Constellation: Making the Graphic Novel

In today's podcast, we discuss Buckminster Fuller's term ephemeralization. Many people today are searching for words to describe the tremendous power of technologies to do more with less. Modern expressions like "dematerialization," "software is eating the world", and "digitization of everything" can in many ways be subsumed by Fuller's original term.

We'd all like to live in a better future, and for ages men have imagined what a theoretical best future might be like. What would a utopian society truly look like? Does the answer lie in external approaches like abundance, decentralization and transparency, or internal approaches like drugs, wireheading and genetic engineering? Is it even possible to formulate a Theory of Fun for human beings, that would define the contours of a world that could exist in perfect equilibrium where the people living in that world never die or get bored?

In this podcast we examine the issue of inequality from the point of view of game design and ask whether a variety of resources are likely to become more or less unequal in the future. In addition to the obvious monetary dimension, we also discuss inequality as it relates to fame, user base, creativity tools, communication, health, and other resources that affect quality of life. Ultimately we decide that inequality will increase in resources that by their nature propagate themselves, like money and fame, and will likely decrease in resources that are close to reaching a point of diminishing returns, such as food and communication.

In this week's podcast we talk about the big topic of Network Neutrality. We define the term and talk about the differences between neutral and biased (or 'diverse') networks. We cover the history of the phone network, the Carterfone, and neutrality regulations in the U.S. We also cover the two major reasons to prefer a neutral internet: the more commonly mentioned threats to innovation and free speech that biased networks engender, and the less commonly discussed technical reason that dumb networks are more efficient and therefore faster. With the FCC in the process of gutting what's left of net neutrality in the U.S. right now, it's important to understand this seemingly dry issue that, as the internet takes over more and more of our lives, gets more and more important. Will we wake up and require network neutrality through our political process? Is it possible to create neutral mesh networks through unlicensed spectrum? Will we simply accept the costs to freedom and innovation that biased networks will bring?

On this podcast, we talk about games and the future. Eric Zimmerman has pronounced this the “Ludic Century” and has said the 21st century will be defined by games. We approach this idea from three points of view: first we talk about games as an entertainment medium and whether they might grow relative to passive entertainment like reading or watching video. Second, we talk about the emerging field of game design theory and what it can learn from, and teach to, existing social sciences like psychology and economics. Finally we discuss the far future of radical abundance and how life in that world might resemble a game in many ways.

In this episode we do a simple thought experiment set at a mathematics competition. Three characters, each with a very different apparatus of enhanced intelligence, compete. One is highly educated, one is enhanced to be able to learn more quickly, and one offloads the complex tasks to an AI or crowd-sourced network. We discuss the pros and cons of these three approaches and consider what that holds for future developments. What would you rather be: an educated, enhanced, or offloading mind?

What is the future of television? Will today's golden age continue? We discuss the current television model and why TV hasn't been disrupted to the degree film and other media have, the real scarcity and artificial limits that are keeping it there, and make a prediction about the next ten years of television content. We also discuss charging viewers on a cliffhanger, superstar effects after unbundling, and bifurcation of budgets. Will serial video lose its flow as it moves online? Or might a combination of recommendation algorithms and massive online film libraries create a deadly-compelling flow similar to "The Entertainment" from David Foster Wallace's INFINITE JEST?

There is no doubt decentralized powerful technologies are coming, and the conventional wisdom is that you cannot control these things easily. In this episode, we discuss drugs, security, and general purpose computing as decentralized technologies that resist control. Will it be possible to control nearly invisible life-logging technologies of the future? What about gun control in a world of 3-D printing? What do surveillance and piracy have in common? What do you think would allow us to keep our freedom while protecting against existential risks? Why do they freeze the pre-criminals in Minority Report? This topic gets big fast, so hold on to your hats! Keep the emails and comments coming, we love to hear from you!

In this week's podcast we discuss money as a technology that has progressed through several versions. What's wrong with our current version of money, and what might we do better in a future version? What are the pros and cons of modern day cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Freicoin? Is the uncertain nature of future economic growth an argument for a dynamic currency with faucets and sinks? Or will a deflationary currency be the perfect choice in a world of abundance where money is less necessary? Is it possible to build a basic income into the design of a currency? And will governments and rich people even allow any of this monetary experimentation to happen in the first place? Join us in the discussion of this and many other questions by emailing feedback@reviewthtefuture.com or posting a comment below.

Today's episode focuses on a thought experiment -- assuming technological unemployment happens and capitalism continues in its current form, what new platforms might allow average folks to monetize the remaining scarce resources? What kind of jobs and economic platforms might arise in a future of automated labor? We discuss current platforms like Kickstarter and Etsy and we wonder about their continued robustness. We also propose a platform for monetizing the attention of the unemployed, discuss the possibility of monetizing slack computing resources through Distributed Autonomous Corporations. We discuss the wisdom of making many small bets over single large bets and wonder whether a distributed black mail platform is in our future.

Today on the podcast we talk about a simple way to predict the future -- simply exaggerate current trends. But this doesn't lead to accurate prediction, it leads to "Super-Now" predictions where everything is shinier, faster, or on steroids, but nothing is actually new. We cover a lot of classic and modern Sci Fi that fails in this regard and talk about several of the people who are pushing back against the conventional wisdom that the more things change, the more they stay the same. We discuss the movies SLEEPER, STAR WARS, WALL-E, IDIOCRACY and work by Greg Egan, Cory Doctorow, David Marusek, Ramez Naam, Ray Bradbury, Gary Shteyngart and Albert Brooks.

In this episode, we ask how culture would be impacted by radically increased lifespans. We go over the main arguments made by longevity research experts like Aubrey De Grey and Ray Kurzweil, and we discuss Sonia Arrison's book 100+. We discuss expanded health spans and acknowledge that a right to die would be even more important in a world with such technology. What kind of impacts would this type of technology have on work, leadership, inequality, social services, and family? Would we design high-efficiency people to defeat starvation? Would term limits apply to immortal individuals? Are we heading for a nightmare world where the poor are condemned to death and the rich live forever?

In this podcast we return to the idea of technological unemployment: if it's happening, what should we do? We consider three ways technological unemployment might be defeated: rising standards of living might outrun inequality, education and cognitive enhancement might solve our retraining problems, or new platforms and needs might emerge and create new demands. But if that doesn't happen, we have three types of options. We cover the range of options from recidivism to artificial scarcity, to enhanced social safety nets.

In this week's podcast, we discuss common communications and computer interfaces in science fiction and ask whether those AI assistants and videophones really make sense. We retell David Foster Wallace's story about the failure of the videophone from Infinite Jest, and we argue that Samantha from Her would be just as annoying as Microsoft Clippy. We also wonder whether the mind-to-mind connections in Nexus are as likely to take off as a future Snapchat might be.

In this week's podcast we evaluate the relative plausibility of four dystopias commonly seen in science fiction: Post-Apocalypse, Alien/AI Oppression, Boot-in-the-Face, and Brave New World. These are all fun settings for exciting stories, but which makes the most sense from the perspective of speculation?