Global Commons in the Global Brain

* Article: Last, C., Global Commons in the Global Brain, Technol. Forecast. Soc. Change (2016), doi

URL = https://cadelllast.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/last-c-2016-global-commons-in-the-global-brain.pdf

Abstract

From Cadell Last:

"The next decade (present to ~2020–2025) could be characterized by large-scale labour disruption and further acceleration of income and wealth inequality due to the widespread introduction of general-purpose robotics, machine-learning software/artificial intelligence (AI) and their various interconnections within the emerging infrastructure of the ‘Internet of Things’(IoT). In this paper I argue that such technological changes and their socio-economic consequences signal the emergence of a global metasystem (i.e. control organization beyond markets and nation-states) and may require a qualitatively new level of political organization to guide a process of self- organization. Consequently, this paper proposes and attempts to develop a conceptual framework with the potential to aid an international political transition towards a ‘post-capitalist’ ‘post-nation state’ global world.

This conceptual framework is grounded within socio-technological theory of the ‘Global Brain’(GB), which describes a potential future planetary organizational structure founded on distributed and open-ended intelligence; and the socioeconomic theory of the ‘Commons’, which is a paradigm describing distributed modes of organization founded upon principles of democratic management and open access. In the integration of GB theory and Commons theory this paper ultimately argues that an appropriate international response to the emerging technological revolution should include the creation of networks with both automated and collaborative components that function on ‘Global Commons’(GC) logic (i.e. beyond both state and market logic)."

(https://cadelllast.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/last-c-2016-global-commons-in-the-global-brain.pdf)

Excerpts

The primary features of the technological shift

"The primary features of the technological shift in relation to social, economic, and political processes, which is (likely) to include the following:

A) The transition will blur the lines between the ‘physical’(actual-existential) and the ‘digital’(virtual) worlds challenging the logical and conceptual foundations of primarily or purely physical institutions that are constrained by geography, maintenance costs, and centralized intelligence structures; but also primarily or purely digital networks that are often isolated or disconnected from directly impacting the physical world,

B) will lead to the disruption of fundamental socioeconomic notions and organizing principles of location, production, labour, and property as many organizational forms will communicate and co- ordinate multi-locally/globally and include large-scale automated production components with advanced materials,

C) will change the human relation to public (state) and private (market) spheres of socioeconomic organization and coordination as the state constructs rigid local boundaries based on control of property and labour, whereas the market operates purely on profit-driven monetary logic without consideration for the complex and multi-dimensional spheres of human value unrelated to profit or commodity exchange,

D) will require an open, active, pluralistic, and meta-reflective dialogue between a wide diversity of actors (in all spheres of human life) about the meaning and direction of this emerging world beyond the dominant state and capitalist forms (state-capital nexus), in the hopes of finding a new level of (commons) coherence and integration, and most probably a new type of social contract (focused on a new relation between the individual's rights within the totality of the sociopolitical sphere)."

Piketty's Global State as Global Keynesianism

Cadell Last:

"Piketty's now well-known ‘utopian solution’ would be to erect some idealized form of ‘Global State’ capable of regulating global markets with a progressive global tax (2014, p. 515):

- “To regulate the globalized patrimonial capitalism of the twenty- first century, rethinking the twentieth century fiscal and social model and adapting it to today's world will not be enough. To be sure, appropriate updating of the last century's social-democratic and fiscal-liberal program is essential, which focused on two fundamental institutions that were invented in the twentieth century and must continue to play a central role in the future: the social state and the progressive income tax. But if democracy is to regain control over the globalized financial capitalism of this century, it must also invent new tools, adapted to today's challenges. The ideal tool would be a progressive global tax on capital, coupled with a very high level of international financial transparency. Such a tax would provide a way to avoid an endless inegalitarian spiral and to control the worrisome dynamics of global capital concentration. Whatever tools and regulations are actually decided on need to be measured against this ideal.”

Consequently, Piketty's ultimate solution for ‘Capitalism in the 21st Century’ is essentially a form of ‘Global Keynesianism in the 21st Century’, where we re-invent the nature of the social state and the progressive in- come tax, but this time instead of just reinventing these dynamics at the multi-local nation-state level, we reinvent these same dynamics for the higher global whole. Although Piketty admits that such an approach is ‘utopian’ in the sense of being an ‘ideal’ projection and thus unrealistic in the ‘material’ domain, he also suggests that, as the end of the above quote suggests, all attempts to solve the problem of global capitalism should be ‘measured against this ideal’ of what essentially amounts to a ‘Global State’. The philosophical logic here is the relation between ‘materialism’ and ‘idealism’, where the ‘ideal’(for Piketty) functions as an attractor state or pole for grounding materialist political construction projects. The economic logic here is that, in the same way that the inhumane consequences of free market capitalism (labour instability, socioeconomic inequality, etc.) were reduced by nation-state interventionism in the second half of the 20th century (‘New Deal’), this same dynamic can be erected for global civilization in the 21st century, and ultimately save both capitalism and the state form itself, albeit at a new global level (‘New New Deal’).

From the perspective of the challenges posed by the emerging technological revolution (i.e. of an exponentially emerging self-organized global world founded on automated smart systems and distributed networks), these problems identified by Piketty (i.e. of global capital and its global control problem) simply accelerate the necessity of large-scale political action (~2020–2025) in order to prevent the eruption of fundamental antagonisms which are now clearly stressing the structural foundations of the world as it is."

(https://cadelllast.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/last-c-2016-global-commons-in-the-global-brain.pdf)