Shamelessly stolen link from Warren Ellis, but the following seemed interesting at first and then proceeded to nag the bloody snot out of me.
It deals with the concept of a "Singleton" which immediately drew my eye as Bridget Jaunty Jones terms herself and all people without significant others as being categorised by this term. When, in fact, it apparently refers to:
"a world order in which there is a single decision-making agency at the highest level.[1] Among its powers would be (1) the ability to prevent any threats (internal or external) to its own existence and supremacy, and (2) the ability to exert effective control over major features of its domain (including taxation and territorial allocation)"
Which, pardon me, sounds like it would be workable as a global system of governments but with greater strictures. Like a Justice League version of the United Nations. So far, so philosophy (with the intention of determining a viable "future of humanity", so sayeth the Oxford University institute). Except except except a singleton can be the product of
"convergent evolution, e.g. if it turns out that all sufficiently advanced individuals or cultures come to accept fundamentally the same values or goals. These common values in combination with all the individuals and cultures that embrace them would then be an “agency” in the broad sense intended here, and it would constitute a singleton."
Got that? An open source version of the Illuminati, if you will. Or the Masons. Or the Rotary Club, as it turns out:
"the universal spread of a single self-enforcing moral code. The code might specify that agents should give preferential treatment to other agents that follow the code. If such a code becomes accepted by a sufficient number of agents, and if monitoring and enforcing compliance is sufficiently feasible, it might in the self-interest of agents who have not yet adopted the code to do so. This could lead to the code’s universal adoption. If the code is sufficiently prescriptive to result in effectively coordinated goal-oriented behavior at the level of world society, it would constitute a singleton."
Again, I'm not a philosophy professor at Oxford,which is why a lot of this struck me as obvious territory covered by...oh, say, EVERY SCI-FI EVER. From Star Trek to Judge Dredd. Although there seems to be a get out clause that a singleton can't exist within reach of alien civilisations but this really seems to be dodging a bullet. In fact, early Judge Dredd seems to be the closest to a singleton in printed media that I've seen recently. The first 50 issues, before it got all Cold-War-tastic, construct a perfectly self-contained system of dependent territories in the Mega Cities and the Moon Colony of Luna 1. Then the Soviets turn up, like the intrusion of a secondary singleton and destroy a bunch of lunalympic athletes and my perfect metaphor.
ANYWAY, to get away from flashing my meagre geek credentials, "a code with preferential treatment of other agents that follow the code"? Like, an Old Boy's network? A combination of Old Edwardian conditioning and Bridget Jones's MSN whoredom amalgamated in an instant. What with that ADHD progeny of humanity called technology (more specifically, the internet) blasting through the communicative barriers of distance, walls and (thanks to facebook) total apathy to other's status, social networking has created a situation whereby homogenisation and monoculture take on the mantle of morals beyond even the meagre dabblings of consumerism. The idea that these previous structures would not be eroded by a global means toward communication, but instead become more tight-knit and attractive to followers is hardly novel.
Though it would kind of only work with minorities, because preferential treatment to majorities doesn't totally work in terms of, mayhap, firing and hiring. And would make for really boring episodes of The Apprentice. But in the form of a sort of moral Ponzi scheme, with satisfaction and other abstract well-being uppers being distributed by inclusion, the whole thing becomes feasible. As a system of singletons, concurrently operating on the same societies without any knowledge of the true extent of their interaction. Religion, forum boards, B3ta. Or singular units of one. Sort of like...the world?
Or humanity, if we're following my pernickty logic to final conclusion, because we all have the shared aim to breathe oxygen.
Except it isn't just my logic, because Nick Bostrum (didn't I introduce him before? He wrote this. And got paid by Linguistic and Philosophical Investigations, I'll bet) comes to the conclusion that he (probably) concurs that "Earth-originating intelligent life will (eventually) form a singleton" due to emerging technology. Like communication. Or, rather disturbingly, mind-control. Disturbing because he muses over mind-control being viable both in terms of a possibility and a technological plausibility before he ever thinks "Oh, yeah. INTERNET."
"Once formed, a future singleton might be perpetually stable. This could happen if surveillance, mind control, and other security technologies develop in such a way as to enable a singleton to effectively prevent the emergence of internal challenges."
Treading on the thin (David) Ic-k-e there a smidgen, we round off with a lovely dystopian view of a system that cannot turn dystopian. So, we end with a massive rip-off of Brave New World.
Now, I'm not saying a fifteen-year-old could have lashed this article together (though I AM saying a fifteen-year-old could have forged this sniping little crit-fest in his tiny angsty heart, in between bouts of Firefly). No. I'm TYPING it. And there is a difference.
Alright, no I'm not. All I'm getting at is that this man was paid. And I would like monies, please. Muchos monieros. I'm only getting antsy because I can't envision a future career and this man appears to have synthesised one out of early issues of 2000A.D. and his article had the wherewithal to make me think. How dare he etc.
OK, I'm not typing that EITHER. I'm avoiding my essays and revision, alright? Good. Return to whatever you were doing before this wasted your time.
It deals with the concept of a "Singleton" which immediately drew my eye as Bridget Jaunty Jones terms herself and all people without significant others as being categorised by this term. When, in fact, it apparently refers to:
"a world order in which there is a single decision-making agency at the highest level.[1] Among its powers would be (1) the ability to prevent any threats (internal or external) to its own existence and supremacy, and (2) the ability to exert effective control over major features of its domain (including taxation and territorial allocation)"
Which, pardon me, sounds like it would be workable as a global system of governments but with greater strictures. Like a Justice League version of the United Nations. So far, so philosophy (with the intention of determining a viable "future of humanity", so sayeth the Oxford University institute). Except except except a singleton can be the product of
"convergent evolution, e.g. if it turns out that all sufficiently advanced individuals or cultures come to accept fundamentally the same values or goals. These common values in combination with all the individuals and cultures that embrace them would then be an “agency” in the broad sense intended here, and it would constitute a singleton."
Got that? An open source version of the Illuminati, if you will. Or the Masons. Or the Rotary Club, as it turns out:
"the universal spread of a single self-enforcing moral code. The code might specify that agents should give preferential treatment to other agents that follow the code. If such a code becomes accepted by a sufficient number of agents, and if monitoring and enforcing compliance is sufficiently feasible, it might in the self-interest of agents who have not yet adopted the code to do so. This could lead to the code’s universal adoption. If the code is sufficiently prescriptive to result in effectively coordinated goal-oriented behavior at the level of world society, it would constitute a singleton."
Again, I'm not a philosophy professor at Oxford,which is why a lot of this struck me as obvious territory covered by...oh, say, EVERY SCI-FI EVER. From Star Trek to Judge Dredd. Although there seems to be a get out clause that a singleton can't exist within reach of alien civilisations but this really seems to be dodging a bullet. In fact, early Judge Dredd seems to be the closest to a singleton in printed media that I've seen recently. The first 50 issues, before it got all Cold-War-tastic, construct a perfectly self-contained system of dependent territories in the Mega Cities and the Moon Colony of Luna 1. Then the Soviets turn up, like the intrusion of a secondary singleton and destroy a bunch of lunalympic athletes and my perfect metaphor.
ANYWAY, to get away from flashing my meagre geek credentials, "a code with preferential treatment of other agents that follow the code"? Like, an Old Boy's network? A combination of Old Edwardian conditioning and Bridget Jones's MSN whoredom amalgamated in an instant. What with that ADHD progeny of humanity called technology (more specifically, the internet) blasting through the communicative barriers of distance, walls and (thanks to facebook) total apathy to other's status, social networking has created a situation whereby homogenisation and monoculture take on the mantle of morals beyond even the meagre dabblings of consumerism. The idea that these previous structures would not be eroded by a global means toward communication, but instead become more tight-knit and attractive to followers is hardly novel.
Though it would kind of only work with minorities, because preferential treatment to majorities doesn't totally work in terms of, mayhap, firing and hiring. And would make for really boring episodes of The Apprentice. But in the form of a sort of moral Ponzi scheme, with satisfaction and other abstract well-being uppers being distributed by inclusion, the whole thing becomes feasible. As a system of singletons, concurrently operating on the same societies without any knowledge of the true extent of their interaction. Religion, forum boards, B3ta. Or singular units of one. Sort of like...the world?
Or humanity, if we're following my pernickty logic to final conclusion, because we all have the shared aim to breathe oxygen.
Except it isn't just my logic, because Nick Bostrum (didn't I introduce him before? He wrote this. And got paid by Linguistic and Philosophical Investigations, I'll bet) comes to the conclusion that he (probably) concurs that "Earth-originating intelligent life will (eventually) form a singleton" due to emerging technology. Like communication. Or, rather disturbingly, mind-control. Disturbing because he muses over mind-control being viable both in terms of a possibility and a technological plausibility before he ever thinks "Oh, yeah. INTERNET."
"Once formed, a future singleton might be perpetually stable. This could happen if surveillance, mind control, and other security technologies develop in such a way as to enable a singleton to effectively prevent the emergence of internal challenges."
Treading on the thin (David) Ic-k-e there a smidgen, we round off with a lovely dystopian view of a system that cannot turn dystopian. So, we end with a massive rip-off of Brave New World.
Now, I'm not saying a fifteen-year-old could have lashed this article together (though I AM saying a fifteen-year-old could have forged this sniping little crit-fest in his tiny angsty heart, in between bouts of Firefly). No. I'm TYPING it. And there is a difference.
Alright, no I'm not. All I'm getting at is that this man was paid. And I would like monies, please. Muchos monieros. I'm only getting antsy because I can't envision a future career and this man appears to have synthesised one out of early issues of 2000A.D. and his article had the wherewithal to make me think. How dare he etc.
OK, I'm not typing that EITHER. I'm avoiding my essays and revision, alright? Good. Return to whatever you were doing before this wasted your time.
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