by From Peter Radford Yes, I am confused. At least I admit it. There’s a lot going on, and someone like me often wallows in the activity as a way of understanding. I like to see the systemic rather than the particular. I am very bad, I admit, at details. I gravitate to the long term. What, I usually ask, does all this imply for what comes next? And how does it connect with the past? This biases me towards the dramatic. The swoosh of certainty when an avenue appears within the clutter is what attracts me most. Those moments of clarity when simplicity can be extracted from the prevailing complexity are the most exciting. They are ephemeral. The gravity of the complex always dominates the energy needed to impose order and identify, even for a moment, some insight into the murkiness
Topics:
Peter Radford considers the following as important: AI, artificial intelligence, Philosophy, politics, Technology, Uncategorized
This could be interesting, too:
Asad Zaman writes Newton’s lost revolution: Why his most radical work remains unread
Robert Skidelsky writes The American Conservative – Why Is the UK So Invested in the Russia–Ukraine War?
Robert Skidelsky writes The American Conservative: Skidelsky on Russia, Ukraine and the Future of European Security
Robert Skidelsky writes Britain’s insistence on total Ukrainian victory was misguided – it’s time for a realistic compromise
from Peter Radford
Yes, I am confused.
At least I admit it.
There’s a lot going on, and someone like me often wallows in the activity as a way of understanding. I like to see the systemic rather than the particular. I am very bad, I admit, at details. I gravitate to the long term. What, I usually ask, does all this imply for what comes next? And how does it connect with the past?
This biases me towards the dramatic. The swoosh of certainty when an avenue appears within the clutter is what attracts me most. Those moments of clarity when simplicity can be extracted from the prevailing complexity are the most exciting. They are ephemeral. The gravity of the complex always dominates the energy needed to impose order and identify, even for a moment, some insight into the murkiness of the here and now.
So, yes, I am confused.
But that’s normal
I suspect all who are not confused.
What are we to make of the current state of affairs in America?
First, there’s the attempt to destroy the government. Why would anyone want to do that? Ideology? A determined anti-government attitude? Perhaps. Nihilism? Certainly. Governments can get in the way of rent creation. And that’s an impediment to the creation of a fortune. So I can see why our so-called techno-bros hate the government. They want unimpeded access to future rents.
They are not capitalists. They are robber-baron wannabes. Their heroes are the likes of Vanderbilt, Carnegie, and Mellon etc. They want to live in the late 1800s. Musk has even said as much. Trump, with his obsession over McKinley and his tariffs, seems to like the late 1800s as well. Apparently they are indifferent to history and all that has come since.
Or are they simply stunningly ignorant?
Or just callous?
Or just plain greedy?
Probably all of the above. They are truly ignorant of the twentieth century development of modern democracy which was the overthrow of, and demise of, the robber barons they so adore. The violence that came between their revered past and our current moment seems to have slipped from their view.
Which suggests to me that similar violence will be needed to bring them to heel.
But we are supposed, in this postindustrial state of ours to be beyond the use of violence as a political weapon. We have elections to sort out our differences. Don’t we?
Maybe.
If elections matter. If our political system can channel and arbitrate differences.
What if it cannot?
Then we are in trouble.
What if polarization freezes the political system and renders it unable to make transition from the past to the future a smooth one? What if we disagree so completely about what the future ought be that “normal” politics is obsolete?
Or, what if the political system has been so utterly corrupted by money that it sees no need to perform that connection of past and future? What if those who inhabit the system benefit so much from stasis that change is seen as unnecessary? Or, what if they are simply incapable of imagining a future that connects with whatever their preferred interpretation of that past persists in their memories?
It’s a mess isn’t it?
On the one hand we are beholden to an antiquated political system designed from the ground up to frustrate the voice of the masses and to spread the political load widely enough to slow decision making to a stolid horse-driven pace. And on the other we live in a hyper-connected technologically overburdened and mass driven world. The difference in pace is stunning. The difference in realities is equally stunning. Our politics is designed to arbitrate genteel and modest arguments through a stately time and space. Meanwhile we live in moments so foreshortened that history seems to be written and re-written over the weekend.
Something has to give.
And our techno-bro overlords tell us they have the answer. Their arrogance is stunning. Rivaled only by their ignorance.
But I said that already.
One of the realities we are facing is that we find it difficult to update our institutions as fast as we can renovate our technology. There is an increasing obsolescence in our institutional framework. And, unfortunately for us, it is that framework that provides our social stability and cohesion.
Oh dear. What a mess.
So we have a triangular dispute to resolve.
Our techno-bros are off ahead of us breaking all sorts of things with no regard to the consequences. We have our institutionalist crowd steadfastly living in that past and pretending to be relevant. And we have the rest of us stuck in the middle. We have to arbitrate between the future and the past without the benefit of those institutions. That means we free-form. We adapt. And we get increasingly frustrated by the deadweight of the past bearing down on those institutions that are supposed to be doing the job that we find ourselves doing.
Inevitably things break.
Inevitably the techno-bros will dominate because they are creating our future. We have no control over them. Our institutions give us no purchase on them. Systemic sclerosis is no bulwark. We have no defense.
Our modern history has followed this same path. Technology has come to dominate us. We are slaves to our machines.
First they took over agriculture. So we poured from the farms into the factories. That worked for a while. It allowed us to form solidarities and overthrow the landowners who had held sway for thousands of years. But then the machines drove us out of the factories. And into what we call services.
Those first two steps created vast amounts of wealth because of the implied gain in productivity. We, collectively, produced much, much, more and could avoid the nasty politics of redistribution by modest amounts of sharing.
The third step, however slowed the gains down. Services, after all, imply a less productive world. The replacement of labor by machine in a service seems a denigration or negation of the very idea of service. Productivity is a difficult concept to square with service. But our institutionalists keep telling us that productivity is a must for our future prosperity. As if we don’t have a lot already. Apparently we need more.
Never mind. Machines replaced human and animal sources of labor. They could translate energy more effectively and at greater scale than we could ourselves. That’s productivity. Our redoubt became our ability to think. We could still lord it over the machines. They were dumb. We are not.
But now the techno-bros tell us that we are dumb. They have built artificial intelligence to replace our thinking. They are determined to drive us out of our defenses. Our machines will, they tell us, out-think us. Humanity is making itself obsolete.
And this is presented as inevitable.
Is it?
We left the countryside and went into the towns when machines took over farming. We left the towns and went into the cities when machines took over manufacturing. Where do we go next? Back to the countryside because we can distribute organization?
Apparently not.
The recent pandemic sent a lot of people to work at home. The techno-bros had created sufficient tech that we could communicate while dispersed. We kept the organizations we knew, except they were scattered rather than concentrated in physical buildings. Perhaps a new way of organizing was possible?
No it wasn’t.
Our institutionalists, firmly living in the past, determined to put a stop to progress by telling us to go back to the buildings. They failed to agree with us about progress.
Why?
Because buildings are spaces of control. The factories into which we were herded during industrialization were both necessary as spaces for the organization of manufacturing — it was both more convenient and productive to cluster sequences of a process in one space — and they were spaces of control so that management could oversee those processes, dependent as they were on the smooth coordination of those sequences. Discipline, unaccustomed in the field, became a necessity in the factory.
And this discipline was simply moved into the office as services became more a part of our overall activity. The failure of management to adapt its practices of oversight to the change from manufacturing to service is why we have to go back to the office. Institutional sclerosis is costing us the wealth absorbed in old fashioned buildings we no longer need. Inertia in management is reflected on every balance sheet in business.
And now we have the techno-bros telling us we won’t even need management. AI will do to all.
AI is the best thing since … whatever. Except, of course it relies on electricity. So I suppose, in my ignorance, that electricity must be a more important innovation. And the grid. And the internet for distribution. And all the computers upon which AI depends.
But that’s just me in my confusion.
I am not smart enough to see clearly how transformative AI must be.
Well. Maybe I can. Tech always displaces most workers it affects. Certainly it aids others. Computers helped accountants. So that tech supplemented, but did not replace. AI has the capacity to do the same. Or, maybe, this time it will replace the accountants themselves. After all, accounting is an information processing function with predictable rules. Most of the time.
So anything that is information based and involves some interpretation but not excessive invention can be done by AI. That’s a whole lot of jobs. And those folks move … to where?
Don’t ask the techno-bros. They’re too busy breaking things and amassing fortunes.
They’re all libertarians anyway so they don’t give a damn about your job. They are too brilliant — I think Musk uses the word “genius” — to worry about mere and paltry fellow citizens.
Whoops. There goes my confusion again! “Citizens” is a word that does not exist in Silicon Valley. It implies a level of sharing that gets in the way of fortune creation and individual genius. Besides, citizens have rights simply by virtue of being a citizen. Libertarians have rights by virtue of their innate superiority. And hard work. I must not forget the hard work.
Yes, I am confused.
Aren’t you?
We all know Trump is confused. He said, when he signed his Executive Order banning programs designed to encourage diversity and inclusion in the Federal workforce and disbursement of its funds, that we are returning to a merit based promotion and hiring system. Just like the techno-bros advocate. After all they are redolent with merit. And they work so so hard. Unlike the rest of us. We are all lazy. Musk says so.
But Trump? Merit based? I assume he sees his own ability to inherit a fortune as being meretricious. Irony? Ignorance? Both?
Yes, I am confused. I admit it.
I am clearly missing something.