Preps for new soc. analysis article
From Wise Nano
I´m currently preparing a major article for Wise-Nano regarding a possible social model to handle MNT and minimize some of its associated problems currently considered most urgent by . For that I´d need some more information:
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Models already developed?
a) Are there already developed models to deal with extremely advanced nanotechnology? If so, where to find them? The possibilities discussed on the CRNblog are very welcome, provided of course they have been archieved.
A few science fiction authors have considered this. Ken MacLeod's The Cassini Division portrayed a society where people took abundance for granted. Greg Bear and David Marusek have also had the imagination to think about what a post-nano society might be like.
The argument could be made that there's no way for present-day humans to predict what extremely advanced nanotechnology will be like, or how we will relate to it. New social and intangible/nonhuman structures/entities will surely emerge, and we don't even know what the resource patterns will be--much less what will emerge to feed on them. And with a technology that is more powerful than humans in many ways, we might expect that most of its consequences will not directly relate to the human sphere.
It used to be that corporations were a side effect of human livelihood. Now, human livelihood is a side effect of corporations. Today, Google searches are a side effect of human thought. How long before human thought is guided by Google?
So the idea of "dealing with" extremely advanced nanotechnology may be an illusion, just as your personal savings activity doesn't "deal with" the international money system. The question may be instead: How can we channel the resources created by nanotech, so that enough of them end up in forms relevant to humans, rather than channeled into non-human entities? Today, we have corporations, which at least have human figureheads--heroes (well compensated executives) and villains (those who get caught violating ethics to steal millions)--who appear to own the money that's being concentrated, and at least in theory may reinvest it in humans. But how many resources get sucked away in ways that are intangible to us? (Asking this question, one speculation suggests itself already: human brainpower is sucked away in big-research big-bureaucracy infrastructures. Why don't we have flying cars yet? Why are fusion, cancer, and AIDS taking so long? Ask a researcher how much time they spend on bureaucracy and funding.
Freedom in different countries?
b) Are there scientific articles that somehow quantify the personal freedom people in different countries enjoy? Freedom is here meant as in the Wikipedia article political Freedom plus Economic Freedom, which means "having choices, not being subject to very many natural or institutional constraints."
What isn't listed here yet?
c) maybe more to come, I´m sure I forgot something...
