Cory Doctorow and Ramez Naam Talked About the Near Future, and It Was Good
By Evan Anderson
In a panel last Friday Scout Media founder Berit Anderson sat down with famed science fiction authors Ramez Naam and Cory Doctorow to discuss a few perspectives on the next 20 years. What the future will bring is, according to the two, both hopeful and complex.
Anderson asked both authors to provide the audience with a “sneak peek” of the future with a prompt:
It’s the year 2024, and the automation revolution has eliminated a massive number of jobs…
Naam noted that the Google self-driving car (and others)will save countless lives. Three thousand people die every day in car accidents around the world, and the automation of motor vehicles should reduce fatality drastically.
That being said, three million people (1–2% of the population) in the US are employed as drivers. All of them will lose their jobs. While this number is high, it is worth noting that one million Americans change jobs each week. Drivers should be able to shift willingly to alternate forms of employment. While this is enlightening, we can’t forget that job loss will occur in a number of sectors, and damage the total availability of employment across the board.
Naam also explained that we have no reason to believe that humanity can replace those lost employment opportunities. Since many more people may struggle to find work in the future, we should seriously consider the need to create a universal basic income.
Doctorow agreed that losing jobs to automation becomes a problem of social justice, but argued that there is a case to be made for automation’s possible reduction of injustice when we examine the amount of work done by individuals that is far below their human potential. He went on to describe, however, that not only will automation remove jobs from the market, but that individuals will need more money to purchase high-tech automated systems, stating “If all of the benefits of automation accrue to only the people that own those systems[…]we need some sort of method to redistribute that benefit.”
Anderson asked both men to comment on what the creation of a universal basic income would actually look like. Naam led, commenting “Its a really good thing, when you look at places like Europe where this has been done, its a huge lift.”
What is more, Naam cited untethered cash distribution projects in sub-Saharan Africa. Far from conservative tropes suggesting that people who receive cash in hand to pursue development are in fact de-motivated and uninvested, Naam explained that such programs have shown significant income growth. A basic income, in short, would improve the lot of those in need, rather than creating a malaise of incentive.
Doctorow added, critically, that this is true as long as those in question are not in precarious circumstances (emergencies that may cause a sudden cash loss). He went on to explore the idea of abundance and its application to technology. Can we design machines and software programs that don’t wear out? Doctorow questioned that an environment with technology that is perfectly durable would provide a new kind of economic environment, one previously unknown to man. He pointed out that, as with fiberoptic cable roll outs, the investor community often eats the R&D costs of creating infrastructure. Critically, Doctorow stated, is that with highly reduced operational and marginal costs, we may not need to maintain the concepts of price discovery or income at all.
Naam noted that Keynes estimated long ago that we’d be essentially “done with work by now” due to a shift to 10 hour work weeks. Rather than trust that the inherent concept of going to work will disappear, then, Naam would rather see a basic income that individuals can allocate in a market than an attempt to create a system in which commodities become free.
Doctorow proposed that with future technological advances dollar-a-day poverty may not be as grinding and difficult as it once was. He suggested that tech advances will make it easier to provide for human needs at a lower cost and that, optimistically, this would apply across the board without higher costs in new areas. Either way, Doctorow explained, it’s clear that unequal wealth distribution is a massive problem in this era.
Doctorow also noted that when serial entrepreneur and Tesla CEO Elon Musk was asked in an interview about the path of self-driving cars in 20 years, his response was “I hope civilization is still around in 20 years.” With a likely 4–5 degree celsius change in global temperatures, Doctorow feared that Musk may be right.
Naam pointed out that climate change was unlikely to end civilization in that time. However, he explained that a real consequence of our shifting climate patterns will be an immense increase (rather than Doctorow’s aforementioned reduction) in difficulty of life for impoverished populations. Naam tangentially explained that the threatening memes that engage liberals regarding climate change have been shown in polls to harden opposition in conservatives. The best messages to motivate the general population, therefore, are about innovation, risk and new business. As solar has plunged in module price 150 times its original value, and batteries drop in price, technology is clearly providing routes to avoid a continuation of this climate trend.
Doctorow explained that the question is not whether there will be crises, but what we, as humans, will do about them. While many narratives focus on chaos and mutual threat in times of peril, this is not actually the case in real-world emergencies. Doctorow cited Rebecca Solnit’s inspiring work, A Paradise Built In Hell, which uses first hand accounts of people in crisis around the globe to show the ways in which individuals regularly rise to the occasion and help each other. He further noted that we have a flawed conception of many crises, explaining that nature cares not for our existence. In short, there are no natural “disasters”. There is only nature, and the consequences of our decisions.
This also means that the stories we tell ourselves about what will happen in times of crisis are important. Science fiction, according to Doctorow, has done a great disservice by telling stories filled with violence and selfish behavior in times of need. He noted that there exists a cheap drama in literature that writers can accomplish by “having the lights go out and the streets filled with rioters.”
Doctorow also expounded on another narrative found in our culture: the concept of abundance. If we recognize that whatever is presently abundant should be defined as available as much as we desire, he commented, we begin to shift our understanding of consumption. Previously, times of true abundance were defined by “jubilee.” Festivals celebrated the absolute lack of need for a product in human society. If we adjust our notion of abundance and shift from relying on “positional goods that are intentionally difficult or expensive” to acquire, and instead focus on what is already abundant, Doctorow stated that we will radically change the way we use our resources.
Naam posited that the zero-sum approach often used in climate politics amongst nations will ultimately fail us. Solving a challenge like climate change requires cooperation, and people respond on a “tit for tat” basis. This requires that nations like the United States work to inspire others through action, rather than waiting for the agreement of other nations to reciprocate. Naam further commented that this is not a difficult decision. When it comes to pursuing green industries, Naam noted that “there are fortunes to be made in this transition…Elon Musk has two of them.”
Along the lines of social justice, Doctorow delved briefly into the concept of a Kickstarter for class-action lawsuits to help balance the corruption in modern society.
What is certain is that the next 20 years will surely be a time of incredible, structural change; we are nearing a shift from an industrial revolution era conception of economics, employment and production to a completely alternate system. The ramifications of this change and its interaction with other concurrent major trends (climate change, social inequality) will define human life and interaction in the near future.
What is in question is whether we, as a species, are ready.
