From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Thu Oct 17 2002 - 16:34:54 MDT
On Thu, Oct 17, 2002 at 01:55:08PM +0200, Eugen Leitl wrote:
> On Thu, 17 Oct 2002, Anders Sandberg wrote:
>
> > This is just a first step, and doesn't show any causation of course.
> > Maybe high tech environments make societies more individualistic and
> > less hierarchical, maybe collectivist and hierarchical environments
> > seldom innovate or adopt new technology, or there are deeper factors
> > affecting both (or a combination of all).
> >
> > If technology tends to drive societies towards centralisation, then
>
> You're addressing a far stronger claim, and one which I didn't made.
> Global trends in urbanization alone would seem to confirm it, though. It
> would be interesting if you can ferret out more data confirming or denying
> it. Bring on the good stuff!
Yes, I suspected I had overestimated your claim. But as you say, it is
interesting and important nevertheless.
When I think about centralization of societies I don't really think
urbanisation matters. It is more about power: does a smaller group get
more influence and/or control over a larger group? In the "standard
model" of how things are many people share (to a large extent based on
second- and third-hand marxist theory) the answer is seen as a fairly
clear yes (usually phrased as "the rich get richer, the poor get
poorer"). This is usually based on the assumption that the power elite
runs everything for its benefit, so hence technology (and anything else
happening) must be controlled in such a manner as to mainly benefit the
elite (at least a marxist would have a dialectic answer).
But is this true? The simplistic (conspiracy) view doesn't hold. And I
doubt even more subtle models. Looking at Gini indices of different
nations doesn't show any strong correlation between income disparity
(which I distrust as a measure of power, but I have the numbers handy)
and level of technology / time as a technological society - there are a
bunch of high tech low-Gini societies like Denmark, Japan and Sweden and
the most unequal high-tech society (the US) has 31 more low-tech
societies with higher Gini indices. Overall, the correlation seems to be
negative: low-tech societies seem to have greater levels of income
disparity than high-tech societies.
This shouldn't be surprising, since it is a kind of syndrome of mutually
reinforcing factors: high disparity, high power distance breeds
corruption and discourages change which in turn reinforces existing
structures. Individualism and a fairly open society allows invention and
change, helping people get richer and more comfortable, which in turn
makes them more interested in other matters than just staying alive -
including politicsn and self-determination. There are still plenty of
cases that are different (like former eastern Europe), showing that the
interactions between culture, wealth, politics and tech are hardly
simple. But there seem to be an overall trend.
> I was addressing merely the fact that technology advances alone allow for
> a much closer tracking of what is happening elsewhere, selectively
> empowering these who are in possesson of that information. The value of
> the network, or of a database is a function of its size.
As I have argued elsewhere, databases doesn't increase their value in
the same nonlinear way as networks as they are extended. But generally
speaking, technology amplifies power. Hence it makes people with power
more powerful, especially if the technology is mainly used by them or
cannot be usefully used by others.
> I'm arguing that the awareness that technology drives power assymetry is
> not widespread, and hence results in no palpable counterpressure in the
> legal domain. Since a lot of these developments are irreversible we should
> be pushing this information into the (unfortunately largely aphathetic)
> public. I really don't care much for the way Emergents solve problems.
This is a very good point. Maybe we should institute "adopt a
lawyer/politician/pundit". Each of us should try to find such a figure,
and start giving them briefings on relevant issues and subjects. I have
watched with amazement (and pride) how a law student friend of mine have
taken to linux, open source, freedom of the net and cryptography after
being given some explanations. Imagine this happening all over the
place.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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