Ben McLeish - Futurists, Technology and Cultural Lag - London Z-Day, 2010
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Ben McLeish- Z-Day 2010
Futurists - Technology - Cultural Lag
The 20th century cultural theorist Walter Benjamin
writing in 1940, expressed a certain sentiment towards modernity
that came to be known as the shock of the new.
Writing about Paul Klee's painting 'Angelus Novus', Benjamin wrote
"Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though
he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating.
His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread.
This is how one pictures the angel of history.
His face is turned towards the past.
Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe
which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage
and hurls it in front of his feet.
The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead
and make whole that which has been smashed.
But a storm is blowing from paradise. It has got caught in his wings
and with such violence that the angel can no longer close them.
This storm irresistibly propels him into the future
to which his back is turned."
Benjamin would eventually be forced to flee
Nazi occupied Germany the same year.
The historical context of the man's life certainly lends an understanding
to the devastation he envisioned in Klee's rather simple painting.
My aim here today is not to speak to you about the past or about art
but about the role of technology in society and to spend a little time
discussing what exactly technology is
and how it interacts with our culture at present and where it's headed.
One of the many ways we'll look at technology is through a loose
and often unrelated group of individuals from many backgrounds
called futurists.
In the arena of technology, a futurist might be understood best
as an individual who extrapolates future possibilities and scenarios
based on how technology is actually developing
and not simply extrapolating from present-day norms of society
and the perceived 'way things are'.
We will quickly see what a huge difference this makes.
A lot of what you hear today, if you are unfamiliar with the actual state
of technology and how it develops or maybe you are just not used
to thinking about it like I was
(like I wasn't used to thinking about it, rather)
you might feel a bit like Benjamin's 'Angel of History'.
You might feel kind of pushed back by it and taken aback by what you hear.
And being one of the early speakers of this event I wanted to attempt
to offer some tools and ground work for the new ears to help contextualize
what is being addressed here as well as hoping to engage
some of the more seasoned followers that I already spotted outside.
Ultimately it is our ability to be open and flexible
not just to new information but to new ways of thinking
no matter how alien they may seem at the time.
This will give us the power to advance in the most rapid and positive way.
It may also seem to you as it did to me
that we simply don't have the means to achieve what we want to.
This too is false and it should become obvious over the course of today's talks
just how far behind we are as a society
from what we have now as a species made possible
through technological and scientific progress.
What is technology?
Is it the latest gadget?
Is technology the newest web start-up?
Is it personified by the newest social network application?
(Audience laughs at image displayed). It's my favorite slide.
Those are certainly by-products of the latest technology
but they're not technology itself.
Certainly the question "What is technology?" almost feels as vague
and infuriating as "Why am I here?"
or "What is the meaning of life?"
This is probably due to the fact that the average citizen
has never really needed to define the word technology in any precise sense.
Just as with the word "life" is simply an ever-present term
in our lives, nebulous, used in many forms and in many contexts
so that a direct explanation of its meaning isn't deemed necessary.
A shared understanding is simply accepted and assumed
even if many of us would
disagree about what our internal definition of technology is
or struggle to find a definition at all.
This lack of an objective explanation about what technology is
and the misunderstandings that arise from it
are having a huge negative impact upon our culture
and our ability to progress as a global society.
Let's define and contextualize what technology actually is.
In attempting this, it's helpful to look at the works of Ray Kurzweil
one of today's most important futurists, who spent
more than three decades studying the overall patterns
of human innovation as well as being the inventor
of the first text-to-speech device for the blind and many other things.
Looking back through the evolutionary process on our planet
very specific patterns of development can be seen and
not just in the development of what we term 'nature'.
This slide shows the advancement of various key events
within pre-history to modern history, starting at the top left.
That's life beginning on this planet.
Nature's evolution of RNA and then ultimately of DNA took billions of years.
That takes you to the second a point on that graph.
The Cambrian explosion followed this and was a period
where there was a relatively rapid expansion
and appearance over a period of tens of millions of years
of most major groups of complex animals
beginning around 530 million years ago.
This was accompanied by a major diversification of other organisms
including animals and Phytoplankton.
Before about 580 million years ago most organisms were simple
composed of individual cells, occasionally organizing into colonies.
Over the following 70-80 million years, the rate of evolution accelerated
and the diversity of life began to resemble today's.
This accelerated rate of diversification was enabled by the fact
that each step forward used the existing evolved tools
such as DNA, which allowed the body plans of many diverse animals
to be accelerated by 200 times that of the evolution of DNA itself.
Homo sapiens was essentially the first technology-creating species
which combined cognitive functions with an opposable appendage.
It's interesting that that's actually a sign of positivity
because it's essentially the reason why we're even here.
And it took several hundred thousand years by comparison with the previous stage.
The shift from primates to homo sapiens also required fewer refinements
than the diverse body plans seen in the Cambrian explosion.
The joint on the thumb was moved about an inch leading to a firmer grip
and our skulls grew larger at the expense of a weaker jaw.
If you think about it, it makes sense. As the first and only species
on this planet with access to the kinds of cognitive functions that we have
our jaws can be weaker than those of primates
as we develop the tools to crack nuts and manipulate food
and we don't need to bite to defend ourselves (at least not as much).
[Laughter]
The first step in our technological evolution as a species
which included stone tools, fire, and the wheel lasted about 10,000 years.
Compare that with the evolutionary time of DNA creation
or even the Cambrian explosions.
We're into the tens of thousands of years now rather than millions or billions.
You'll also notice that we're already half way through Kurzweil's graph
which is there.
I'll make it a little bit bigger for you.
Our existing technologies then became the enablers
of more advanced technologies: manipulation of metals
rudimentary construction and archiving technologies such as books
which store, to some extent
the instructions for our technologies
to be passed on for use by each new generation and built upon.
The printing press took only a century to be adopted.
Mobile phones took around 7 years to be adopted on a worldwide level by comparison
(that excludes the hilarious 'bricks' that only three people had in the 1970s)
in terms of mass adoption it was about 7 years.
Within the recent 100 years or so
our computers have now reached a staggering rate of development.
We've doubled the price, performance, capacity and speed
of our computers every 15-18 months.
And they are adopted on a constant level in everyday hardware.
The exponential rate of acceleration
relies on the current state of technology to produce the next stage.
To understand this cumulative rate of development
I'm going to show you this data on Kurzweil's graph in a linear format.
This graph is logarithmic which means
(and I'm not a math major)
rather than being a linear projection like: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
we're actually jumping up in factors of 10.
We're actually jumping down if you go from left to right.
The space of time between 10 to the power of 10
and 10 to the power of 9
10 to the power of 2, to 10 to the power of 1
the first one is 9 billion years on that section of the graph.
The last step is only a hundred years, so it gives you an idea
that it's got that kind of element to it.
Looking at this development in a linear fashion
does make it look like nothing much has happened until the last 100 years.
Show this to people who tell you that scientific and technological advances
are mostly luck or by chance or serendipitous: it just simply isn't.
That's the result of a linear fashion that we experience
in the short lifetimes that we have.
We think they move fairly slowly.
But unless we're getting exponentially more lucky every year
(which seems unlikely) this is exactly how our innovations look.
For example, that is where we begin to walk upright
and use specialized stone tools.
The wheel was invented here.
Everything that we have since then pretty much relies on wheels
and it's happened in what appears to be
almost no time at all.
The exponential rate at which nature evolved each step on top of the last
is continued in our evolution of technology.
This is what technology is: a natural progression of the increase
in sophistication of life on this planet
by means other than natural selection by nature.
To truly understand what technology is, is to understand
that it is part of nature, an organic developmental tendency of human life.
Our inventions and advances are not unnatural.
They are utterly expected given that we solve the problems
we come to face in the natural world with them.
As the only species of life in nature survive because of their body plans
behaviors and genetic predispositions allow their continued survival
so technology adapts and advances with the challenges
and problems we face now.
Technology is also the incremental development of tools which allow us
to exceed our physical and mental possibilities
and advance at much greater speeds in all areas of knowledge.
However, with this exponential rate of technological innovation outlined
you may be asking yourself the same question I asked when I came across it
and that is: Where is my hover board?
If our technology is advancing so quickly
our society and culture is not developing at a similar rate along with it
given it is born of the evolutionary requirements. Why is that?
Why are our motorways clogged, our buildings defunct, hard to upgrade
and made of materials that wear out quickly?
While it is true that a great deal of change has occurred in the last 10 years
the rate is nowhere near that of a society in line with exponential increase
in innovation and new applications of technology
in Kurzweil's second graph, or the first.
On the whole, our society lags behind by comparison
with what we are actually capable of.
When explaining this, the first and most important factor to address
is this mistrust of technology that we have as a civilization.
Douglas Adams, the author of "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy"
(who really drew me, an English student, into science) said this:
"Anything that's in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary
and just a natural part of the way the world works.
Anything that's invented between when you're 15 and 35 is new
exciting and revolutionary, and you could probably get a career in it.
Anything invented after you're 35 is against the natural order of things."
Our overriding distrust of technology and fear of it
is one of the principal blockades in exponential social growth.
This stems from many mechanisms that either exist within the society structure
which essentially exert pressure on the populace
to maintain the established order of things.
Some others are accidental or deliberate by-products of the perceptions
we draw from being exposed to that society
and these need to be addressed in order to be adequately discussed
when considering the future.
I like this because Google is a very good
"finger on the pulse" of what we're looking for.
The fact that 'technology is destroying humanity'
comes up there is great. Also '[technology] is indistinguishable from magic.'
I quite like that one as well.
The most understandable reason for technophobia lies in the existence
of something Simon mentioned called 'technological unemployment'.
Machines have since the agricultural revolution rapidly
and methodically replaced human labor force in certain areas
and increasingly in more and more areas of society.
Keynes said it best. He said "We're being afflicted with a new disease
of which some readers have not yet heard the name
but of which they will hear a great deal in the years to come
namely technological unemployment. This means unemployment
due to our discovery of means of economizing the use of labor
outrunning the pace at which we can find new uses for labor."
If you look at the US historical labor statistics by sector
it shows the pattern of machine automation replacing human labor definitively.
In the agricultural sector, almost all traditional workflow is now done by machine.
For example in 1949, machines did 6% of the cotton harvesting in the South.
By 1972, 100% of the cotton harvesting was done by machines.
In 1860, 60% of America worked in agriculture
while today it's less than 3%.
When automation fully hit the US manufacturing sector in the 1950s
1.6 million blue-collar jobs were lost in 9 years.
That sounds like a lot doesn't it? Just remember, that's 9 years and 1.6 million.
In 1950, 33% of US workers worked in manufacturing
while by 2002, there was only 10%.
The US steel industry from 1982 to 2002
increased production from 75 million tons to 120 million tons
while steelworkers employed actually went from 289,000 to 74,000.
In 2003, a study was done by the world's largest 20 economies
ranging from the period of 1995 to 2002
finding that 31 million manufacturing jobs were lost
while production rose by 30%. This is very powerful information.
It clearly crystallizes the obvious pattern of human job displacement
by technological innovation.
This pattern of increasing productivity coupled with decreasing employment
is a new and powerful phenomenon, showing among many other things
the incredible merit of the ability to automate.
Where have the jobs gone? They've gone to the service sector.
By 2002, the percentage of Americans employed
in the service industries was 82%.
For the last 50 years, the service sector has been absorbing the job losses
from agriculture and manufacturing.
Unfortunately this pattern is slowing fast
as the computerized automation takes hold here as well.
From 1989 to 1993 banks cut 37% of their human tellers
and by the year 2000, 90% of all bank customers used teller machines.
Business phone operators now have almost completely been replaced
by computerized voice answering systems, much to our joy.
Post office tellers are being replaced by self-service machines
while cashiers are being replaced by computerized kiosks.
There isn't one area of the service industry
that isn't being affected by computerized automation.
If we think creatively about the application of technology
that currently exists that's not yet applied to the service sector
we can easily see how the majority of all service jobs
could be phased out now.
Economist Stephen Roach has warned "The service sector has lost its role
as America's unbridled engine of job creation."
Where is the emerging new sector to employ all the newly displaced workers?
There really isn't one, at least not yet.
Even if there was one that it doesn't really matter
it would just end up delaying the inevitable.
From the elevator man to human phone operators
almost all once existing agricultural positions
right through to the near full automation of the manufacturing of cars
a big issue in this country: Technological unemployment
has become a major part of modern life.
While we are based in a monetary system that rewards labor
with financial stability, there will be a growing distrust
mistrust and resentment in machines and automation
the very tools that we originally designed to make our lives
more productive and less tedious.
Take a trip on the Docklands Light Railway one day in southeast London
the driver of the train is likely to walk past you during the trip.
(I don't know if anyone's done this, but they actually do that)
It's an automated network of trains guided by sensors and central management.
Counter intuitively, this is actually safer than human drivers.
Given GPS technology and guidance systems sophisticated enough
to fly missiles to within a foot of the desired target
it's amazing how many drivers of anything we have anymore.
I was on the DLR about two months ago.
This guy walked past me and I guessed he was driver
and I said "Are you the driver?" He said "Yeah, absolutely."
He looked a bit worried and I said
"I'd heard about that, and I was just wondering if it was true or not."
He said “ Well, you don't seem upset and that's a good thing
because about 2 weeks ago, there was woman on the train who realized
that there was no driver sitting up front. She burst into tears
and became uncontrollable and hysterical."
He had to get a guy from central office to come down and be the driver
to just sit there because we have that kind of association
that human somehow is good in terms of technological exactness
whereas a decent integrated system of transport
is much better than humans, just because of the way we are.
Machines not only take our jobs, they seem to take our lives too.
Today war and instability around the world is becoming ever more high-tech.
The ever-decreasing numbers of soldiers on the ground
are being replaced with an increase in automated warfare.
Missiles and smart bombs seem to take on a life of their own.
Automated robots designed to identify and kill humans
can now operate autonomously.
Biological and chemical warfare has made it possible
for even worse horrors in this world
and it's generated a fear in physical danger to technological developments.
This means there now exists the kind of misapplied technology
that could see to it that the next world war
would be the human race's final act.
This is now relayed by embedded journalists through multimedia systems
to our living room, all thanks to technology, misapplied.
Computer games that re-enact war scenes are ever more sophisticated.
Unmanned drones even bring that remote-control virtual-reality aspect
back into real war games enabling murder from afar.
No wonder we don't trust technology. This is how we presently use it
on each other.
The second mechanism as to why we lag far behind
in what is technologically possible and relates
to the monetary system, as technological unemployment rises
is the need for cyclical consumption.
This table shows what is meant by that and at present
this buying-selling cycle is the cornerstone
for the way we operate worldwide, no matter what
name of the market system is used, whether it's communist, socialist
capitalist. It is all based on this.
The overriding model of all production and consumption
as we presently structure it means that a business owner
or employer pays an employee to work.
That work means the creation of a product or service
that can then be sold to the consumer at a profit.
The money from this transaction then theoretically goes back to the employer.
They cross. You can have employers that have employees
and some of the money will go to somebody
or something else, but essentially that cycle remains.
It just happens to be parallel.
This buying-selling cycle presupposes the consistent need
to purchase any good or service on a regular basis
in order to keep the structure from breaking down.
What's the result of this cyclical consumption?
It means that nothing physically produced can ever maintain a lifespan
longer than what can be endured in order to maintain the needed turnover.
In other words, everything produced must break down
in a respective amount of time in order to continue the financial circulation
needed to power the economy.
This comes in the form of 'planned obsolescence'.
It's not a new term. It's been around for quite long time.
Planned obsolescence is essentially the deliberate withholding of efficiency
so the product in question breaks down respectively fast
and then you have to buy another one or upgrade it.
In order to keep this cycle going, two inefficiencies
need to be consistently maintained: Either a product needs to be designed
with many versions in its life cycle (look at the number of Blackberry phones
or laptops you can buy in the open market. People will always pick on the I-pod
the amount of different types we've had
in the seven years it's been around.)
or an indirect inefficiency which exists in the product.
Either of these two are called 'planned obsolescence'.
Planned obsolescence in a second sense may be
the inclusion of sub-optimal technologies in your computer
that need to be upgraded in the future.
It can be manifested in the need of manufacturing costs and materials
of any given product to be as low as possible to maximize the profits.
Build something out of cheap materials, cut corners
and the item will break down.
Simply put, maximum efficiency, the ability to repeatedly upgrade
all the products successfully with newer technologies
and the building of any item out of the best possible materials
and in the most lasting way, stands in direct opposition
to the profit mechanisms to dictate any company's future.
For if you build a car that lasts 80 years with minimal servicing
that could run at 80 mph on one battery charge for a thousand miles
and didn't need conventional refueling
what would happen to the auto repair industry or to the car company
which cannot afford an 80-year gap between individual unit sales?
What would happen to the fuel companies if fuel was used
with maximum efficiency?
We all know what happens. Hyper-efficient
non-corroding cars which are programmed
not to crash into each other have existed for a very long time.
These are the creations of Jacque Fresco that you're looking at
a futurist whose work I'll detail in just a moment
(and yes, whose 94th birthday is today.)
These will never go on sale. There is no aftermarket value
in something built to last. There is no money
in the problem of hyper-optimal transport and thus
we remain behind the curve. Are you familiar with this story?
Toyota's recent troubles are not the result of an evil company.
You have to understand that. It is to be expected
from a manufacturer of cars whose main incentive in survival
hinges upon profit at all cost.
Toyota doesn't want you to crash. They want to sell you a car
but production costs need to be low. Flaws appear for whatever reason
mostly production costs or design flaws.
They lose millions while people lose their lives.
The bottom line is that efficiency and optimization
must remain outside of our technological landscape
so long as we have to satisfy the profit mechanism
as individuals and as corporations.
Mechanism Three is the technology lag that can be loosely termed
'The Sci-Fi factor.' This can be summed up best
as the automatic subconscious rejection of highly advanced science
and application of technology through the conditioning of popularized
and often misinformed science fiction in public culture.
I've got some good examples I'm pretty sure we all know
which would prove a point.
To demonstrate how this perception plays out I'll turn to our second futurist
Jacque Fresco, an inventor, industrial designer and social engineer
whose lifelong work (and it is twice the lives of the ones that we've led)
at the helm of The Venus Project dedicated to building
true sustainable models of society is best summed up as follows:
It is common in our mass media to read and hear commentators
talk about the number of social problems that face us today
such as global warming, the destruction of the Earth's environment
unemployment, crime, violence, poverty, hunger and the population explosion.
How often do you hear of workable plans
for alleviating many of the social problems?
It is relatively simple for people to criticize society.
It is much more difficult to identify and implement
plans to resolve the problems.
The plans for The Venus Project offer society a broader spectrum of choices
based on the scientific possibilities
directed towards a new era of peace and sustainability for all
through the implementation of a resource economy
and a multitude of innovative and environmentally-friendly technologies
directly applied to the social system. The Venus Project proposals
will dramatically reduce crime, poverty, hunger, homelessness
and many other pressuring problems that are common throughout the world today.
One of the cornerstones of the organization's findings is that
many of the dysfunctional behaviors of today's society stem directly
from the dehumanizing environment of a monetary system.
Automation has resulted in the technological replacement
of human labor by machines and eventually, most people
will not have the purchasing power to buy the goods and services turned out.
The Venus Project proposes a social system in which automation
and technology would be intelligently integrated
into an overall social design where the primary function
would be to maximize the quality of life rather than profits.
This project also introduces a set of workable and practical values.
This is in perfect accord with the spiritual aspects
and ideals found in most religions throughout the world.
What sets The Venus Project apart
is that it proposes to translate these ideals into a working reality.
We call for a cybernated society.
That's the quickest way of saying it.
Before we take a look at what Fresco's vision actually is
let me ask you "What did you immediately think of when you saw
and heard this phrase 'We believe or call for a cybernated society'?"
Did you, like me when I first heard it think of...
This?
Or perhaps this?
Hands up if you thought of this.
A big fan of 'The Matrix' will.
The word 'cybernated' sounds inherently dangerous, doesn't it?
Why is that? What you've just experienced is called a 'cultural filter'.
The constant association of the word 'cybernation'
or 'cybernated' with Hollywood-starred murder machines
out to kill humans for no other reason than global dominance
is so heavily ingrained in our heads that the word cybernation
even sounds negative when not even surrounded by a context.
This is an emotional response with no basis in reality.
There is no such thing as a malevolent machine
only malevolent applications of technology
with the arms companies of this world already doing that.
The idea of innate mechanized evil
is a huge misunderstanding by almost everyone alive today
because we have all been subjected to the brainwashing by various sources
mostly Hollywood, but we all do it in some way.
A hammer is not a negative technology
unless it's used deliberately to inflict harm.
The same is true of a robot.
Being essentially a technological extension of ourselves
sometimes made in our own image, sometimes not
for reasons of efficient design for the task it's matched to.
Robots will do what they're designed to do.
Naturally as mentioned briefly before, robots used in war will kill humans
but that's the application of technology for negative ends.
It is obeying humans when it does that.
It is up to us to push positive applications for robotics
and technology for the betterment of society.
Just to make it clear how ridiculously fictional
this Sci-Fi effect is, consider this
and realize that a truly optimal killing machine
would definitively not look like a human
because it's quicker to move on wheels.
What exactly do we mean by a cybernated society then?
Fresco gives a decent example: In the early days of airline flight
when requesting his position in the sky
the pilot would guess, looking out the window
and say "About a mile high."
These days, such behavior on the part of the pilot
would be utterly unacceptable and probably terrifying.
With the introduction of Doppler radar and automated communication systems
we know to within a few inches how high a plane is
and don't even have to manually request it from the pilots.
That is the kind of cybernation we call for, applied
widespread to all facets of society.
Here's another example:
Once there was the elevator man (we've mentioned him briefly already).
The elevator man's job was to open and close the elevator doors
direct the elevator to the correct floor, up or down
and to stop the elevator at the right level to match the lip of the floor
so you don't trip when you walk out.
These days practically every lift in the world is automatic
visiting the right floors in the right order
opening the doors automatically and matching the floor level exactly.
If the doors are closing and a person is in the way
the doors will stop and reopen.
That is cybernation at work in a very miniature scale.
Will the lift one day consciously crush a human that tries to enter it
before deliberately and maliciously going to the wrong floor
and misaligning at the floor level so the crushed and misdirected person
trips over on the way out? Or as Fresco himself says:
"If you smash one laptop in front of a 100 other laptops
will they care?
Will they rise up against you?"
These are the illogical absurdities of the Sci-Fi factor at work.
Cybernated society: employing social systems
that are designed to make our lives better
enable us to perform tasks more accurately and more efficiently
and even those tasks that we can't even do at all
like look at electrons.
When you look particularly at that last couple of examples
it's designed to relieve humanity of the dull, dreary and repetitive jobs
that purely exist for now until our technology can automate them
like we've done with the elevator.
A society without a vision of what the future can be
is bound to repeat past errors over and over again.
This brief video will outline a vision designed
to avoid old mistakes.
This vision of efficiency, sustainability and intelligent planning
can lead us into a world of unlimited human potential.
This vision could be a showcase of what the world can be
in our cybernated age.
Science and technology could be used for human betterment
and the restoration and protection of the environment
serving as an example of the intelligent application
of the systems approach.
While some people advocate the restoration of existing worn out cities
these efforts fall short of the potentials of modern technology.
Modifying outmoded cities simply delays the inevitable problems.
It is actually much easier in the long run
to build newer cities from the ground up
than to restore and maintain the old ones.
A total city-system approach requires overall planning
to obtain a higher standard of living for the occupants.
The circular arrangement efficiently permits the most sophisticated use
of available resources and construction techniques
with a minimum expenditure of energy.
The outer perimeter will be part of the recreational area
with golf courses, hiking and biking trails
and other outdoor activities.
Inside this area, a waterway surrounds the agricultural belt
with indoor and outdoor agriculture.
Continuing toward the city center, eight green sectors provide clean
renewable sources of energy using wind
solar and heat concentrators.
The residential district would include unique landscaping
lakes and winding streams.
A wide range of creative and innovative apartment buildings
and individual homes will provide many options for the occupants.
New and innovative methods of fast, mass-construction for housing
and building systems will inject composite materials into the mold
and then extrude the form upward.
In some cases, multiple city apartments
can be produced as continuous extrusions
which are then separated into individual units.
The apartments are lightweight and high strength.
All of the dwellings are designed as self-contained residences.
The outer surface of these efficient structures
serve as photovoltaic generators converting solar radiation
directly into electricity for heating, cooling and other needs.
The thermocouple effect will also be used for generating energy.
These individual homes are prefabricated and relatively maintenance free
fire resistant and impervious to weather.
With this type of construction, there would be minimal damage
from floods, earthquakes and hurricanes.
Their thin-shelled construction can be mass produced efficiently
with little environmental restriction.
Adjacent to the residential district are the planning
science and research centers.
The eight domes surrounding the central dome house the art
music, exhibition, entertainment and conference centers.
The central dome houses schools
healthcare, access centers, communications networking.
It is also the core for most transportation services
which move people by transveyors horizontally
vertically and radially anywhere in the city.
This minimizes the need for automobile transportation
except for emergency vehicles.
Transportation between cities would be by monorail or Maglev.
Waste recycling and other services are beneath the city.
The plan will use the best of clean technology
in harmony with the surrounding environment.
The central dome also houses the cybernated complex
which serves as the brain and nervous system of the entire city.
It might project a 3D virtual image of Earth
using satellite communication systems
which provide information on weather, agriculture
transportation and overall functionality.
This cybernated system will use environmental sensors
to help maintain a balanced-load economy
which avoids overruns and shortages.
For example, in the agricultural belt
electronic probes monitor and maintain the water table
soil conditions, nutrients and more.
This method of electronic feedback can be applied
to the entire city system.
With computers now able to process trillions of bits of information per second
they are vital for arriving at more appropriate decisions
for the management of the cities.
Colonization of the oceans is one of the last frontiers
remaining on earth.
Prodigious ocean city communities will evolve as artificial islands
floating structures, undersea observatories and more.
These large marine structures are designed to explore
the relatively untapped riches of the oceans
provide improved mariculture, freshwater production, energy and mining.
They could also provide almost unlimited riches in pharmaceuticals
chemicals, fertilizers, minerals and other energies.
Ocean cities would be resistant to earthquakes
and greatly relieve land-based population pressures.
Unsinkable floating sea domes will provide for those who prefer
unique offshore or island living.
In the event of inclement weather they could easily be towed ashore
mounted and anchored to elevated support structures.
Mariculture and sea-farming systems are used to cultivate
and raise fish and other forms of marine life
to help meet nutritional needs.
These marine enclosures are designed as non-contaminating
integral parts of the ocean system.
A sustainable environment can be achieved
through the infusion of technology and cybernetics
applied with human and environmental concern to secure
protect and encourage a more humane future.
In the final analysis, we are one people
and we share one planet.
To conclude:
We must call for the upgrading of all aspects of society
to the most present-day automation and technological practices.
It is time to free ourselves of the repetitive, pointless
or unnecessary tasks that our present-day system produces and requires.
We have to defeat our shock of the new to get past this Sci-Fi notion
the fear of technology and change and instead welcome
and embrace real sustainable practices the world over.
By realizing that slight modifications to our present system
will do nothing while we base our processes
behaviors and decisions on monetarism of any kind
nothing will change and the age-old problems of war, poverty and politics
(the last being the worst of course) will remain with us.
We must learn to see our society as emergent, continually improving
and changing, building upon what we have discovered
even if it means rewriting those things we once held sacred or dear.
We once burned people at the stake for suggesting that our solar system
is heliocentric rather than geocentric.
The same shifts will happen over and over again, and we must learn not to resist
but move with those truths that we discover and prove
through the scientific method.
And finally, each and every one of us
needs to demand the acceptance of what our society actually is.
It always was, and always will be a global society, one human race
one set of problems that affect us all
and that we must share in the attempted resolution of those issues
as we share in the problem itself.
Walter Benjamin attempted to flee Nazi-occupied France into Spain
with the ultimate aim of heading to America.
On the 27th of September 1940
at the Spanish-French border town of Portbou
his party was denied access into Spain
which would've been the watershed to their freedom.
Benjamin took his own life that night at the place he was staying.
It is thought an overdose of morphine was the case.
Defeated by the system the world lost yet another great thinker
to be consoled only by his writings which remained.
Benjamin is still in Portbou today.
I'm reminded of Benjamin's fate a great deal when I look at our situation.
His final journey very much forms a parallel with where we are headed
as a race, should we not decide each for ourselves and then together
to drop this corrupt, paralyzing system we have the world over
and replace it with a system of efficiency, abundance
resource management and global partnership
and the best that technology truly has to offer us.
I sincerely hope that when we reach our own border
we will have dismantled the barriers first.
We have the means to do so.
Now we have to undergo the hardest revolution of all:
It's a revolution in your own mind
a shift in the cultural and social spirit of the age:
The Zeitgeist.
Our movement is now one year old
now with some 362,000 members worldwide.
Today is only the third instance of this, our yearly event
with 320 relatively simultaneous events worldwide
and we're just getting started.
I hope I've helped introduce the broad strokes of what is possible
and why we are where we are now.
Thank you.
[Applause]