)

• Science fiction uses scenarios as the setting for drama.
• Others (eg, GBN) use scenarios as a basis for planning:
  • Build those wild-eyed scenarios, each at the extreme of plausibility but in a different direction.
    • For each scenario, build a list of symptoms and anti-symptoms
    • Taken together, list responses common to different scenarios, with a major goal of maintaining flexibility.
  • Track relevant events as time passes
    • Update existing scenarios accordingly
    • Create new scenarios accordingly

The scenario I want to outline in this talk assumes we encounter no grand physical or social disasters. (If there's time, I'll touch on some less optimistic (and hopefully, less plausible) social/political scenarios. For extreme physical disasters, see Martin Rees's Our Final Hour.)

Of course, that resource is still ... humanity itself.

• Population of China: 1,322e6
• Population of India: 1,169e6
• Population of EU and Russia: 638e6
• Population of USA: 303e6
• ...

In the past, these numbers have been cause for gloomy prediction, for military calculation, and (happily) for spectacular market estimates. We are moving into an era where the numbers can also be the basis for a creativity engine.

The Internet has given us hints of this potential. With the proper high-level architectures, we could make twentieth century levels of innovation and creativity look like the Middle Ages.

In fact, the greatest importance of our present-day Internet may be as a huge laboratory for experimenting with collaboration. In the next ten years we will probably see more innovation in the area of social contracts than in all preceding time.

• Google's projects
• Social protocols and business models
  • eBay
  • Games
  • Social networks
  • Automation of social networks (eg, Yenta )
  • MIT Software Agents Group
  • Open education (for example, MIT's online lectures and supporting software)
  • Prediction markets and prizeboards
  • Movie production as a model for industry
• The productive tension that exists between those who are out to make billions by monetizing the previously unmonetized -- and those who are rendering all but free what had previously been fabulously expensive. (Examples of the second kind:)
  • Wikipedia
  • The Free Software Movement

A lot is made of "ubiquitous computing". But ubiquity is a relative term. In 1975, the notion of a personal computer would qualify as as extreme ubiquity. What will ubiquity amount to in our near future?

Some relevant hardware trends:

• Embedded systems
• Networked embedded systems
• Fine-grained distribution
  • Localizers
  • Smart Dust. Warneke, Last, and Pister, IEEE Computer, January 2001, p44-51: "We will program the walls and the furniture, and some day even the insects and the dust."

These technologies and the economic advantage they confer appear to head us inexorably toward a future where physical objects know what they are, where they are, and how to communicated with their nearby neighbors -- and thus, in principle -- with anywhere in the world. In this situation, physical reality becomes its own database.

• Software is all. If a desired product can't be done with software on top of the uniform (network/localizer/sensor/effector) substrate, then there is something wrong with the product concept.
  • An extreme case: active stability. (See Donald Kingsbury's hilarious discussion of the archeological reconstruction of the B-17 aircraft in The Psychohistorical Crisis, Tor Books, 2001.)
• A heuristic for invention in the new age: In the 20th century, people often used real world metaphors in their programming. Now turn that around: Almost every aspect of computers should have a concrete analog in the network/localizer/sensor/effector real world -- and where this doesn't appear to be true, that's evidence of unexploited opportunity!
  • Example: Computer games --> ARGs --> work and belief circles
• Anything known anywhere is known by those who need to know: "synthetic serendipity" really works

Some demoralizing questions:

• How long does it take to be become an expert in a domain?
• How long does a domain stay relevant?
• How temporary can temporary employment become?
• How to cope with deprofessionalization?
• How to cope with best-in-the-world competition?

Some advice from my 2025-era high school teacher in Rainbows End:

• "You have to know something about something."
• "Choose your targets carefully!"
  • Core domains
  • Meta domains
  • Style domains: butterflies v woodborers
• "Learn to ask the right questions!"
  • Of classical search services and support groups
  • Of new network services that "every day" are being born
  • Of software support packages
• "Innovation is just asking the right questions."
  • The notion of "Commodity innovation"
• "Clever procrastination is the heart of successful planning."
  • [Is this lady confused or what?]
  • Just think of it as very late binding :-)

• In the twentieth century, Pogo captured the weakness of populisms past: "We have met the enemy, and he is us."
  In the twenty-first century, computers+communication+people might bring Pogo to say: "We have met what's going to save the show, and it is us!"
• Internet is changing what makes the economic power of a nation.
• Economic power lies in the combination of:
  • Large populations of educated, creative, enthusiastic people, pursuing their myriad independent goals, but planning and coordinating with one another via
  • Computer networks and shared data services.

The leaders of the most powerful countries are coming to realize this, and to realize that at least the illusion of freedom is necessary to maintain this creativity machine.

What leaders may not realize is that the creativity machine includes millions of people who are as bright and knowledgeable as anyone who has ever captained a great nation. In the end that illusion of freedom may have to be more like the real thing than any society has ever achieved in the past, something that could satisfy a new kind of populism, a populism powered by deep knowledge, self-interest so broad as to reasonably be called tolerance, and an automatic, preternatural vigilance.

• Bruce Sterling's "Maneki Neko"
• Marc Stiegler's EarthWeb
• Gregory Stock's Metaman

The Technological Singularity
Alas, imagining a post-Singularity version of these issues is a little like a frog imagining a conference on wetlands management. The topic is of interest, but beyond our mental horizon.