Full disclosure: I live on the planet Earth, I’m invested into the survival and prosperity. No tweets are endorsements, opinions are own, save thinking before you print trees, do not invest more that you can comfortably afford to lose, crypto is here to stay, always read the small print,
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I recall some major technical events from my life to put things into perspective:
- 2002 and my first summer internship
- 2008 and my first psychedelic experience
- 2011 and moving to London
- 2015 and the first time I put on a VR headset
Maybe you recall your first smartphone experience or first interaction on Facebook.
Space travel is there
In 2017 humanity is on the verge of becoming multi-planetary species:
- Elon Musk and SpaceX
- Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin
- NASA, ESA (European Space Agency), Chinese Space Program
I believe landing and establishing a base on Mars will be by far the biggest achievement in recorded history. Media and popular culture ("Martian" the movie) are already familiarising us with this concept.
Governance
The idea of interplanetary governance is still relatively new, and the existing protocols may soon become obsolete. Democracy originated in ancient Greece and was working “kind of OK” for the past thousand years.
Now we have tools and technology - we should make use of delegative voting aka liquid democracy (on the blockchain of course). Sure enough, subjects like nuclear power and vaccination remain controversial - depending on who is sponsoring and publishing the scientific study. I can relate to arguments of sides but I'd much rather "delegate" my vote to someone more knowledgeable in each matter.
Bombing (not photobombing)
Speaking of politics - can you imagine that in 2017 some guys are bombing other guys?
What if you could obtain all the wealth in the universe by putting on a VR headset?
We have all the tools and technology to live peacefully, in abundance. Technology is cheap, reliable and efficient, nature already knows how to grow food. According to Wikipedia currently only 1 - 1.5% of population in the US and UK works in agriculture.
Universal Basic Income*
The majority of the jobs are in middle management, pushing papers (and all surrounding activities) - bus drivers who deliver workers to work, receptionists, catering and then consumption and healthcare to recover from bull manure work.
Universal Basic Income is becoming widely adopted and I can see it being implemented on an even larger scale. Someone asked a question about earning wages in era of automation - see the quote from visionary Vinay Gupta:
Vinay Gupa at #DEVCON1
*I’m rather capitalist, I even worked for a bank to extract salary and invest into education, experience, other projects.
I'm carefully observing a number of interesting projects operating in the blockchain space. You might have heard of Bitcoin - distributed ledger - a response to central banks printing money out of thin air. Note that the origin of Bitcoin couldn't be more timely - 2009, right after the financial crisis. Ethereum is a natural evolution of Bitcoin, and now we have a number of revolutionary apps leveraging blockchain technology:
- Aragon: governance, ownerships, shares.
- Bancor: liquidity for niche currencies.
- Status: ethereum apps running on mobile.
- Decentraland: Virtual Reality on the blockchain
With the rise of VR, I would like to introduce the concept of "Reality Check" - when you put the headset on - how do you tell base reality from the one created by AI?
Currently trivially easy, cables everywhere, tethered movement. In the foreseeable future I can see AI passing "Reality Check" similar to the Turing Test, where participants will answer the question about what they experienced. Even Today we can improvise such tests - 360 camera and actions triggered by the remote agent.
In one instance the world be from the same base reality as the experiment, in the second one the world be generated by AI and your job is to tell which is which...
You can join us in the quest of exploring and expanding human potential. First - astralship.org - visionary coworking and coliving space (no need for another taxi or food delivery app but solving actual problems such as global warming). And a spinoff entity - genesis.re - developing a $1000 capsule containing all necessary life-support systems:
- food
- water
- oxygen
- energy
- waste treatment
Concept originates from treating Spaceship Earth as a single organism and each human as an individual cell. Solving the individual survival problem will remove dependency on critical infrastructure and will solve many interesting problems along the way.
Climate change is real
NASA confirms with very high confidence that climate change is real:
These observed trends are robust, and have been confirmed by independent research groups around the world.
(some people say it was leaked so that presidential administration will not suppress this report)
The reality as I see it has multiple, reinforcing feedback feedback loops:
- Polar caps are white, white reflects heat
- Oceans are dark, dark absorbs heat (feel the difference between black and white t-shirt on a sunny day)
- Natural gas in Siberia is getting released
Some researchers suggest that current climate change models are unstable - the feedback loops are so potent, the simulation gets out of control. I suggest we renegotiate current survival priorities and start incentivising economy that actually makes sense: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_bottom_line
For instance, this is completely nuts:
- Sending Dutch shrimps to Morocco and then back
- Sending Norwegian salmon to China and then back
- Exploring quinoa from South America and setting prices that it is not affordable for locals
- Subsidies for products such as meat and sugar (and sugar industry sponsoring research claiming that fat is the source of obesity)
Climate change might not be visible day-to-day but go figure timelapse of glaciers melting and opening of sea routes in the Arctic (not cool).
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I’m often considered unconventional and controversial - it’s OK - there are enough people aiming for mediocrity and fitting in.
Intention is to appeal to innovators and early adopters, not the "mass market" - statistics say 4 hours on average in front of TV. In my little bubble I don't know anyone who owns a TV. (other than a few programmers using one as a cheap 4K monitor)
This article is titled vision of the future as of 2017. If you read that far it’s time for a shameless, unapologetic plug - I called my site “mostly doing” because ______ and only sometimes I publish, but when I do I want to make it count:
- planet Earth as of 2016 (we live in equilibrium)
- Syria - climate change - global warming - environmental refugees (effective altruism - reverse climate change first before helping small group of people crossing the sea)
- Climate change is real? (title was meant to be controversial)
Universe provides, fortune favours the bold. As always I'm cautiously optimistic - optimistic by nature, cautious because sometimes life throws stuff at us. These days I'm acting in the flow, in alignment with a higher self and it's been a badass kickass experience. Let's see how deep the rabbit hole goes... 🦄
(before we start terraforming other planets there is still some hope on this one)
(all images CC0 via Pixabay)