EmbraceToken — A new understanding of work in the digital society, pt. I
This is the first article of a series about the upcoming changes in our society, fueled by digitalization and decentralization. This first part remains broad in order to give an overview to those who are not yet confronted with all the things happening in the background.
The advent of the digital society
If someone would have told you ten years ago that the release of the first iPhone — and with it the “smombie fever” — will change our communication, our daily habits, our acceptance of technology as a whole, you probably would have not believed it.
A decade later we are finally aware of the advent of the digital society — but most of us still underestimate the acceleration of the developments to come. Sure, there are more scientists and tech evangelists than ever who draw (promising as much as dystopian) scenarios of the future. But who of us is really taking the advice for themselves, when Stephen Hawking (R.I.P.) tells us we need to leave earth within the next 200 years or Elon Musk warns against the perils of Artificial Intelligence? Not to mention the groundbreaking changes that will occur with blockchain technology, a topic that virtually emerged from nowhere in the last two years.. Admittedly, it may be hard to conclude personal action from these topics but one realization must me made: Technology will dramatically change all aspects of our personal life, very soon.
Work is the fuel of the human species, the power of hands and brains created wealth and prosperity far beyond basic human needs. The steady growth of artificial physical power shaped the recent centuries, created our modern societies, determined the labour market (with its 9-to-5 jobs), and demanded higher education to control the force. Artificial intelligence instead is still in its infancy, a phenomenon driven by the exponential growth of computation power and network communication, just evolved in the last 30 years. But if there is one thing we can tell from the history of evolution, it is the fact that intelligence has a far more accelerated development curve than simple physical strength.
Our struggle compared to the people in the beginning of the industrialization: This time it is not so clear what we, as humans, can contribute to the welfare of our society, once, after muscles, also our brains getting depreciated. Some researches analyze the degree of autonomization of certain jobs and predict the (un-) likelihood of being replaced by a robot, some defend artisanship or complex tasks, some call on our creativity as last resort to compete against the machines. In fact, most people today cannot imagine a world without jobs, the paradigm of wage employment appears as natural law for the majority. The upcoming question will be: From whom are we getting our paycheck then?
The peak and decline of centralized corporations (and capital accumulation)
The evolvement of industrial production is close connected to another industry: financial capital. Service providers and product manufacturers accumulate money in order to grow their business by increasing production capacity and/or hiring more workers to enter new markets etc. Later on, shareholders get a return (with interest) once the investment pays off. So much about the well-known theory. In reality, the applied mechanics of this model become more and more ruthless. The 1% richest people in the world hold half of its wealth, some companies maintain 285 billion (285.000.000.000) US-Dollar as cash! reserve, it is finally evidence that these days it is rather luck than hard work that makes you rich as an individual. It was not helping, that Marx suggested to let workers also become shareholders and participate from the gains of a corporation, that construct simply underestimated the individual greed (from everyone involved). Piketty and the 99% movement know that money circles like to stay between themselves.
It seems that the accumulation of financial capital has reached a critical level — and the platform economy with the incredible valuations of its Ubers, AirBnBs or even Facebooks represent the sugar coating of capitalism. Some may say that also those companies eventually follow the standard patterns of growth — but there is something more: they breed the “virus”, nurture the understanding of a different kind of business model that was postulated within the first idea of the internet protocols: decentralized peer-to-peer communication between parties that don’t know each other. Yet, until now there was one ingredient missing to boost this principle into the middle of “human” society: Trustless trust.
A centralized handling of products and services has (by design) disadvantages like communication gaps, failing delegation of responsibility and the immobility of business decisions; the bigger the company, the worse it gets. This is why Elon Musk wants that at Tesla everyone talks to everyone, business consultants permanently restructure hierarchies and CEOs impose a constant “change management”. But in the end all this happens on cost of productivity. The collaborative commons economy does not know these flaws, individual intention and execution is (almost) always direct and constructive. If just this one economic principle will rule, then tokenized enterprises will “solve the pain” of today’s corporations and will create the new standard.
Blockchain will facilitate a new type of economy: Decentralized investments for decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO). Decision making, respectively distributed consensus models, will be determined in code, shares will be widely (and freely) distributed to disperse investors, risk will be outsourced, professionalism is granted by experts who will be identified over their (decentral maintained) reputation. Those experts will be too scarce to work in 9-to-5-jobs for just one company. Like actors today they will have HR-agents booking time slots to solve the needs of the highest-bidding (most likely not in FIAT-money, since crypto-tokens will provide much better use cases and independence) DAO. From tomorrow’s point of view company executives are also only middlemen that can be cutted out.
The great depression and the path to a new understanding of work
- Platform businesses and distributed corporations will function without central steering.
- Transportation and logistics become seamlessly automatized.
- Robots and artificial intelligence take over decentralized production cycles (think of downloading a digital pattern for a piece of furniture that you can print out at the big-scale 3D-Printer in your neighborhood). People will be capable to (Star Trek-like) materialize their own steak at home.
- The Dollars and Euros of this world will decline in value once they are less and less backed by work.
So, what’s left for the “normal” wage worker? The answer is: not much. Not without a reason avantgarde thinkers demand a universal basic income, funded by tax-paying robots (although this primarily consumption-focussed money circulation may not end well for our planetary resources). And overall, in a decentralized economy, who owns the robot in the first place and can initiate the tax transfer?
Yuval Harari draws the picture of a “useless class”, Bill Hibbard postulates the rise of AI-powered minds, where “average humans will not […] have a voice in the future.” Pretty depressing, huh? What is left for the majority on this planet, when we have nothing to do and become incapable of understanding the motives of the AI-enhanced decision makers? Suddenly the social credit system introduced by the chinese leaders appear in a complete different light.
Luckily the future is not carved in stone. For a while now scientists are investigating into preferable instead of probable future outcomes. Indeed, the digital society will cause a giant leap into more participation, direct democracy and fair collaboration. And yes, we will do something useful with the time that is given to us, but we may not call it jobs anymore and may not get (then worthless) money for it. Chances are, that those are among the potential occupations:
- Become an expert in something and get booked to help DAOs to solve problems (see above).
- Earn “bounties” by completing scientific or public tasks from a network you participate or the place you live (nationalities and countries will play a much less important role as you probably reasoned).
- Keep up a decentralized network and earn shares.
- Trade your own data (which you are in control of).
- Build something in a digital 3D environment and sell it to others that they can print it out.
- Create quality content (text, voice, video, music, art, virtual goods, you name it) and get paid in social credits.
- Help developing a sustainable ecosystem and benefit from making it better.
There will be lots of additional opportunities, but one field will stand out, released from the shady treatment once financial capital (with its in-build demand for growth and yield) loses influence over central societal tasks: social engagement. Despite all future developments, most people want to be treated by other human beings, at the restaurant, hairdresser, hospital, elder care, voluntary work or even humanitarian engagement. We love the company of humans — and once financial pressure releases these activities will start to flourish. But people will not need to do it for free, instead they will get rewarded for their performed work and can exchange the earned tokens against other products and services. And the best ist: everyone can participate! This is the future we want and this is why we build Embrace! And if it sounds too good to you, simply think back on the early days of the iPhone…
Learn more about the vision of the Embrace team at www.embracetoken.com or in the second part of our series here at Medium.
