The Next Big Threat To Humanity

Contrary to what most alarmists are saying today, it's not global warming/climate change. I'm not saying I don't believe that the waters will rise and drown a good quarter of humanity. It will happen, but we'll manage to survive. The next big threat to humanity won't be an asteroid or the moon crashing into the earth or the sun exploding: it will be something that man creates. I'm not talking about war or any of the weapons that comes with it, be they nuclear or biological. I'm talking about robots.

You might be thinking I'm crazy now, and I might be, but not for the reasons you think. This isn't a Terminator or Matrix nightmare scenario, I don't even know what the nightmare scenario will be, only that robots will be responsible for it. Not directly, rather it will be their impact on society.

It doesn't take us long to adopt technology, but it normally follows a similar pattern: first generation is extremely expensive and unreliable, second generation is still expensive but different brands are sold based on reliability and feature sets, by the third generation what was new is now a commodity. Marketing departments work constantly to try to pitch an added value, whether it be higher intrinsic value (brand) or tiny improvements, but that is mostly smoke and mirrors.

We're presently in the dawning stages of the first generation of robot technology, only prototypes are truly available although there is widespread usage of the basic technology in factories. Essentially a robotic welding arm used in car manufacturing could be considered a robot, but it is not independent nor adaptable. I am not suggesting AI with this statement, I am concentrating on function. By this, I mean that the first true generation of robots will be mobile and multi-functional. It will not be bolted into the ground and it will not be created for one single purpose, it will be able to do anything a human could (and more). It will be able to build a car, a house, a plane. It will be able to count sheep, shear them, and slaughter them. It will be able to cook, clean, and ask you if you want fries with that. The one thing we can do that they can't will be to make decisions based on new data

This bring us to how robots threaten humanity. They are a tool, like a screwdriver... but also like a gun. The danger is not that they will start killing us, or be used to kill us (although that is bound to happen due to the military). What they will destroy is our social structures. I'm not particularly attached to capitalism, but should we not have a plan in place before the introduction of robots into society, the combination of the two will surely destroy us. Capitalism holds that anyone can own the means of production, and only socialist measures keep all of that power from accumulating into one set of hands, but we will have to enact even more sweeping changes in order to keep up with the drastic social upheaval that commonplace robotics usage will cause. If any job can be done by a robot then only two types of people will be able to guarantee themselves an income: owners of robots and those in positions to make decisions. It is unlikely that every person can be given a position where they would be given the power to make decisions as decision making is a very small part of any business, so that leaves a large portion of humanity unable to make money in any way... and that percentage will grow with the population.

My argument is basically that widespread use of robots as labour will have the same economic effect as slavery. We are presently, through globalization, experimenting with something similar, but China's sweatshops only affect our manufacturing sectors. However, they are hitting hard in certain industries: textiles, electronics, and steel. The rest of the world would be having a similar effect on agriculture if it weren't for farm subsidies. Included in the cost of doing business is shipping these products halfway around the world. With robot labour this could all be done locally, bypassing any trade barriers, and putting everyone (except the 10% needed to make decisions) out of work.

That is how I believe humanity will be destroyed. As an outbreak of true class warfare between the Haves and the Have-Nots. This one won't be nice and friendly, as the Have-Nots won't even have a future unless the Haves realize that if they want to stay on top they will have to provide the bottom everything that is necessary for life, as they will have no way of getting it themselves. Pretty bleak future, or it may be an opportunity to change society for the better. My next topic will be on The Duty to Think.

The Politics Of Food

It seems like forever that people have been speaking about the necessities of life: Food, Water, Shelter. This is simplistic and yet overly complex. Some things we think we need, we really don't, others we'll always have so long as we don't destroy it and then there is the need for a goal. The most often cited goal is reproduction (when looking at survival from the view of species) but even that is a want and not something we, as individuals, could live without. When living in a land of plenty, it is obvious that we would start seeing conceptual occupations as the meaning of life, rather than survival, which some of us take for granted, being its purpose. I say that simply to skip any question about the mind or body having needs of that sort; I say they are luxuries.

True need is limited to one thing: Food. Water, we can live without. Not actually.. but we can get water from the food we eat (juices, sauces, etc). So long as we have a proper diet, water (as in liquid for drinking) is something we can live without (although it is necessary for the production of food). While there are places where we cannot live without shelter, the fact is that we are not evolved to live in most of the places where humankind does. In our natural environment (sub-tropical to tropical), we do not require shelter.. although it would be suggested in cases of extreme weather. This leaves us with only food to nourish us, food to worry about, and food to fight over. So why, throughout our history, is there so much war? The answer is still food.

Territorial instincts are driven by a primitive understanding of scarcity. Prior to the development of agriculture, groups of humans would fight over hunting territory, essentially the ranges of prey animals. With the advent of farming, it was now over the most fertile soil and water for irrigation. As civilizations grew, we warred against each other for dominance. The question here is why? Why does anyone need to establish dominance? It goes back to scarcity. If you have dominance, then you decide how to partition anything that is considered wealth. The primary sign of wealth throughout all recorded history, from the first written word to now, has been land. Ownership of land was a ticket into primitive democracies and later what separated the common folk from the nobles. Land is nothing except potential food.

Land (as food) is not the only thing we fight for. Humanity is adaptable in the ways it can conjure to initiate an attempt at dominance, but food is still at the root of most conflicts. I'm going to use two examples: The Fall of the Roman Empire, and The Iraq War.

• The Roman Empire, as many before me have noted, had grown lazy and complacent (too much good food) and eventually saw its capital sacked. People will often point to this as a reason not to become complacent, but that comes from a poor understanding of the situation. Rome was able to be sacked because of complacency, it was sacked because of hunger. The Visigoths had been driven into the Roman Empires sphere by the Huns, they came poor and hungry. They were promised food and land, but due to a famine, the Roman emperor Valens let them starve. That was 378 BCE, by 382 the Goths had largely settled down and were providing troops . A new emperor reigned until 395, and Alaric of the Visigoths campaigned under him. When Alaric was denied a generalship, he was raised as king of the Visigoths and went to war. Fifteen years later, the Roman Empire was starting its slide into history. The relations between the Visogoths and Romans were based on two things: Food and dominance. When a Roman emperor used his dominance to deny them food, he put in place a series of events which would lead to the empires downfall. The Visigoths knew that they were dependent on the whims of the emperor so while a peaceful emperor was in place they did nothing. After his death, nothing was certain, but the denial of the generalship swayed the Visigoths into acting to assure themselves of a food supply by taking land for themselves, rather than be at the mercy of another.


• The Iraq War is well documented. Regardless of the numerous reasons for invasion, one of the 'benefits' of regime change in the country was said to be cheaper oil ('It will pay for itself'). I'm not claiming that this war was about oil, I'm saying it was about dominance and food. Dominance is a factor when you look at the reasons given for invasion: the threat (WMD), relative morality (Halabja), resolving an old conflict (sanctions). The causes are not all that important. The sole appreciable benefit of invasion was increase legal Iraqi output of oil as the oil-for-food program was being circumvented easily. So it was all about the oil, but the oil is all about the food. When oil prices go up, so do food prices. Our farms are heavily mechanized, using petrochemicals for fertilizers, plowing, transportation, processing, as well as all the other minor acts that go into putting food onto your table (promotion, preparation, etc). Keeping the oil flowing (which is a long process) means keeping the people fed, and so long as the people are fed, no one complains.

It should come as no surprise that the most backwards, war-ridden, messed up areas of this planet are the most hungry. Africa, the Middle East and South-East Asia are the hardest hit and they are also the most war-torn. When confronted with scarcity, people break down into smaller group to fight for what there is. This leads to hoarding, which leads to more scarcity, which leads to more fighting. With all the fighting going on, and hunger in their bellies, it is no surprise that there is not much in the way of progress.

This is all happening based on false assumptions. People say that there is a food shortage in this world, but there isn't. Some people have said that we are overpopulated, we aren't. There is the same answer to both of those statements: We have a distribution problem. Too many people are concentrated in areas which can't produce enough food, and the areas that can.. well they aren't sharing. It's easy enough to do when you don't have to see the children with distended bellies on the same streets as you.

I'm not offering any solutions here, I just want people to recognize that food is necessary to everyone, and that it drives global politics even among those nations who aren't hungry. My next post will be on The Next Big Threat To Humanity.

The Beginning Is Nigh!

While some people might think that we're quickly approaching the end times, I take the more cynical view: This is just the beginning of recorded history. Millenia from now no one will have information printed on vegetable matter, it will all be recorded digitally like this entry and all others. We will all be forgotten, and the only ones who will be reading this are scholars, researchers, and bored teenagers taking a glimpse at the lives of us cavemen. While a good history (in fiction and non-fiction) will be available through Project Gutenberg chances are that it will just be one of many compressed files stored in their archives hidden away in a tiny low-traffic area of their information network. YouTube and Wikipedia's content will probably be more relevant in a historical sense (once they wade through the crap) but in order to put it into context, what these future people will be looking at is blogs. Obviously not individual entries, most likely an automated routine would query the entirety of the blogosphere regarding whatever subject matter they are interested in and prune it down to a simple paragraph.

"What did they talk about?" These future people will ask.
"Britney's haircut" They will be told. They will not ask again.

We have a duty to ensure that the impression we leave of ourselves for future generations is useful in understanding who we are, so that they may understand how they came to be. While what we do in the digital world has no real life effects, our actions here will echo through time with greater impact that anything we will do in life (for most of us).. In this sense, we are immortal. As these things work, some of us may become as Gods, not with supernatural powers or anything of the like, but as time distorts the truth people who are remembered will be considered to be more than they were. Millenia from now people may await the second coming of Tom Cruise and tell their children to clean their teeth (whatever method they've developed to replace tooth brushes) or else Osama Bin Laden will get them (he lives in a cave under the bed), and consider Yoda an acceptable boys name (it may be already.. there are roughly forty thousand human languages and dialects). I don't want our culture to be remembered like that.

I can't say I'm a big fan of our culture. It's better than it could be, but not as great as we deserve.. but that comes with time. Sooner or later, we will have a world based on justice, on compassion: One that serves all mankind equally, because there is no reason for strife, we have enough to go around. My next post will be on that subject, The Politics of Food.