A ZInK Point Of View

How would it be to live in an environment that we like, we want to preserve and we helped design to suit our needs? From my point of view, it would an amazing experience. Not only that it would increase our quality of life (assuring that one has what one needs), but also achieving sustainability in order to support our planet, not just take from it.

Creating this kind of conditions is not easy, and everybody has to contribute, but the hardest thing would be that we have to just let go some of the things we are so used to in this modern world. Before you say that this is another Utopian view, I am going to ask you to bear with me through this article, which hopefully it will be as clear as intended, and then analyse my opinions objectively.

The need identification

We’re just fine right now, in the modern society, where every individual works hard for his achievements. But, are we fine? We’re witnessing every day that the system isn’t working as we hoped it would. Ideas, so great and innovative at their core, are being impeded by financial deficits or poor marketing plans. People, who want to make a difference and improve our life are pushed away because it’s more important to keep the tradition. Science and technology’s progress is sometimes going so slow because there are no immediate economical interests.

Our needs, as humans, are generally identifiable. We all need comfort in our lives. Comfort that comes from a safe home, nourishment and access to resources that provide us welfare. We also need variation and entertainment, discovering the world around us and engaging in exploring activities. Every existing product and service has to be designed so that it satisfies one or more human needs. Ideally, the more efficient it is (without any false promise that it is) the better is for both us, and the environment (no resources are pointlessly wasted). As we try to understand the modern human being, it is imperative that we identify which needs are a priority and which needs are side-effects of a badly designed society (such as the need to see other people suffering,  the need to have more money than everyone else, etc. ).

If we then focus our efforts into designing methods and objects to satisfy these needs, we would make a huge step in designing our future society. We have to see it as a possibility first and convince ourselves that we can do better than what we have now.

The Goal – A designed future

The goal we should aim for achieving in the future is to use our knowledge, our morality and humanity to create a peaceful, fruitful and sustainable society. If we concentrate our efforts into designing the framework for the future, by taking into consideration human nature and nurturing possibilities, we will live better, have fewer problems and cherish true values.

The means to achieve our goal

There are three conditions for achieving the goal: motivation, technology and organization.

Motivation

First of all, we need the motivation by opening our eyes to the future and what we really want to achieve, as humans. Research must be conducted in order to find out if the idea is feasible (the resources are enough for everybody). After that, it is just the matter of showing the truth in the face of people and they will realize what they could miss if they look away. There first must be a revolution in the educational system, so that children are not taught in limitation to what we know now, but what we could discover and make.

(see a TED Talks video on the revolution of education )

Technology

Technology is something we can’t avoid. We have invented it because it defines us, it raises the limits of our potential and it helps us understand the world. By the means of technological evolution, things that never seemed possible are put into light for the first time and we then use them extensively to improve something in our life. We don’t just want to use them, but sometimes we want to understand how they work and how to build better ones. This kind of thinking is important to preserve and appreciate, because it fuels the technological progress.

By using technological benefits, we can relieve ourselves from the stress that we have to do so many tasks each day. Of course, now when technology and computers are pretty recent, we’ve gorged all the aspects of this: both good and bad. Through education, we need to find a balance in our daily life, so that technology doesn’t overwhelm us, but rather help us.

Creating a fast, reliable and environmental friendly transport system is something I can’t stress enough how important it is. We always have the need to get from A to B, but it should be less misused for things we don’t really feel like doing (such as long-distance conferences, which can be taken online from home, or grocery shopping, which can be automatically ordered to arrive home by the integrated product transport system, etc)

Our homes need to adapt to our needs and figure out our behavior so they provide us resources and comfort. They will “know” when we’re out of ingredients for our favorite dishes and provide interactivity with our tasks and activities. Building intelligent homes from start not only improves our daily flow, but also compensates for things we throw away and replace every day (by providing high-quality, self-aware and self-repairing devices).

(see a video on future technologies and ideas )

Since the appearance and evolution of Internet, we have faster and easier access to a massive amount of knowledge. The Internet is dependent of technology. Once technology evolves, so does the Internet. The next stage of Internet development is going to be The Semantic Web, which is represented by data and interconnectivity between data that can be understood by machines (by code). By having a common format and structure that all data shares, it would be easy to make meaningful connections between information that is in the present scattered on the Internet and only accessible through a text-based search engine, that approximates phrases and the relevancy of content. Once the Semantic Web will kick in, people could put normal questions to search engines and get relevant answers and links to connected data.

Like Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of both the Web as we know it and The Semantic Web, said in an article for Scientific American’s May 2001 number, “Properly designed, the Semantic Web can assist the evolution of human knowledge as a whole.”

By the means of technology, we can abolish human labor in factories and production plants and replace it by effective, self-maintained robots. Therefore, we will have more time thinking about the concepts and ideas behind the design of the society. We could become a population of intellectuals, balancing our needs and maintaining both mind and body healthy. We would set our own limits or push them however we want. The society will benefit from our dedicated time into solving its problems and discovering new ideas. Science and technology will advance even further on, with the help of more brighter minds. I don’t think an individual can remain passive and don’t involve somehow in the process of the ongoing design.

Organization

When we all agree that the future can be designed, we need to pull out a plan of action and start playing with it until everybody is on the same level of thinking. This may take time, and may never be fully accepted by some, but nevertheless, progress should be made and it needs to start out somewhere. Once the first step is made (a city where these principles apply), the benefits become obvious even for the single-minded individuals and the project can go on to ultimately cover the whole planet.

This plan needs the contribution of everybody that is well-intentioned. We need ideas (on how to solve need specific problems) and generally people who can imagine how the future will look for us if we try to follow the principle of prosperity for every individual. This should be completely open and every voice that has a point should be heard.

Obstacles that need to be overcome by innovation

The largest obstacle will be in making everybody agree on a model of a society that is both functional, open and provides the individual means of fulfilling his needs. People have already preconceptions of a democratic society, but in nowadays it all relates to politicians and their limited openness to find solutions. Moreover, relating everything to money has gone too far, especially now when there are so many services and digital products that have demonstrated the limited potential of money. The monetary system is just not flexible enough to keep up with technological innovation and the fast-pace of the society now. It just creates a false world where everything revolves around money, even if it doesn’t have a concrete connection with the real world. This feeds up our stress, worries and keeps us from focusing on what we really want.

We therefore need another way to reward people for their contribution to the society, or maybe a reward may not be at all necessary, especially when the educated people’s only reward is satisfaction to have created or contributed to something important.

There is also an issue, when identifying people’s needs, to predict how those needs will evolve after we introduce the new model of society. Will the extremes of needs still be around (for example, the pleasure of seeing others suffer, the craving for items we need to own, despite the fact they bring no use, the need to hold absolute deciding power over a group of people, or individual, etc) ? If so, how to make sure that people don’t abuse them (and just use them for entertainment, in conjunction with people who have complementary needs) ? Will there be an understanding of such individuals? I personally think that through proper open education, people will realize these are just foolish caprices that by no means bring accomplishment into one’s life.

In today’s world, there is so much diversity regarding morality issues because people are raised in different environments and belief systems. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but that we need to find out common goals and put emphasis on the fundamental values of a human being.

The new system will bring more uniformity, but I believe it’s impossible to try and remove variety and to level all belief systems. We have to be different, and one of our basic human needs is to vary our environment and our behavior. Therefore, we want to encourage diversity, but not at the price of emerging conflicts. So this will become one of the most important discussion subjects when planning the new design.

As I mentioned earlier, I don’t think there will be people who would miss working in lousy jobs that they hate, which in a technological developed world, they either won’t be needed or will be replaced by robots. They will love to work in creative projects and intellectual demanding tasks aimed to solve the problems of this world and improve on its design.

As far-fetched as it may seem now, I think that the progress toward such designed society is advancing slowly, but if we realize that we want it sooner, then we will focus to bring it sooner into our lives. And it might not be too late to save the environment, either.

I hope there are more people who share my ideas, and if you are, don’t be shy and drop a line in the comments box. Maybe we can soon collaborate to design this future I am talking about. Also, try to answer the questions along the article in a comment or two.

Inspiration: This article is written after reading and watching videos about The Venus Project, a project that focuses on the idea of a Resource-Based Economy in which we rely heavily on technology to fulfill our needs. Not far away from what I’m saying here, but I want to stress out a difference: I want this to be an open project, something in which everybody can contribute and design the future. I don’t have all the answers, and I don’t think anyone has them all, but I believe we can all work towards finding them.