“The idea that entrepreneurship is a meritocracy is a myth. In the real world, money flows to the ideas that are the most convenient to find or the most familiar, not necessarily those that are the best. Simply put, the blind spots in the way we innovate–the way we nurture, support, and invest in new ideas–make all our other problems even harder to solve.” — said Ross Baird, an experienced VC

To a depressing extent, Silicon Valley isn’t even trying to do technology innovation any longer. Uber, Bird, Facebook, Twitter: compare these to the original Silicon Valley firms: Intel, Xerox/PARC, HP, etc. In place of high tech startups, SV is now creating consumer startups that, you know, have an app or a website. They are clever products and services, but the invincible advantage that SV had years ago was rooted in real engineering and technology, stuff that wasn’t cheap and isn’t easy to displace. AI is promising and deep, but it’s concentrated in the hands of a couple of established monopolies even at this early stage. The half-dozen gigantic tech monopolies are these days using open source in order to legally dump software products and platforms, with the intention of killing off software competitors. And it’s working. And the open source community is largely cheering it on. The upshot is this: equating Silicon Valley with technology is laughable at this point. There are a dozen places around the globe where people are as serious or more serious about technology per se than SV. And technology is the difference between real, deep innovation and superficial cheap stuff. — Luddy Harrison

Chamath Palihapitiya, the outspoken Silicon Valley tech investor, called

“The start-up economy a charade,” “We are, make no mistake … in the middle of an enormous multivariate kind of Ponzi scheme,” “It’s all on paper, but it looks amazing,” “You’ve been told to grow, so you’re growing. You’re doing your job.” — Chamath Palihapitiya said.

VCs also want companies to be located near where they are, explaining why their funding is so concentrated (the average distance from funders to startups is 80 miles). Y Combinator, perhaps the best-known early-stage funder in the country, won’t look at any business that doesn’t set up in San Francisco. It thinks they are 10 times more valuable than companies based elsewhere.

“We would not be doing them a favor by not making them move,” Sam Altman, president of the accelerator, has said.

“We’re not jerks. We just live in a white privilege filter bubble.” — says Charlie O’Donnell.

Obviously, we can’t blame them, but this interferes with the idea of equality. (Thisisgoingtobebig).

These 100 reasons tore the myth that “VCs perform just right” to shreds. Even though it could do well in the past, we live in new world where their models aren’t relevant anymore. On the contrary, it can hurt your start up in its infancy. Would you let them spoil your idea and kick you out as an “empty shell”? Would you continue desperately proving that you are worth their money?

Future starts with a 3 “Ds”: democratization, decentralization, diversification. People and their needs become the center of this model, while the center of the VC startup model is still capital.

Blockchain Industry: lack of implemented projects, low-skilled teams, ICO scam, loss of interest, confidence in the industry, falling number of users / utility / mass adoption is missing / churn — network externalities are negative

Photo-Illustration by Erik Johansson

In the field of decentralized applications, a huge number of unrelated enthusiasts are trying to achieve a false “ideal” of the network, which was conceived by Tim Berners-Lee

At the same time, fragmented startups in various countries can’t join forces to rival old market players and replace them.

One of the main problems is still the reluctance of developers to work together (community disunited and marginalized — zero-sum games). The participants of decentralization are united by a common idea, however they dream of their own developments, and some hope to compete in strength and influence with IT giants. Such ambitions completely contradict the idea of a “real” democratic Internet with equal users of Web 3.0.

Every startup owner, like Frodo Baggins — the Chosen One! If someone does not know…

“I don’t wanna live in a world where someone else makes the world a better place better than we do.” — Gavin Belson, SiliconValley

Human motivation and psychology have not changed much in the last 500 years.

The global triumph of Western civilization has led to the fact that personal motives and interests, including money, power, status, comfort, and convenience, are coming to the forefront. The desire to achieve them at any cost, primarily due to the victory in the competition at the expense of others.

“Bitcoin enthusiasts are fighting the establishment, and draining “fiat” currency of its value, while directly feeding the coffers of Wall Street and the technology tycoons behind the crypto-exchanges through which they are fighting.” — writes Tyler Elliot Bettilyon

The founder of the Internet Archive, Brewster Kahle, believes that even a decentralized network can reunite into large corporations-empires, and then all efforts will be in vain. “Huge forces will go to maintain the status quo,”- he admits. In the end, engineers and enthusiastic developers can still be excited by a big money and power. And then no one will distinguish them from blocking services of the authorities or censors in the network.

“The stupid underground of the cryptocurrency world are commodifying and capitalizing on a technology that has already been domesticated, yet they still imagine themselves as revolutionaries.” — writes Tyler Elliot Bettilyon

The time comes and it becomes necessary that someone woke us up and said — the battle has already begun …

Wake Up!

The current degree of community development is an absolute inconsistency in the quality of the industry — there are no leaders, there is no single vision and understanding of how the industry should develop, finally, it is fragmented so much that it resembles some kind of sports league, in which there are teams with fans (Global tribalism succeeds). If a community strives to recognize and reach new users, it will have to “build muscle”, otherwise it will remain a “marginal sect of random nouveau riche”.

Education Sector (Challenges)

“In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance” — George Orwell / 1984

Factors that determine the development of higher education:

The challenge and requirements for higher education from technological development,

The process of higher education, research set and objectives,

The impact of commercial and private “universities” on the education process,

The significance of the tradition of “free arts” and the liberalization process in the postmodern society,

The rising cost of education,

The reduction of public funding, the concept of “accountability”,

The use of part-time teachers to reduce costs,

Intellectual property issues.

The cost of getting the education necessary to work in high-tech production is five times higher than the cost of providing the child with the means of subsistence during to the period until it becomes a grown-up. They become comparable with the cost of production assets, even surpass them.

The analytical platform HackerRank published the results of the survey Student Developer Report for 2018. According to the results, 65 percent of students-developers acquire skills through self-study.

The remuneration of professors in the United States is higher than anywhere else, but it has steadily decreased since 1970, and the salaries of American professors are 25% lower than the salaries of doctors, lawyers, and engineers.

The government of the United States lowers its relationship with higher education and consequently limits it’s funding, leaving it “at the mercy” of businesses focused solely on profitability (privatization of education).

The total privatization of education has led to rather discouraging consequences — to get an education today, and the passage of training throughout life and career has become simply an unaffordable task — it’s too expensive.

Since the moment the economic crisis has intensified, the world has changed for colleges and universities. Along with failing banks and insurance companies, higher education was also affected universities whose donation funds have plummeted.

At present, the role of universities in society has changed, in addition to educational and research activities, higher education became involved in entrepreneurship, which resulted in the commercialization of scientific ideas and their implementation in production. The mission of the economic activities of scientific teams is seen as a contribution to the satisfaction of social needs within the region and the country, as well as the possibility of obtaining financial benefits by the educational institution itself. As a result, the university has become one of the central subjects of innovation, around which strategic alliances are being created.

Modern science is in pursuit of material well-being, but this path will not lead to knowledge.

The current training system reflects past positions separating commercial business and social activities. Business schools traditionally treat the social component only as a burden on a business that they have to endure. For many students such thinking has already become anachronism.

Ownership of intellectual property (technology / development / research) — affiliation, to the one who issued the grant, or a rare exception — to the university / lecturer itself (with up to 60% of the research grant amount the university leaves for itself).

Many universities now have an Office of Technology Transfer (TTO, also known as “Tech Transfer” or “TechXfer”) dedicated to identifying research which has potential commercial interest for governments and large transnational corporations. In cases where customers are startups and subsidiaries, commercial fees are sometimes canceled, in return for which there go shares in the business.

There has been a marked increase in technology transfer intermediaries specialized in their field since 1980, stimulated in large part by the Bayh-Dole Act and equivalent legislation in other countries, which provided additional incentives for research exploitation.

As new labor market takes shape over the 2018–2022 period, governments, businesses and individuals will also find themselves confronted with a range of wholly new questions. For example, as employment relationships increasingly shift towards temporary and freelancing arrangements, how can we ensure that individuals receive the support and guidance they need to acquire the right skills throughout their working lives? As employers are deconstructing traditional job roles and re-bundling work tasks in response to new technologies, how can they minimize the risks and best leverage new partnerships with resources such as online freelancers and talent platforms?

It is also equally clear that many individuals will need to be supported through periods of job transition and phases of retraining and upskilling by governments and employers. For example, lifelong learning is becoming a rich area of experimentation, with several governments and industries looking for the right formula to encourage individuals to voluntarily undergo periodic skills upgrading. The concept of a universal lifelong learning Fund to support workers is increasingly on the agenda of many state institutions. Solutions are likely to vary by country and to depend on local political, economic and social circumstances.

Most people face with the impossibility of repayment of the loan for a university education; without the support of the state or of the employer, advanced training will be like a game of survival.

The World Bank called the losses of the global economy due to the inaccessibility of education for girls. This is stated in the report “Unrealized Potential: The High Cost of Gender Inequality in Earnings 2018.”

According to the report, more than 130 million girls are out of school, causing the global economy to lose up to $ 30 trillion a year. According to preliminary estimates, if every girl received a secondary education, their total earnings could additionally bring in the world economy from 15 trillion to 30 trillion dollars a year.

Painting by Michael Cheval

As a Result, the Status Quo is Preserved (consolidation is growing — NET IMPERIALISM — Netocracy), increasing polarization and catastrophic inequality, which leads to economic — ecological instability, revolutionary sentiments and wars

“The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.” — Albert Einstein

As a result, we can state that the entire industry of innovations / startups / technologies, education, investments works in the old system of coordinates and acts in the interests of financial capital and the preservation of the status quo — we ourselves create these Frankensteins — we add to corporations even more competitive advantages — tools for irrepressible capture of the capital, assets, and power.

“We demonstrated that the Web had failed instead of served humanity, as it was supposed to have done, and failed in many places,”- said Tim Berners-Lee in an interview with Vanity Fair.

“The internet, French economist Yann Moulier-Boutang says, is “both the ship and the ocean” when it comes to the modern equivalent of the discovery of the new world. In fact, it is the ship, the compass, the ocean and the gold.” — writes Paul Mason

The man had really great opportunities. All this was based on the absence of a central authority, which had to be addressed for permission. The sense of individual control, empowerment is what we have lost … The power of the Internet has not been appropriated or stolen. We, and the billions of us, allowed it to be …

“Convenience and comfort are the main scourge of modernity! Network neutrality is dead, mining data took the maximum height, but they do not care, they are comfortable — a well-known evil. Do you remember Cambridge Analitica — people still use Facebook, because it is familiar to them — it is human nature!” — TV series Startup

Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple now monopolize almost everything that happens online, from what we buy to the news we read to who we like. Along with a handful of powerful government agencies, they are able to monitor, manipulate, and spy in once unimaginable ways.

”A bug is never just a mistake. It represents something bigger. An error of thinking that makes you who you are.” — Elliot Mr.Robot

These companies also control massive proprietary developer platforms. The dominant operating systems — iOS and Android — charge 30% payment fees and exert heavy influence over app distribution. The dominant social networks tightly restrict access, hindering the ability of third-party developers to scale. Startups and independent developers are increasingly competing from a disadvantaged position.

The ones that do reach critical mass tend to careen towards natural monopoly, creating competitive moats that allow the network owner to extract huge fees.

Market power arises when users or customers have few comparable alternative options for sources of the good or service being provided. This gives the seller the ability to raise prices, or in the case of some internet giants to charge transaction fees, compile and sell user data, all as a condition for giving users access to the platform.

Fiduciary duty to its shareholders — this is the ‘Extraction Imperative’. Charging monopoly rents is not optional: the company’s responsibility to shareholders means it will always look to maximize profits.

All companies seek consolidation. If earlier the same market was divided by dozens of small organizations, today all that you deal with in life, with the exception of electronics and automobiles, belong in one way or another to only 10 companies in the world.

Another thing is that it is blockchain technology, providing projects with funds, may ultimately create difficulties for achieving the ultimate goal of the creators of DWeb (Web 3.0) — freedom from corporations. Cryptocurrencies can be one of the ways to monetize this project. And if he has monetization, then sooner or later he will cease to be free from corporations.

At first, something new can really be free. But then capital is inevitably concentrated in this new one, and the conditional market of ideal competition goes first to oligopolies, and then to monopolies. So it was with the usual Internet, so it will be with the network, free from any corporations. Capitalism simply cannot be changed — it is what it is.

“Subversive technological advances are not made in a vacuum; they are made in the grander context of Earth’s geopolitical, economic, and interpersonal reality. Such advances may cause shifts and fissures within the groups holding power, but when the dust settles, those who used technology to obtain power will, in turn, use it to maintain their power. And as our technologies become more powerful, the consequences of inventing them have become more significant.” -writes Tyler Elliot Bettilyon

The Dangers of Modernity

“After all, a system that formalizes only capital and not human individuality may inexorably serve wealth rather than humanity.” — Vitalik Buterin

Although we think we live in a democracy, it will eventually turn out to be an oligarchy at best and a totalitarian regime at worst, since the money are concentrated on the hands of fewer and fewer people cannot be controlled politically, and the potential for capital to merge with the state leads to excessive influence of individuals on the development of state policy and personal officials’ interest in certain decisions.

In the Middle Ages people felt that they had a bad life because they had to pay tithing, that is, a tenth of the income or products of the feudal Lord. Today, more than a third of every dollar, euro falls into the pockets of capital owners. And the fact that the economic situation of most people are better than in the Middle Ages, it is explained by the implementation of the industrial revolution and the increase in the level of automation of the economy. Only understanding the mechanism of redistribution in within the framework of the percentage system allows us to understand why we are still had to deal with economic difficulties.

The iron law of oligarchy is a principle of elite theory first formulated by Robert Michels in 1911. It consists in the fact that any form of social organization, regardless of its original democracy or autocracy, inevitably degenerates into the power of a few elected — the oligarchy (direct domination of the masses is technically impossible).

In the past, a similar increase in money and, thus, power in the hands of all a smaller group of people “resolved” through social revolutions, wars or economic disasters.

“Violence is the midwife of everyone old society, pregnant with a new one.” -K. Marx

About fifty years ago Alvin Toffler also spoke with a warning about the upcoming “revolutionary transitions” the widespread symptoms of disorientation, discontent, and loss of balance in our society. Today, such revolutionary solutions have already been unacceptable. On the one hand, the potential of a multiple global destruction makes the violent decision unacceptable; on the other hand, all countries are in an unprecedented economic dependence on each other.

We just have to find a new solution if we want to survive and avoid wars, social revolutions and economic crashes.

Let us not forget that high levels of economic inequality come at a price not only for the poor but also for the extremely wealthy themselves. Some are building protective bunkers on secluded islands as they prepare for the inevitable social upheavals. Historical research shows that any concentration of wealth and power requires investments in vast networks of expensive security institutions leading to what Dr. Rachel Kleinfeld calls privilege violence. Such violence stems from a power structure that allows or enables violence against some citizens as the price for maintaining extreme privilege.

The Struggle of Networks and Hierarchy (Corporations are still the same People)

“We can’t beat them, but we don’t have to lose to them either. Maybe there’s a way to keep them from winning.”- Elliot Mr.Robot

The main contradiction today is between the possibility of free, abundant goods and information; and a system of monopolies, banks and governments trying to keep things private, scarce and commercial. Everything comes down to the struggle between the network and the hierarchy: between old forms of society molded around capitalism and new forms of society that prefigure what comes next.

“Decentralized networks can win the third era of the internet for the same reason they won the first era: by winning the hearts and minds of entrepreneurs and developers.” — Chris Dixon

Installation by Recycle Group

“An illustrative analogy is the rivalry in the 2000s between Wikipedia and its centralized competitors like Encarta. If you compared the two products in the early 2000s, Encarta was a far better product, with better topic coverage and higher accuracy. But Wikipedia improved at a much faster rate, because it had an active community of volunteer contributors who were attracted to its decentralized, community-governed ethos. By 2005, Wikipedia was the most popular reference site on the internet. Encarta was shut down in 2009.” “GAFA has many advantages, including cash reserves, large user bases, and operational infrastructure. Cryptonetworks have a significantly more attractive value proposition to developers and entrepreneurs. If they can win their hearts and minds, they can mobilize far more resources than GAFA, and rapidly outpace their product development.” — writes Chris Dixon

“And who are we in the world wide web — spiders or flies?” — Vladislav Surkov

We need to imagine new sorts of governance and provisioning arrangements that can transform, tame, or replace predatory markets and capitalism. Over the past 50 years, the regulatory state has failed to abate the relentless flood of anti-ecological, anti-consumer, anti-social “externalities” generated by capitalism, largely because the power of capital has eclipsed that of the nation-state and citizen sovereignty. Yet the traditional left continues to believe, mistakenly, that a warmed-over Keynesianism, wealth-redistribution, and social programs are politically achievable and likely to be effective.

“You can’t really beat big money with more money. You have to beat them with a totally different game.” — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

“We need more than just a bunch of utopian dreams and small-scale horizontal projects. We need a project based on reason, evidence and testable designs, that cuts with the grain of history and is sustainable by the planet. And we need to get on with it.” — says Paul Mason

In its struggle, it is necessary to make demands and act beyond the limits of the capitalist mode of production.

Not tinting capitalism, not redistributing (temporarily!) social wealth in favor of those who were poorer, but eliminating in general all the foundations of a society where rich and poor, working and unemployed are possible.

Painting by Andrey Surnov

“We can make a mess in the economy, but in any case, we will correct the situation. If we make a mistake in theory, we will ruin everything. Without theory, we will die…” “No replastering, the structure is rotten.” — graffiti may 1968 France “Corporations, US presidential candidate Mitt Romney reminds us, are people. Whether or not you agree with the conclusions that his partisans draw from that claim, the statement certainly carries a large amount of truth. What is a corporation, after all, but a certain group of people working together under a set of specific rules?” — writes Vitalik Buterin

And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like “1984” — ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The Inquisition of Science: Global Governance and Preventive Police

“Random Number Generation Is Too Important to Be Left to Chance” — Robert R. Coveyou

In the summer and autumn of last year on both sides of the Atlantic according to initiative of the highest ruling elite, and intelligence communities held a number of conferences on chronopolitics, which are not advertised in the media.

If the sphere of geopolitics includes issues of domination in a particular territory, the chronopolitics is a struggle for the future, for gaining a mainstream position in the formation of the dynamics of world and regional development. The chiefs of the leading “think tanks” spoke at these conferences.

One of the reports was made by the Swedish philosopher, the creator of the Institute of the Future of Humanity at Oxford University, the author of the famous bestseller about artificial intelligence Nick Bostrom. He told in detail to the powerful ones of this world about his “concept of black balls in a vulnerable world”.

A real black ball is a technology that, in itself, within the framework of self-development, imperceptibly, due to the efforts of various unrelated groups and teams pursuing their own interests, is capable to destroy the civilization to the ground.

Bostrom believes that the answer to the black ball challenge can only be the creation of a layered global system of scientific monitoring, and moreover, blocking those areas of technological development that carry the threat of the black ball. Moreover, blocking directions are necessary not within the country, but at a more global level.

Bostrom is considering the following ways to achieve stabilization:

Blocking certain areas of technological development.

Building a hierarchical world order, when the dominant will partially transfer its functions to regional and sectoral areas of science and technology subdominants. Of course, it will be like feudalism on a global scale and perpetuate injustice. However, such a system will make it possible to quickly identify and prevent hazards.

The establishment of effective global governance, led by the dominant and fair participation of subdominants.

A decisive change in the norms of international law, as well as the creation of a global authority that carries out rapid preventive measures against violators of the global treaty on the braking of technological development.

To this end, Bostrom proposes to implement the principle of differentiated scientific and technological braking.

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions” — Samuel Johnson

The implementation of this principle will require the creation (attention — literally) of a supranational intelligence and counterintelligence — punishing structure capable to daily practical actions.

Bostrom also offers another theoretically possible way to achieve civilization stability — this is a sharp decrease in the number of competing actors who make independent decisions in the development of science and technology, and the application of technology.

The only alternative to chaos that currently exists in the world community, Bostrom sees in the establishment of a rigid global governance. Due to the discrediting of the term “world government”, he does not call the global governance of this term.

He prefers to use the term “global governance institution”. The functions of the special institution should be limited to the specific problem of deterring scientific and technological progress.

Bostrom does not offer a world government, but in the face of a real threat to civilization, he offers a model of limiting the sovereignty of all countries of the world in terms of technological development. No country can refer to the fact that it is sovereign, and therefore can, on its territory, do whatever it pleases.

“There’s a saying. The devil’s at his strongest when we’re looking the other way, like a program running in the background silently, while we’re busy doing other shit.” — Elliot Mr.Robot

Connoisseurs of Soviet fiction, especially fans of the Strugatsky brothers, reading the newest concept of one of the intellectual Western leaders Nick Bostrom, will see in it a kind of plagiarism, though much more specific and developed.

In the novels of the cycle “Noon Universe”, especially in “The Beetle in the Anthill” and “Waves Extinguish the Wind”, the organization COMCON-2 is active — the Committee “for Control of Scientific Research”, which had unlimited rights and opportunities to monitor and suppress scientific and technological research and developments that threaten the stability of Earth civilization.

And, acquainted with the novel “Bull Hour” Soviet science fiction writer I.Efremov, you can look at the problem raised by N. Bostrom, from a different angle.

“Not one state has such a right [to deny access to information], not one planet! The sacred duty of each of us is to contravene such an unprecedented oppression. Who dares block the way of a sentient reasoning being towards knowledge? … When in the Great Ring a state is discovered that blocks the way to knowledge for its people, such a state is dismantled. This is the only case that gives the right to interfere in the affairs of another planet… the prohibition to learn about arts, sciences, life on other planets, is unacceptable”.

According to Bostrom, if they start an intensive information campaign about the technological dangers of the black ball, there is reason to believe that the position of the majority of the population in Western countries will change. Mentally, it is prepared, first of all, by television and the Internet to the future colossal problems due to the uncontrolled development of technologies.

It would therefore be far-sighted, in preparing a global agreement on technology deceleration, to start small, and only then, using public opinion, to rapidly ban what can be banned.

Taking into account that states no longer have a monopoly on power, which partially passes to corporations and public organizations, the emphasis is on the creation of a supranational proactive technological police.

Experience shows that technology giants are ready to cooperate with law enforcement agencies in identifying and limiting certain technological solutions. This is not due to the high consciousness of the leaders of the technological giants, but due to their economic interests.

Being engaged in braking technologies — candidates for the black ball — technological giants simultaneously freeze the achieved level of technology, i.e. fix the world where they are leaders — keep the status quo.

The main point of the speech of Bostrom is to literally in the next year or two or three to abandon the concept of unlimited national sovereignty on an international scale and transfer unconditional rights to the Institute of global governance as a global body to monitor, control and suppress attempts to carry out research and development, fraught with a black ball.

When the black ball is received, it will be too late to look for ways to curb the development of technology. The Institute of Global Governance or the high-tech Panopticon is, according to Bostrom,

not a fascism, but a necessity.

Forming the right public opinion — technology astroturfing? Or HyperNormalisation? Who will determine which technology is the “black ball”? Based on whose consensus will decisions be made? How will the monitoring, censorship, and inhibition of technological progress occur?

Perhaps the secret society of the Nine is not a legend, the secret union of the “Nine Unknowns”, which had an unusual task — to hinder in every way the technological progress leading to the improvement of the civilization of humanity.

We all remember how in childhood we dreamed about the rapid development of technology-imagined how much the world will change in the near future: the colonization of planets, carbon-free energy, antigravity, victory over diseases, cold nuclear fusion, relativistic heavy nuclear energy, technology of unlimited resources, etc. Why was technological progress suspended in the 70s of the last century? Why did they abolish the future?

Perhaps there is a consensus on maintaining the status quo and slowing down the development of certain scientific areas? After all, the technological progress of modern times is mainly global management and control technologies — (communication technologies, smartphones, social networks, 5G, AI, BigData) — technologies serving financial capital. Technologies that lead to mass degradation, the formation of a parasitic society and massively suppress the creative potential of each individual (Relentless iterations of the same basic product sustain marginal consumer demand at the expense of human acceleration.)

No one doubts that feudalism and the slave-owning system were destroyed by technological progress, a natural question arises — perhaps the elites have a desire to block technological development in order to maintain the status quo, and thereby to continue the capitalist era. And if earlier we observed the inhibition of the development of science-now, based on the report of Bostrom, we can say that the blocking wants to perpetuate…

“In a society that has abolished all adventures, the only adventure left is to abolish society” — graffiti may 1968 France

Wake Up!

The Singularity Puzzle

“The ever-accelerating progress of technology and changes in mode of human life… give an appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue.” — John von Neumann

To understand the future alternatives of world development, it is worth explaining one mathematical concept. Which, at one time very accurately described by Stanislav Lem:

“Let us imagine a mad tailor who makes all sorts of clothes. He does not know anything about people, birds, or plants. He is not interested in the world; he does not examine it. He makes clothes but does not know for whom. He does not think about it. Some of his clothes are spherical, without any openings for heads or feet; others have tubes sewn into them that he calls “sleeves” or “legs.” Their number is random. The clothes consist of various numbers of elements. The tailor is only concerned about one thing: he wants to be consistent. His clothes are symmetrical and asymmetrical, large and small, stretchy and permanently fixed. When he starts producing a new item, he makes certain assumptions. They are not always the same. But he follows the assumptions he has made, and he expects them not to lead to a contradiction. If he sews on the legs, he does not cut them off later; he does not unstitch what he has sewn; they are always clothes and not bunches of randomly sewn rags. He takes the finished clothes to a massive warehouse. If we could enter it, we would discover that some of the clothes fit an octopus, others fit trees, butterflies, or people. We would find clothes for a centaur and for a unicorn as well as for creatures that have not even been imagined yet. The great majority of his clothes would not find any application. Everyone will admit that the tailor’s Sisyphean labor is pure madness. Mathematics works in the same way. It builds structures but it is not clear of what. These are perfect models (i.e., perfectly accurate), but a mathematician does not know what they are models of. He is not interested. He does what he does because such an action has turned out to be possible. Of course, a mathematician uses words we know from everyday language, especially when making initial assumptions. He talks, for example, about spheres and straight lines or about points. But he does not mean the same things we understand by them. The surface of his sphere has no thickness, while points have no size. The space of his constructions is not our space, as it can have an infinite number of dimensions.” (“Summa Technologiae”)

Such a purely model concept is the bifurcation point. In fact, the mathematical concept of a bifurcation point speaks about it precisely as a point, which, as we remember, has neither dimensions nor internal structure in mathematics. A model system or mathematical function that falls into the bifurcation point loses either differentiability or continuity, or both at the same time.

The behavior and state of the system after passing the bifurcation point can be predicted purely conditional — and by whom or what it will become later — it is often completely impossible to predict from its (system or function) behavior until the point is passed.

Having extrapolated the hyperbolic curve into the future, the researchers have come to a nearly unanimous (ignoring the individual interpretations) and even more result that is striking: around the mid-21st century, the hyperbole turns into a vertical. That is, the speed of the evolutionary processes tends to infinity, and the time intervals between new phase transitions vanish. The point on which the value of a function becomes infinite is called the singularity; therefore, the mentioned mathematical inference has been designated by the authors’ names as Snooks — Panov’s Vertical or Kurzweil’s Singularity.

The Mega-history inferences are corroborated by the calculations based on more particular parameters, like the accumulation of the genetic burden because of falling children’s mortality and growing longevities, etc. Indeed, our civilization seems to be approaching at a growing rate the polyfurcation point whose planetary (and cosmic?) significance exceeds all the foregoing phase transitions. Thus, the four-billion-year-long evolution intrigue will be solved somehow or other during the current century. Cross-disciplinary investigations applying a synergetic pattern help discern three attractors beyond the mathematical Singularity, with a set of scenarios within each one.

Transition to history’s “descending branch”. European philosophers wrote a lot about this perspective in the 18th-19th centuries; yet they saw external reasons (like Earth aging or the Sun blowing out) and used to put this transition off many thousands, millions or hundreds of millions years in future. Now we see that the cause of history exhaustion can be exclusively humans’ own activity and that the timetable amounts to decades. As we trace onward various anthroposphere and biosphere degradation scenarios, we find that the process can continue from several days to millennia; anyhow, the simple attractor is that Earth will become a “normal” cosmic body like the Moon or Mars free from res cogitans and living matter at all.

“If to the sacred truth World would not find the way Glory to madman who’d bring To mankind a Golden Dream…” - Pierre Jean Beranger

2. Evolution’s suspension guaranteed by a shift of core social activity to virtual reality — horizontal attractor. The “hang-up” may be long-term, but sooner or later, the escapist civilization will be absorbed by the growing universal entropy.

3. Transition from evolution’s planetary phase to the cosmic one — vertical attractor. This does not look idyllic either, since the cosmically relevant phase implies radical transformations in the mind’s conditions, qualities and substrates (like man-machine structures and so on) as a premise for subsequent development: progress has never been the way “from the worse to the better” but just an alternative to the system’s destruction.

Technological Singularity

“I understand now. This world doesn’t belong to them; it belongs to us.” — Dolores Westworld

“AI will radically transform transportation, retail and finance in the 1st wave of automation which has already started to occur. The 2nd wave of automation impacts and the firms that are the winners of HealthTech and EdTeach are among the most powerful companies of the 21st century, even if a few of them don’t even exist yet.” — writes Michael K. Spencer

How technology, robotics, AI, automation will develop — we don’t know for sure, and the speed with which changes come into life is growing exponentially, just like the amount of information. Ray Kurzweil was right when he spoke about the imminent onset of technological singularity — however, there are all the prerequisites that this will happen in the near future. And actually, thinking about the future and analyzing the course of history have no sense — the story will be created by the Mind, superior mind to the human.

The main contradiction in the infosphere, due to which it has explosive development, is a contradiction between two singularities: technological and the complete absence of the human singularity (cognitive, communicative, organizational, subjective). This contradiction should be solved by Сryptoeconomics.

To understand what is beyond the simulation — we need to build it!

New Archetype — Network Individual

“Run, comrade, the old world is behind you!” — graffiti may 1968 France

Those who still believe that the proletariat is the only force that can lead society far beyond the limits of capitalism do not take into account the two key features of the modern world to the proper degree: a different path leads to post-capitalism, and the driving force of change can now potentially be any person on earth.

As a historical subject, it is replaced by a diverse global population, for which the battleground is all aspects of society’s life, not just work, and whose lifestyle is characterized not by solidarity, but by inconstancy.

Barry Wellman traced the transition from communities based on teams to physical and then digital networks. He called what turned out to be “network individualism” and directly connected it with greater flexibility regarding work, and who has no attachment to hierarchy and structures, both at work and in protest activities.

Both R.Sennett and B.Wellman noted the tendency of people who have adapted to such an informal lifestyle to develop many identities, both in real life and on the Internet. Sennett writes:

“The conditions of time under new capitalism created a conflict between character and experience, the experience of dismembered time, which jeopardizes the ability of people to turn their personality into stable narratives.”

A networked individual creates a more multifaceted reality: he lives parallel lives at work, in a multitude of fragmented subcultures and on the Internet.

In many industrial and commercial cities of the world, network individuals are already not a sociological curiosity, but an archetype.

Network transformations and movements confirm that a new historical subject has emerged. It is not just the working class in a different guise; this is Networked Humanity.

Network Society (Era of a Classless Society)

“We are all now connected by the Internet, like neurons in a giant brain.” — Stephen Hawking

According to M.Castells, networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies

“…the definition, if you wish, in concrete terms of a network society is a society where the key social structures and activities are organized around electronically processed information networks. So it’s not just about networks or social networks, because social networks have been very old forms of social organization. It’s about social networks which process and manages information and are using micro-electronic based technologies.”

The diffusion of a networking logic substantially modifies the operation and outcomes in processes of production, experience, power, and culture. For Castells, networks have become the basic units of modern society.

The network society goes further than the information society that is often proclaimed. Castells argues that it is not purely the technology that defines modern societies, but also cultural, economic and political factors that make up the network society. Influences such as religion, cultural upbringing, political organizations, and social status all shape the network society. Societies are shaped by these factors in many ways. These influences can either raise or hinder these societies.

The space of flows plays a central role in Castells’ vision of the network society. It is a network of communications, defined by hubs where these networks crisscross. Elites in cities are not attached to a particular locality but to the space of flows.

Castells puts great importance on the networks and argues that the real Power is to be found within the networks rather than confined in global cities. This contrasts with other theorists who rank cities hierarchically.

Modern capitalism is capitalism without a class struggle, since the category “class” ceases to exist. Capitalism forms new cultural conglomerates, subcultural communities, such as Hipsterism (from “to behip” to be in “theme”), Yuccies (from yuccies, young urban creatives), Geekism (from geek, people possessed the technological “spirit”), Precariat (from precarious, fragile, unstable), etc.

In this respect, there is a certain degree of certainty say that the “third” the spirit of capitalism is the spirit of high technology, high-speed, the fragmentation of time and space, innovation, simulation and virtualization in general, and the financialization of economic and cultural life of the society.

“Algorithms, derivatives, big data, and social media technology all contribute to the rampant expansion of divisive management strategies and desires for self-division. The good news, however, is that this same terrain of dividuality presents an opportunity for a new kind of resistance, one that can be realized in the form of con/division.” — Gerald Raunig

More than 200 years ago, the radical journalist John Thelwall warned the men who built the English factories that they had created a new and dangerous form of democracy:

“Every large workshop and manufacture is a sort of political society, which no act of parliament can silence, and no magistrate disperses.”

Today the whole of society is a factory. We all participate in the creation and recreation of the brands, norms and institutions that surround us. At the same time the communication grids vital for everyday work and profit are buzzing with shared knowledge and discontent. Today it is the network — like the workshop 200 years ago — that they “cannot silence or disperse”.

“The liberation of humanity will be total or it will not be.” — graffiti may 1968 France

Rather than try to manage themselves as hierarchical organizations with proprietary franchises, reputations, and overhead to sustain, activists see themselves as part of social movements working as flexible players in open, fluid environments. Their network-driven activism enables them to more efficiently self-organize and coordinate activities, attract self-selected participants with talent, and implement fast cycles of creative iteration.

System-change movements tend to eschew the conventional policy and political process, and instead seek change through self-organized EMERGENCE.

As two students of complexity theory and social movements, Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze, write:

When separate, local efforts connect with each other as networks, then strengthen as communities of practice, suddenly and surprisingly a new system emerges at a greater level of scale. This system of influence possesses qualities and capacities that were unknown in the individuals. It isn’t that they were hidden; they simply don’t exist until the system emerges. They are properties of the system, not the individual, but once there, individuals possess them. And the system that emerges always possesses greater power and influence than is possible through planned, incremental change. Emergence is how life creates radical change and takes things to scale.

The old guard of electoral politics and standard economics has trouble comprehending the principle of emergence, let alone recognizing the need for innovative policy structures that could leverage and focus that dynamic power. It has consistently underestimated the bottom-up innovation enabled by open source software; the speed and reliability of Wikipedia-style coordination and knowledge-aggregation, and the power of social media in catalyzing viral self-organization.

Conventional schools of economics, politics and power do not comprehend the generative capacities of decentralized, self-organized networks. They apply obsolete categories of institutional control and political analysis, as if trying to understand the ramifications of automobiles through the language of “horseless carriages.”

Instead of clinging to the old left/right spectrum of political ideology — which reflects the centrality of “the market” and “the state” in organizing society — we need to entertain new narratives that allow us to imagine new drivers of governance, production and culture.

General Intellect

General intellect, according to Karl Marx in his Grundrisse, became a crucial force of production. It is a combination of technological expertise and social intellect, or general social knowledge (increasing importance of machinery in social organization).

The “general intellect” passage in the Fragment section of Grundrisse, shows that, while the development of machinery led to the oppression of workers under capitalism, it also offers a prospect for future liberation.

In the “Fragment” Marx imagines an economy in which the main role of machines is to produce, and the main role of people is to supervise them. He was clear that, in such an economy, the main productive force would be information. The productive power of such machines as the automated cotton-spinning machine, the telegraph and the steam locomotive did not depend on the amount of labor it took to produce them but on the state of social knowledge. Organization and knowledge, in other words, made a bigger contribution to productive power than the work of making and running the machines.

Given what Marxism was to become — a theory of exploitation based on the theft of labor time — this is a revolutionary statement. It suggests that, once knowledge becomes a productive force in its own right, outweighing the actual labor spent creating a machine, the big question becomes not one of “wages versus profits” but who controls what Marx called the “power of knowledge”.

In an economy where machines do most of the work, the nature of the knowledge locked inside the machines must, he writes, be “social”. In a final thought experiment Marx imagined the end point of this trajectory: the creation of an “ideal machine”, which lasts forever and costs nothing. A machine that could be built for nothing would, he said, add no value at all to the production process and rapidly, over several accounting periods, reduce the price, profit and labor costs of everything else it touched.

Once you understand that information is physical, and that software is a machine, and that storage, bandwidth and processing power are collapsing in price at exponential rates, the value of Marx’s thinking becomes clear. We are surrounded by machines that cost nothing and could, if we wanted them to, last forever.

In these musings, not published until the mid-20th century, Marx imagined information coming to be stored and shared in something called a “general intellect” — which was the mind of everybody on Earth connected by social knowledge, in which every upgrade benefits everybody. In short, he had imagined something close to the information economy in which we live. And, he wrote, its existence would “blow capitalism sky-high”.

“Marx imagined something close to our information economy. He wrote its existence would blow capitalism sky-high…”- Paul Mason

Going beyond Marx’ idea of knowledge absorbed in fixed capital, P.Virno posits his thesis of the simultaneously pre-individual and trans-individual social quality of the intellect.

“Intellect” is not to be understood here as the exclusive competence of an individual, but rather as a common tie and a constantly developing foundation of individuation, as a social quality of the intellect.

Living labor in postfordism has as raw material and means of production: thinking that is expressed through language, the ability to learn and communicate, the imagination, in other words the capacity that distinguishes human consciousness.

Here pre-individual human “nature”, which lies in speaking, thinking, communicating, is augmented by the trans-individual aspect of the General Intellect: it is not only the entirety of all knowledge accumulated by the human species, not only what all prior shared capability has in common, it is also the in-between of cognitive workers, the communicative interaction, abstraction and self-reflexion of living subjects, the cooperation, the coordinated action of living labor.

Living labor accordingly incarnates the General Intellect (the ‘social brain’), which Marx called the ‘pillar of production and wealth’. Today the General Intellect is no longer absorbed in fixed capital; it no longer represents only the knowledge contained in the system of the machines,

but rather the verbal cooperation of a multitude of living subjects.”

Knowledge Economy (Knowledge is a Productive Force)

Photo-Illustration by Hugh Kretschmer

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.” — Albert Einstein

Special attention should be paid to the role of labor resources in the process of globalization. The growth of some quantitative and qualitative changes is becoming more and more obvious. Their essence is that traditional competitive advantages such as natural resources and cheap labor force cease to be a decisive factor. The success of national economic systems in modern conditions lies in the possession of a more advanced system of accumulation, dissemination and application of knowledge. Knowledge, multiplied by the ability to generate and implement ideas, forms a stable basis of advanced development.

In advanced countries, national innovation systems are being created, whose goal is to build an economy based on innovations. Such economic systems are increasingly called innovative societies.

The post-industrial type of economy, which we call, in a broad sense, the economy of knowledge, acts in this case as a system in which new laws operate:

the law of increasing returns;

the exponential nature of growth, enhanced by the network structure of the interaction of subjects;

rental effects due to the accumulation of intellectual and technological potentials.

It can be argued that the knowledge economy differs from the traditional economy in several key respects:

The economics are not of scarcity, but rather of abundance. Unlike most resources that are depleted when used, information and knowledge can be shared, and actually grow through application;

Unlike most resources that are depleted when used, information and knowledge can be shared, and actually grow through application; The effect of location is either

— Diminished, in some economic activities: using appropriate technology and methods, virtual marketplaces and virtual organizations that offer benefits of speed, agility, round the clock operation and global reach can be created.

— Or, on the contrary, reinforced in some other economic fields, by the creation of business clusters around centers of knowledge, such as universities and research centers. However, clusters already existed in pre-knowledge economy times.

Laws, barriers, taxes and ways to measure are difficult to apply solely on a national basis. Knowledge and information “leak” to where demand is highest and the barriers are lowest.

Knowledge and information “leak” to where demand is highest and the barriers are lowest. Knowledge enhanced products or services can command price premiums over comparable products with low embedded knowledge or knowledge intensity.

over comparable products with low embedded knowledge or knowledge intensity. Pricing and value depends heavily on context. Thus the same information or knowledge can have vastly different value to different people or even to the same person at different times.

Thus the same information or knowledge can have vastly different value to different people or even to the same person at different times. Knowledge when locked into systems or processes has higher inherent value than when it can “walk out of the door” in people’s heads.

than when it can “walk out of the door” in people’s heads. Human capital is the main factor of formation and development of innovative economy and knowledge economy.

Photo-Illustration by Hugh Kretschmer

Communication is increasingly being seen as fundamental to knowledge flows. Social structures, cultural context and other factors influencing social relations are therefore of fundamental importance to knowledge economies.

The knowledge economy has manifold forms in which it may appear but there are predictions that the new economy will extend radically, creating a pattern in which even ideas will be recognised and identified as a commodity.

Modern capitalism effectively realizes itself through Internet communication, social networks, virtual communication — the ability to speak, write, think, invent is a new source of capital extraction.

The speed of knowledge development grows not only with the growth of the number of people involved in the creative process, but even more with the intensity of information exchanges, knowledge creates knowledge.

Are various interlocking driving forces, which are changing the rules of business and national competitiveness:

Globalization — markets and products are more global.

— markets and products are more global. Information technology, which is related to next three:

Information/Knowledge Intensity — efficient production relies on information and know-how; many factory workers use their heads more than their hands.

New Media — New media increases the production and distribution of knowledge which in turn, results in collective intelligence. Existing knowledge becomes much easier to access as a result of networked data-bases which promote online interaction between users and producers.

Computer networking and Connectivity — developments such as the Internet bring the “global village” ever nearer.

Knowledge workers bring benefits to organizations in a variety of ways. These include:

analyzing data to establish relationships;

assessing input in order to evaluate complex or conflicting priorities;

identifying and understanding trends;

making connections;

understanding cause and effect;

ability to brainstorm, thinking broadly (divergent thinking);

ability to drill down, creating more focus (convergent thinking);

producing a new capability;

creating or modifying a strategy.

Reinhardt et al.’s review of current literature shows that the roles of knowledge workers across the workforce are incredibly diverse. In two empirical studies they have “proposed a new way of classifying the roles of knowledge workers and the knowledge actions they perform during their daily work.”

As some conclusion from the above, it follows: as a new factor that changes the very essence of labor, intellect stands out. Under the all-penetrating and ever-changing influence of the intellect on the state of the productive forces of society, the product is increasingly being created either without the usual factors of production, or with their very limited participation.

Obviously, actions by developed countries, as well as major information corporations, striving to maintain the status quo achieved and using their monopoly on intellectual property, inevitably lead to a stagnation of scientific, technical and economic progress of society.

All these factors once again underline that the modern processes of development of labor relations are becoming inadequate to the classical theoretical ideas about the labor market. This limits the possibility of substantiation and implementation of effective policies both in the labor sphere and in the economy as a whole. Thus, science sets new research tasks, the solution of which requires a revision of the methodological principles and theoretical foundations of analyzing a new type of work — information work, changing approaches to evaluating its results and driving forces, overcoming a number of stable stereotypes and dogmas, forming the corresponding new historical situation in the policy and practice of socio-economic processes management.

Collective Intelligence

According to Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, collective intelligence is mass collaboration.

Photo-Illustration by Erik Johansson

In order for this concept to happen, four principles need to exist:

Openness

Sharing ideas and intellectual property: though these resources provide the edge over competitors more benefits accrue from allowing others to share ideas and gain significant improvement and scrutiny through collaboration.

Peering

Horizontal organization as with the ‘opening up’ of the Linux program where users are free to modify and develop it provided that they make it available for others. Peering succeeds because it encourages self-organization — a style of production that works more effectively than hierarchical management for certain tasks.

Sharing

Companies have started to share some ideas while maintaining some degree of control over others, like potential and critical patent rights. Limiting all intellectual property shuts out opportunities, while sharing some expands markets and brings out products faster.

Acting Globally

The advancement in communication technology has prompted the rise of global companies at low overhead costs. The internet is widespread; therefore a globally integrated company has no geographical boundaries and may access new markets, ideas and technology.

According to research scientists, neither team cohesion nor motivation or satisfaction is correlated with C (Collective intelligence factor). However, they claim that three factors were found as significant correlates: the variance in the number of speaking turns, group members’ average social sensitivity and the proportion of females.

The number speaking turns indicates that “groups where a few people dominated the conversation were less collectively intelligent than those with a more equal distribution of conversational turn-taking”. Hence, providing multiple team members the chance to speak up made a group more intelligent.

Gladwell (2008) showed that the relationship between individual IQ and success works only to a certain point and that additional IQ points over an estimate of IQ 120 do not translate into real life advantages.

Individuals who respect collective intelligence are confident of their own abilities and recognize that the whole is indeed greater than the sum of any individual parts.

Collective intelligence is a major advantage in the global innovation economy (the ability to develop new knowledge and competencies). The problems we facing with are so complex that it is obvious that no one can solve them alone or by a separate team — only by collective intelligence. Each individual has unique, complementary skills, education, experience, beliefs, perspectives, perceptions, and a scale of values ​​- without these diverse attributes (differences) we cannot succeed.

For example, everyone remembers how a small team of five people won a prize of $ 100,000 in a competition held by Kaggle. The participants were given two months’ worth of information on airplane flights and were asked to come up with a new way of optimizing airplane routs. The teams were working on classical TSP (traveling salesman problem), that mathematicians have worked on for centuries. The winning team has exceeded all expectations and came up with a model that was 40% more efficient than any other modern systems. Even a part of this potential will translate into billions of dollars saved on an annual basis.

This innovation is quite impressive given that it’s linked to one of the well-researched problems in mathematics. It’s amazing that it took only two months for a small team to create such a valuable advance only because they decided to tackle it in a totally new direction.

What exactly did they do? They utilized the power of merging different knowledge systems in the process of innovating.

Evolution of Crowdsourcing — Noosourcing (Attracting Professionals on Demand)

Installation by Thilo Frank

Noosourcing — (from greek “noos” — “mind” and sourcing — “use of someone’s resources”) — transfer of functions related to the production of knowledge (for example, the expertise), network communities, uniting professionals and experts. Unlike crowdsourcing, noosourcing implies that the network community involved in the solution is organized in such a way that its members have corresponding confirmed competences and obligations, although not as formal as in the case of outsourcing. Crowdsourcing is based on social networks, and noosourcing is based on expert networks.

Noosourcing in the sourcing series

Noosourcing is the next step in the organization of labor after crowdsourcing. Below are sourcing technologies corresponding to different epochs in economic development.

Noosourcing technology

The technological basis for noosourcing is Web 3.0 technology (for crowdsourcing — Web 2.0 technology). Semantic search capabilities will allow you to effectively select experts. The same algorithms enable experts to find articles and colleagues according to their competences, suggest reviewers, etc. Algorithms of relative ranking allow objective assessment of experts by determining their level of competence. Methods of hierarchical analysis, modeling of communications, etc. — allow effective collective examination.

An expert network, unlike a social network, is algorithmic because it organizes specialists into a single organism. But unlike corporate information systems, where individuality is lost behind algorithms (processes), expert networks allow their participants to create.

Nupedia

Remember Nupedia? Of course, not. They wanted to create a crowdsourcing encyclopedia, but demanded that the authors have a doctoral degree. For 18 months they have reached 12 articles. Then they dropped the requirements (degree) and renamed themselves Wikipedia. Nupedia existed since March 09, 2000 — September 2003 and known as the predecessor of Wikipedia.

Before it ceased operating, Nupedia produced 25 approved articles that had completed its review process (three articles also existed in two versions of different lengths), and 150 more articles were in progress.

In June 2008, CNET UK listed Nupedia as one of the greatest defunct Web sites in the still young history of the Internet, noting how the strict control had limited the posting of articles.

“Ask Steven Pruitt to name the site’s biggest challenge and he’ll point to a small editing community that lends itself to a “systemic bias.”

Transparent World / Transparent Company / Transparent University

“You don’t have to be in Silicon Valley to change the world…I can be an engineer, entrepreneur, writer and speaker from anywhere in the world.” — writes Preethi Kasireddy

Photo by travelnow.or.crylater on Unsplash

Transparency in a company or a region can be defined as the overall ease of the movement of funds, people, objects, transactions, etc. It means that a high level of transparency means low friction in conducting relevant activities.

The transparent world is a future development of many innovative systems for collaborative work of people located in many countries. Although Silicon Valley was one of the most obvious examples in the past, professionals located in any part of the world can take part in this kind of collaboration these days, including Turkey, Japan, Russia, India, Brazil and so on.

The greatest benefit is that there are no boundaries. With the development of the modern technologies, they keep vanishing. Even speaking the same language is no longer important, technology allows people to actively communicate and cooperate.

The ability to synthesize and benefit from different forms of existing knowledge to create surprising innovations is the essence of the transparent world.

Education and science are also becoming more transparent. There are 4 main points, the development of which will give a new breath to all existing educational and scientific trends:

On-line education that emulates the most effective learning-science principles;

R&D and innovation initiatives using value-creation best practices;

Global experiences and perspectives through both real and virtual collaborations;

Development of value-creation skills through project-based learning.

Co-operation helps to solve most important and most interesting multi-science problems. In his book, James Surowiecki mentioned that most scientists think that benefits of co-operation have much more value when compared to potential costs. Co-operation works also because at best it guarantees number of different viewpoints. Because of the possibilities of technology global co-operation is nowadays much easier and productive than before. It is clear that, when co-operation goes from university level to global it has significant benefits.

On the threshold of the XXI century the world has witnessed phenomenal phenomena: for the first time the feeling of common problems, interconnectedness and interdependence of nations, countries, economies, structures, institutions, social movements, people. Globality is reflected in all spheres of public life: political, social, economic, cultural, etc. Density of international economic, financial, information and human contacts has become so high that, for almost all national economies, global development conditions play a decisive role in relation to domestic conditions.

These rapidly emerging developments lead to several conclusions. First, as the world becomes more transparent the rate of innovation will increase along with the intensity of competition. Second, in many markets it will be like being in the Olympics with only a few major winners in each category. As Tom Friedman says, “average is over.” And, like training for the Olympics, every advantage matters. Transparency matters.

The Nature of the New Economy Built on Cooperation

The nature of the new economy built on cooperation does not fundamentally correspond to the classical economic theory, which extols the desire for personal gain in the market and presents it as the only effective way to ensure economic growth. The model of the third industrial revolution also denies a centralized system of command and control, which is usually associated with a socialist economy. The new model is close in its essence to horizontal enterprises, both in social communities and in the market, and proceeds from the fact that the best way to environmentally sustainable economic development is common goals that are achieved through joint efforts.

Partial transition from markets to networks reorients business to a different reality. The opposing relationships between sellers and buyers are replaced by cooperation between suppliers and users. In place of personal gain there is coming the general interest. The desire to keep information in their property is replaced by an emphasis on openness and joint fiduciary ownership. The bet on transparency instead of secrecy is based on the premise that creating value in the network does not devalue the individual contribution, but increases the value at the disposal of everyone as an equal participant in a common cause.

Changes in business triggered a grandiose battle between the old guard of the second industrial revolution, which is firmly committed to remaining power, and young entrepreneurs of the third industrial revolution, who are no less committed to promoting a horizontal, environmentally sustainable economy in the world.

The Future of the World Economy

In the basis of cyclic-wave development processes there are: the theory of three waves of civilizational development of the American philosopher and futurist A. Toffler, the theory of large cycles of economic conjuncture N. Kondratiev (K-cycles) and the theory of system cycles of capital accumulation (SCCA) American scientist G. Arrighi. These cyclic wave theories are usually considered independently from each other, but in reality they are closely interrelated.

Photo-Illustration by Erik Johansson

According to the theory of civilizational development of A. Toffler, the First Civilizational (agricultural) wave was the result of the agrarian revolution, which led to the change of hunting and gathering by agriculture and cattle breeding. Within the agricultural wave, technological changing’s were going very slow for centuries, if not millennia. The second — the industrial wave, was the result of the industrial revolution, which began in the middle of the XVIII century. The third wave as a result of the intellectual revolution leads to the formation of the information society.

Unfortunately, as a futurologist, A. Toffler was somewhat ahead of events, declaring the third wave offensive almost 100 years earlier than objective conditions were formed for it. But in order to understand this, it is necessary to consider the industrial wave through the prism of the theory of N. Kondratiev, which characterizes the socio-economic and technological changes within the industrial civilization wave.

In the middle of 1920. N. Kondratiev noticed certain recurring patterns in the changes in the economic situation of developed countries, which he called Large cycles, as opposed to small (Kitschin cycles) and medium (Juglar cycles) economic cycles, which were studied before. N. Kondratiev came to the conclusion that Large cycles consist of two waves (or phases of development): the upward one, where the economy is growing rapidly, and the downward one, where short-term phases of growth are accompanied by long periods of crises and stagnation.

The nature of these cycles N. Kondratiev could not determine until the end, since by the time of his research only two complete large cycles had passed, but he noted certain regular features of them and was able to predict on this basis the further development of the world economic situation up to the Great Depression.

Further research in this direction by many scientists and especially the work of the eminent American economist J. Schumpeter, the German scientist G. Mensch, the Russian economist S. Menshikov made it possible to formulate a general theory of large K-cycles, the main role in which the latest technologies and innovations play.

A major contribution to the study of the nature of K-сycles was made by academician S. Glazyev, who developed the theory of technological structures (TS), recognized as a scientific discovery. In 1993, in his monograph “Theory of Long-Term Techno-Economic Development”, he showed that innovations and new technologies do not develop uniformly and evolutionarily, but by discrete beams or clusters of integral complexes of technologically coupled industries, which he called technological structures (TS).

The 1 TS, in which textile machines appeared in order to complete the Industrial revolution, demanded the formation of the 2 TS: a steam engine and the transition from natural energy resources (water and wind) to coal, since the necessary labour force was concentrated in cities, and the production based on water and wind was being created in rural areas. In addition, the steam engine was more efficient than wind and water. The industrial revolution was formed by the 3 TS, which ensured the production of steel, electricity and chemical production, and the 4 TS, which gave the internal combustion engine, conveyor production and the transition to oil as the main energy resource.

At present, the world passes from the 5-th TS (which began in 1970–1980 on the basis of microprocessor technology, personal computers, the Internet, mobile communications, etc.) to the 6-th TS, which will complete the victory of the Information and Communication Revolution.

On the downward wave of the K-cycle, when the growth potential of the previous TS is completely exhausted, a cluster of basic technologies of the new TS begins to form. The formation of a cluster of basic technologies is accompanied by the development of improving and complementary innovations that contribute to the transition from the downward to the upward wave of the K-cycle, which leads to a strong growth of the world economy, which lasts, as a rule, a quarter of a century.

It is the formation and introduction of a new TS into production that leads to rapid growth of the economy on the upward wave of the K-cycle, and the exhaustion of the growth potential of the TS leads to a slowdown in the economy on the downward wave and a state that G. Mensh called “technological stalemate”, when the introduction of new technologies is actually suspended, and real innovations leading to the use of new more effective technologies are replaced by pseudo-innovations.

At the turn of XX — XXI centuries G. Arrighi, based on research by the French historian F. Braudel and principles of the world-system analysis, developed the theory of Systemic cycles of capital accumulation (SCCA). F. Braudel drew attention to the fact that the centers of capital accumulation are constantly changing their geographical “registration”. In the middle Ages they were in the North of Italy, in the XVII century they moved to Holland, from the beginning of the XIX century — in Britain, and in the 20th century to the USA. These studies F. Brodel served as an impetus for the development of the theory of SCCA by G. Arrighi.

Since the main thing for capitalism is the infinite accumulation of capital, it is precisely the qualitatively special cycles of this accumulation that, according to G. Arrighi, have become milestones in the development of this system. In his monograph “The Long XX century” G. Arrighi identified four SCCA: Genoese-Iberian (XV — early XVII century), Dutch (mid XVII — late XVIII century), British (early XIX century — early XX century) and American (from the beginning of the 20th century). In his last work, “Adam Smith in Beijing”, G. Arrighi predicted the completion of the American SCCA and the coming of the Asian SCCA to replace it.

Any SCCA, according to the analysis of G. Arrighi, consists of two phases. G. Arrighi called the first phase the phase of material expansion, since it is formed in the sphere of material production, when a new center of capital accumulation in a new region of the world is formed on the basis of the newest technologies. In the second phase of the SCCA, the expansion of capital accumulation enters the financial sphere, and the material sphere plays a secondary and subordinate role.

G. Arrighi called the second stage of SCCA as a phase of financial expansion, which ends with a crisis of overproduction due to compression of consumer demand and the collapse of financial markets as a result of the collapse of financial pyramids. It is precisely this phase of historical development associated with the crisis of over-production that the world economy is currently experiencing.

Photo-Illustration by Logan Zillmer

But it is wrong to assume that financial capital performs an exceptionally parasitic function of producing money from the air. The main task of financial capital is the concentration and accumulation of capital for a new leap in expanding opportunities for physical capital, and redirecting capital to the industries, which are formed by new TS.

For physical capital, knowledge about a product, processes and markets is a basis for potential success. Financial capital is independent by its very nature, and its power is based on the power of money.

Financial capital can acquire deposits, stocks, bonds, oil futures, derivatives, gold and diamonds, since the main thing for it is the expectation of growth. Financial capital itself is divided into investment, contributing to the development of physical capital, and speculative, inflating financial bubbles and building financial pyramids.

When financial bubbles burst, and financial pyramids break down, the financial markets collapse, the process of centralizing financial capital, which strives for new technologies and emerging industries, as well as in new territories, starts. There is a “development of inconvenient territories”, leading to the explosive growth of the world economy. “Technological stalemate” or the collapse of financial markets is historical violence over the capital, but at the same time, it is an economic compulsion of financial capital to further development. And it is not accidental that in the Chinese language the phenomenon of the crisis is indicated by two hieroglyphs, one of which means “problem”, and the second one is “new opportunities.” It is precisely this economic violence that forces capital to develop new TS that provides for the transition to a new K-cycle and the formation of a new world economic structure (WEC) in a new territory, which means a transition to a new SCCA.

It is curious that chronologically, each individual phase of the SCCA coincides perfectly with large K-cycles based on a certain technological structure (TS).

According to G. Arrighi’s analysis, in the phase of material expansion the dominant economic ideology is always dirigisme (with active state intervention in economic management) — political economy approach, and the phase of financial expansion the mainstream is the liberal model (the ideology of chrematistics).

In the phase of material expansion of the Dutch SCCA dominated the ideology of mercantilism with its policy of protectionism, in the phase of financial expansion mainstream was the ideology of physiocrats with their slogan “laissez faire, laissez passer” (give freedom to act), Adam Smith with his “invisible hand of the market” and other classics of liberalism.

T. Piketty in his work “Capital in the 21st Century” convincingly showed that the phases of financial expansion based on the dominance of liberalism are always accompanied by a sharp increase in inequality in society. The phases of material expansion based on the ideology of dirigisme, on the contrary, are always accompanied by a significant reduction in this inequality.

The phase of material expansion of the British SCCA, based on the second TS, was brilliantly analyzed by the outstanding political economist of the XIX century K. Marx in his work “Capital”. At the beginning of the twentieth century, R. Hilferding in his work “Financial Capital” and V. Lenin in the essay “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism” analyzed the phase of financial expansion.

Only V. Lenin, analyzing the historical place of imperialism, made not quite the right conclusion: he characterized it as the highest and last stage of capitalism. In historical reality, the phase of expansion of “financial capital” has become the highest and last stage of the British SCCA. But at this stage, the dominant ideology was no longer Marxism, but the liberal Neoclassicism of S. Jevons, L. Walras, A. Pigu and A. Marshall, which successfully led the world economy to the great depression.

The British SCCA replaced the equally capitalist American one, which was finally formed between the two world wars, and its period of material expansion, based on the fourth TS, lasted from the beginning of the twentieth century to the end of the 1960s and was characterized in the 1950s and 60s as the “Golden age of capitalism”. The economic mainstream of the material expansion of the American SSCN was the ideology of Keynesian dirigisme, which became the basis of the economic policy of the “New Deal” by President FDR and existed before President R. Nixon, who claimed that “we are all Keynesians now.”

The crisis years of the 1970s — 1980s that followed the “golden age of capitalism” not only led to the flourishing of macroeconomics as “economic alchemy”, but also transferred the American SCCA into the phase of financial expansion, which is according to V. Lenin, “the highest and last stage”, but not of all capitalism, but only of the American SCCA, culminating in the great recession of 2008–2020-ies.

On the upward wave of the new K-cycle, the American SCCA will be replaced by the phase of material expansion of the Asian SCCA, based on the sixth TS. But to understand why there is a change of SCCA, it was necessary to investigate the action of the internal mechanism of SCCA, which was carried out by academician S. Glazyev — put forward a scientific hypothesis about the formation within the SCCA of world economic structures (WES).

In accordance with the scientific hypothesis of S. Glazyev, WES is “a system of interrelated international and national institutions that ensure the reproduction of the economy and determine the mechanism of global economic relations.”

At the same time, “the main role is played by the institutions of the leading country, which have a dominant influence on international institutions regulating the world market and international trade, economic and financial relations.”

The foundations of the current Imperial (Monopolistic) WES of the American SCCA were laid at the Bretton Woods monetary and financial conference in 1944, where the Bretton Woods gold-dollar monetary and financial system, the IMF, the IBRD and so on were formed. In 1947, GATT was created, later transformed into the WTO, in 1949, NATO and other institutions of the Imperial (Monopolistic) WES were created.

The downward wave of the K-cycle of the 1970s and 1980s made its adjustments to the Imperial WES. The United States abandoned the free exchange of dollars for gold, and the Bretton Woods financial system was replaced by the Jamaican financial system based on freely floating exchange rates, marking the transition from material to financial expansion.

And since the 1980s, the American SCCA entered the final phase of its development — the phase of financial expansion, which recorded a historical record for the level of inequality in the world. The mainstream of this phase of the American SCCA was neoliberalism, embodied in the ideology of the Washington Consensus, which is a guide to action for governments and countries of the world.

On the downward wave of the new K-cycle, which started with the crisis of 2008, in the “take-off phase”, the basic technologies of the 6TS and a new paradigm of economic development are already being formed, the painful search for which is taking place nowadays. Neo-liberalism is already visibly dying, and the new economic doctrine has not found its clear outlines yet. In the 2020s, the “take-off phase” will pass into the “growth phase,” and the rapid development of the world economy in the new Center for World Capital Accumulation is in Asia.

Image — Koyos + Ssolbergj

By the middle of this century, a new polycentric world will be formed, in which there will be no need for the process of accumulation of capital and capitalist exploitation for the further development of Mankind. And in accordance with J. Schumpeter, I. Wallerstein and V. Pantin’s forecasts, the new Information civilization, about which A. Toffler wrote in his futurological forecast, would have to be finally formed on the basis of the Integral WES.

Kondratiev’s cycles characterize the development of the industrial wave in terms of technical and economic changes. Systemic cycles of capital accumulation (SCCA), revealed by G. Arrighi on the basis of F. Braudel’s research, show how the industrial wave evolved in space and in time. Within SCCA, there is the formation of a certain world-system with a nucleus headed by a hegemonic country and a periphery, due to which the accumulation of capital in the nucleus takes place. The formation of a new SCCA always happens “under the umbrella” (F. Braudel’s term) of the previous SCCA, and its formation and development are carried out within the framework of two K-cycles.

It is on the basis of the Information and Communication Revolution that the Integral WES is already being formed as the basis of the Asian SCCA. As a result, the center of the world economy moves from the West to the East, where currently more than 60 % of the world’s population lives. The pendulum of the historical development of the world economy has again swung to the East.

The current transition from the 5-th TS to the 6-th TS, based on information technologies, nano and biotechnologies, robotics, 3-D printers, new technologies in energy, etc., will lead to qualitative shifts in the productive forces of the world community. New 6TS technologies will give a powerful impetus to the development of the world economy for the next 20–30 years. The formation of new industries and the diffusion of 6TS innovations into old industries will start, which will ensure a transition to the upward “wave of growth” of the K-cycle as early as the 2020s. This qualitative technological leap will create the material base of the Integral WES, which will ensure the rapid development of the world economy at least until the middle of the 21st century.

Significant changes will occur in the production relations, since the Center for Capital Accumulation is shifting from West to East before our eyes. In Asia, the Integral WES is already being formed, and it is based on integrating the advantages of a market economy with the planning and regulatory principles of economic management, which are typical of in such Asian countries as China, India, Japan, South Korea, Iran, etc.

P. Sorokin wrote about it in the 1960s: “The dominant type of an emerging society and culture will be probably neither capitalist nor communist, but a sui generis type, which we will designate as an integral type. This type will be intermediate between capitalist and communist orders and ways of life. It should include most of the positive values and be free of serious defects of each type. Moreover, the emerging integral system in its full development will probably not be a simple eclectic mixture of specific characteristics of both types, but a unified system of integral cultural values, social institutions and an integral type of a personality that are substantially different from the capitalist and communist models”.

Another important factor determining the formation of the Integral WES was the rapid development of integration processes in the world economy. They will replace globalization, carried out exclusively for the benefit of transnational corporations and banks (70 % of TNCs and TNBs) within the final phase of the financialization of the Monopolistic WES.

The formation of the Integral WES with an accumulation center in Asia is intended to ensure the welfare of the bulk of our planet population through fair and mutually beneficial economic cooperation and equal partnership. This coincides with the eastern mentality, which is not striving for hegemony and leadership, like Anglo-Saxons, but for the harmony of interests.

Within the framework of the British SCCA, the Colonial WES provided the wellbeing of the elite of several metropolitan countries through direct robbery of the colonies. Pax Americana within the framework of the Monopolistic WES provided prosperity of the “golden billion” due to financial robbery and nonequivalent trade with the countries of the world periphery, whose population was five times higher than the population of developed countries.

The share of Western countries in world exports is currently less than a third, while their share in world imports is about two-thirds. The countries of non-Western civilizations have the opposite: exports exceed two-thirds of world exports, while imports are slightly more than a third. The above data indicate that the trade of the “golden billion” with the developing countries is not equivalent. At the same time, the total external debt of the BRICS countries (leaders of developing countries) is only 2.5 trillion. Or 3.75 % of the external debt of all countries of the world, and the external debt of the G-7 countries (the nucleus of the developed countries) is 18 times higher (45 trillion dollars) and is 63.9 % of the total debt of all countries in the world. This clearly shows the financial robbery of the developing countries.

Main Features of the Integrated WES

Image by graphicshot

Each civilizational wave has its own special worldview, its own morality, its way of life. Moreover, the world outlook, principles and institutions of a new wave do not rise evolutionarily from the elements of the earlier wave, but are formed on the basis of the unique genome of a new civilization. Therefore, the nucleus of different civilizations is different regions of our planet, in this case, the East and the West. The Integrated WES is transitional, designed to form a third wave or Information civilization; it is a complex nature. In it, in a bizarre form, different worldviews, moral principles, ideological principles and life styles collide in the conflict, which we observe now.

Capitalism, even within the framework of the Agricultural wave, was formed on the basis of the Protestant ethics, and therefore it was not by chance that Anglo-Saxon Protestants formed the Industrial wave. They worked hard, honestly and skillfully, saving every penny or dollar to invest in the development of their business, and invented new production technologies that allowed them to earn more. Therefore, the world factory was first in the UK (British SCCA), and then the center of the world industry moved to the US (American SCCA). But economic liberalism, which appeared in France in the eighteenth century, gradually replaced the values of life: now it is not necessary to work much, honestly and skillfully “in the sweat of one’s face.” Capitalism created “the consumer society”; now rest and entertainments and all sorts of relaxation (often in a cynical and perverted form) are in fashion, any machinations with money, the quality and quantity of goods are allowed, without regard to conscience and honor.

At the beginning of the XXI century, liberalism was not needed, since it had done what the “proletarians of all countries” could not — to bury capitalism. Liberalism became the gravedigger of capitalism, as it destroyed its foundation — the Protestant ethic.

And on the ruins of Western capitalism, within the framework of the Asian SCCA, the Integral WES began to form on the basis of the ethics of the civilizations of the East. The industry of the new Information wave shifted from the West to the East. Moreover, if both the Protestant ethics and liberalism are based on extreme individualism and tough competition, the Eastern civilizations are based on collectivism and the pursuit of a harmony of interests that are incomparably more in line with the demands of a new wave.

While the “second wave” civilization emphasized the need to study different things separately, the “third wave” civilization draws attention to their interrelations, context and integrity. This does not correspond to the mentality of the Western man, but completely corresponds to the mentality of the Eastern man who perceives the world in its unity and diversity.

The mechanistic approach of the “second wave” argued that any co-existence can in principle be predicted. System thinking of the “third wave,” based on the analysis of an infinite number of combinations of loops of positive and negative feedback, draws a line between the phenomena that can be predicted and which cannot be predicted. Nobel Prize Winner I. Prigozhin proposed an amazing synthesis of chaos and order with randomness and necessity, explaining how they influence the cause-effect relationships.

Industrial civilization leaves the world in a state of deep divisions between the rich and the poor. The solution to this problem from the point of the “the second wave” was to help poor countries to catch up with the rich ones, having built an industrialized economy. The analysis of the peculiarities of the “third wave” civilization constantly suggests its similarity with the “first wave” civilization, but at a fundamentally different technological level.

In our opinion, it is quite legitimate to ask the question: Can the countries of the “first wave” adopt certain characteristics of the “third wave” without a painful breaking of their culture and lifestyle that industrialization demanded? Integration of the most advanced technologies of the “third wave” into the way of life of a patriarchal agrarian society can lead to the emergence of a completely new type of society. The “third wave” is not only a technological revolution; it brings revolutionary changes in all spheres of life, in all dimensions of civilization.

A new civilization will have a much more diversified energy base, which will be dominated by environmentally friendly renewable sources. The technological base of the “third wave” will also be widely diversified: from biology, genetics, electronics, materials science to the exploration of outer space and the depths of the ocean. In connection with the unprecedented growth in the importance of information, humanity restructures education, rebuilds scientific research and, most importantly, reorganizes the communications system. The organization of society will resemble a network rather than a hierarchy of institutions, as it was before.

Developing countries will abandon attempts to copy the example of industrialized countries and develop their own radically new development strategies based on their cultural and religious traditions. Instead of ranking people according to what they own, as the Industrial wave ethics dictates, the ethics of the new wave will appreciate people for what they can do.

To create a social system of the “third wave”, it is necessary to abandon the frightening, though incorrect assumption that the growth of diversity in society automatically leads to increased tension and conflicts. It is necessary to delegate decisions correctly to the level where they can be adopted in an optimal way. The change in information flows enables to solve many problems on the lower level.

At the same time, new supranational institutions are needed to solve problems, which go beyond the competence of national authorities, more effectively. We are moving towards a world that will be more like the human brain with a huge number of neurons and complex connections between them, rather than departments of a bureaucratic machine.

The main contradiction of today is the confrontation between the defenders of the obsolete Industrial civilization in the face of the cumulative West and the supporters of the Information Society that is coming to replace it, the embodiment of which is the countries of the East.

The world is on the verge of changing the Monopolistic world economic structure, or the American-style world — Pax Americana, to the Integral world economic structure, based on the ethical norms of the civilizations of the East.

New Capitalization Model

Photo-Illustration by Erik Johansson

Thanks to Marxist political economy and Western economics, we are used to seeing goods as the basis of economy. Thus, we view production and market relations around it, as well as property relations expressed through value, prices, finance and so on. However, disguised is the fact that goods are, first of all, the result of economic