Blockchain....open source....disruptive technologies
When I red Post-Capitalism by Mason, Mason tackles thebwhat of technology but not the how to. I believe the answer lies in the blockchain...open source...... disruptive technologies. These forms will lead us to a new social, cultural, political and economic Renaissance and Enlightenment.
Before knowing about this ecosystem however, I envisioned the future like in Animatrix.
The future predicated on power: on who was the true master and servent. Like what we have right now. Human's innate reaction, just like animals, are instinctual... we are territorial creatures and we fear the unknown. Heck, it becomes easy to control and kill another human being; when you begin to rationalize the commodification of their bodies. Shoot, we are easy to kill each other because of differences in opinions, religion, culture, language, food, history. And it is bound to repeat again in the future, until we cooperate as ONE.
The future painted bybAnimatrix where humans fight machines is hellish and nihilistic. Its also unrealistic. Given the fact that the biggest threat for all species (including homo-sapiens) is climate change. Which WE perpetuated since the dawn of the Industrial Age. It has to be a cooperative manner with humans and machines adapting together.
I know it's a huge stretch to fathom how machines and systems can help bring peace and order, if we consider the finity of our resources and time. But we don't have to see far that the lack of justice and equality in our society is because of private property and trust.
Mason tackles it well when he argues that in an age of abundance; private property(servicing, creative, information) cannot exist. The biggest contradiction in our generation is to assume that technology will still hold private property.
(Facebook, Instagram, Twitter are vibrant anomalies that occurred in this capitalist ecosystem. Their platform on services and information, helped eliminate third entities. Facebook connects parties in a low level P2P format in cyberspace. This essentially holds a monopoly in the market. However, in due time the Giants, will be replaced by Steemit and other decentralized open source platforms. Why? Because the economy is really at war with other platform ecosystems. Economic ecosystems are highly volatile and they constantly mutate. The new mutation shift is towards decentralize, open source networks. Where you can eliminate censorship, rentership:
(Because your cyber (space) in Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram isn't free. You, (the renter) pay Facebook (the land owner) your rights away. Your privacy is monitored and packaged and sold to investors wanting to sell you stuff.)
And finally eliminate and dissolve third parties (bureaucrats, management, middle man, they all mean the same). What replaces them are true P2P contracts. Where cryptocurrency will be the arbitrator for exchanges in between parties: the masses will be connected to digital space, and outside the grasp of the State. )**
I like Mason's response about private property in the iTunes example. iTunes makes a profit because they have a stake in the stock of the mp3. If it weren't for the legality of the commodity then it would literally be free...which it has(i.eNapster, Limewire, Tor) The bigger question is how does it generate revenue and how do you apply theory into physical space--like democratizing land reform.
I would imagine that in an age of total automation, land reform will not be easily undone. By fully utilizing the blockchain, I imagine algorithms that can easily and fairly distribute the land. Once we acknowledge it's true democratic outputs, we begin sophocating the State. With a fast paced environment like open source, the State will be a thing of the past. Ultimately have the blockchain and open source technologies actually BE the Controler. It's a machine, a system. (My only fear is, can it live up to our standards. Can it evolve to our ways of interacting with reality, and not be bounded by pure codes, can it can evolve to think like us?)
Truly think about what is a stake here. There are no leaders, trust is fortified, private property is abolished, social contracts are embedded in currencies. It's a cryptic anarcho society. It's the blockchain generation.
Interesting thoughts on the future evolution of our content sharing/ consuming and governmental model. Recent developments vis-à-vis decentralization applications and the acceptance rates of those applications seems to paint a picture that supports your thesis on the former (content sharing/ communication). However, I'm not so sure about how the latter (governmental model overhaul to a trust-less, automated, system) would come to be in the real-world. It may not be too difficult of a sell to a seemingly growing crowd of disenfranchised and dissatisfied citizens/ slaves, but I'm not convinced that the numbers are anywhere close to high enough now, or in the foreseeable future, to revolt against the current system(s) with even a minute chance of success.
Power sits firmly on "their side" and the propaganda-machine is still reaching well over 50% of the populace, probably even better than 75%, IMO.
It may be that we'll evolve towards the type of society that you suggest we are/ might, here, but I'm thinking that it probably won't happen in our lifetimes - I just don't see how it would be possible to stop all the current momentum without decades and decades of battle and massive losses of life. But, who knows, the future is difficult to predict from our myopic frames of reference.
Sadly and selfishly on my end, you are right. It won't finish in our generation, but it has already materialized into forms that we are seeing vibrantly--like Steemit.
The battle has been going on, and I do think it's going to have massive losses like you say. China evidently wrote in their military doctrine 40 years ago to venture into unconventional warfare. They have in development or are developening EMP. Imagine they threw such a device to our electrical grids? Paranoia and hysteria would ensue. But we need to go through this bullshit in order for history to progress. We are habitual creatures, we learn through trial and error. We'll get there...and it's going to be one hell of a ride.
That's a scary thought. I read a fiction book about a shock-wave from a supernova (can't recall the name, but I think it might have had supernova in the title) that effectively became a world-wide EMP. Long story short, it wasn't a pretty picture - hell comes to mind as an appropriate analogy...speaking of which...
Yeah. It's in situations like this (possibly missing out on the fruits on the other end of a revolution harvest) that I really hope reincarnation is something real. I don't want to tap-out on our species' evolution (so to speak) so early. It's only just beginning to get exciting around here, considering that we're really still at what could, and hopefully will, be the start of an exponential explosion of scientific, technological, and medical innovations.
I read and hear that it's possible within our lifetimes to beat out aging with the use of cell-regenerative technology through the use of nano-machines, making us virtually immortal. It might also be possible at some point within the next 100 or 200 years to instantaneously teleport people from place to place and, this is important, doing so safely and efficiently. I want to be here for those things, dammit!
Great piece. Happy to upvote. Posted a recent piece about STEEMIT. You might be interested to read it. Following and looking forward to reading more of your posts. Catch us also on Twitter Twitter✔. Cheers. Stephen