[p2p-research] gotta read this (money vs. informational aid)

[Paul D. Fernhout]

Here are some comments on charitable monetary giving (at the start), as well 
as informational p2p giving (at the end).

=== Charitable monetary giving

A lot of charitable giving in the USA is related to supporting churches, 
which in the USA are IMHO basically private social clubs for locals (even if 
they have a small fraction of their budget that may go to other worthy 
causes, and even if in theory anyone can join). I'm not saying they are not 
good things to have, of course; well, at least some of them. :-)

To pick on one group I've been an informal member of and donated to: :-)
   "Shame on UU"
   http://www.left-bank.org/antiuu/
From:
   "The Joys And Concerns Of Nominal UU" by Kathy Hamill
   http://www.left-bank.org/antiuu/joy_concern.htm
"[Examining the goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for 
all:] I came to the UUs in the 60s as a pacifist. Pacifism has remained the 
foundation for my ethics and my preferences, if those two things are 
different. (I don't think they are.) I continued to self-invent as an 
anarchist and a career advocate for those who are least likely to be deemed 
"worthy" of justice -- indigent, often personally offensive, or simply 
dangerous, criminals. Thus, peace, liberty and justice for all are 
conditions precedent to any concept of community, in my view. World 
community is a fine goal; however, I think it puts the cart way ahead of the 
horse. The inclusion of this principle makes conspicuous the absence of a 
like principle naming the goal of strong, loving, local community possessed 
of those traits, as well as a myriad of others. People who cannot 
find/invent successful, universally enriching local community are not 
particularly likely to advance the goal of world community."

Still, even the conservative Catholics get the idea of a "basic income": :-)
   "The Social Credit proposals explained in 10 lessons; Lesson 1: The end 
of economics: To make goods join those who need them"
  http://www.michaeljournal.org/lesson1.htm

So, it's hard to paint religions with a broad brush, even if one may wrestle 
with various dogmas. I think people in the USA sincerely give that money 
thinking they are helping support community and good deeds. (Well, 
face-to-face social pressure is part of it too. :-)

Nonetheless, from:
   http://www.charitablechoices.org/chargive.asp
"""
Americans give a lot to charity: $260.3 billion in 2005, a $15 billion 
increase over 2004.  This is a 6.1% increase over 2004, though it is only a 
2.7% increase if you consider the impact of inflation.  ...
   Individuals give away most of this money: $199 billion in 2005, or 76.5% 
of all giving.  Giving by individuals went up 6.4% before inflation. 
Bequests -- giving by individuals who have died -- added up to another 
$17.44 billion.
   A large part of individual giving goes to religious organizations, which 
received $93.2 billion in 2005.
   Foundations gave away $30 billion in 2005, or 11.5% of all giving.  This 
is a 5.6% increase.  The Foundation Center attributes this increase to a 
growth in the number of foundations and the rise in the stock market in 2004.
   Corporations greatly increased their giving in 2005, up 22.5%, to $13.77 
billion.  This increase in part reflects corporate donations of money and 
products in response to the natural disasters
"""

So, close to half of individual charitable giving in the USA, or about a 
third the total, goes to these private social clubs (paying a minister's 
salary, keeping roofs in good repair, paying utility bills) but is labeled 
"charity". It stretches the notion of charity IHMO, even if some of it 
clearly is charitable. But maybe that is just me. :-)

As Joan Roelofs suggests, much of the foundation aid is tied to a capitalist 
and imperial agenda:
   "The NED, NGOs and the Imperial Uses of Philanthropy: Why They Hate Our 
Kind Hearts, Too"
   http://www.counterpunch.org/roelofs05132006.html

As Noam Chomsky suggests, the people who run most philanthropies (most with 
roots in academia) are steeped in mainstream assumptions:
   http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199710--.htm
"People within them, who don’t adjust to that structure, who don’t accept it 
and internalize it (you can’t really work with it unless you internalize it, 
and believe it); people who don’t do that are likely to be weeded out along 
the way, starting from kindergarten, all the way up."

And G. William Domhoff suggest the same:
"""
Q:  Do they rule secretly from behind the scenes, as a conspiracy?
A:  No, conspiracy theories are wrong, though it's true that some corporate 
leaders lie and steal, and that some government officials try to keep things 
secret (but usually fail).
    http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/theory/conspiracy.html
Q:  Then how do they rule?
A:  That's a complicated story, but the short answer is through open and 
direct involvement in policy planning, through participation in political 
campaigns and elections, and through appointments to key decision-making 
positions in government. [And foundations.]
"""

Still, I think that is shifting. More and more people in foundations, for 
example, are sensing something is changing. An increasing interest in social 
media is one example. Just recently my wife was contacted by someone in a 
foundation in relation to her Rakontu project who said that their foundation 
had been using social media infrastructure for many years now to help 
others, and they were starting to think, maybe they should invest directly 
in it instead of just take the infrastructure for granted? :-) Just one 
datapoint, but a hopeful one, that investing in free and open source 
software is getting on the radar screen of some foundations (even the US NSF).
http://www.pdfernhout.net/open-letter-to-grantmakers-and-donors-on-copyright-policy.html

And maybe someday, there will be more money for more physical community 
centers, bigger libraries, and so on.

It's a terribly slow process for foundations to shift some of their giving 
towards open infrastructure (by "internet time" standards :-), but it seems 
to be slowly happening.

Related:
"Slashdot | Is Open Source the Answer To Giving?"
   http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/20/1313223
"Mark Surman, Shuttleworth Foundation fellow, writes that open source is the
answer to philanthropy's $55 trillion question: how to spend the money
expected to flow into foundations over the next 25 years. While others have
lashed out at 'Philanthro-Capitalism' — claiming that the charitable giving
of Gates and others simply extends power in the market to power over society
— Surman believes that open source shows the way to the harmonious yin-yang
of business and not-for-profit. Sun, Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, Yahoo, and
Facebook are big backers of Creative Commons; Mozilla has spawned two
for-profits. Open source shows that philanthropy and business can cohabit
and mutually thrive. Indeed, philanthropy might learn from open source to
find new ways to organize itself for spending that $55 trillion."

On religious aid through schools, in the USA we are told by the mainstream 
media get all upset that the Taliban or other fundamentalist groups run 
schools for kids (including meals) where other indoctrination supposedly 
happens, but then we ignore how both religious schools and secular schools 
is the USA both tend to indoctrinate kids to accept capitalism and 
militarism. See, for example:
"Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey through the Dark 
World of Compulsory Schooling" by John Taylor Gatto
http://www.amazon.com/Weapons-Mass-Instruction-Schoolteachers-Compulsory/dp/0865716315

Also, on foreign aid, a bunch of of US foreign aid goes to Israel (always 
the top recipient it seems) and then a few other countries of the day of 
military intervention. Factor out the military or corruption related aid, 
and the rest is not that much general foreign aid for things like disaster 
relief efforts or infrastructure building and so on (as a percentage of GDP, 
low as it is relatively). And even the aid that does go through for that is 
generally to buy US American products to do something.

From:
"Who Gets U.S. Foreign Aid"
http://www.parade.com/news/intelligence-report/archive/who-gets-us-foreign-aid.html
"""
The U.S. will give an estimated $26 billion in foreign aid in 2008—70% more 
than when President George W. Bush took office (the figure doesn’t include 
funds related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan). More than 150 countries 
get financial assistance from the U.S. Here are the six that received the 
most this year.
   COUNTRY 	AID 	PURPOSE
1. Israel 	$2.4 billion 	Virtually all of this money is used to buy weapons 
(up to 75% made in the U.S.). Beginning in 2009, the U.S. plans to give $30 
billion over 10 years.
2. Egypt 	$1.7 billion 	$1.3 billion to buy weapons; $103 million for 
education; $74 million for health care; $45 million to promote civic 
participation and human rights.
3. Pakistan 	$798 million 	$330 million for security efforts, including 
military-equipment upgrades and border security; $20 million for infrastructure.
4. Jordan 	$688 million 	$326 million to fight terrorism and promote 
regional stability through equipment upgrades and training; $163 million 
cash payment to the Jordanian government.
5. Kenya 	$586 million 	$501 million to fight HIV/AIDS through drug 
treatment and abstinence education and to combat malaria; $15 million for 
agricultural development; $5.4 million for programs that promote government 
accountability.
6. South Africa 	$574 million 	$557 million to fight TB and HIV/AIDS; $3 
million for education.
"""

That's about half the money "aid" there. The first four are mostly all 
military. Look at even the last, for example, with AIDs drugs, so, probably 
most of that is to buy US American products. Why else would only a tiny 
fraction go to "education"? Of other countries, often spending is related to 
the drug war which is tearing various countries apart.

The USA is spending about five trillion US$ total on the wars in Iraq and 
Afghanistan (current estimates in total costs long term). Think about how 
much more secure the USA would be if that money had been allocated to truly 
worthwhile charitable aid instead, compared to only US$26 billion a year on 
"aid", most of that to facilitate weapons sales.

Maybe if more charitable dollars went to open community things instead of 
creed-based centers, there might be a bigger community center for my own 
town based on charity (rather than a dozen small churches mostly only used 
on Sundays)? Well, there is a a bit of a small community center paid for by 
tax dollars, left over when the town built a new town hall. For a small 
town, it's actually quite nice. My wife wanted to have a group there for 
parents with young kids, but the Seniors had it mostly booked up. At least 
during the day, the seniors have taken this one small free-to-the-user 
center over for their free-to-the-user lunches where they get to complain 
about how they want to keep their free-to-the-user medical care unchanged 
and how they don't want their children and grandchildren to have the same 
free-to-the-user medical care because it is scary economically for the 
seniors to think about change. :-( Essentially, the community center during 
the day is the place where the USA's old eat the USA's young. :-( Not that I 
don't want seniors to have free lunches or free medical care or free 
discussions or a free place to do that -- it's just that they are the only 
ones who get that where I live in the USA (plus some children do, too). 
Sadly, I feel the seniors in the USA are part of running the place into the 
ground, especially as they are most attached to increasing out-of-date 
ideology of scarcity. Still, who built the bridges? Who built the roads? Who 
built the hospitals? Those were built by people who are now seniors. So, it 
is an issue with the way US social benefits (and charity) are structured, 
because all these social benefit schemes in the USA were set up as pyramid 
schemes, not investments. Individually, most seniors have made big 
contributions.

But, as I read somewhere, and actually about Europe more than the USA,
   "The Lost Youth of Europe"
   http://www.newsweek.com/id/36470
we now have built a society where the seniors act like footloose teenagers, 
and the teenagers have a huge weary burden of dread, school-prison, and work 
ahead of them. So, that is another aspect of why the USA is being talked 
about in the "past tense". I'd suspect it will spread to Europe too.

In today's news, perhaps partially as a response to running out of tear gas 
during last years riots by Greek youths:
   "Greeks Vote Socialists Into Power"
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125463553190862261.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories
"Greece's opposition Socialists won national elections on Sunday as voters 
rejected the incumbent center-right party that had been tarred by scandals 
and unpopular economic policies during its five and a half years in office. 
... To tackle an unemployment rate of 9% and what is expected to be Greece's 
first recession in 15 years, Pasok has vowed to pursue a €3 billion ($4.4 
billion) stimulus program. It has pledged to raise taxes on the wealthy and 
clean up endemic corruption in the public sector. The incumbents had 
promised an austerity program to cut the government deficit -- forecast at 
between 6% and 8% of gross domestic product this year, far above the 
European-Union mandated level -- and that they would continue to liberalize 
Greece's heavily regulated economy."

Hey, maybe Greece will soon be ready for this idea? :-)
"Getting Greece and Iceland to be 99% self-sufficient by mass; international 
consortium"
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/b918d271f9bb701d?hl=en
"""
Now, does this make any sense if you understand the possibilities of open
manufacturing or an open society? In Greece you have a warm climate, access
to oceans, lots of sun and wind, an educated populace with a 2000+ year
history of democracy (on and off :-), no obvious external enemies declaring
war, and so on. And they are so worried about their future ability to make
and use things (which is how I translate "fears for Greece's economic
future") that they are running out of tear gas? This all makes no *physical*
sense. The place should be a paradise. Instead it is in "self-destruct mode"
according to one editor. It must be *ideology*. Or, more correctly, ideology
*embodied* in a certain type of productive infrastructure. ...
  Anyway, this suggests one target of open manufacturing could be a community
of size ranging from Iceland (about 300,000 people) to Greece (about
11,000,000 people). That's certainly an interesting size range. I would
think 99% closure of those economies by mass should be easily doable.
Computer chips, some medicines, and maybe some other specialized components
might be the major imports after the system was set up. Note that while one
may not expect Greece or Iceland to "self-replicate" any time soon, the
ability do do so ensures it can be self-repairing.
   Anyway, it kind of comes down to how much economic security is worth to a
country compared to minimum effort. Given the massive youth unemployment in
Greece, and the economic fears of depending on a global economy, it would
seem like maximizing productive efficiency through participating in global
production would not be at the top of their priority list now that they are
out of tear gas. Unfortunately, they did not invest in this research ten
years ago. So, this is only theoretical at this point. It might take a very
expensive crash program to bring together thousands of researchers for a
year to make headway in any time that might make a difference. Still,
politically, that is an out for Greece. We could all move there, recruit all
the educated youths off the streets, and spend a year figuring out how to
make Greece work for everybody and be 99% self-sufficient by mass. :-) But,
no need to move with the internet really. Maybe somebody on the list could
coordinate moving the rioters off the streets and into internet cafes and
start them programming and tagging designs with metadata? Anyway, with the
right kind of enthusiasm, I bet someone who was in Greece could turn this
whole thing around, recasting the Greek rioters as the potential people who
would save the planet by implementing open manufacturing and
cradle-to-cradle design.
"""

Note: I don't think socialist have all the answers. As Jacque Fresco 
suggests, it takes scientists and engineers (not politicians) to build a 
physical infrastructure that works for everyone. We'll only see progress of 
socialists fund an alternative infrastructure (and R&D into that). But that 
is where I disagree with Jacque Fresco. I can hope, eventually, some 
politicians will do just that -- fund the future. But, until then, 
volunteers lay the ground work. And at some point, perhaps, that groundwork 
will become the politics.

Which brings me to my next point.

=== Information p2p giving

But it is hard to get information out, outside the internet. About year ago, 
I  bought a dozen copies of James P. Hogan's "Voyage from Yesteryear" to 
give away (and also a bunch of DVDs two years ago about the Albany Free 
School). Who do I give them to? If I leave them in a hotel room (one 
thought, on a recent trip) they will just get thrown away (even though each 
hotel room has a Gideon bible). (My wife would not let me leave one with a 
tip to the cleaning person. :-) If I try to hand them out on street corners, 
people will probably ignore them or think I am crazy. The families of 
relatives where kids need most to hear that message will be most angry about 
their kids getting it. And so on. And get someone in Congress to read that 
book or watch that video? Forget about it -- there are all sorts of layers 
to buffer or turn back any information that does not fit into a fund-raising 
model. You probably can't even send a package to anyone in Congress anymore 
anyhow for security reasons.

What we have is an information processing dysfunction in our society. It's 
hard to see how to fix that with money, outside the internet. It does not 
feel as weird to have a web site or send email as to be giving out 
free-to-the-user copies of James P. Hogan books. :-)

But, each little bit added stigmergically to the World Wide Web is slowly 
increasing the temperature of our society, until one day, as a phase change, 
perhaps the frozen icy wastes of government and foundation spending will 
turn fluid as the collective social temperature finally goes above zero 
degrees Celcius and money will start going to real change to bring real 
abundance to most real people (accepting that most new ideas are flops, so 
success comes from funding lots of ventures, or lots of people. :-)

So, then we will see more charitable spending on community (outside of 
churches with creedal tests), or we'll see more spending on more types of 
social media or more spending on new types of physical infrastructure.

There is only about twenty staff members for this "Sustainable and Lifecycle
Information-based Manufacturing" project at NIST? It should have twenty 
thousand staff members. Maybe even twenty million. :-) From:
   http://www.mel.nist.gov/programs/slim.htm
"17.75 Total FTEs ... The United States needs to prepare for a future where 
products are 100% recyclable, manufacturing itself has a zero net impact on 
the environment, and complete disassembly and disposal of a product at its 
end of life is routine"

So, basically, this is the research plan I proposed for a consortium with 
Greece and Iceland. :-)

If the USA hired twenty *million* staff members for that NIST program, :-) 
assuming about US$100K per staff, that would only cost about US$2 trillion a 
year for NIST -- to increase the staff levels on that project to closer to 
what I'd like to see. :-) About a third of that US$2 trillion a year could 
come from the costs saved in medical care related to pollution and cancer. 
Another third could come from costs saved on the US military otherwise spent 
for defending oil supplies and mineral supplies. Another third can come from 
reducing Medicare/Medicaid costs by cheaper medical device manufacturing. 
So, essentially, putting twenty million people to work in the USA right now 
on that NIST project would pay for itself. As with the free electric cars, 
it might even *lower* taxes. :-)
"Why luxury safer electric cars should be free-to-the-user"
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/09eb7f4c973349f2

Instead, we have eight million unemployed in the USA (many more 
underemployed), and medical costs projected to double over the next decade, 
and a military that continues to grow each year to "defend" the USA against 
all sorts of threats related to perceived resource scarcity. I presume, 
unlike Greece, the USA would not run out of tear gas though? :-( Or vote in 
socialists? :-) Still, in miniature, that NIST R&D program is what the 
greens/socialists really need, just scaled up a million times. :-)

(Still can't resolve why my emails to NIST get bounced by the NIST email 
server. I might not mind being one of those 17.75 people, if that's the best 
I can hope for in the USA. But maybe better to give those slots to others. :-)

Still, if one considers "aid" as new ideas or innovations, than it is true, 
as Ryan suggests that the USA (and capitalism) has been aiding the rest of 
the world. As have places like Finland with Linux, or other Europeans with 
the World Wide Web (WWW) idea.
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web
Or, even the Soviets with "phage therapy" which may yet prove decisive in 
dealing with the supergerms capitalism has bred in part as an external cost 
of overuse of antibiotics in animal feed:
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy
   http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL9910/S00096.htm

Though to be fair, many in the USA had related ideas to the WWW (even me 
with the Pointrel system :-); big US names are Douglas Engelbart (Augment), 
William C. Norris (Plato), Alan Kay (Smalltalk), Ted Nelson (Xanadu), 
Theodore Sturgeon ("The Skills of Xanadu" story inspiring Ted Nelson), 
Vannevar Bush (Memex, which inspired much of the rest).
   http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/194507/bush
In every single case, fairly trivial financial issues got in the way, often 
related to commercialization attempts (I still grieve over what was done to 
Smalltalk by Parc Place Systems). The WWW came out of grant funded research 
(and spare time activities) is Geneva, Switzerland at CERN.

I wrote about finding funding for a Star Trek society in this linked essay 
(now that I know more about our society then back then. :-)
   http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/AchievingAStarTrekSociety.html

Still, Gene Roddenberry, a US American, has inspired billions with the Star 
Trek society ideas. So, I'm just building on his great vision. As are many 
others. And the fact is, the USA has been a "shining beacon" of hope for 
decades if not centuries in the *past* as far as freedom. People like Thomas 
Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin were amazing inspirations, and still are 
(ignoring Jefferson had slaves and Franklin spent his later years in 
Europe.) But, as financial prospectuses always disclaim: "Past performance 
is no promise of future rewards". Thus, the issue the Counterpunch article 
of US America in the "past tense".

I see these "Star Trek" society ideas are building traction. The following 
linked post is not by me, and the "Paul" posting comments there is not me 
either:
"A Utopian Star Trek Society – Making Economics Redundant"
http://cow.neondragon.net/index.php/a-utopian-star-trek-society-making-economics-redundant

A comment there by that other Paul: "Also, our ram & hd space is getting 
bigger & bigger space in smaller smaller packages.."

Which reminds me of something I wanted to post on; I was just at a store 
where I saw a 4GB USB flash drive for only US$10, *and* it came with a free 
copy of an encyclopedia on it. :-) I saw it in red, but here it is in blue:
http://www.target.com/gp/detail.html/192-5325061-1683311?ASIN=B002JTQ95A
"Dane-Elec 4GB Britannica Family Encyclopedia USB - Blue ... $9.99
Encyclopedia Britannica Family Encyclopedia USB is the perfect reference 
tool for the entire family. From arts and literature to sports, geography 
and politics, the Family Encyclopedia covers the most fascinating topics. 
Features 25,000 articles, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary and 
Merriam-Webster’s Spanish-English Translation Dictionary. Britannica Family 
Encyclopedia and a serial number come preloaded on USB drive."

Now, I prefer Wikipedia. :-)

But the point is, computer technology and basic information continues to 
reduce in cost to the point where it is becoming effectively free. My wife 
and I spent about US$1000 for a 1GB hard drive about fifteen years ago or 
so. I spent about the same for 80MB drive ten years before that. And I paid 
about US$1300 for a Commodore dual floppy drive system of about 300K bytes 
each about ten years before that. (All figures are in the dollars of the 
time, so adjusted for inflation, they would be double or triple now.) And 
back then, you had to pay money for a paper encyclopedia or a paper 
dictionary (although WordNet was around even then, but people did not know 
of it, and slower networks made it hard to get). And when you had your paper 
encyclopedia, you could not easily change it or share it or comment on it, 
both for licensing reasons and for practical reasons. Some people did 
comment and revise encyclopedia entries, but they were professionals in 
offices with secretaries and expensive equipment at universities and so on 
-- they were not potentially anybody. (Wikipedia may now have growing pains, 
but the general concept is broader than that.)

So, in those terms, Wikipedia and similar p2p ventures, due to cheaper 
computing and cheaper faster networks and an expanding p2p ethos, are 
immense amounts of "aid" to other societies. So, we should not discount the 
"aid" value of P2P even though it is "free" to the user. How much would it 
have cost fifty years ago to deliver all the informational aid that the 
internet and p2p efforts is delivering essentially for free to the user?

Still, peers need to eat, and so peers either need grants to do it as a full 
time "job", or an unrelated income to do it as a "hobby" in spare time, or 
the need an open-ended job to do it as "outreach" or some other aspect of a 
good job (like Google's 20% of self-directed time). There is a collision 
here between the free-to-the-user digital world and the pay-as-you-go 
material world.

The question is, at what point will this whole society turn inside out, 
where the free-to-the-user idea swamps the pay-as-you-go material world, to 
make the material world mostly free-to-the-user too?

Well, that's part of what "open manufacturing" is about, whether the list 
Nathan started as a spinoff of the p2p list:
   http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing
or many other similar efforts (even back to Bucky Fuller and his 
Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science with roots in the 1920s). As a 
trend, open information and the effect on abundance even goes all the way 
back to the first time the ancestors of Native Americans figured out how to 
draw a "Standing Bear" on a cave wall so they could educate the young about 
bear management (from the written down oral history in "The Walking People").

What I hope, is that at some point we will see this change, where the ideas 
and institutions of a abundance-oriented World Wide Web just surpass the 
ideas and institutions of a scarcity-oriented manufacturing ethos. I don't 
know when though. The idea of 3D printing seems to put a maximum time for 
this change though, of maybe (guessing) twenty years until 3D printing puts 
an end to most supply chains. The question is, will the other p2p social 
changes take place before, during, or after this transition to how we make 
most things? Although, robotics and AI also seem to be coming to a "head" in 
that time frame too (a joke on these systems developing many human-like 
attributes and replacing the need for most human labor even in commercial 
services).

So, those other trends would put the capitalistic USA as "past tense" anyway 
within about twenty years. A trend I, and others, have predicted in the past 
(this was from about ten years ago):
   "[unrev-II] Singularity in twenty to forty years?"
   http://www.dougengelbart.org/colloquium/forum/discussion/0126.html
"""
Below are six "explosive" technology trends that all appear to
culminate in around twenty years. Even if some of them don't pan
out, the others will revolutionize our world (for good or bad).
I also list later four OHS/DKR projects related to coping with these
trends.
   These are the technological trends that I think have a high chance of
coming to pass in twenty years (or so):
* Infotech -- Twenty years to $1000 human AI equivalent (1 billion MIPS)
   Source: http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/book98/fig.ch3/p060.html
* Robotech -- Twenty years to advanced macroscopic manipulators (human-
               like, strong, mobile, low power) for $1000
   Source: My general understanding of this field; this is similar to
           what is explained in Hans Moravec's book "Robot"
* Powertech -- Twenty years to widespread fuel cells, PV, wind,
                microturbines, etc.
   Source: My general reading in this area, like my previous post
           on energy issues. For example of what might be around the
           corner:
             http://www.io.com/~frg/
             http://www.borealis.com/power/index.htm
* Nanotech -- Twenty years to a first microscopic universal assembler
   Source: Drexler, etc. http://www.foresight.org/
* Biotech -- Twenty years to mastery of many human DNA mysteries
   Source: The human genome project is finishing soon and more
           rapid advances are expected.
* Commtech -- Twenty years to ubiquitous cheap wireless communications
   Source: This is already happening now with cell phones, but
           needs time to percolate throughout the world.
Intersections may happen sooner: power chips, DNA computers, bio chips.
   Of course, there is also what this colloquium is about -- Collabtech!
Collabtech arises from these other trends, although perhaps it is best
considered as a separate trend. I especially liked Ron Goldman's pointer
to the Chaordic Alliance http://www.chaordic.org/ founded by Dee Hock.
Collabtech such as developed and promoted by the Chaordic Alliance or
the Bootstrap Institute http://www.bootstrap.org may provide the most
hope for dealing with these other trends and the changes they bring.
"""

I've been off on some that have moved faster (wireless) and some that have 
moved slower (nanotech). But, I'd be happy to repost that exactly as is but 
titled "Singularity in ten to thirty years" and think it was more or less 
still true. :-)

Still, one can quibble about whether that is all "good aid" or "bad aid". 
:-) I think part of the good or bad aspect will emerge from the economic and 
social paradigms that surround the continued development of this technology. 
And, unfortunately, that does not look that good, as long as R&D is chained 
to a landscape revolving around competition and warfare. We need R&D 
emerging out of joy, abundance, laughter, and sharing. That's what I find so 
interesting about, say, Willow Garage, or any other research labe that is 
linked to charitable dollars and developing stuff in an open source way.
   http://www.willowgarage.com/

I have a lot more hope for those groups to produce good stuff. But there are 
so few of them -- so few foundations that invest in fundamental 
infrastructure (which is risky and long term) instead of services (which are 
obvious and really can help people right away).

Same as I have more hope for the P2P Foundation to produce good stuff than 
some big computer company like Microsoft, if it had the same R&D budget, 
which is does not, sadly, despite my pointing out literally about a trillion 
dollars US in waste annually that should go to the P2P foundation instead. 
:-) But, pointing out stuff is not enough, apparently.

Google Wave is maybe in the middle there. :-) But they still miss stuff I 
consider important (previously listed).
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-October/004949.html
"""
One is a semantic focus, so you are exchanging webs of linked information
(so, more like RDF).
Another is a layering ability, so you can overlay your own links on top of
public links.
Another is a p2p distributed aspect, like email.
Another is a transactional paradigm.
Another is easy replication and redistribution of content (especially entire
repositories).
Another is desktop applications to work with all this, and maybe publish
summaries to web pages as desired.
"""

Sometimes, when you want something done right, you need to do it yourself. :-)

Except that idea kind of breaks down in a p2p setting. :-)

And I wrote another email instead of code again. :-)

--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/

Michel Bauwens wrote:
> I was not implying that Europe was much better .. though I would gather that
> some scandinavian countries are ahead of the game. Most foreign aid comes
> with strings attached, i.e. obligations to buy goods and services from the
> donor country.
> 
> You are right of course about the tradition of private charitable giving in
> the US, which is quite strong, and likely stronger than in most european
> countries ..
> 
> Michel
> 
> On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 1:16 PM, Edward Miller <embraceunity at gmail.com>wrote:
> 
>> Quantitatively speaking, since the US is the largest national economy, it
>> shouldn't be surprising that the US also provides the greatest foreign aid
>> contributions.
>>
>> Qualitatively, the US government doesn't give away as big of a percentage
>> of their GDP as other governments. However, the government, in effect,
>> subsidizes public charity by making it tax deductible. The US's private
>> contributions should put the US on comparable footing to other nations in
>> foreign aid. The Europeans give about 1% of GDP, from what I have seen. I
>> actually think the idea that Europeans are oh so compassionate and
>> cosmopolitan is a sort of myth-making as well... not that these are even
>> good measures of compassion.
>>
>> There are at least two dark sides to this. First, foreign aid distributed
>> by the government is often little more than bribery to corrupt dictators.
>> This was especially true during the Cold War.
>>
>> Second, foreign aid from the private sector is often given with religious
>> fundamentalist strings attached. Want some bibles with your soup, little
>> african boy? Haha, just kidding, you don't have a choice in the matter. The
>> fact that this stuff is subsidized by the tax system is not, in my mind,
>> necessarily a good thing.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 12:44 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> thanks to Ryan, Paul, and Edward, I have read your contributions with
>>> great interest ...
>>>
>>> As a european I'm only piqued by the claim that the US gives most foreign
>>> aid ... it's actually one of the lowest (relatively speaking) of the western
>>> world ... I'll have to look it up though
>>>
>>> and the other thing, that the US pioneered the social welfare net? hmmm we
>>> had paid holidays since the thirties in france ... again, I want to check
>>> that, seems like US myth-making of being the best in the world ..<g>
>>>
>>>
>>> Michel
>>>
>>>   On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 8:50 AM, Edward Miller <embraceunity at gmail.com>wrote:
>>>
>>>>  Michel,
>>>>
>>>> While I would agree with Ryan's general take on the matter, namely, his
>>>> disappointment with the apparent schizophrenia of the US, which has been the
>>>> primary driver for technological, social, and economic innovation for most
>>>> of the past century. However, I do have some differences other certain
>>>> points.
>>>>
>>>> First, I would disagree that the US is different on a state-by-state
>>>> basis. The world is a much smaller place because of communications
>>>> technology and in my extensive travels around the US, including such out of
>>>> the way places as Alaska, the striking thing I have noticed is the
>>>> homogeneity of our daily life. The cultural differences are mainly
>>>> superficial. Alaska might use snowmobiles to use McDonald's drive thru, but
>>>> that isn't exactly a qualitative change. We Americanize everything. We have
>>>> Taco Bell and Panda Express and the Washington Redskins, but they all use
>>>> the same models that Ray Kroc developed 50 years ago.
>>>>
>>>> I think the core-periphery model applies very well to the US in the sense
>>>> that the rich and the poor, the "liberal" and the "conservative," tend to be
>>>> diffuse and often in very close proximity to each other in a scattered sort
>>>> of way. If you look at detailed electoral maps and income maps of the US,
>>>> the variation is striking. Hyde Park, where Obama is from, and where the
>>>> University of Chicago is located (the institution which claims more Nobel
>>>> Laureates than any other in the world), is just blocks away from Englewood,
>>>> famous for having higher murder rates than Iraq.
>>>>
>>>> Another piece of the puzzle is cyberbalkanization, a term coined by one
>>>> of Obama's most hated (read: best) "czars," is to blame for much of it. Even
>>>> Glenn Beck commented on this, though without using the term. Because of the
>>>> exponential increase in media outlets and discussion groups, including this
>>>> one, there are now thousands of mini echo chambers each talking past one
>>>> another and becoming further and further estranged from one another. We pick
>>>> and choose exactly which sources we want to view, and filter out anything we
>>>> don't wish to see.... with RSS and tagging we can even filter out stuff from
>>>> within our preferred sources. One of the effects is all the loony conspiracy
>>>> theories now gaining traction. Yet the geographical locations of each of
>>>> these cyberbalkanized groups look about the same as those electoral maps,
>>>> income maps, etc. They are diffuse.
>>>>
>>>> I notice after watching extended amounts of MSNBC, CNN, and FOX that I
>>>> become terrified of the sorts of things which David Michael Green is talking
>>>> about. However, this week I haven't watched television at all and merely
>>>> used my narrow online media sources and RSS feeds, and my attitude is
>>>> entirely changed. I no longer feel an urgent desire to stock up on guns at
>>>> least.In fact, my thoughts on a lot of these types of things have been all
>>>> over the map lately, and while I wouldn't want to project this onto my
>>>> fellow countrymen, I do tend to think this is part of our current zeitgeist,
>>>> or collective consciousness, or what have you. We are at the brink of deep
>>>> structural change.
>>>>
>>>> Yet, one fact which remains is the astonishingly low amount of political
>>>> interest and participation on the part of the general public, and it seems
>>>> the political hysteria may in fact be only in intellectual circles. Voting
>>>> rates are very low. While cable news generally gets a couple million viewers
>>>> per night in total, our nation's population is close to 300 million. We are
>>>> very distracted and deluged by media, video games, facebook quizzes,
>>>> twittering, texting, and such.
>>>>
>>>> Of course this is both a natural flaw of human beings and a creation of
>>>> our educational system which, as The Big Crunch article which Paul linked to
>>>> argues, is structured to polish the "gems" and discard the vast majority of
>>>> the "dirt."  It is a good example of one of the many tipping points which
>>>> are happening simultaneously, along with structural unemployment, the
>>>> unenforceability of intellectual property, skyrocketing healthcare costs,
>>>> Open Source, etc etc etc. In systems-theoretic terms, we are at the cusp of
>>>> bifurcation.
>>>>
>>>> It seems that the 2 Party System, unless some truly outstanding
>>>> Republican figures arise, will simply have to crumble, and we may end up as
>>>> a single-party system or multi-party, but this is the least of the changes
>>>> which will be occurring simultaneously.
>>>>
>>>> I think the educational system described by the Big Crunch paper explains
>>>> a lot about why the US is where it is, and since an informed electorate is
>>>> the most crucial aspect of any functioning democracy, we are going to be in
>>>> big trouble if we can't come up with a radically new educational paradigm.
>>>> Intellectual self-defense is the most crucial skill in the age of
>>>> cyberbalkanization. We need critical, reflexive people to make informed
>>>> decisions as citizens, consumers, and entrepreneurs.
>>>>
>>>> My generation, the Millenials, were raised in those strange years between
>>>> the fall of the Soviet Union and 9/11 when our nation was completely
>>>> unmatched on every possible measure, and there appeared to be absolutely no
>>>> existential threats. Politics consisted of endless play-by-play coverage of
>>>> the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Yet, my generation was also forced into
>>>> political awareness with the shock of 9/11. Relatively speaking, we have a
>>>> keen social consciousness according to most statistics (volunteerism, public
>>>> service, etc), and were the first generation to grow up with computers.
>>>>
>>>> Perhaps there is some hope in this generation, and the growing
>>>> alternatives to both markets and governments, as embodied by the P2P
>>>> movement. Perhaps the paradigm shift to this will be as bloodless as the
>>>> overthrow of Encyclopedia Britannica by Wikipedia. Not too many molotovs in
>>>> that revolution, from what I hear.
>>>>
>>>> Yet, it isn't inconceivable that the nation could fracture or collapse,
>>>> but considering the statistics, I can't imagine many geographical borders
>>>> larger than a few square blocks that would contain homogenous
>>>> cultural/political/social views. I really think what we are seeing will be
>>>> unprecedented, and likely very strange.
>>>>
>>>> If Factor e Farm or something similar takes off, perhaps Panarchy will
>>>> take off, as they seem to be hoping. Though I doubt it could remain an
>>>> evolutionarily stable state for long. Natural Selection will continue to
>>>> select for virulent systems and actually think Alexander Wendt's recent work
>>>> arguing that World Government is inevitable makes a strong point... or at
>>>> least elucidates the structural properties which make higher levels of
>>>> organization likely (and even desirable).
>>>>
>>>> The EU seems like it may be closer to adopting the Lisbon Treaty, but
>>>> even this model isn't really the future we seem to be heading toward. We
>>>> will likely see more distributed non-state actors, global guerillas, open
>>>> source revolutionaries, resilient communities, and so forth, but they will
>>>> also almost certainly form transnational coalitions to create mutually
>>>> agreed upon organizational apparatuses and alliances at both regional and
>>>> global levels.