Scientific Breakthroughs of the Future will be Free for All
The free trend could extend to rice, clothing, housing, and other modern necessities
Science comes in many flavors. And its breakthroughs can come in every aspect of the world and our lives. Remember, there are not just the physical sciences of chemistry, physics, astronomy, and biology; there are also the socioeconomic sciences of psychology, sociology, economics, and politics. And we can even get into science for technologies that man has honed, such as computer science, data science, and food science. Science is everywhere.
Large scientific breakthroughs come from many sources, but two of the most obvious are from public research institutions in the form of universities and colleges, and from corporate research arms such as the fabled Xerox PARC and such as Bell Labs, which started in 1925. In particular, Xerox PARC was instrumental in inventing “laser printing, Ethernet, the modern personal computer, graphical user interface (GUI),” and “object-oriented programming”, to name a few according to Wikipedia.
Today, I sense an interesting trend in the scientific research that is going on, or rather, in the people who are taking part in the scientific research, and where they are willing to do that research.
Research at corporations is getting more prestigious than it was in the past, and some of the best researchers are moving to the companies that are allowing those researchers to publish their findings for the world to see. When research is published, it is easier to copy and use the useful implications of that research.
Apple has been known to miss out on much of the best artificial intelligence (AI) talent because they are secretive and don’t want their researchers to publish their findings, although that secrecy may be starting to change. Apple’s loss is part of the reason that Google’s DeepMind is getting some of the best AI researchers.
DeepMind has published “over 200 peer-reviewed papers.” Some of this research may be replicatible, and not only are scientists around the world able to mimic DeepMind’s success, but Google has developed and then open-sourced one of the most important AI software libraries in the world: TensorFlow. Google is publishing a ton of research through DeepMind, but it’s going a step further and giving away some of the best AI technology that it has developed, free for the entire world to use, improve, and build upon.
Today, I was reading and article about economics and found this interesting paragraph from Quartz:
In July 2016, Uber hired John List, a big-deal economist at the University of Chicago, as chief economist (a title he shared with Hall). Amazon had approached List with a similar offer in 2010, but he declined after the company said it wouldn’t allow academic publication. Travis Kalanick lured List to Uber by making clear that publishing was part of the deal.
Do you see the pattern emerging here? The computer, engineering, and data sciences of AI are starting to be dominated by those who allow publication, the sharing of findings, and the sharing of the technology produced: the same is starting to happen in the field of economics. Perhaps it will soon happen in drug research and every other field of science. Of course drug researchers already publish their work, but how long will it be until the best drug researchers will not work for a pharmaceutical company unless the company agrees that findings will not be patented? Right now, in some cases, corporate researchers are not only demanding that they can publish any and all of their findings as they see fit, but corporations themselves are deciding to benefit humanity by seeing to it that their technological creations are free for anyone and everyone, as we see in the case of Google’s TensorFlow.
When will this trend end, where is it heading, and where will it ultimately go? Think about that for a moment, and please respond at the bottom. Once you’ve had a chance to ponder, please feel free to read on for a few of my thoughts on where this trend might lead us.
Here are a few of my thoughts: Are we moving toward a world where “intellectual” property is no longer protected; not because governments have stopped protecting it, but rather because corporations no longer see a benefit in filing for a patent or copyright?
Also, could we be moving to a brandless world? Trademarks have only been used sparsely for about two thousand years, except for the past one or two hundred years, when have they gained mainstream popularity. What if we lived in a world where the quality of any physical product was not only assumed, but it could quickly be proven by the scan of our device, whether that “device” is a simple feature of the phones of tomorrow or an “all-in-one” chip that is implanted in our body that augments everything we do from thinking to “calling” other people to communicating with other people and our own machine augmented bodies? Trademarks would no longer matter if our mind’s eye — because of the chip — instantly told us how good a product we were looking at was.
Finally, what about physical goods? Are we coming to a physical world where most of the simple goods we have today will be offered for free to the world population? A world where anyone could subscribe to a free rice subscription from the world’s largest rice producer, but they would only receive the minimum amount of rice that a typical human would need: perhaps receiving their supply on a daily or weekly basis through a sucking pipe like the ones you see at the bank, or through a drone delivery. It would be the most basic rice: higher quality rices and greater quantities of rice would cost money.
Perhaps these free deliveries would be necessary marketing because the company would know that goodwill would be created from the program to people who don’t already eat the company’s rice, but also because the company would project additional future revenue through the new paying customers that would exist as the millions who got the free rice quickly move out of poverty and are able to pay for nicer rice, and more rice than the free program provided.
People will move out of poverty for the main reasons that they are already moving out of poverty today, but also because of corporate “free stuff advertising” programs like this from the rice company and other companies, but also from the freedom that that food security provides. Freedom to no longer worry about farming, but rather start thinking about what you can learn, and the freedom to think about how your family’s life can be improved, beyond the old worry of where you’ll get your next meal.
I’d be more willing to buy a house from the company who 3D printed a free, small, basic but practical apartment that I got to rent for free for the past few months or years. And as these “free” programs (they’re really just advertising programs) grow, they’ll move up the economic and technological chain until “basic” smartphones, cell service, and computers are free, as well as there being free basic vitamins, education, and clothing.
Because our world will have such an abundance of stuff because of office work done by AI, fully autonomous robotic factories, and 3D printers and food synthesizers owned by nearly everyone in the middle class, it will only make sense for corporations to get their foot in the door by offering free, high quality goods and services to everyone. The people who pay will be those who can afford to pay more for premium goods and services.
Will cars ever be free? Perhaps not, but basic, for-profit transportation services may be free, and a 3D printed car might be really cheap from the local auto garage/repair shop. Maybe the Universal Basic Income so often talked about will hardly be necessary, because the goods and services people need most will be totally taken care of through corporate philanthropy (some might call “advertising”) programs.
But will companies really give stuff away for free? Competition that is also advertising this way will make it necessary, but also, society’s disdain for ads will demand it. We hate ads now, but in a world of even greater abundance, we will find most traditional ads unacceptable and we will say to ourselves, “The company should let me use their goods and services for free: I want to see if it’s worth it to pay for their premium products.” And as this gets popularized, almost every industry on Earth will have to go along.
Right now, we’re at the cusp of most intellectual property being free. When will the free movement move into physical goods and services, and where will it end? One day, will all goods and services except the nicest yachts, planes, and spaceships (perhaps the Millennium Falcon will have a price: I’ve wanted one for a long time) be free for all but the most monastic hermits who decide to colonize Mars, Pluto, or even another solar system?
