Collapsing Upwards

Hi everyone. It's been a while since I wrote anything. I've been so busy with more practical matters, but some recent news has captured my attention and imagination.

Indictments and Political Scandal

As you may have heard, Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney's chief of staff was indicted on five felony counts. In those moments where I take politics seriously, this could be a big deal and make me happy, but it doesn't. It's quite possible these indictments are only the beginning of seeing this criminal administration fall from power as much as it deserves to. Regardless of the probability of that, it all doesn't matter. The damage has already been done. America's reputation has been shattered, the deficits are soaring, dramatic increases in police state powers have been essentially cemented into law , etc. Basically, the entire political game is a dead end. I can't possibly think how any reform, no matter how sweeping will make much of a difference.

Post-Politics:

If we hope to have a future, we need to start thinking post-politically. I know many have a problem with that whole concept, and unfortunately it depends on gravity escape, but there are interesting possibilities while still living within our planetary biosphere that are far more harmonious than we have now.

Timothy Leary made a strong case that politics is rooted in power struggles within the constraints of a planetary 2-dimensional surface. Ian Banks makes the most compelling case I've ever read. As long as we remain on a planet, there is limited space in which we can travel. Any direction we decide to go in, we will inevitable end up back where we started. All corners of the globe have in some way been explored, colonized, utilized, cordoned off, walled, fenced, enclosed, patented, owned, copyrighted, raped and plundered. There is no wild and free frontier left, no place left to explore or to escape to. Sure, there are some places more free than others, but the differences are often trivial. For most people on the planet, life is hard, brutish and short. For those of us lucky enough to be in the developed world, the walls are closing in, fast. But,

End of Hierarchies and Traditional Power Structures:

Don't loose hope folks, because things are a accelerat'n! The current system with all its corruption, greed and shear stupidity and incompetence can't last much longer. Not only from an environmental and sustainable point of view, but because there is rapid, but still deep current change underway. It's all around us, and it's happening without anyone noticing much. It's not some big monolithic light from the sky change that we are archetypically expecting, but a much more subtle and profound change happening that we won't notice until its already happened. These changes are all around us. Humanity is waking up. People are becoming more aware, we are taking all of these tools and technologies for granted. The network is growing, and will continue to grow. Meanwhile, what we actually see with our traditional conditioning is more laws, copyrights, restrictions and so on. It's all an illusion folks. They only exist if you believe they exist. Most, if not all of these new laws are almost entirely uneforceable. The genie is out of the bottle when it comes to network intelligence, peer to peer technologies, free internet, sustainable energy systems, etc.

Power of the Network:

Here is an example of some of the stuff that the power of the network is producing by motivated programmers:

Netsukuku the Anarchical Parallel Internet (Internet)

Developed by the Freaknet, Netsukuku is a new p2p routing system, which will be utilised to build a worldwide distributed, anonymous and anarchical network, separated from the Internet, without the support of any servers, ISPs or authority controls. In a p2p network every node acts as a router, therefore in order to solve the problem of computing and storing the routes for 2^128 nodes, Netsukuku makes use of a new meta-algorithm, which exploits the chaos to avoid CPU consumption and fractals to keep the map of the whole net constantly under the size of 2Kb. Netsukuku includes also the Abnormal Netsukuku Domain Name Anarchy, a non hierarchical and decentralized system of hostnames management which replaces the DNS. It runs on GNU/Linux.

On the alternative energy front:

don't even know where to begin. Breakthroughs in this area are happening almost daily. If you've been reading blogs like World Changing, you'll see that there is so much going on with alternative energy now, that it is now impossible to keep up with the overwhelming rapid pace of global conversion to post-peak-oil alternatives.

Canda Proposing 30 GW wind farm in far north

On the space migration front:

Spaceship One and Two, and then Space Ship Three hold so much promise. There are only the beginning, but they are the first genuine steps of humanity getting off of the planet. With the advent of mass produced nanotubes, we could soon see the commercial construction of several space elevators. Space elevators mean price to space in the hundreds of dollars. Hundreds to change your life forever. What does this mean for the space game? It means that almost everyone who wants to go will go. When you have millions, billions of people who can now afford to go to space, there will be the infrastructure to support it. Every enterprising, capitalizing individual or group will make sure of that. Because the profit potential of this will be enormous beyond all comprehension. To give you an idea, imagine what the total World Gross Product is today. It will triple within the first 5 years of a sub-$1000 price to orbit, and after that it will continue to grow at a conservative 20% a year. Imagine the total economy of humanity growing by 20% a year. You are not rich now? You will be, and so will everyone else. Nothing will ever be the same after this.

I can already hear people, saying, "But what about molecular nanotechnology?". Yes! What's amazing about the above figures is all of that is possible without molecular nanotech. It only requires some master of nanomaterial construction. Once nanotech assemblers hit the scene, things will really take off.

On the longevity front:

If you make it the next 20 years, you're going to live damn near forever. So you might as well accept it. :)

So, what's in store in the next 20 years and beyond:

• Indefinite Lifespans


• Total freedom on the space frontier


• Total leisure and full-immersion hyper-eudaemonic lifetstyles - think Burning Man in Space all the time.


• Expansion out into the Galaxy and beyond

Have fun! Now for me, back to the work at hand. :)