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)

Technological Singularity Theory

Cadell Last:

"Contemporary practical (elite) discourse regarding an emerging technological revolution has started to revolve around notions of a ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’(WEF,2016),but in the general futures literature, discourse about a future technological revolution has, for some time, revolved around notions of ‘Technological Singularity’(TS) (Last, 2015c, Section 3.2). The notion of TS attempts to articulate the notion that technological progress is inherently evolving via an exponential trajectory and will eventually change the human world beyond individual human comprehension and understanding. The metaphor of ‘Singularity’ in ‘TS’ theory is used in specific reference to the astrophysical properties of a black hole's ‘event-horizon’. The ‘event-horizon’ of a black hole represents a break in spatiotemporal continuity rendering it impossible for any external observer to know the internal properties of the object in question (i.e. ‘the impossible beyond’ that is the ‘black hole’). In the same way, in TS literature the ‘Singularity’ represents ‘the impossible beyond’ for human comprehension and understanding (i.e. the ‘external (human) observer’ attempting to discern the (beyond human) future properties of a super-technological world that is a ‘black hole’). In these general futures notions the primary catalyst for future exponential change (the agent-cause of ‘Singularity’) is typically envisioned to be artificial general intelligence (AGI), i.e. a form of ma- chine intelligence that vastly overpowers human intelligence, leading to essentially a ‘post-human’ ‘future’(if such words even make discursive sense at that point).

This general AGI-TS vision, although always presented as human eschatology (i.e. end of human comprehension and understanding of the world, or end of human existence in the world), can take the form of either a utopian and dystopian variant. Both utopian and dystopian variants were explored in the first official introduction of the term ‘Technological Singularity’ in Vernor Vinge's ‘The Coming Technological Singularity’, where he posited that (1993, p. 88):

- “Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human race will be ended.”

Thus, the introductory overview of TS ultimately concluded that, in either the utopian or dystopian scenarios, humanity was approaching an eschatological horizon (as transcendence or extinction), which set the general ‘end times’ tone for the literature that followed. The most popular and influential ‘utopian’ ‘transcendence’ variant is inarguably Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity Is Near (2005), which argues that humanity will merge with technological intelligence and ‘transcend biology’ for a ‘super-human’ or ‘post-human’ state of being characterized by higher love, knowledge, and organizational form. The most popular and influential ‘dystopian’ ‘extinction’ variant (at least recently) is Nick Bostrom's Superintelligence (2014), which argues that the further development of machine intelligence will lead humanity towards an existential ‘control problem’ where human beings will become eradicated by our own technological creations.

The history of this futures discourse is problematic in many dimensions. Firstly, if this literature is not totally out of touch with our future reality, i.e. AGI is either impossible (an idea with fundamentally problematic presuppositions) or will itself not lead to humanity's phenomenological transcendence/extinction (because the human brain cannot be simulated by a digital supercomputer); then secondly, it is most certainly out of touch with our approach to Singularity –the ‘here to there’ of exponential global technological revolution –in many crucial ways.

The most important reason for this is that the theoretical emphasis in TS literature (i.e. emergence of AGI) almost completely ignores the systemic dynamics of technological revolution in relation to the emerging socio-technological sphere mediated by the totality of the Internet as universal medium. In missing this systemic dynamic the TS literature fails to even confront basic issues of systemic transitions in relation to control, power, and hierarchy, and thus basic issues of systemic transitions in terms of social, economic, and political life. In short, the TS literature to date has jumped far too quickly towards an eschatological horizon (in all honesty a repressed repetition of Christian thinking and Christian notions of historical time emerging in the scientific worldview) without thinking through deeply the systemic implications of technological revolution for the foundations of human life and civilization as a total sphere.

However, in contrast to this briefly introduced and problematic notion of an ‘AGI TS’, the general futures literature has also been characterized by discussions of an emerging collective superintelligence in the form of a ‘Global Brain (GB) Technological Singularity (TS)’, where ‘Global Brain’ refers specifically to the totality of the Internet as universal coordination medium."

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

Global Brain Technological Singularity

Cadell Last:

"The general futures literature has also been characterized by discussions of an emerging collective superintelligence in the form of a ‘Global Brain (GB) Technological Singularity (TS)’, where ‘Global Brain’ refers specifically to the totality of the Internet as universal coordination medium. This GB notion, founded on the metaphorical homology between global neuronal network action in the brain and global human-computer networks on earth, includes both a spatial and temporal dimension. The spatial dimension of the GB is characterized by distributed superintelligence, i.e. multi-agent problem solving and opportunity exploitation that occurs through horizontal communication channels (and consequently does not result in any permanent/hierarchical ‘centering’ phenomena) (Heylighen, 2016a). The temporal dimension of the GB is characterized by open-ended superintelligence, i.e. multi-agent problem solving that focuses on exploring possibility spaces and guiding immanent processual dynamics (and consequently does not rely on specifically predicting and controlling civilization development) (Weinbaum and Veitas, 2015). Thus, at its foundation, the GB as phenomenon can be seen to consist of A) a problem of global coordination (distributed organizations), and B) a problem of global self- becoming (open-ended organizations).

In this GB TS frame humanity does not face an immanent AGI apocalypse (in either a utopian or dystopian interpretation), but rather an immanent global metasystem transition founded on distributed (spatial) and open-ended (temporal) superintelligence mediated by the fu- ture Internet: of a world that self-organizes towards a planetary level via peer-to-peer platforms with no specific centers of power and of a human life that opens up towards an increasingly mysterious horizon of possibility.

Here the essence of the GB TS vision:

A) Totality of the Internet as universal coordination medium

B) Environment characterized by distributed open-ended super-intelligence

C) Societal self-organization towards planetary system level Proposed maxim for GB vision: Freedom on this socio-technological pathway is to recognize our necessity as the beings guiding history to- wards the full actualization of human desire (the indestructible hard core of human becoming).

This GB TS vision can be compared and contrasted with the traditional AGI TS vision. In the AGI TS vision humanity's attention becomes focused on individual machine-learning programs that enter ‘self-recursive cycles’ of exponential intellect improvement towards ‘post-humanity’. However, in the GB TS vision humanity's attention becomes focused on collective global issues and meta-systemic transitions related to power, control, and hierarchy. This is not to say that the GB TS vision totally negates the possibility of the emergence of AGI or even post-humanity, but rather approaches the emerging technological revolution as a phenomenon that must be grounded in the totality of socio-technological process (a conceptual shift that AGI TS cannot theoretically handle, and a conceptual shift that even GB theorists have not yet fully appreciated). Consequently, we may not be proposing too much with the above maxim to state that the GB TS theory's specific ontological function is to be a guiding tool towards a ‘positive’ Singularity –not as traditionally conceived AGI apocalypse (utopian/dystopian) –but as opening the possibility for the full actualization of the historical process itself as driven by humanity's (transcendent) desires (and the inherent, yet potentially immanent, adventure and mystery that will entail).

Thus, and said in a different way, GB TS theory can –instead of focusing on the exponential emergence of ‘post-human AGI’ as an ‘event-horizon-like’ discontinuous break with individual human comprehension and understanding (e.g. Kurzweil, 2005; Bostrom, 2014) –make the important ‘Singularity shift’ and focus on the way in which distributed and open-ended intelligence can potentially self-organize from the development of automated smart systems and social networks (Goertzel, 2016a). This would, in a different way, lead to an ‘event-horizon-like’ discontinuous break with individual human comprehension and understanding, but only in the sense that the totality of the global socio-technological sphere (Internet as universal coordination medium) would acquire coherent collective properties alien (qualitatively different) from any historical local socio-technological sphere. Thus, other than the obvious local/global size difference of form between historical states and future GB, the important qualitative difference would be in the totally different qualitative organizational difference, i.e. a future GB ‘state’ would be distributed and open to maximizing individual becoming, as opposed to historical states, which have been (and still are) hierarchical and generally closed to maximizing individual becoming (unless it explicitly serves ‘their’ ends, i.e. sublimates individual minds within its substanceless (empty) virtual structure –e.g. monarchies, states, religions, corporations, and so forth).

What is missing here? In the conceptual vision of the GB, I would argue, we can see the contours of a TS theory that can make a practical contribution to the development of international institutional reforms within the context of an emerging technological revolution that has radical consequences for social, economic, and political life. However, GB TS theory has not made specific geopolitical recommendations for navigating this new world. In other words, what is missing from GB TS theory are the specific political consequences of this exponential-global socio-technological process, in the actual capability of humanity to develop qualitatively new large-scale political forms capable of intelligent-ly guiding the development of (already existent) human-computer networks that coordinate on a planetary level via distributed/open-ended mechanisms (i.e. horizontal communication/interaction and open-access). Thus, GB TS theory, in its identification of the possibility for totally different organizational forms within the totality of the Internet's developing structure, we gain the ability to develop an alter- native political and socioeconomic solution to Piketty's ‘Global Keynes- ianism/Global State’.

In other words, can GB theorists think Commonism in the 21st Century?

The ground for this opening has already been presented. For example, in GB theorist Francis Heylighen's paper ‘Accelerating Socio- Technological Evolution: From Ephemeralization and Stigmergy to the Global Brain’."

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

Superintelligence for a Global State ?

Cadell Last:

"Besides this ‘Kurzweilian variant’(i.e. free markets will take care of everything as the invisible vital agent of cosmic evolution leading us towards our ‘post-human’ ‘utopia’), there is another emerging AGI TS grounded theory of large political collectives that is problematic in a different dimension, i.e. the ‘State dimension’ instead of the ‘Market dimension’.

To give a specific example, philosopher and AGI TS theorist Nick Bostrom (the aforementioned author of Superintelligence (2014), addressed issues of collective political development in relation to advanced superintelligence at the United Nations (UN). In this presentation Bostrom gave an overview of the “challenges” posed by the emergence of machine learning software (see: UN WEB TV, 2015) that focused exclusively on the existential risks of machine learning technologies future development and, as a result, a focus on how such advanced technological development needs to be rigidly controlled. The practical result is that we get the offer of an approach to large- scale political collectives founded, not on distributed mechanisms (post-state) and open-access (post-capital), but instead on tightly con- trolled and hierarchically centralized elite groups (the emergence of some form of Global State that develops advanced technology in secret and actively attempts to prevent it from being developed openly).

Indeed, this was explicitly the view developed by Bostrom in Superintelligence (2014, p. 253):

- “[A]n international project to develop safe superintelligence would... have to be constituted not as an open academic collaboration but as an extremely tightly controlled joint enterprise. Perhaps the scientists involved would have to be physically isolated and prevented from communicating with the rest of the world for the duration of the pro- ject, except through a single carefully vetted communication channel. The required level of security might be nearly unattainable at present, but advances in lie detection and surveillance technology could make it feasible later this century.”

Ben Goertzel, a researcher with expertise in both AGI and GB TS theory, noted the massively problematic sociopolitical dimension of Bostrom's AGI TS theory that develops in this direction (2016a, p. 65): “What [Bostrom] is advocating here, in his dry professional style, is ac- tually quite dramatic: For the UN and all governments of the world to come together to control AGI research and development, protecting and fostering an elite AGI R&D effort carried out under the auspices by a small group, potentially even just by one person.”

Thus, Bostrom's view here, although only focused on how to handle the future of AGI (and not concerned (yet) with the totality of the development of the socio-technological sphere), is nevertheless directly anti-thetical to the potential GB TS vision of future large-scale political forms based on distributed mechanisms and open-access as it is possible to be. Bostrom's view, ultimately, stems from a hierarchical and closed under- standing of collective intelligence (as opposed to a distributed and open-ended understanding of collective intelligence). As a consequence, Bostrom proposes an (impossible) attempt to rigidly control and predict precisely what will happen with the future development of the socio-technological sphere in regards to AGI with the erection of a new global elite guiding technological development and implementation (which could ultimately be a more problematic ‘governance control problem ’than the ‘AGI control problem’ Bostrom intends to solve. In other words, in contrast to the Kurzweilian ‘neoliberalism to the end of humanity’ formula, Bostrom is starting to articulate a view that comes pretty close to ‘Big Brother to the end of humanity’formula.4 Here we can see that AGI TS theorists, like theorists in practically every other domain, have trouble thinking outside of the binary of state/market, and thus cannot think the radical third of the commons.

Of course, directing focus either to the productive ‘utopian’ potentialities of free market capitalism (Kurzweil) or the existential risks associated with the emergence of AGI ‘post-humans’(Bostrom) in general is not totally unwarranted. On the one hand, free market capitalism is obviously the most productive mechanism for technological development in the history of humanity, and on the other hand, the future of AGI does indeed present us with important existential questions. Are capitalism and science –our contemporary Masters5 –ultimately leading us to- wards, not the End of History, but the End of Humanity? That, at least, is contemporary Singularity ideology. However, grounding a practical geopolitical approach to Singularity in either foundation biases the conversation towards extreme positions disconnected from the realities of contemporary global evolution in relation to the totality of revolution- ary technologies emerging in our socio-technological sphere and their practical social, economic, and political consequences. In other words, from the Kurzweilian perspective we cannot simply have faith that free market capitalism will erect an all-inclusive abundant utopia when the total sphere of capitalism appears to be inherently exclusive and built on scarcity producing class antagonisms that structure the en- tire universal space. And, from the Bostromian perspective we cannot simply posit the paranoiac view that an AGI takeover is immanent in order to justify a reactionary position that we need a central elite group to monitor its development in secret (and the same goes for other technologies that are presupposed as eschatological).

Moreover, and more importantly, as a consequence of these AGI TS positions there is a de-emphasis on the potential of this emerging exponential-global technological revolution to lead us towards large-scale automation (automated smart systems), radically distributed organizations (distributed social networks), and consequently, a de-emphasis on the type of conversation that would help us understand what types of large-scale political collectives would allow for large- scale human emancipation from labour insecurity and hierarchical control. In other words we have a de-emphasis on a type of conversation that would focus all of its attention on the traditional humanist attractor of (collective) ‘Freedom’, perhaps most articulately represented in the perfectly reasonable maxim of: ‘th efree development of each is the condition for the free development of all’(Marx and Engels, 2004, p. 82).

Here the GB TS theoretical view can, and indeed has already, produced a much more nuanced understanding of human becoming within a world of revolutionary technologies that can organize via distributed and open-ended coordination mechanisms in relation to social (see: Veitas and Weinbaum, 2016), economic (see: Heylighen, 2016b), and political domains (see: Goertzel et al., 2016b).

The step that needs to be taken now is to integrate GB TS theoretic view within the emerging discourse of the Commons. Can we imagine a Singularity in the Commons? "

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