Mechanical Existentialism

There is a technological trend that can be extrapolated a bit further. We have exploration on Mars with the Mars Rover. We also have aerial drones attacking in various theaters. Both are mobile extensions of human operators.

Technology migrates toward a more human like nature. There have been numerous incidents where this has surprised. Near the turn of the 20th century the telegraph was entrenched. No one at the time would have thought the telephone would so thoroughly unseat it so quickly. In the early part of the last century no one would have thought the radio would become obsolete and displaced by television. The movie industry never thought color movies would catch on and used a tepid approach. It is why the Wizard of Oz was such a marvel in 1939 without much of a follow on.

The displacements occurred as another technology arrived that more closely imitated the human experience. The telephone offered natural voice, instead of transcribed code. Television offered a pictorial representation of the world, instead of just sound. Movies with color were a bit more life like.

Our extension of robotic technology will continue to migrate toward more human characteristics. It seems some very important capabilities are missing in our technology today.  The acknowledged five senses are sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. We have embodied in our extension technology the senses of sight in the form of video. We have sound as hearing. To a degree, touch as proximity. Decidedly lacking are the senses of taste and smell. Eventually this too will be incorporated in extension technology.

The extension model portends the most efficient method of accomplishing many tasks. Particularly those fraught with risk. We will not likely have little green men show up on our doorstep from outer space, unless they are androids [biological robots].  It is far more efficient to send a crafted surrogate. Our image of Star Trek human explorers, “going where no man has gone before”, is merely a romantic fantasy. Much more likely is that technology will advance and a human explorer will be in a holographic chamber. All five of senses will be present relayed from some robot extension that may be millions of miles away. 

Empirical Answer

The empirical answer for the justification of an economic system; “the efficient allocation of the resources in society”. However, there is a caveat. It is the degree of equality. Therefore the definition of an economic system really should read,  “the equable” allocation of the resources in society. Historically the genesis of the demise of any economic system is inequality. Heightened inequality is not economic efficiency.

Capitalism as an economic system is not exempt. It ages. Over time the benefits increasingly accrue to an ever shrinking select minority. Eventually what is left for everyone else is not viewed as remotely just. In the case of capitalism we must look at it on a global basis. We should treat variance among nations like that of States in the United States. The United States being the Texas of the world. Texas can be referenced as a microcosm of America's place in the world in terms of relative size, economics, politicies and culture. Globalization has created the condition of veiwing capitalism on an international basis and not nation-by-nation. The exchange of goods, services and money is the glue.

America has an “exacerbated” capitalism or one less disposed to serve social purposes. American capitalism is self serving. Profits is its singular motivation. American culture condones just about anything in obtaining those profits. Scandinavian countries seem to occupy the opposite pole from America. They tend to have serving a social purpose as the primary objective of their economic system.

In the most advance stage of an economic system life cycle the inequality blame shifts. Dissatisfaction goes from the wealthy beneficiaries and their political enablers to the system itself. Capitalism in the world is reaching this tipping point. The austerity movement is really disenfranchisement in a different guise. It is driving toward economic insurrection.

What can we expect once we have crossed the tipping point? A sharp economic swing to assertive socialism or even communism. It will be a bloody time. The rich will fight to the end to retain their wealth and control. They will use the resources of government as their bulwark. This will cause the people to focus on the overthrow of the government.

If it is obvious that inequality leads to an economic system demise, why is timely action not taken to mitigate the situation? In a word, “greed”.

Transient

I was thinking old thoughts Sunday after reading the newspaper. I was putting it to go out for the recycle bin. I recalled as a child our newspapers. At that point in time, most all the single family homes and building from a generation or more earlier, had a coal shed.  In America coal was the ubiquitous fuel. Everyone had a coal stove up until that time or a coal fired boiler. Therefore a requirement was that homes have a place to store coal. Commercial buildings usually had a coal chute and coal was kept in the basement. Periodically a coal truck would squeeze down our shared driveway and dump coal in a shed.

The switch was on to heating oil by the time I was a child. My family were one of the early converters. Our shed had ceased to be used for coal some years earlier.  Instead it had become a repository of old newspapers and discarded items.  The newspapers were stacked about 4 feet high, 7 feet across and maybe several feet deep. There was no door on the shed. It had a wide opening. The weather had mildewed the newspapers and mold was prominent.

I do not know how it happened, but my Mother guided me and my two brothers in a clean up activity. We took those wet musty newspapers out of the shed to the front street. It was a several day’s effort for us pre-teens. My Father got somebody to collect the newspapers and take them away. The shed filled with other stuff. Years later it was torn down.

Our perspective of things is relatively narrow. We tend to forget what seems to have an indomitable presence today will likely vanish. I would never have taken a bet on the extent to which coal as a universal heating source would change. I guess just like people would never have taken a bet for the demise of horses as the primary means of locomotion or the great European powers being so relegated in significance.

Perhaps the lesson for us today is that the two big “A”s of America and Apple are transient. They too will pass.

Speculation Space Missions

Why do I keep coming back to space? Subterfuge is a very effect tool in persuading incorrect information. It worked admirably for the tobacco industry and the health issues of smoking. It is working well for climate change deniers of a human causation. It has worked well for Republicans in Congress dispelling that the party has a specific class focus of serving the wealthy. But the roll model for this type of communication success might be the whole issue of space.

Suppose the Soviet Union, which was significantly ahead of America in space achievement, got to the moon first. Suppose they found something that caused them to clamp down on that fact. They also would not want to announce success in a moon landing because it might spur America to emulate them and have a moon discovery revelation. Surprise! America went after it anyway as a means to overshadow Soviet space achievements. The Soviet Union’s dilemma was rather to remain silent.

Once the moon discovery was made by America, the Apollo moon missions became a security nightmare. The only solution was to go underground. Officially Apollo 17 was the last moon mission. But there have been persistent rumors of at least one more, called Apollo 18. It was supposedly ultra top secret directly under The Defense Department.

Things stayed pretty much under control with America’s lockdown of space. But in 1981 the Shuttle missions were underway. It was a source of national pride. Too politically important to just shut down. It was an even worst security nightmare because of the large numbers of civilians involved.

The space shuttle missions were a source of abnormalities being noted. The Defense Department needed the program shut down so tightly that no zealous Congress or President would take the risk of keeping it going. They were desperate.  Then there was the fortuitous Challenger disaster, depending on how you look at it. When the space shuttle missions resumed later, they were staffed with people completed encased in the secrecy.

The nineteen sixties were a very scary time in America. We emerged from the social conservative nineteen fifties into an unsettling unorthodox time. Social unraveling was on everyone’s mind. The RAND corporation issued a report that society would completely collapse if the public really believed aliens were among us. The government embarked on a major effort to debunk any mention of aliens.

But aliens are just one manifestation that would contribute to social collapse. Any revelation that significantly upsets our belief system would have the same effect. The question becomes why the revelations about all the planets being discovered had no such effect? The answer is that the discovery method is mathematical in nature. Americans particularly have no affinity for mathematics or its rigor. It is to most merely a mysticism. But turn things around and look at the attack on “extremophiles” or earth biological life not based on the accepted universal model of oxygen and carbon. There is repeated instant denial of extremophiles discoveries.

An example of belief system destabilization would be finding “humroid” [humanlike] evidence on the moon. Then we would be in the intellectual game of the “chicken and the egg”, especially if the evidence was hundreds of thousands of years old. This would bring into question human origins and achievements. It would render most Western religion to the realm of mythology. Another example might be ancient technological prowess discovered on earth far beyond our archaeological view.

One day there might be an anomaly that defies rejection. One that peaked my interest should have been in all the media - IF True. Supposedly the Mayans had calculated the length of a day to a ten thousandth of a decimal point. Their calculation is within 2 ten thousandths of a decimal point of atomic clocks. Scientist admit atomic clocks have a plus or minus error rate of 5 ten thousandths of a decimal point. The only reasonable answer, if this is true, is that the knowledge was given to the Mayans. That means intervention. The question becomes by whom or what? The fact that so many ancient religions reference a specific point of the sky suggests visitors. It should be publicly taken very seriously and rigorous scientific methods applied. But it might already be taken extremely seriously and cloaked in government secrecy. I am certain the Pentagon takes it seriously.

I suspect that humankind is far older than our current dating. I believe Homo sapiens co-existed with prehistoric man and did not naturally evolve from them.  I suspect humans have reached significant achievement in the past, only to be plunged back to a barbarous condition.  Evidence of early human advanced achievement is probably obscured by time and the fact these peoples were relatively few in numbers.