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23 March 2010

The search for big political ideas

Filed under: Humanity Plus, democracy, innovation, politics, vision — David Wood @ 1:07 am

On Saturday, I attended an event called “The Battle for Politics“, organised by the Institute for Ideas as a “pre-election public summit”.

The publicity material for this event gave me reason to look forward to it:

Party politics no longer seems to be about clear ideological differences, or indeed any kind of substantial debate reflecting competing visions for a better society. Nonetheless, many pressing issues remain unresolved.

So though it might be tempting to write off mainstream politics as irrelevant, and to take a ‘none of the above’ position in the coming election, this can only feed the pervasive cynicism about the possibility of social change and progress. History has not gone on standby, but continues to throw up new challenges.

The Institute of Ideas wants to take the opportunity of this election to re-enfranchise the electorate and put each candidate on the spot by asking them to declare where they stand on a range of key questions.

And yes, there were some worthy discussions during the day:

  • The electorate seem still to be deeply interested in political matters, even though they are alienated from existing political parties and politicians;
  • Changing the way voting takes place might engender better discussion and buy-in from the electorate to the political process;
  • The ever growing costs of the welfare state – coupled with our current financial shortfalls – mean that some significant change is needed in how the welfare state operates;
  • Insights from social sciences (such as behavioural economics) possibly have at least some role to play in improving political governance;
  • Wider adoption of evidence-based policy – where appropriate – probably will also improve governance.

However, at the end of the day, I felt underwhelmed by what had taken place.

For example: at the event, the Institute of Ideas had launched their “21 pledges for progress 2010“.  This included the following gems:

  • Limit the police’s power to detain people without charge to 24 hours rather than 28 days, in the interests of civil liberties and due process.
  • Declare an amnesty for all illegal immigrants presently in the UK, whether asylum seekers or economic migrants, in the interests of recognising the positive aspirations of those who seek to improve their lives by moving countries.
  • Open the borders, revoking all immigration controls, in the interests of the free movement of citizens.
  • Get rid of police Tsars and unelected ‘experts’ from government decision-making in the interests of parliamentary sovereignty and democratic accountability.
  • Abolish the monarchy and the House of Lords in the interests of a fully elected legislature and executive.
  • Direct state funding of schools into providing universal access to the highest standard of education in academic subjects, rather than politicised cross curricular themes like sustainability or citizenship, in the interests of passing on real knowledge to our children.

I applaud the Institute of Ideas for catalysing debate on a series of important topics, but I saw little evidence of political ideas that are likely to deservedly capture the imagination and the enthusiasm of the electorate.

The material I liked best, from what was on display, was something entitled “The London Manifesto for Innovation”, created by a group called “The Big Potatoes“.  This made the following assertions:

  • We should “think big” about the potential of innovation, since there’s a great deal that innovation can accomplish;
  • Rather than “small is beautiful” we should keep in mind the slogan “scale is beautiful”;
  • We should seek more than just a continuation of the “post-war legacy of innovation” – that’s only the start;
  • Breakthrough innovations are driven by new technology – so we should prioritise the enablement of new technology;
  • Innovation is hard work and an uphill struggle – so we need to give it our full support;
  • Innovation arises from pure scientific research as well as from applied research – both are needed;
  • Rather than seeking to avoid risk or even to manage risk, we have to be ready to confront risk;
  • Great innovation needs great leaders of innovation, to make it happen;
  • Instead of trusting regulations, we should be ready to trust people;
  • Markets, sticks, carrots and nudges are no substitute for what innovation itself can accomplish.

I’d like to build on these insights, with some concrete suggestions.  These are suggestions for items that should become national priorities – items that deserve a larger amount of attention, analysis, resourcing, and funding.  Borrowing some of the “big potatoes” language, I see these items as potentially having major impact over the next 10-20 years.  As such, they deserve to be national priorities during the decade ahead.

I’m not sure exactly what belongs on this list of national priorities, and look forward to feedback.  But here’s an initial proposal:

  1. Preventive medicine – since the costs of prevention will in many cases dwarf the cost of cures;
  2. Anti-aging treatments – an important special case of the previous point;
  3. Better than well – just as there are many benefits to avoiding ill-health, there are many benefits to promoting super-health;
  4. Cognitive enhancement and intelligence augmentation – to help everyone to become smarter and more sociable (both individually and collectively);
  5. Artificial general intelligence – an important special case of the previous point;
  6. Improved rationality (overcoming biases, in all their forms) – another important special case of the same point;
  7. Freedom from fundamentalism – diminishing the hold of dogma, whether from “scripture” or “tradition” or “prophets”;
  8. Education about accelerating technology – so people become fully aware of the opportunities, risks, context, and options;
  9. Robotics supporting humans – providing unmatched strength, precision, and diligence;
  10. Nanotechnology – the use of atom-level engineering to create highly useful new materials, compounds, and tools;
  11. Synthetic biology – techniques of software and manufacturing applied to biology, with huge benefits for health;
  12. Largescale clean energy – whether solar, nuclear, or whatever;
  13. Patent system reform – to address aspects of intellectual property law where innovation and collaboration are being hindered rather than helped;
  14. Smart market regulation – to handle pressures where social forces lead to market failures rather than genuinely useful products;
  15. Expansion of voluntary enterprise (the domain of not-for-profit contribution) – since not everything good is driven by financial motivation;
  16. Expansion of human autonomy – supporting greater choice and experience – in both virtual and physical reality;
  17. New measures of human accomplishment – an attractive vision that supersedes economic measures such as GDP;
  18. Geo-engineering capability – to equip us with tools to wisely restructure the planet (and more).

To give this list a name: I tentatively call this list “The Humanity+ Agenda“.  I propose to say more about it at the Humanity+, UK2010 event in London’s Conway Hall on 24th April.

The list is driven by my beliefs that:

  • Humanity in the 21st century is facing both enormous challenges and enormous opportunities – “business as usual” is not sustainable;
  • Wise application of technology is the factor that will make the single biggest difference to successfully addressing these challenges and opportunities;
  • If we get things right, human experience in just a few decades time will be very substantially better than it is today – for all people, all over the world;
  • However, there’s nothing inevitable about any of this;
  • Getting things right will require us becoming smarter and more effective than ever before – but, thankfully, that is within our grasp;
  • This is worth shouting about!

Footnote: Some people say that big political ideas are dangerous, and that a focus on effective political management, pursuing pragmatic principles, is far preferable to ideology.  I sympathise with this viewpoint, and share an apprehension of ideology.  But provided rationality remains at the forefront, and provided people remain open to discussion and persuasion, I see great value in vision and focus.

13 January 2010

Top of the list: the biggest impact

Filed under: Humanity Plus, UKTA, books, democracy — David Wood @ 12:46 am

I recently published a list of the books that had made the biggest impact on me, personally, over the last ten years.  I left one book out of that list – the book that impacted me even more than any of the others.

The book in question was authored by Dr James J. Hughes, a sociologist and bioethicist who teaches Health Policy at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.  In his spare time, James is the Executive Director of the IEET – the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies.

The title of the book is a bit of a mouthful:

I came across this book in October 2005.  The ideas in the book started me down a long path of further exploration:

I count this book as deeply impactful for me because:

  1. It was the book that led to so many other things (as just listed);
  2. When I look back at the book in 2010, I find several key ideas in it which I now take for granted (but I had forgotten where I learned them).

An indication of the ideas contained may be found from an online copy of the Introduction to the book, and from a related essay “Democratic Transhumanism 2.0“.

The book goes far beyond just highlighting the potential of new technologies – including genetic engineering, nanotechnology, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence – to significantly enhance human experience.  The book also contains a savvy account of the role of politics in supporting and enabling human change.

To quote from the Introduction:

This book argues that transhuman technologies – technologies that push the boundaries of humanness – can radically improve our quality of life, and that we have a fundamental right to use them to control our bodies and minds.  But to ensure these benefits we need to democratically regulate these technologies and make them equally available in free societies.  Becoming more than human can improve all our lives, but only new forms of transhuman citizenship and democracy will make us free, more equal, and more united.

A lot of people are understandably frightened by the idea of a society in which unenhanced humans will need to coexist with humans who are smarter, faster, and more able, not to mention robots and enhanced animals…

The “bioLuddite” opposition to genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence, slowly building and networking since the 1960s, picked up where the anti-industrialisation Luddites left off in the nineteenth century.  While Luddites believed that defending workers’ rights required a ban on the automation of work, the bioLuddites believe genetic engineering and human enhancement technologies cannot be used safely, and must be banned…

The emerging “biopolitical” polarisation between bioLuddites and transhumanists will define twenty-first century politics…

People will be happiest when they individually and collectively exercise rational control of the social and natural forces that affect their lives.  The promise of technological liberation, however, is best achieved in the context of a social democratic society committed to liberty, equality, and solidarity…

Boing Boing author Cory Doctorow makes some good points in his review of “Citizen Cyborg”:

I’ve just finished a review copy of James Hughes’s “Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future.” I was skeptical when this one arrived, since I’ve read any number of utopian wanks on the future of humanity and the inevitable withering away of the state into utopian anarchism fueled by the triumph of superior technology over inferior laws.

But Hughes’s work is much subtler and more nuanced than that, and was genuinely surprising, engaging and engrossing…

Hughes’s remarkable achievement in “Citizen Cyborg” is the fusion of social democratic ideals of tempered, reasoned state intervention to promote equality of opportunity with the ideal of self-determination inherent in transhumanism. Transhumanism, Hughes convincingly argues, is the sequel to humanism, and to feminism, to the movements for racial and gender equality, for the fight for queer and transgender rights — if you support the right to determine what consenting adults can do with their bodies in the bedroom, why not in the operating theatre?

Much of this book is taken up with scathing rebuttal to the enemies of transhumanism — Christian lifestyle conservatives who’ve fought against abortion, stem-cell research and gay marriage; as well as deep ecologist/secular lefty intelligentsia who fear the commodification of human life. He dismisses the former as superstitious religious thugs who, a few generations back, would happily decry the “unnatural” sin of miscegenation; to the latter, he says, “You are willing to solve the problems of labor-automation with laws that ensure a fair shake for working people — why not afford the same chance to life-improving techno-medicine?”

The humanist transhuman is a political stance I’d never imagined, but having read “Citizen Cyborg,” it seems obvious and natural. Like a lot of basically lefty geeks, I’ve often felt like many of my ideals were at odds with both the traditional left and the largely right-wing libertarians. “Citizen Cyborg” squares the circle, suggest a middle-path between them that stands foursquare for the improvement of the human condition through technology but is likewise not squeamish about advocating for rules, laws and systems that extend a fair opportunity to those less fortunate…

The transformation of politics Hughes envisions is from a two-dimensional classification to a three-dimensional classification.

The first two dimensions are “Economic politics” and “Cultural politics”, with a spectrum (in each case) from conservative to progressive.

The new dimension, which will become increasingly significant, is “Biopolitics”.  Hughes uses the label “bioLuddism” for the conservative end of this spectrum, and “Transhumanism” for the progressive end.

The resulting cube has eight vertices, which include both “Left bioLuddism” and “Right bioLuddism”, as well as both “Libertarian transhumanism” and “Democratic transhumanism”.

Interestingly, the ramp-up of political debate in the United Kingdom, ahead of the parliamentary election that will take place some time before summer, has served as a reminder that the “old” political divisions seem inadequate to deal with the challenges of the current day.  It’s harder to discern significant real differences between the major parties.  I still don’t have any strong views as to which party I should vote for.  My guess is that each of the major parties will contain a split of views regarding the importance of enhancement technologies.

I’ll give the final words to James Hughes – from the start of Chapter 7 in his book:

The most important disagreement between bioLuddites and transhumanists is over who we should grant citizenship, with all its rights and protections.  BioLuddites advocate “human-racism”, that citizenship and rights have something to do with simply having a human genome.  Transhumanists… believe citizenship should be based on “personhood”, having feelings and consciousness.  The struggle to replace human-racism with personhood can be found at the beginnings and ends of life, and at the imaginary lines between humans and animals, and between humans and posthumans.  Because they have not adopted the personhood view, the human-racists are disturbed by lives that straddle the imaginary human/non-human line.  But technological advances at each of these margins will force our society in the coming decades to complete the trajectory of 400 years of liberal democracy and choose “cyborg citizenship”.

16 December 2009

What’s in a name – pirate?

Filed under: Intellectual property, brand, democracy, openness, piracy — David Wood @ 7:24 pm

I’ve been taking a look at the website for the UK Pirate Party.

There’s quite a lot there which strikes a chord with me.  Here are some extracts:

The world is changing. The Pirate Party understands that the law needs to change to match the realities of life in the 21st century…

Reform copyright and patent law. We want to … reduce the excessive length of copyright protection… We want a patent system that doesn’t stifle innovation or make life saving drugs so expensive that patients die…

Ensure that everyone has real freedom of speech and real freedom to enjoy and participate in our shared culture…

The internet has turned our world into a global village.  Ideas can be shared at incredible speed, and at negligible cost.  The benefits are plain to see, but as a result, many vested interests are threatened.  The old guard works hard to preserve their power and their privilege, so we must work hard for our freedom.  The Pirate Party offers an alternative to the last century’s struggles between political left and political right.  We are open to anyone and everyone who wants to live in a fair and open society…

The Pirate Party UK offers a new way to tackle society’s problems, by releasing the potential of ideas, at the expense of corporate monopolies and the interests of a controlling state…

I ask myself: should I sign up to support this party – hoping to help it break the mould in UK politics?

I’m tempted.  But three things hold me back.

First, there are others items listed as priorities on the Pirate Party website, which seem much less important to me.  For example, I’m sympathetic to looking at the ideas “to legalise non-commercial file sharing”, but that hardly seems a black-and-white “no-brainer” deserving lots of my attention.  It’s not a principle I would nail to the mast.

Second, I wince at the description on the website of “the corrupt MPs who hold our nation’s cultural treasures to ransom, ignore our democratic wishes and undermine our civil liberties”.  I think this paints altogether too negative a view of existing UK politicians.  I’d rather find ways to collaborate with these existing MPs, rather than to out them and oppose them as “corrupt”.

Third, I’m thoroughly unesasy with the name “Pirate”.  This word has connotations which I think will prevent the party from “crossing the chasm” to gaining sufficient mainstream support.  Names are important.  If the party were called something like “The open party” rather than “The pirate party”, I suspect I (and many others) would be quicker to offer encouragement.

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