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The Transformation

The world is undergoing a transformation from an Industrial Age to an Information Age civilization. Its primary components are:

1) An explosion in standards of living, spurred by the implementation of state of the art robotics, artificial intelligence, genetic engineering and nanotechnologies.

2) Because of item 1), the global Information Age civilization will see an end to manufacturing and clerical jobs and the emergence of a profoundly affluent knowledge class and a ‘semi-automated services’ class.

3) A significant increase in robust life spans to an average of at least 100 by 2030.

4) The emergence of transnational communities that, through Internet delivered audio and video programning and international congregations, will increase in cultural cohesiveness. This community identification will have supplanted national identity for a significant percentage of the population by 2030.

5) The Industrial Age was dominated by large, hierarchical manufacturing corporations. Over the next twenty years, these will be replaced by less structured enterprise networks with common economic interests. The Polymathica Institute’s Entrerpreneurs’ Network is an example.

6) Global population will stabilize as the inverse correlation between income and fertility rates takes hold. Large urban areas will begin to depopulate as the ‘live anywhere’ option leads to significant demographic shifts. Many will move to comprehensivelyl designed lifestyle and values based communities.

The Transformation Hypothesis described above differs from the well known Singularity in several important ways. First, it is beginning right now and through a cascade of technological innovations and social discontinuities will occur primarily between 2010 and 2030. In other words, it is immediately relevant. Second, the Singularity is a hyper-technological vision. The Transformation considers technological innovations. However, it also interprets them within the context of sociological, cultural and demographic factors. Third, it is realistic. The Singularity assumes many scientific and technological innovations being made in a very short time frame with no significant setbacks. The Transformation assumes rapid technological advances. However, it assumes a classic S-Curve progression rather than the extremely optimistic, sustained geometric progression of the Singularity.

Each one of the six major components, as well as many minor factors, of the Transformation listed above offers significant opportunities for those with sufficient intelligence, drive and vision to recognize them and capitalize upon them.

While the future of god-like computers, predicted by Singularitarians, is not likely in the 21st Century, the next twenty years are going to be extraordinarily exciting. Due to a number of economic and technological forces, robotic performance in practice is lagging far behind theory. The computing capacity that can be purchased today for $1,000 would have cost $250,000,000 just twenty years ago. However, in the same period, the cost of a similar robot has only decreased by 75%.

This is about to change. Robotics and artificial intelligence are about to explode. The 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge, for robotics and artificial intelligence, was something like the Apollo Project for space exploration. It was ahead of its time, but it demonstrated just how far behind we were in the implementation of robotics.

By 2030, even households of moderate means will have robots cooking their meals, washing their clothes, cleaning their house and chauffeuring them around. In fact, their home will be primarily robotically built. Manufacturing plants will not only be completely automated, the production of robots will be completely automated as well. In the office, purchasing, inventory control, accounts payable, accounts receivable, cash management and more will be performed by intelligent computer programs with nominal human oversight. Civilization will literally become a slave economy. However, unlike the first round of slavery, robots are completely uninterested in consuming to a level proportional to their production. They are not interested in asserting their will or exercising freedoms. And, if anyone built such robots, people wouldn't buy them.

We are just now entering the bottom of the geometric growth of installed robotics and artificial intelligence. It should be expected that the process will be messy and contentious. However, it will take place. In fact, between 2000 and 2005, Japan’s growth in robot exports was increasing at a rate of 20% to 35% per year. While the global economic slowdown hit robot sales hard, the recovery will begin in 2010 and is expected to be significant.

It is only a matter of time before this level of growth will over-run the current GDP per Capita growth rate of under 3%. Conservatively, we would expect household income to double by 2020 and quadruple by 2030. For those who wish to enter the Information Age knowledge professions the increase in standard of living will be even more pronounced and happen even faster. When we state that people who choose to enter a knowledge professions today will be earning 250K within three years and 500K within five years, it is in now way hyperbole. It is simply what knowledge professions will be earning in the Information Age.

So, while significantly less dramatic that what is predicted by Singularitarians, we still expect a dramatic and positive next twenty years. Singularitarians seem to make the admirable error of assuming that everything that can go right, will go right. It won’t. However, much of it will, though generally later than expected. Even now, we are beginning to see that S-Curves aggregate to make a Super S-Curve, not a geometric curve. However, the generally pessimistic view of the future promulgated by many of the more mainstream media is even more unrealistic. As Polymathica grows and expands the assumption that an Information Age Income Explosion is imminent is critical to proper planning.

Among Transhumanists and Singularitarians, there is a general assumption that death from aging and age related diseases is about to be conquered Ray Kurzweil and Dr. Terry Grossman, in their book, ‘Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever’ claim that ‘Immortality is within our grasp.’ Cambridge researcher, Dr. Aubrey de Grey at SENS.Org claims that through seven identified rejuvenation processes, people alive today could live to be 1,000. Dr. Michael Fossel of Michigan State University claims technologies that reverse the loss of telomeres on the ends of DNA strands can result in indefinite life spans within the next ten to fifteen years. Dr. Leonid A.Gavrilov and Dr. Natalia S. Gavrilova of the University of Chicago state, “Numerous studies demonstrate that many manifestations of aging can be postponed or even reversed, and that lifespan can be significantly extended in experimental animals.”

The overwhelming percentage of researchers disagree with Kurzweil/Grossman, de Grey, Fossel, Gavrilov, et al. For example, 28 renowned researchers in a letter to EMBO Review stated that Dr. de Grey’s efforts ‘don’t have the remotest chance of success.’ Dr. Richard L. Sprott, in the September 22, 2005 ‘White House Conference on Aging Solution Session, stated that, ‘150 or 200 year old humans are not likely any time soon.’ Obviously, since the oldest humans alive today are under 115 years old, it arithmetically can not happen any sooner than another 35 years. However, that was obviously not the message that Dr. Sprott intended to convey. Hayflick, Olshansky and Case, claiming a review by 52 experts stated that “Repeating this feat (increasing life expectancy at birth by 30 years) during the lifetimes of people alive today is unlikely.” On the other hand, MIT Tech Review offered a $20,000 prize to any Molecular Biologist who could demonstrate that SENS is ‘not worthy of serious consideration.’ Though several biologists submitted papers, the prize went unclaimed.

Clearly, those who purport to be expert in the field are far from being in agreement. However, life expectancies have been increasing consistently across all age groups for the past 40 years. This has primarily been due to improvements in our ability to mitigate the severity of the top two causes of death in the elderly, cancer and heart disease. Advances in our understanding of the mechanisms of cancer is likely to cause the mortality rate to decrease significantly over the next twenty years while heart disease mortality rates continue to decrease steadily. So, at a minimum, we expect that, over the next twenty years, society will be fundamentally transformed by the growing expectations that life spans will routinely exceed one hundred years.

We can expect that people will more readily accept the notion of evolving careers. The portion of life dedicated to rearing children will dramatically decrease. Preparation for retirement will be de-emphasized. Continuing adult education will become normative and, parenthetically, one of the lifestyle changes enabled by the increase in leisure time inherent in The Transformation.

The Transformation begins right now. Internet delivered radio and television, by creating global, memic propagators of extreme precision will transform the world by creating an explosion of transnational communities affiliated through concept space proximity. This will put enormous pressure on geographically defined institutions of governance to cope with the new realities. This is beginning right now. An explosion of automation and AI implementation is nearly as imminent. It will displace large percentages of the workforce, requiring a complete reordering of the professions and the productive institutions. A general perception of careers into the 80’s and lifespans into the 100’s will change the way people relate to one another, their communities and their life expectations. This is only a cursory depiction of what will be a complete Tranformation, from Industrial Age institutions to new, radically different Information Age ones.

It is virtually impossible to plan our lives without a deep understanding of the forces that lead to the imminent Transformation of the world civilizations. While the opportunities for Polymaths will be rapidly increasing, they will emerge within these contexts. In order to consider how best to capitalize upon the opportunities, we need to consider how the Transformation will progress.

We have dedicated an enormous amount of energy in trying to understand how the Industrial Age civilizations will turn into the global Information Age civilization – what we call The Transformation. So, although, we don't have a crystal ball, we do have a deep, perhaps the deepest, understanding of the forces and mechanisms at work.

If we are to learn anything from the prior transformations, it is that they are messy, often violent, affairs that really are not under anyone's control. As we have stated on a number of occasions, the recent string of crises, of which the financial crisis was one and the current nation state credit crises are the latest, are directly related to The Transformation. Here in the U.S. we have Herculean efforts of sweeping reform which are exactly ‘the status quo’ attempting to reassert itself.’ These efforts, like those of the European Royal families in the previous Transformation, will ultimately fail.

The Transformation is an extremely complex phenomenon that cannot be adequately explained in an article or, most likely, even in a book. Understanding The Transformation is more a matter of a dedicated, ongoing course of study. However, there are three major factors that we attempt to emphasize.

First, we are entering a period of unprecedented occupational displacement. Nearly all clerical, and many entry level professional, jobs are at risk to AI applications. The current AI state of the art can duplicate most clerical functions cost effectively. It’s really a matter of product design and marketing. It is happening right now, actually, with large corporations, such as Target and Wal-Mart, that are promulgating electronic invoicing and payments in their formats upon their vendors. We need a data interchange format for business paper with translators. Then, all clerks are basically out of a job.

The DARPA 2007 Urban Challenge, and the work of Stanford/Audi since then, has demonstrated that millions of jobs in the transportation industries are terminal and have years, not decades, to live. Audi has the stated goal of fully automated vehicles by 2028. Given the state of the art as demonstrated to date we conclude that, if they take that long, someone will beat them to it. It seems unlikely that the other manufacturers will not respond and instigate a technology race. Consequently, it is unlikely that this technology is no more than a decade or so from commercial applications.

There are few, if any, construction jobs that cannot be cost effectively replaced by robots with current technologies. Again, they will be gone in our twenty year time frame. There are even AI programs being marketed today that threaten the jobs of classical K-12 teachers and replace most of the diagnostic functions of physicians.

So, Factor One, is the emergence of huge worker displacements with no straightforward road to a replacement career. As we have often stated, paradoxically, all of the implemented robotics and AI will cause an explosion in GDP per capita. When we say that it will double in ten years and quadruple in twenty, we are trying to be very conservative. Many people are beginning to understand that something very fundamental is going to need to change in the economic mechanisms of society in order to get all of the income of productions into the hands of the consumer.

Second, the emergence of cable and satellite television created a situation where a few of the major cultural perspectives are now living in totally separate and robust memic universes. In other words, people who watch MSNBC for their news, analysis and commentary are being immersed in a culturally comfortable world view that is quite different than the one received by people watch Fox News. There are no significant homogenizing forces and those that do exist are becoming overwhelmed by the forces of fragmentation.

Furthermore, as radio and television move to the Internet small print/audio/video enterprises, targeted at markets with total customer bases in the hundreds of thousands or several millions, rather than tens or even hundreds of millions will become viable. Polymathica, a global community of refinement and erudition, Project Venus, Gaians, New Agers, Polyamorists, and many, many more will float their own news outlets and television networks. Some will undoubtedly fail. However, many will succeed and the march toward a massively heterogeneous, multicultural world will continue.

As ‘live anywhere’ economics take hold, combined with the Information Age Income Explosion of Factor One, an increasing percentage of the population will move to comprehensively designed communities that are facilitative of a specific set of values, cultural and lifestyle preferences. Because, at the time, the major nation states will be desperately trying to maintain a semblance of cultural homogeneity, many of these communities will be found in smaller nations. The notion of cultural sovereignty will emerge. Along with it will come the concept of Market Based Governance.

So, Factor Two, the emergence of memic propagators that will cause the currently fragmenting cultures of the Industrial Age to coalesce around a relatively large number of new and old memically isolated global communities that will begin to express themselves in a growing number of culturally homogenous ‘bricks and mortar’ communities.

In economics and business there is a perverse, inverse relationship between industry stability and barriers to market entry. This is critical to the nature of The Transformation. The Internet is currently completely disorganized. Small businesses that are primarily information enterprises have as their primary barrier to success, the inability to find their customers efficiently. Polymathica has as affiliates some magnificent blogs that have readers numbering in the hundreds rather than hundreds of thousands, primarily because they can’t efficiently find their readership. The very large information brokers such as NewsCorp and NBC like it this way. However, it will not last. As Internet television and radio create targeted networks, barriers to market entry will fall and, as the saying goes, ‘all Hell will break loose.’

So, Factor Three, the Mega corporations will experience increasing competition from networks of small enterprises that have affiliated in a non-corporate fashion. The large corporations of the Industrial Age will fight the process of course. However, in the end, they will lose. The world economy will become far more organic.

Unlike The Singularity and other Transhumanist movements, The Transformation is not a vague, ‘someday this will happen’, kind of story. These three factors are all emerging today. They will accelerate over the next ten years and by 2030, the global Information Age civilization will be here. It will look far different than the world of today. The differences will be in kind not degree.

It will most likely be a rough ride. The large, multinational corporations and institutions of geographic governance will not ‘go quietly into that dark night.’ National governments will attempt, as China and some of the more fundamentalist Islamic states are doing now, to build information barriers that will protect their citizens from the onslaught of memic propagators of other cultural viewpoints. Mega corporations, which are generally proscribed from overtly predatory practices in most nations, will attempt to create multinational strategies to fend off the attack of the hordes of small, niche creating Information Age. They will search for, and most likely find, Corporate Havens where the local governments will turn a blind eye to the tactics.

For many the large, Industrial Age institutions seem too powerful to be displaced. However, as the feudalism and Nobility of the Agricultural Age gave way to the new institutions of the Industrial Age, the Nation State and Multinational corporations of the Industrial Age will succumb to new Information Age institutions. Ten years ago when some of us began telling this story, it seemed unrealistic and distant to most people. They believed that they had some time to watch how it all unfolded. They were correct. However, now, more people accept the story and time has run out. The Transformation is happening right now. Historians will view the U.S. taxation of worldwide income and the 2008 ‘Exit Tax’ legislation as important early salvos in the Industrial Age/Information Age conflict.

The people who have the easiest time with it will be the people who are anticipating it and acting upon it in real time. The person who sits back, feeling secure in their job as, for example, a clerk in a public library, will find themselves totally unprepared when public libraries become a virtual, Internet based affair, delivering their ‘borrowed books’ to people’s Kindles, Ipads, etc. They will lose their jobs and find that everyone with their skill set and occupational expectations are in the same boat. They will adjust, but it will be an uncomfortable time. Those, however, who begin now to craft a new Information Age career, will have a much easier transition.

People who are vested in the Industrial Age fiction of a bipolar political universe will find the new Information Age realities confusing. Republicans/Democrats, Conservative/Labour, et al will become false dichotomies. The new realities of ‘voting with your feet’ will completely confound Industrial Age thinkers. Liberal Democracies that have become comfortable in the political strategy of making promises to the majority, financed by the affluent minority will find that the affluent minority is gone and no longer taxable. We suspect that the reaction will not be pleasant.

In conclusion, the greater your involvement in Polymathica, the more comprehensive will be your understanding of The Transformation. We are searching for all the refined, erudite people on the Internet. For the most part, it is an effort to create an audience and customer base for refined, erudite content, networks, products and services. However, the process of educating its Membership about the Transformation and mobilizing them to create Information Age strategies to address the problems and capitalize upon the opportunities is a non-trivial pursuit, as well.