Modern Slavery

For our society slavery is evil. The word "slaver" is similar to what "demon" was a few centuries ago. No politician in their right mind would get up on TV and say "I think we should bring back slavery". The funny thing is, it's all about the word "slavery" rather than the reality of the thing.

The wikipedian gods say that "Slavery is a form of unfree labour where a person (called a "slave") is compelled to work for another (sometimes called "the master" or "slave owner")". Remove the "slave" and "owner" qualifiers and you have the situation that prevails in much of the world today. What we called slaved a few centuries ago is what we call cheap labour today. There is not much difference between someone getting paid just enough to feed his family and another person getting paid in food for her family. The problem is that our society functions in such a way that the use of cheap labour is inevitable. Market forces drive prices in such a way that to increase profits you have to lower prices. There are two ways of doing so. One means investing in technology while the other focuses on getting cheaper labour. The latter way has been proven to work through millennia while there will always be a great deal of uncertainty about the former as you'll always be dealing with new technologies.

In the end even with our best efforts, our society will keep plummeting towards cheaper labour and we will probably be recognized through history as a slaver-like civilization (much like Europe during the Middle-Ages). The only thing that could potentially change this, at least as far as humans are concerned, would be for machines to become advanced enough so that they could reinvent themselves and become automatically reliable and efficient at doing new work. The easiest path to increase profits and increase comfort would then become the technological one.

Our democratic system is flawed (Part II)

We live in an era of tremendous access to information which will keep increasing exponentially as time goes back. The average Canadian has nearly as much information as an MP at their disposal. The only difference is that this knowledge can be tainted by rumors and false data. Right now, it would be incredibly simple to give all the pertinent information to any citizen and enable them to take an active role in the daily running of the government. This means that, in our 21^st century, direct democracy is possible.

The Athenian government in the 5^th century BC, the first recorded democracy, was directly administered by its citizens. 30,000 to 60,000 Athenian citizens were directly voting on the laws affecting them. Of course, there are 33.6 million Canadians which create logistical problems not present in Ancient Athens. However with our technology, it would actually be easier to recreate such a level of involvement than it was in the old Greek city-state. Even though the older generations might be reluctant to do this, internet voting can be secured and implemented nationwide. The internet infrastructure would also be important in providing the information that people would need to take informed decisions. We would need to make sure that everyone, wherever they are on the Canadian territory, has access to the Web (actually, that should be a priority even without direct democracy).

And to everyone saying that people are too dumb to make decisions, this is ultimately an argument towards geniocracy or dictatorship.

Honoring Ancestors?

    These weeks in Quebec there is quite a bit of fuss about the reenactment of the Plaines d'Abraham battle. Some people claim that their ancestors lost the battle and how it is a shame to them. What is interesting is that this battle occurred in 1759. It opposed French colonists to English colonists with quite a few other factions in between. The English won and Quebecers who feel kinship with the French feel that it was their defeat, those of their ancestors. If you think about it, all ideas of ancestry going back that far are ridiculous. Humans, by nature, will try reproduce with everything they can find. The English winners of the battle did produce offsprings that mingled and survived to this day. There is not such a thing as a purebred (and it can be said that there has never been in the past) and we can safely assume that everyone who has ancestors that fought in the Battle of Quebec has them on both sides of the war.

    The same is true for the Haitian War of Independence of the late 1700s, early 1800s. As far as I'm concerned, my ancestors enslaved my ancestors who rebelled and killed all of my ancestors, claiming their independence from the country of my ancestors. Again, this is ridiculous. The reason people look at only one set of ancestors is simply because they do not associate with blood but with easy to recognize characteristics such as language (like in Quebec) or skin color (in Haiti). It is a very simplistic way to view the past world and as we see with feuds, something that can actually be very destructive.

    I, for one, think that we can learn a lot from the people that came before us but that is it. They are not linked to us in ideas or reality and we shouldn't automatically assume that their battles are relevant to us.

The Singularity and society

    I came upon the story of the Singularity University this week (Video from the Singularity blog). It got me thinking about what these possibilities mean for our society.

To give short explanation, the singularity I am talking about is the point in time where machines become smart enough to be able improve themselves. While I agree that this is rather vague, the possibility or the definition of the singularity is not really what I want to talk about. My main focus is actually the inherent advances in technology and how these affect us.

The most important part of the Singularity is the tremendous knowledge that will (did?) become available to us. Right now, anyone can find out relatively accurate details about the history of Zimbabwe with minutes. It does however take an external device to do so. Eventually, technology will let us embed this knowledge into our bodies. It will be up to the people to decide whether or not they want to get this enhancement. Assuming this goes forward, you will have a large amount of people with the knowledge of the world available to them nearly as easily as their own memory. Interestingly, this means we will be moving closer to having a hive-mind.

To conclude, I just want to add that, while the future technological advances will be undoubtedly interesting, the past advances, what has happened in the last 5 years, have given us the tools to drastically affect our society. This is what I will be talking about in the second part of my "Democracy is flawed" post.