Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Scifi notes - accessibility and abundance tradeoffs


Disclaimer :written on a note 2 pardon my many mistakes. (the blogger app is barred in the Philippines play store and the app available has worn my patience)

I've almost caught up with my Sci if reading and one aspect of lost fleet where it doesn't focus (for good reason)  on imaginatining the blossoming of new cultures and the implication of the level of productivity that results from the automation from drones and AI and where humans fit in all that. It kinda tests my understanding of economics when I try to use gdp per capita, quality of life and poverty.

Too often when technology creates abundance it is of a slightly different quality.  Take cheese for example and the cheap cheese, the Philippines has an underdeveloped dairy industry. We still have the cheeses people used to eat back in the day, hard cheeses like qeso de bola, but we have this poorer quality but more accessible cheese (what people consider fake cheese and challenging what "is"  cheese). Instant noodles are the same, as well as preparred meals (microwave meals they now sell in convenience stores) . The idea that automation would produce something of a "different"  quality but sufficient while making the rest of us access it.
The people who have already access to its more original form and quality now may not appreciate it but the majority of those who didn't have now a bigger utility out of it. I may be a food snob sometimes but when I frame in terms of accessibility and the budget of the Philippines average mode income the perspective changes.

What if the artifical meat will never be as good as the real thing? Still it grants us the Protien we need and some of the satisfaction of eating meat. It may make an unprecedented accessibility of meat never known in human history.  Take that experience and multiple that to the possible things we may finally have personally  access but not at the level of quality or satisfaction  we once thought.  Heck working on a phone is different from working on an "ancient"  2000 laptop still it gets the job done. What if we use 7 inch tablets with blue tooth key boards and power management cable nodes instead of desktops or laptops? Would the life suits we would need in space have some lacking compared to space suits of older generation, an economic tradeoff for abundance and accessibility.

This is not limited to products, it's also in our relationships. What are our Internet relationships compared to our face to face relationships? What is a family when it depends a lot on the state to provide communal nursery to centralize and make more efficient child care as its adults are productive? How is this home and childhood differ from the childhood from a previous era's? How is our work different from cubicle or office work in a  era that derives productivity in more imaginative ways.

Combat readiness and secure population vs that with specialized and dedicated force in an era where productivity allows people to be worth 10s of people of work in a previous era?  Is the quality of security and defense different in the abundance of combat and security ready Personnel in these tradeoffs?

Hopefully you see how abundance and creative ways of what makes up productivity, relationships, and key human needs and wants may change humanity in ways beyond our imagination.

Another thing in abundance is the kinds of states and organizations! Technology and space will allow for the blossoming of new people's, cultures, and efficiencies. I can't wait for what they might be,  for good or for bad, but their experimentation and mutation is essential in creating the diversity for optimum happiness will thrive. Happiness is not truely rational so the results of which may be completely counter intuitive to us of this era.

This is where a collaborative shared world can happen among GMs. A living setting can happen

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