I am just wondering why we dont using technology to rull the world together yet…
just get unite and work together
how many people using open source hardware/software?
I have a lot of questions and I wanna hear ALL opinions…
no prejudice so kill me now ;)
That’s gonna be a tough one, and probably a world which you wouldn’t want to live in.
People are inherently selfish. It’s in our genes. We’re constantly in conflict with all other people over resources which will allow us to procreate. In order to get those resources, we need power over other people. It’s basically impossible to equally divide power amongst all people.
There will always be a small inequality, where some have a little bit more power than others. That small inequality will quickly grow, making a handful of people by far the most powerful. Over the history of mankind, we’ve seen that happen time and time again. Empires conquering Europe, landlords, slavery, modern capitalism, etc. There’s no escaping it.
So what we need is a system of checks and balances for those with the most power. Government is an integral part of that. It has the power to fight against the (selfish) interests of industry, hyper-wealthy individuals, other countries, etc. Naturally, government’s power must also have checks and balances, which is why, amongst other things, we have democracy: the power of the people to choose their government and to keep their power in check.
None of it is ideal, none is without flaws. Sure, sometimes governments will use their power to enact things that are against my personal best interests, but that’s the whole point: I’m selfish and so is everybody else, so government will always need to find a balance between everybody’s interests.
Technology can aid us in keeping those checks and balances. It can increase our privacy and help with communication. This is why we have to be so careful of letting a single power dictate how we use technology. But in the end, technology is just a tool; it can be used for good and evil. It’s not a solution for anything, merely an aid to make us more effective and efficient.
In short: there will always be rulers, it’s just the nature of things. We need to keep the rulers in check. One way we do that is with governments. A tool to aid us in doing so can be technology.
What makes you say that? Humans, before the establishment of classes, lived for millennia (and some still do) in small, relatively egalitarian communities characterized by the collective or common ownership of resources, where everyone worked to provide for the means of subsistence of each other, in what some call primitive communism. That is the very opposite of being selfish. In fact, I’d say that the very capacity for humans to adapt to their environment and to cooperate with others is what made humans such a successful species. If humans were selfish by nature, they would have become extinct by now.
Just going to reply to myself after giving it a little bit more thought…
The problem is scarcity. There aren’t enough resources to go around for everybody, so we have conflict with each other over those resources. If we could use technology to increase the amount of resources available such that there is no more scarcity, we wouldn’t need conflict anymore, and as a consequence there would be no point to having power, and no need for governments.
The big question is: is there a limit to technology which will prevent us from getting enough resources? We’re already using up this planet’s resources and soon we’ll start using the resources of our solar system. Mankind will simply expand to fill this new abundance of resources, because procreation is our nature. Resources will start getting scarce again, meaning we’ll have to venture out into our galaxy. But can we even do so, technologically speaking? The speed of light is finite, so the very laws of nature may mean a never ending scarcity of resources available to us.
Scarcity is definity a big factor in the struggle for power, but I wouldn’t say it can be the full story. Consider the rise of digital file sharing as a possible case study of post-scarcity: I would say it has had MASSIVE benefits in information sharing and accessibility of some information (e.g. academic papers, piracy circles, online download stores) but has also prompted artificial scarcity. I would even assert we already see artificial scarcity in things like food waste. We have the technology, skills and people to do much more than we can, but our society pushes people to act selfishly simply to ensure food, shelter, security and luxury.
You mean artificial scarcity of those resources by, for example, companies charging access fees, as is the case with scientific journals?
I think that problem is still inherently a cause of scarcity. File sharing is cheap enough that it doesn’t have to be scarce, but companies want money, and they’ve figured out a way to make those resources artificially scarce. But if food and shelter and whole bunch of other stuff wasn’t scarce, companies wouldn’t even need to exist. Why work if all resources are readily available for free?
Do note that I’m talking about some Startrek-esque future utopia with basically unlimited availability of electric power, natural resources and automation. Maybe we’ll get that far as a species someday, but for now I guess there’s plenty of scarcity to go around. Pun intended. ;-)