Stop autonomous weapons! — from killingry to livingry (as Bucky suggested)
Humanity has the option to become succesful on our planet if we reorient world production away from weaponry — from killingry to livingry. Can we convince humanity in time? — R. Buckminster Fuller
I believe Bucky was referring to the fact that much of our ingenuity seems to have been focussed on developing more and more advanced ways of killing each other — and life on Earth in the process. Many of today’s high technologies have first been developed in the well funded labs working on more advanced weapon systems.
The confluence of artificial intelligence, robotics and biotechnology could create a dystopic technological future that the best of science fictions has been warning us of for decades. We seem to have sleepwalked into a ‘brave new world’ that is Orwellian in the sense described in his book 1984. The guru’s of transhumanism and idols of run-away high tech are actively bringing the world described in ‘Elysium’ into being. Are these the futures we want and are willing to accept?
We are about to trigger irreversible runaway climate change with catastrophic impact on biodiversity and the future of life on Earth, yet the media are cheering on folks that want to go to Mars.
Based on our performance on Earth we have not yet reached the level of species maturity to be meddling with other planets. Before we learn to be responsible passengers on living Spaceship Earth nurturing and regenerating life’s syntropic (negentropic) capacity to create conditions conducive to life, we are not yet fit for populating other planets!
We need an ethical dialogue about ubiquitous technology, 24hr surveillance, and especially autonomous robotic weapon systems urgently. If you have not watched the little video Slaughterbots released by the Future of Life Institute in Cambridge, do!
We can unleash a new era of salutogenic (health generating) innovation and regenerative development if we shift the power of our ingenuity, science, technology and design towards creating conditions conducive to life.
That is what Bucky described as the shift from killingry to livingry. It is not entirely a technologically driven shift, much of the transformative innovation will be in new ways of living, working, and in creative ways of regenerating society and ecosystems together. We don’t just need a new attitude towards technology, we also need a new guiding story about who we are and what we are here for — a regenerative (r)evolution!
Creating technology as ‘livingry’ will invite us to marry the best of indigenous and place-based wisdom and culture with the best of modern renewable and regenerative technology. We used to know how to inhabit our bioregions with a reverent attitude towards the rest of nature as kin and source of abundance. Now that we have wonderful technological capabilities — if we choose wisely between salutogenic and pathogenic technologies — we could create shared abundance through collaborative adantage.
A world that works for all is within reach, but we need to wise up and not walk into the dystopia of letting run-away tech enact our worst sci-fi nightmares because we accept the lie that technology is out of bounds and cannot be guided ethically. It is our choice whether we let the broom sticks of technology beat the last bit of humanity out of us, or whether we assume the maturity to become masters of our innovations rather than immature wizards’ apprentices.
WE NEED AN ETHICAL DIALOGUE ON TECH NOW! This also means increased global collaboration in establishing bans of certain technologies and reinforcing them!
Daniel Christian Wahl works internationally as a consultant and educator in regenerative whole systems design, and transformative innovation. He holds degrees in biology (Univ. of Edinburgh / Univ. of California) and Holistic Science (Schumacher College) and his 2006 doctoral thesis (Univ. of Dundee) was on Design for Human and Planetary Health. He was director of Findhorn College between 2007 and 2010, and is a member of the International Futures Forum, a fellow of the RSA, a Findhorn Foundation Fellow and a member of the Evolutionary Leaders Circle. Daniel sits on the advisory council of the Ojai Foundation and the Ecosystem Restoration Camps Foundation. His clients have included UNITAR (with CIFAL Scotland), UK Foresight (with Decision Integrity Ltd), Ecover (with Forum for the Future), Bioneers (with the Progressio Foundation, and with the Findhorn Foundation), the Dubai Futures Foundation (with Tellart), The Commonwealth Secretariat (with Cloudburst Foundation), Gaia Education, the Global Ecovillage Network, the State of the World Forum, Balears.t, Camper, LUSH and many educational NGOs, universities, and design schools. He is co-founder of Biomimicry Iberia (2012), and has been collaborating with ‘SmartUIB’ at the University of the Balearic Islands since 2014. Daniel works part-time as Gaia Education’s ‘Head of Design & Innovation’ since 2015. His recent book Designing Regenerative Cultures, published by Triarchy Press in the UK in May 2016, has already gained international acclaim, and his blog on Medium has a large international readership.
