technical stagnation under late capitalism

The relative scientific and technical stagnation under late capitalism is hardly a new observation, but one that bears repeating.
Our best minds are largely at work making shiny things we don't need or figuring out how best to sell it to us. Pure scientific research is at an all time low and research departments directed in some way by profit motive are the norm. We think we're living in a sci-fi future because that thinking sells shiny things and advertising works. But the slowing down in the rate of technical advancement has only really just begun... It takes about a generation before the fruits of raw research can be deployed as technologies, and we will only really see real downside of this approach a generation of two from now - just when we could use all the science we can get to save us from the ecological disaster also wrought by run away capitalism.

growing pains

"The tribes and clans of early man never left us, they just expanded outward like ripples in a pond, becoming more intricate." - without losing too much of their easy use of violence and coercion.

We can reshape - build networks of decentralized public power using smart tools for communication and knowledge-sharing, decision-making and organisation.

But then again, we should never underestimate the potential  for things to get very much worse instead (or first?), as the priests and warlords - now corporations and politicians - steadily turn up the manipulation and violence to keep things running in their favour.

gene and race

So there was this discussion on non-racialism at this book launch last night ...

and a member of the audience asked that typical question about the obvious genetic basis to race.

I was working up to try and answer there, but found it a bit hard to get my thoughts together in time. So below is working toward how I'd like to answer that in future. I'll correct/refine it with time, hopefully, and corrections and comments from you, the anonymous or not anonymous public, are as welcome as always.

 Attempt One:

Once our very early, singular human population separated geographically (after what appears to be a series of survival bottlenecks), they evolved separate and particular traits according to the now well understood processes of natural selection and genetic drift. 

Even while populations were largely separated, there was still sufficient movement and interaction to allow for genetic information to pass between populations. This, most importantly, would have included the successful spread of immune response adaptations and anti-parasite counter-measures vital to early population survival. [which is why all so called races have within their populations a spread of proteomic pathways for immune function that are common between races] 

As populations interacted and genetic information spread, there are a few mechanisms by which certain traits persisted within local populations, despite the relatively thorough statistical mixing of other genetic traits. The  mechanisms that ‘preserved’ local ‘race type traits’ include environment specific adaptations (like skin colour) that were continuously selected for within separated populations by survival pressure, and culture-specific sexual selection criteria - that proceeded along with cultural evolution. There are more mechanisms i think, but these two come to mind for now.

Via these mechanisms, an aggregation of certain traits (the sexual selection model accounts for why these are most often just externally visible) would accumulate within populations, while allowing the fortunate mixing of other vital genetic survival strategies without which local populations would most likely have fallen from parasite/pathogen load/stress.

This explains why, with the exception of this small percentage of ‘race type traits’, when looking at particular sequences, we often see more genetic diversity within races than between them — for example, there will be a particular immune system function that is expressed in different ways by several different protein pathways (lets call them A,B,C,D) and each race will have individuals carrying sequences for A,B,C,D. For the larger pathways, two individuals from different ‘races’ carrying the sequences necessary for A will often have more in common genetically with each other than with members of the same race carrying sequences for B, say.

[Immune function has been a big driver for evolution throughout the entire animal line, and so its not for nothing that it gets emphasised when discussing genetic variation.]

Even as our populations experienced civilisational shifts that allowed for more interaction between populations and more and more geographical displacement, patterns of mechanisms like the culture-specific sexual selection mentioned above - now intimately coupled with power, violence, etc. - still worked to keep certain traits prominent within local populations. 

Anyway, I think that's the type of traits the dude from yesterday mentioned. That small percentage of genetic traits, often highly visible, that we based the myth of race on.

 added later:

Of course, the other reason that immune system is so important when discussing us, is that in the very brief evolutionary time since we split up, nothing much else changed.

Sure some of us lightened our skins and straightened our hair, but these were almost insignificant changes when seen against our vast evolutionary history.

The most significant changes to humankind since our ‘forking’ is that the big brains that we evolved before we split led to us being super successful wherever we went - and that success was met in turn by a multitude of parasites rushing in to live off a newly found ecosystem - us.

So, most of our real evolution as humans, neglecting the very very minor surface tweaks, have been in complex immune system responses to those parasites since we became successful. That is why we are closer to members of other races that share our immune pathways than those of our race that don’t - immune system complexity makes up most of our evolution since we got here.

so called modern democracy

Part of the problem with current democracies is inherited. As all systems adapt and evolve they are often left burdened with artifacts left over from the systems they replace, long after these artifacts become unnecessary or irrelevant. Human systems are not immune. We  see this looking back through history and there is no reason to believe that we’ve somehow broken free from this effect today.

The public’s relation to our modern leaders, and the space that we create and allow for leadership, seems to me to be a good example of this. In these terms, so called modern democracies aren’t too removed from the royal courts that they evolved from.

We now have groups selected not by their birthright (so much), but by one or another system of voting, to make important decisions on behalf of the public. Yet apart from the method of selection, the new formation carries forward much from the older system.

Modern democratic representatives/leaders still have esteem, power and privilege heaped on them, as well as plenty of material benefit - similar to all that the lords and ladies of royal courts enjoyed. They still treated with what must be palpable deference, still honoured, pampered and fawned over - pretty much still treated like royalty - ripe fodder for all manner of narcissistic disorder.

Then, as I imagine in those royal courts that precede them, they are surrounded by others with similar status in spaces where maneuverings and machinations are encouraged and rewarded, and given closed doors behind which to negotiate and trade for favour and power.

And despite all this we expect them once installed to such office, to behave differently - better and more responsible than their 'ancestors'. They are installed in surroundings of virtual royalty; surrounded by the pageantry and intrigue of royal courts, and we are all still terribly surprised when they behave, sooner or later, with the same self interest and careless disregard for the public as the lords and kings of old.

infopolitics teaser

Techno-optimism and its bashing aside, there are two things that I'd like to repeat:

• We will continue to be bad at predicting the forms and shapes civilisation will take as it evolves.
• And the more information rich a civilisation becomes, the less and less tolerant it will be of the self parasitism that plagues it.

prologue

It happened on our shift - this mass mistreatment of ourselves and the systems that came before us. Self-parasitism left unchecked, unchallenged. There can be little doubt that we will be seen as the neanderthal or homo-erectus of this past. Hardly human, because we were capable of behaving with so little humanity towards each other, and with so little respect for the complexity that birthed us that we could destroy it.

For dozens of generations, we let emergent power and self interest shape our will - teach our children, and we hardly noticed as it turned suicidal.

gods for science's sake

As opposed to the popular view that science followed long after religion - early science might very well have been key in the formation of our first myths and religions.

Think of the early gods and myths as narrative containers that would have helped with the storage and transmission of important survival information about complex natural patterns from one generation to the next, before there were other forms of storage and transmission such as the written word.

For example: most early cultures had myths and god-stories of one form or the other that would have helped us remember changing star positions and how they predicted the changing seasons - essential for agriculture.

...

Nothing new, but I liked the twist.

on emergence ...

"We live in an emergent universe, in which the interaction between its parts, be they people or electrons, gives rise to emergent collective behaviors that are different from those of the parts separately and are generally unpredictable from knowledge only of those parts and their interaction. To understand this emergent universe, scientists are replacing the traditional reductionist approach, with its focus on using the individual components as basic building blocks, by an emergent perspective, in which the focus is on characterizing collective emergent behavior and the search for the collective organizing concepts and principles that bring it about"

mean world syndrome

Mean World Syndrome is a phenomenon where the violence-related content of mass media convinces viewers that the world is more dangerous than it actually is, and prompts a desire for more protection than is warranted by any actual threat.

african fractals

This ones on fractals and self-organising algorithms in African culture/history. Check it out if you're at all interested in fractals, bottom-up self-organising patterns, or using indigenous knowledge in current solutions

FREE CULTURE

FREE CULTURE by Lawrence Lessig: halfway through and I'm thinking its just fucking brilliant!
copyright, ownership, derivative content, universal access, and the impact of new technology on all of these. its an essential debate that simply needs to happen more. Lessig argues for sensible change so simply and clearly that you've got to read Free Culture if you're interested in any of it. (naturally its a free download)

I'll try to write some more, or to summarize fully when I've finished, but i probably wont be able to do any of it justice without simply pasting in large bits of text from the book.

btw, he doesnt just push open-content, he nicely describes how and why copyright itself should be re-negotiated.

Checkout the audio version if you want to listen to it.. like maybe, while doing something else ;)
"Free Culture" as a popup audiobook