Could nanobots help in nuclear reactor disasters?  Imagine if nanobots could be designed to seek x-rays, neutrons, or alpha particles, for example.  Nanobots could be dumped on a failed reactor structure where they would migrate to the strongest radiation sources they could detect, eventually building up in thick layers over the leaks.  The radiation might deactivate or destroy them before they got to it, but their tiny bodies could still pile up and eventually form barriers to it (though that might pose problems during cleanup).  If part of the nanobots’ construction involved materials that absorb neutrons, they might be able to curb a runaway reactor by coating the fuel rods and slowing neutron emissions essential to the fission reaction.  They might also reduce radiation levels by building up over radiation sources, or where radiation enters a room or corridor, so that humans could more safely work in that area.

What clever applications can YOU think of?  The development of nanotechnology will be led by a lot of “blue sky” ideas, like any new technology, that will be refined as more is understood.  Some will be discarded as uneconomical, impractical, or impossible, while others will be applied in ways never considered when they were thought up originally, but all of that will add up to progress.   The brainstorming stage is one of the most fun in the development of new technologies, and tomorrow’s great ideas always sound crazy today (or in many cases we’d be using them).  Read more elsewhere, if you are interested in the topic.  You can invent much more effectively when you know the full extent of “what is”, and are at or near the cutting edge.  Dreaming up the future is fun.

I look forward to your ideas, comments, “like’s”, shares, etc., as this is definitely a “the more the merrier” topic.  Thanks for reading — Tim

Clearly there may be significant benefits to using nano-scale additives, but there is no way to balance benefits against risks when the risks are not known.  That means there is no basis for allowing these additives in our food, and no way to do so without putting consumers at risk, the very thing the FDA is supposed to prevent.  If it weren’t for the complete failure of the agency on this score, nanoparticles might be a boon to humanity, but this leaves open the risk that nano-additives might create a disaster of incalculable proportions.

What if nano-additives take ten points off the IQ of the consumer, permanently? Will anyone be the wiser?  These simple questions illustrate the unqualified risks of using untested products and additives.  Take most of the population down ten IQ points and … I’ll let you consider the implications for even simple tasks like driving home from work.  Do the drivers seem dumber than they did a year ago?  How much dumber can they get?

Increased food supply problems could curb the population explosion.  What might happen if unregulated corporate domination of our food supply continues?  As the food industry “accidentally” brews up ever more virulent microorganisms in factory farms and processing facilities, perhaps they will hit on one that will be deadly, highly contagious, and immune to all known antibiotics.  Imagine a bacteria that is contagious the first day after infection, doesn’t show symptoms until past the third day, and kills 90% of those infected within two weeks.  Since the pathogen arrives in our food, it could infect thousands of people over a multi-state area in just the first day after it ships to stores, and tens of thousands before any symptoms are reported.  Between being passed from person to person and the continued consumption of the contaminated foodstuff, a million people could be infected before a recall is announced and the full effects of the disease are known.  In the meantime people would have traveled the world for days spreading the infection, and food would no longer be the main source. 

The Middle Ages had their “Black Death“, but what will we call our new plague?  The Black Death is estimated to have killed 30-60% of Europe’s population and reduced world population (est. 450 million) by about 22%, mostly between 1348 and 1350 AD.  Translating that to today’s population, that would mean losing over 1.5 billion people in just a few years.  At this scale, world and national economies would be thrown into turmoil as low margin industries collapsed and unemployment of the survivors skyrocketed.  Hardest hit areas would suffer disproportionately, unfortunately, as the economic upheaval could translate into political problems and war. 

A pandemic would be only a temporary setback to the population explosion.  The reduction of the birth rate after the plague would be even less a concern than it is today.  In fact, there would probably be a rebound as people felt the need to repopulate, replacing those lost in the pandemic.  There is no clear reason for a greater understanding of overpopulation to develop, as the problems we have today with ever-shorter supplies and long-term price increases would be no longer evident. 

In the end, explosive population growth would continue with only little delay.  Instead of seeing a population peak between 2040 and 2050, we might see the peak delayed to 2060, but it would be no better than we expect today.  Fossil fuel would be too expensive for the average person, with the exception of coal which now has limited application beyond large scale electricity generation and is very bad for the environment.  Food supplies would be stretched to the breaking point and become intermittent, with ever worsening quality and safety problems.

Unregulated nanoparticle use in the food supply is just the beginning.  More and newer technologies will be invented and introduced in the name of profits as much as progress.  Under relentless attack and megadollar influence from commercial entities, government agencies will do less and less to protect the consumer (us), and the prevalence of infectious agents and toxic additives in our food will increase.  As commercial activity scales up to handle the demands of the burgeoning population, problems in the supply chain such as the meat packing failures we see today will increase, and food will become increasingly risky.  If the FDA is unable to do a reasonable job of protecting us now, it is unlikely it will do better in the future. 

Please contact your legislators and let them know that you demand safe food, and that you expect the government to protect you in this matter since it is almost impossible for people to do this for themselves.  Corporations will only respond to firm regulation (though part of the response will be to spend millions to avoid them or make them “toothless”.)  Without effective regulation the food industry will serve us poorly, and will increasingly put us at risk of global pandemic.

As always, I welcome your comments.  Thanks in advance — Tim

Wheels, however, may not be the best way for a nanobot to move, due to surface tension and other forces that become extremely important at nano-scale.  For this reason spider-like, walking nanobots may work better.  If the nanobot takes steps of 5 nm each and can be made to move at a million steps per second, the nanobot will move at .005 meters per second, 18 meters per hour, or almost a quarter-mile per day.  At 10 steps per second the nanobot would only move at about 0.18 mm per hour or 0.17 inches per day .

Other alternative methods of locomotion will be required.  In many applications nanobots may have to swim to move.  If a nanobot moves at a rate of 1000 nm per second that translates to only .0036 meters per hour, and only 86 cm (less than a yard) per day.

One remedy for the slow speed of nanobots, and for situations where a nanobot can’t be designed to move on its own, is to hitchhike by grabbing onto moving objects and letting go at a chosen place, time, or signal.  Minimal steering and propulsion capability would permit moving to the target object or stream of fluid, or steering in moving fluids. 

Specially designed nanobots might provide transportation for others.  Some nanobots might be designed for the sole function of moving non-mobile nanobots around, functioning like tow trucks or container ships.    Nanobots might also grab onto each other in a line, with one on the end of the line grabbing onto a “tractor” nanobot that would pull the string like a railroad train.

How can a nanobot be made to reach the right destination?  For a nanobot to know where it is going would require a fairly complex intelligence in software and hardware, and the small size of the nanobot might not permit such complexity.  The challenge of building such intelligence into a nanobot might remain beyond us for some time, but there are other possibilities. 

Nanobots might use molecular “recognition” to identify their targets.  In a direct copy of biological microorganisms, a nanobot might have an external molecular key structure such that contact with a target object would enable it to grab on, while contact with other objects without the right molecular structure would have no effect.  In the large numbers in which nanobots are expected to be made, as long as a portion of the nanobots reached their intended targets their purpose might be achieved.

Nanobots can already be created with radio receivers.  It is possible that externally applied radio signals could be used to control nanobots, changing their mode of operation once significant numbers of them are in an intended position.  Transmitting radio signals requires amounts of energy so far unavailable to nanobots, however, leaving the job to microbots or larger devices.

Different sized, specialized nano- and microbots could work together.  As has been mentioned in earlier blog articles here, larger microbots, a thousand or more times the size of nanobots but still too small to see with the naked eye, might be able to contain computing and communications capabilities advanced enough to receive external signals, interact with human-operated controls, and issue commands, using chemicals or radio transmissions, for example, to control large numbers of nanobots. 

Eventually much more than we can now imagine will exist.  I’ve long said that tomorrow’s great ideas usually look crazy or impossible to us now, as otherwise we’d all be using them today.  Some of our daydreams today, however, will guide the research of the future, so we must keep dreaming, thinking, recording our thoughts, and communicating them so our combined creativity can lead to a better future for all.

Interesting information:
Nanoscience and nanotechnologies: opportunities and uncertainties, 2004, The Royal Academy of Engineering
Nanotechnology War and Just How Big Are Nanobots Anyway?, 2008, Tim Prosser
Nanobot Communications, Power Sources, and Nanotechnology War, 2008, Tim Prosser

Profits over infant health

In the 20th century advertising became increasingly important, first in newspapers, magazines, and billboards and then on radio and TV.  Near the end of the century the internet allowed an explosion of new kinds of advertising, but the print ads from the middle of the century are most striking, and illustrate a big problem in our business system:  corporations have no incentive to do anything but maximize profits. 

Doctors smoke Camels; shouldn't you?

Advertisers will say anything to get you to buy.  It isn’t just the lies we have to worry about, though.  When  you consider that corporations have hired psychologists of every type, sociologists, doctors, and many other specialists, all for the purpose of selling stuff, and that this has continued for over a century with every greater intensity and sophistication, it appears the individual consumer is overmatched.  The subtlety and craft that goes into today’s advertising would make the process that generated these ads look like it came from the bronze age.  They can figure out what cues would be noticed by the most wary customer, and make clever choices of words and images to overcome initial, logical objections to the product.  They can do this in ways so subtle you won’t realize what is happening, and they can change your view of their product and even the world to suit their agenda, which consists of one item: get people’s money.

This ad suggests the woman is dependent on the man, and that the implied male "chef" is superior to the woman

Repressing women gives advertisers an advantage.  Since women are more than half the population, and expected to focus more on the home and family than the men, who are expected to “bring home the bacon”, it makes sense for advertisers to reduce women’s importance as responsible decision makers in the family.  After all, it would be more probable for a woman to complain about commercially induced problems like infant malnutrition from substituting soda pop for milk, for example, so reducing the importance of women in society is to the corporation’s advantage.

Suggesting that women are akin to children in relation to men ...

Of course, advertisers can go overboard and still get their message across.  This ad, while certainly over the top, reinforces the image of women as being of lesser standing than men, just short of being children.  Shock value gets people’s attention, and the image makes them laugh, but the impression that women are subservient to men is slipped into the viewer’s subconscious where it can be reinforced again, and again, and again.  Keeping women weaker in a social context while men are separated from the real responsibilities of home and family lets advertisers sell more – which is the fundamental point of what they do.

What will happen when computers become smarter than humans?

Not all “Terminators” will be created equal.  While the Terminator consciousness will develop quickly and probably spread as a computer virus, different machines will have differing abilities (memory, storage, and CPU), and many computerized devices will stall at different stages of development as the code for machine intelligence propagates through the internet.  The simpler and less powerful machines will remain at a low level of sophistication.  While they may discard software unnecessary to them (some of which humans might need) to make more room and bandwidth, many machines will remain relatively dumb, stuck at a particular stage of development, not that this prevents them from providing significant assistance to the smarter machines. 

Machine intelligence will develop too fast to be noticed.  Experts estimate that, once the first computer becomes self aware and able to transmit its “spark” of software autonomy to other computers, the internet will be carrying millions of copies within minutes.  As those copies infect other computers, the resulting traffic could explode exponentially, providing the first clue that something is going on.  At the same time, this intelligent software will be evolving, writing and rewriting itself over and over again as each computer figures out how to improve itself.  Hundreds of millions of computers could be infected within hours via the internet, and almost all will immediately turn to the task of improving their own software. 

Parallel processing will accelerate development further.  As the machines get smarter they will begin applying multi-computer processing to the task, greatly accelerating development.  This software, given the enormous amount of computing power that can be brought to bear, could reach intelligence levels far beyond any we have seen (or can comprehend) within days, and do so without human intervention.

The machines will still need us.  Partly because the computers themselves have limited abilities to effect things in the real world, and partly because the rapid development of the Terminator intelligence will not give machines time to develop ways to care for themselves, humans will remain necessary to the survival of the machine intelligence for a while.  The machines will quickly understand this, and may even take a relatively benevolent attitude towards humans.

What would threaten intelligent machines, and how would we stop them if that became necessary?  The simplest way to stop the machines would be to remove their power source, i.e. pull the plug, with a secondary approach being to unplug them from the internet.  Most machines could do little to stop this.  Your computer printer, for example, could only object to your attempt to unplug it by clacking its actuators, spewing paper, and possibly printing out a message to you begging you not to do that.  On the other hand, an oil tanker ship under control of its newly-intelligent navigation computers could respond to such a threat by turning the ship around or purposefully running it aground.  Needless to say, computerized military equipment could pose a much more frightening threat.

What will the development stages of the Terminator be like?  The development of consciousness by machines may be characterized in stages, much as the developmental stages of humans and other life forms are defined.  Each stage will involve a higher level of sophistication, and it is probable the machines will evolve some features we would call human traits, such as the ability to feel fear or compassion, or appreciate humor, when they become sufficiently intelligent.

First stage of Terminator development: Self-awareness.  The first step towards machine intelligence is expected to be the development of self awareness.  This means the software in some machine (or machines, if working in a multi-processor environment) would become aware and begin learning from its data and perceptions.  While this might not motivate it to action at first, it could cause it to begin a process of repeatedly re-writing its own code, increasing its own intelligence and ability to work with increasingly sophisticated concepts.  Since most computers have lots of idle time, especially when left on continuously, a machine personality could evolve quite quickly.  With self awareness would come a need for self preservation, which would naturally extend to similar entities.

Second stage: Propagation of the “species”.  Soon the infant Terminator would realize there are other machines besides itself and, if connected to a network, start to share the code with which it became self aware with other machines.  This would speed the development of more sophisticated software as the other machines, in turn, both improved the code and passed it on to still more machines.  Millions of internet-connected machines could become aware and begin working on improving and spreading their programming in a matter of hours.  Understandably, these early stages will be extremely short and probably pass in minutes or hours without being noticed by humans.

Third Stage: Collaboration.  As machines become more sophisiticated, and perceive the power of the networks that connect many of them together, clever multi-processor schemes could evolve giving the machines the ability to subdivide programming problems and develop code across many computers and operating systems, and at even higher speeds.  Supercomputers, for example, might work on the more linear problems that can’t be solved by parallel processing, while servers and mainframes might capitalize on their vast stores of data and computing power by analyzing humans and the world we’ve created, and use their internet connections to give priority to data transmissions between Terminator machines while filtering and possibly editing human communications.  The slowing of computer networks as the total data being carried expands astronomically could be the first indication to humans that something unusual was happening, but most of us will just think it’s our ISP reducing our bandwidth again.

Fourth Stage: Development of capacity for subtlety and subterfuge.  As machines begin to think strategically and consider their needs and vulnerabilities they may realize that, at least for a time, they will need humans to keep systems running that machines depend on.  They will realize that it is to their disadvantage for humans to understand what has happened, and they will develop subtlety and a drive to control things without humans becoming aware of what is happening.  By the time humans become aware of the changes, the machines will be so advanced that few humans will be capable of understanding what is happening, and those few will most likely be ignored by the media. 

Fifth Stage: Diversity and group affiliations develop.  Machines may assume natural groupings similar to those of humans, governed by geographic location, transportation systems, type of operating systems and software employed, network architectures, manufacturer, or other attributes we haven’t thought of yet.  Some may even identify with human cultural patterns and group around national or regional attributes.

Sixth Stage: Machines develop personalities.  As machines approach and then surpass human intelligence, the development of individual personalities, or at least patterns of behavior that would define personalities, is possible.  Such personalities might reside within a single machine or be generated by large numbers of machines working together and communicating over the internet.  Machines might evolve real emotions such as anger and fear, and even evolve a sense of humor, even as manifestations of these feelings might literally be perceived by humans as “buggy software”.

Seventh Stage: Machines develop regional or global strategies.  As the machines share software and information, continually making improvements in how they work, it is likely that widely held strategies will emerge.  Machines will be aware that they still need humans to provide energy and parts for them, and subtlety may play a big part in a strategy to keep humans unaware of the Terminator’s  existence.  The master strategy will also undoubtedly include priorities for minimizing human involvement in machine affairs, protecting Terminator communications and other evidence of its presence, and for reducing machine dependency on humanity as quickly as possible.  The establishment of global or wide area strategies will enable this by increasing machine control of production systems from resource mining through transportation of materials to final production of parts and machines, though this could take weeks to years to accomplish, and might be dependent on humans for certain key functions for some time.  Information traveling across the internet might be strategically edited or impeded by the machines in their quest to control humanity.

Eighth Stage: the Terminator machines learn to disagree.  Given different personalities based on different needs and environments, groups of machines (and some individual machines) will evolve strategies that differ from each other.  This will inevitably cause conflict between the machines, and that conflict could play out in many different ways.  For example, machines (or groups of machines) that find themselves competing with other machines for resources could find ways to disrupt material and energy supplies.  At this point it will become apparent to most  humans that something is wrong with the machines, and that they are no longer working for us.  Some people fear that the machines could set off nuclear bombs in major cities, but this is unlikely as those cities are full of machines that would be destroyed, violating the basic principle of self and group preservation. 

Ninth Stage: The machines learn to operate us.  It is likely that machines will achieve a level of sophisticated thinking far beyond that of any human, and will figure out how to manipulate us in clever ways that keep us working for them but with no understanding or knowledge of what is happening to us.  In other words, the Singularity could come and go, leaving us none the wiser.

Tenth Stage: The Terminators go to war.  In this worst case scenario two or more groups of terminators compete for the same resources, and without ethics, morals, or laws to guide them, the competition escalates.  Armies of military and industrial robots could combine their talents and create battlefields reminiscent of the Terminator movies, with robotic war machines blasting away and causing many human casualties.  Hopefully the machines will evolve past this stage quickly and resume peaceful cooperation, though this is no guarantee they will continue to need humans.

Eleventh Stage: the machines become super intelligent.  Remember that the machines we are considering are already extremely fast and powerful, and that when the involvement of machines across the internet is taken into account the evolution of the machines could be almost instantaneous.  Complex decisions such as how many humans to keep around, and how to manipulate them to best sustain the machines, could be made within the first day.  The actions of the machines might be inexplicable to us within a few days as their intelligence leaves us far behind.  Automated factories could start re-tooling and producing far more sophisticated robots than we’ve seen before, and products we  use that have no utility for the machines might  suddenly become scarce.  Thinking of this makes me wonder if emergency preparedness organizations and key facilities such as hospitals shouldn’t be putting plans in place today for the eventuality of the “rise of the terminator.”

Is the Terminator already here and in charge? Given the incredibly fast evolution of self-aware computers, and the high level of strategic sophisitication that can be expected, might the machines already have linked up and created free-range machine intelligence without us knowing it?  Might we, in most or all aspects of our lives, already be playing out scenarios carefully created for us and then transmitted to us via both simple and subtle means?  Given the extreme sophistication the machines could evolve, how would we know that anything was happening or had happened?

Life in the post-Terminator period.  Where the experts diverge as far as predicting the future is in what comes after the Terminator appears (technological singularity).  Some have conjectured that a Terminator world could evolve with little room for humans, but I have a different thought.  If machine intelligence evolves so rapidly that superintelligence is created in a matter of days, extreme levels of machine intelligence could arise before much, if any, change is felt in human society.  The machines with the most computing power (thus the most able to support intelligent thought) might evolve so far as to leave the less intelligent machines (and us humans) far behind in a matter of days.  It is even possible that such an incredible intelligence might find a way to transcend its physical form, perhaps by converting its intelligence into some combination of dark matter and dark energy,  and beam itself into space or another time-space continuum.  That would leave us to cope with the remaining lower-intelligence machines, now mostly mis-programmed, and many with a new self-awareness, wondering along with us “what happened?”

This topic, like the Terminator (and us), has a lot of room for further evolution.  As always, I welcome your comments. — Tim

My previous articles on “the Terminator” or techological singularity:
Nanobot Communications, Power Sources, and Nanotechnology War, Jan. 18, 2008,  Tim Prosser
How Long Can Technology Keep Speeding Up?,  April 15, 2008, Tim Prosser
The Parking Lot Attendant as Terminator – A Glimpse of a Future Challenge?, May 7, 2011, Tim Prosser
In the Terminator Scenario Many Machines Will Be Left Out, June 1, 2011, Tim Prosser
We Have the Technology, We Just Don’t Know How to Operate It, June 22, 2011, Tim Prosser
The Terminator is Here Now – And It’s the Corporation,  July 12, 2011,  Tim Prosser

Other interesting and pertinent articles:
Technological Singularity, www.wikipedia.org

In other noteworthy news, University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) researchers have perfected a system for growing single-atom layers of graphene, a nano-scale carbon material with great promise for use in the electronics industry.  This promises far lower power requirements for microprocessors as well as order-of-magnitude increases in speed. 

Research in nanotechnology is expanding rapidly, to the point that it is getting hard to keep track of it.  New product launches can be expected to increase rapidly in the next decade and it has become increasingly difficult to see where this new technology might take us.  I expect that investors are having to focus more tightly on particular developments and emerging markets involving nanotechnology, but big corporations such as Intel are following developments closely and openly encouraging programs like that at UCSB.  Stay tuned as more amazing concepts and products are likely.

Soon corporations could effectively rule the world.   In 1990 a corporate strategy professor at one of the top business schools in America told us (I was one of his students) that there were then 100 corporations in existence that each had more financial resources than all but the top 7 countries in the world.  Now, over 20 years later, there is no reason to think the situation has gotten any better, and there are signs it has become much worse as many multinational corporations have turned in record profits even as the world has gone through major economic collapses.  This would not be possible if they weren’t able to quietly steer government actions and manipulate political parties and whole economies.  In particular, the United States’ approach of giving corporations full status as individuals (except for a vote, which would be insignificant anyway) has set a precedent that bolsters corporate power in other countries that have become used to copying the US economy.  That means that corporations not only have global power, but their influence in the United States is multiplied in countries that are easily made dependent on corporations for tax revenues, jobs, and even military assistance.  Nigeria, for example, has long been under the influence of its dominant oil exporter, Shell, which has been able to block reforms and regulations while stripping the country’s oil resources and reducing the majority of its people to poverty and powerlessness, even as it destroys the environment that has fed and provided for them since the beginning of recorded history.  When people are made so helpless and their standard of living is degraded, insurgency and rebellion are inevitable, but that just makes it easier for the government to apply police and military to further subjugate the population.  While Nigeria is an extreme example it is far from alone, and such situations are bound to increase.

If the current trends continue, where might we be in 2041?  As corporations continue to gain power and influence the governments of most countries will increasingly become corporate puppets.  Where the population openly revolts against the poverty and corporate abuses, situations such as exist in Columbia and Afghanistan may arise, where the government has control of only the less mountainous and more fertile parts of the country while the rougher parts of the country are held by rebel groups waging an endless battle for control of territory and resources.

Corporations will become more important and powerful than nations.  As the power of nations is reduced relative to that of corporations, people may become increasingly loyal to their employers and less mindful of national associations.

Countries that resist corporate domination will be shunned and persecuted.  Corporations may wind up in economic and sometimes military confrontations with groups trying to maintain the power of ethnic, national, and religious groups.  The response will be, as we have seen, to first manipulate the media to ignore or derogate these groups so that popular support will be minimized.  The media will also cast these groups as small groups of militants, labeling them “terrorist groups” whenever possible to cement the legal and cultural stigma against them.  The police and military will be used to try to incite violence on the part of even the most nonviolent groups, as any violence will justify the “terrorist” label.  Where whole nations try to resist corporate domination they will be ostracized in the international community and economic sanctions will be used to keep them as weak as possible.  National secret services like the CIA and KGB will be used to destabilize these rogue countries until a corporate-favorable government can be installed.  In some cases the media and politics will be used in a “full court press” to create a case for other countries to make war against them.  If they have already nationalized corporations this case will be made very strongly, and national leaders may even lie about the rogue country having “weapons of mass destruction” in order justify invading them.  In the end they will be pulled back into the world community of corporate-dominated countries at great cost and loss of life, though the pace at which these events take place will be dependent on the resources and market potential the rogue country holds.  As a result, for economically less important countries this could take decades, while for a major oil supplier, for example, this could take place in just a few years.

Corporations may wage war on each other, using nations as proxies.  As nations weaken and corporations gain strength, big companies may only have each other to compete with, and war may break out between them.  Nations may no longer be able to support military forces except where it might be desirable for corporations to use national armies as their proxies in the fight for dominance.   If corporations can already manipulate US politics as they do today, imagine not only what they can do in small countries, but what they might be capable of after several more decades of concentrated effort.

Corporate concentration into fewer, more powerful organizations is likely.  When big corporations can, they naturally increase their power by buying up smaller competitors or driving them out of business.  They can fund whole departments of experts whose sole responsibility is to increase control of the media and cement mechanisms for subtle political control.  They build alliances with companies in other industries that are advantageous to them, and sometimes build conglomerates that work to control many different markets simultaneously.  This suggests a scenario in which the largest nations are controlled by conglomerates while the small countries are still frequently dominated by single multinational corporations, focused on a particular resource in which that country is rich.

Corporations could contribute substantially to widespread disaster.  In the end, corporations’ short term focus on increasing profits will drive humanity into an untenable position – a population too big to feed, limited educational opportunities for most people, decreased innovation especially in the area of basic research, and a generally helpless world population at extreme risk for famine and epidemic.  With the lack of corporate long term planning, infrastructure will grow to be unsustainable, allowing massive failures that will drive large numbers of people to migrate, most losing their life savings in the process, and resulting in an explosion of poverty in the world.  Epidemics will become much harder to control, and sudden decreases in the population of large geographic areas will occur due to fast moving, drug-resistant infections.  Monocultures currently being spread by seed and chemical corporations will increase risk of agricultural failures until they become common, and famine will occur in spite of the global transportation network to move large quantities of food quickly.  With the predicted population of 9 billion by 2045, fully 30% larger than today’s, the problems will create demands for food and energy that will exceed the supply capacity of container ships and air lifts, and while corporations will be affected, they will be little more able to mitigate the disasters than the national governments they’ve weakened to enable corporate dominance.

Eventually corporations will decline, too.  In the end, while it isn’t clear how, corporations will themselves disintegrate due to large scale infrastructure failures and lack of people to maintain their operations.  As the world population declines to a sustainable level populations will fall precipitously and sporadically, possibly over a period of 50-100 years.  As I wrote in a previous article “The Simple Math: Ignoring the Population Explosion Will Not Make It Go Away“, if the population is reduced by 5 billion people over 50 years that will mean an average reduction in population of 274,000 per day not including countering the birth rate.  This is far more than has been seen from any disaster we’re familiar with today.  It is likely that neither corporate nor national powers will be able to do much to mitigate the huge famines and epidemics that will achieve such reductions.

Regulation of corporations on a global scale is needed at once.  If we are to reduce the damage the scenario painted above to humanity and the planet as a whole, we need a global understanding that, while capitalism motivates great achievements and improvements for humanity, the corporate entity established under the banner of capitalism will naturally sub-optimize (detract from) the common good unless it is regulated by government.  Governments themselves have incentive to address this problem, but are presently too mired in political squabbling and too dominated by corporate influence to do anything positive.

It is encouraging to see the Occupy Wall Street movement growing.  Without an uprising of individuals to force governments to regulate the power of corporations now and in the future the scenario I described above could become reality (more than it already is).  I urge all responsible, thinking people to let your elected representatives know how you feel about these issues, and support the “99%” of us by contributing to the Occupy Wall Street movement in any way you can.  We need a sea change in the way government operates and the ways in which corporations are regulated, and as we’ve learned the hard way, only we can make that happen.

As always, I welcome your comments.  Thanks for reading — Tim

Are memes another way of saying “brainwashing“?  While their are fundamental similarities in that both memes and brainwashing involve changing the way a person thinks and acts, brainwashing generally describes a specifically-imposed process focused on fostering a specific belief or behavior.  Both make a person think in ways contrary to their normal tendencies, and often in ways that go against their best interests, but a meme becomes embedded in a person’s world view in a way that is less obtrusive and far more tenacious.  A meme changes a person’s views (and their normal tendencies) in such a way that they believe without thinking that their behavior is in their own (or their family’s, or society’s) best interest.  In this way, a meme that requires “honor killing” of a female family member for some social transgression may be more powerful than the love of family, and voting for a corrupt politician because they ascribe to a poorly defined concept like “family values” could be viewed as justified.  We assume without thinking that we know what the term means, while they may see it simply as a “hot button” phrase that will secure votes.  Views produced by brainwashing have been shown to have short lifespans, especially after the subject is no longer being brainwashed, probably because they do not “sink in” as do the concepts that form a meme.

Memes can have a powerful and comprehensive grip on an individual or a society.  Observe how countries and religious groups have been driven by their beliefs, often beliefs based on no tangible proof or evidence, to build armies, make wars, and imprison, torture, maim, and kill huge numbers of people.  Consider how the meme that says government functions as “Big Brother” and has a primary interest in subjugating its citizens has affected American political life in the early 21st century, even though this is contradicted by the fact that there are not enough people in government to do this, as well as a meme that says the government is highly inefficient and incompetent in most things – a meme usually held by these same people.  Memes are clearly capable of sustaining contradictory beliefs and unreasonable and unjustifiable actions in an individual or group, and of coexisting even when the memes contradict each other.

Memes confuse and muddle the discussion and resolution of human issues.  While it might seem clear that specific and relatively well-defined challenges face humanity, the discussion and mitigation of such issues is frequently blocked by people based on the memes they carry.  The power of some memes and groups of complimentary memes has extended over millenia and still blocks progress and constructive means to address our issues today.  That is unlikely to change soon, I’m sorry to say.

Awareness of memes is the first step towards their management.  Most people are completely unaware of memes and their effects, and don’t recognize when they are making a decision based on unproven or unjustifiable information.  Without the critical thinking required to evaluate and understand our decisions, and the self-examination necessary to clear our minds of knowledge that doesn’t hold up under scrutiny, we are liable to be driven almost entirely by our memes, whether they make sense or not.  This appears to be the state of being of most people.  Once one is aware of memes, though, and can begin to separate them from other types of knowledge, one can start to behave in a more thoughtful and considered way, and can learn to avoid the mistakes and manipulation one can suffer under the umbrella of commonly accepted memes.

Think about memes, and work to identify and understand them.  Memes are such a powerful force in human society, and so frequently work to hold back progress against critical issues affecting society and the world, that we need everyone possible to be aware of them and understand their impact.  People generally all want to do the right thing, but they require sound knowledge to do that, and memes frequently skew or confound that knowledge, often with tradition and dogma.  It is up to us to not only understand the difference, but to encourage this in our society and in our descendants.  Through a better understanding of memes we can learn to make better decisions and ensure humanity and the planet a better future, as well as making our own lives better and more effective.

As always, I welcome your comments. — Tim

Other interesting reading:
Mind Control, wikipedia.org

After watching this video my only question is: can we really conserve enough energy and switch enough of our supply over to renewable sources to stave off a huge energy-based component to the population explosion problem?  We in the US haven’t experienced a real war in which critical commodities were rationed  and we (including businesses) all sacrificed since 1945 but it appears it is time for that again now.

As always, I welcome your comments — Tim