The Future of Civilization. V
9 Nearing the Answer
Thus far, above listed phenomena look rather observations than anything else and as such call themselves in question. Well, to be clear: Any observation becomes a fact … within framework of a theory. No theory means no fact. Meaning without a theory we don’t understand what we observe and this practically means we don’t see. Therefore, it is necessary at least to try to bring some logic in the said phenomena. We can do that by trying to find connections among the phenomena and between phenomena and some established ideas.
9.1 Civilization
The three above described phenomena represent three different aspects of interrelations between culture and civilization.
Several interrelated definitions of culture were given already. Civilization, in short, is realm of “human things,” social structures, socially determined relationships, behaviour and speech.
It is essential for our investigation to clarify how civilization and culture interact, in general.
9.2 Interrelation of Culture and Civilization
In general, culture is responsible for development of humanity as such while civilization is responsible for human environment, that is, social structures and socially determined material structures within which people live. Culture produces ideas and aesthetic forms. Civilization picks up and uses some of those while fights, suppresses or ignores others.
There are two areas where culture and civilization interact directly, coincide in a way:
“Things of culture,” which are temples, theaters, books, musical instruments, etc. The function of things of culture is to directly keep, present, save, reproduce, etc. of cultural phenomena. The focal point in their functioning is communication to people, or, turning people into audience.
“Chronotope of and for private life,” which is socially determined and structured space and time when and where an individual is free to act, communicate and think.
9.3 The Bibler’s Formula, Third Reading
The formula: Culture shifts into the epicentre of being, may be reformulated now thus: Culture and civilization tend to coincide. In other words, they develop toward one another. Let’s try to see how that specifically happens.
9.4 Culture, Civilization and … Automation
As I mentioned earlier three phenomena Vladimir Bibler pointed out to are used by the philosopher for illustration of the main formula. As for the formula itself he derived it based on the processes in culture, mostly in the arts, philosophy and science. What happens in civilization the philosopher considered rather a consequence. At least, that may be inferred from Bibler’s works. I am not sure it is totally so. Regardless, I want to focus on one out of three above mentioned civilizational phenomena, namely, the global trend toward innovation in modern production and, correspondingly, competition. Our task is to find out what is the logic of the phenomenon.
To approach that we start with automation. In general, Vladimir Bibler considered automation to play a principle role in relationship between creative and routine work. But why does automation happen at all?
There are a few interrelated factors bringing it up. The major two are obviously the following.
First, automation is driven by market forces. Two prong effect of automation is lowering the cost and increasing speed of production.
Second, it is rooted deep in the human nature as such, in humans’ work with and development of tools.
Tools allow humans to extend their ability to deal with nature and, thereby, simultaneously develop their psyche’s abilities. One tool can be used in different ways, while one material thing can be dealt with using different tools. Automation gets born naturally and, sooner or later, its development leads to tools extending human mind’s capacities directly.
In general, the development of the by-tools driven environment allows humans to do things with less physical but more intellectual effort.
9.5 Automation and Market
Let’s have a closer look how automation affects market. As I mentioned above automation accelerates simultaneously demand (by lowering prices) and supply (by increasing speed of production) of a given product. Two aspects add up and accelerate saturation of the market by that product. Obviously, the saturation entails a call for a new or improved product. A business to first answer the call becomes the winner here and now. That is, coming out with new product and thus creation of that new product becomes increasingly a means of competition. Consequentially, the farther automation goes the more considerable role new products and services play on the market.
On the other hand, business offering a new product is particularly interested in the special customer’s attitude, namely, strive for new products. That means, the idea of just “new product,” regardless any other properties and features tends to gain value over the idea of “good old product.” The further it goes the more “looking for new” tends to become a dominant value on the market and thus backfires on manufacturer. Thus the cause and action chain reverses: customers’ strive for new pushes businesses to offer new as often as possible which causes business to give up profits derived from the current products and services. That in turn, pushes them to further increase productivity and thus develop and spread automation. The circle is closing. Which is good enough to make the next conclusion but before offering it I want to point out to another phenomenon supporting the contemplated trend. It seems important.
The powerful quest for automation brings to existence a very special “work force,” engineers creating machines. Once called to existence these have to work and thus new machines are condemned to appear as a self-valued phenomenon, which, in the end, brings in new or improved products faster and faster.
Obviously, all considered aspects of automation represent actual forces pushing it ever further. These forces support one another and sum up into the powerful trend: Coming up with new or improved products and services becomes more and more significant means of competition.
Now, we have to perform our logical operation on the process pondered — to direct it into infinity. What do we find there? In infinity, creation and, respectively, offering new products and services become the only means of competition.
9.6 Automation and Ideas
Let’s look into automation from another angle. We saw it accelerate and spread itself. In infinity it covers all products and services, as much as those products and services include formalized reproducible aspects. “All” means it covers itself too, “locks onto itself,” philosophically speaking.
Furthermore, “locking automation onto itself” or “automation of automation” brings it on new levels (computerization, robotization, and so forth), all of which have specifics but these specifics are not my subject. The subject is the general trend. And there is another noteworthy aspect of the trend: Ever increasing role and part of new ideas in new products and services.
The latter comes from the following. We can consider any product as a set of ideas plus the labour time used to produce it. New product means new ideas, evidently. What is important that labour time needed to produce a single product decreases while automation develops. This is why the role of producing of new ideas becomes more and more significant and in infinity becomes the only part in production done by humans. Everything else a given product is comprised of will be done by machines.
We can reformulate the above conclusion as follows: In infinity any production becomes an art. In other words, in infinity human part of production will be creativity only.
9.7 Creativity Versus Monopolization
Let’s run through the chain of ideas, as they were presented by Bibler, once more. The trend is that new products coming on the market faster and faster. Which means that time spent on a new product creation increases comparatively to the time of its mass production. Which means the role and significance of creativity increases comparatively to role and significance of routine work. Which in infinity means that only creative work will be the work. Which entails certain consequences.
A very important one, from my stand point, is the following. There will be nothing possible to monopolize when entire labour time becomes time of creativity because “labour” will be producing only new things. What new things? Everything! In no particular order: works of art, inventions, new tools and materials, new machines, new technologies, new products and services … plus one more item on the list which seems very natural here — new business. In the economy of free time the idea of new business becomes … routine. At the same time, this process, so to speak, is endless in itself.
To substantiate the latter but not deviate too far from our subject I can point out to a simple rationale: When two ideas meet they produce yet another one. That means, the realm of ideas is unlimited in principle.
Now we can make our next step — turn back from infinity and look into nowadays situation from that angle. And what do we see? The same picture we saw before but we can term it differently now: We surely see that “production is production of ideas to a degree,” which entails “impossibility to monopolize to this degree …” unless monopolies are imposed on markets artificially.
Unfortunately, and we must say, illogically, but they are. I am talking about “Intellectual Property (IP).” No wonder we run into IP in our quest at this point. It is monopoly and it is about ideas. We will touch upon this aspect later. At the moment I just want to state that, if it was not for IP, modern civilization could heal itself from the plague of monopolies via natural development, just by market forces … under certain conditions.
The last statement seems to contradict initial conclusions of our thought experiment. Please note: We contemplated different trends. They were two trends pushing civilization in opposite directions.
9.8 Automation, etc.: Summary +
Creativity is an ability to see things differently. That is, to see something by my own pair of eyes and, simultaneously, by some other pair, not mine but of a complete stranger. Yes, I have to be able to perform as a stranger to myself in order to be creative. All the same, in order to be creative, I need a completely strange person, a person with a totally different look at the subject, to discuss my problem with. This is why a small group is a normal setting for creativity.
Now, talking about “stranger” I have to point out to a fact that strange in my eyes is another set of values. This is where explosions and fountains of values come from for the last century. That happens because of increasing role of creativity in all spheres of social life starting with production…. Which increasing caused by automation driven by market forces.
Finally, different values are the major cause of wars and revolutions for the 20th century.
To sum it up: The phenomena Bibler pointed out to are not random collection of observations but demonstration of deep interrelated processes western civilization undergoes.
PS. The rest of the work:
Part 1. Free Market, Monopolies, Crude Communism: https://medium.com/where-does-this-world-go/part-1-8c68d5030757?source=friends_link&sk=7613c0f6aadbb17b89a2b35a0b0195d9
Part 2. Ideals, Reality, Fantasy. Where to Go?: https://medium.com/where-does-this-world-go/the-future-of-civilization-ii-1210d5a0db78?source=friends_link&sk=eded6e79c22067840822f958b3c939f8
Part 3. Ideal Solution, My Wishes, Problem Statement: https://medium.com/where-does-this-world-go/the-future-of-civilization-iii-1548e4295352?source=friends_link&sk=d0f93e2c44f54b06de26480be38f3be2
Part 4. Economy of Free Time, Dialogue of Cultures, Etc.: https://medium.com/where-does-this-world-go/future-of-civilization-iv-57ec15b2d7f0?source=friends_link&sk=041a84363733649a47b403fa4fde98a2
Part 5. Culture, Civilization & Automation
Part 6. Socium of Small Groups, Socium of Freedom: https://medium.com/@anatolyvolynets/the-future-of-civilization-small-groups-1033297794c9?source=friends_link&sk=91dddf1ea25c823d33ee80fd5077dadd
Part 7. Transition from Present to Future: https://medium.com/@anatolyvolynets/the-future-of-civilization-vii-60e7220ae250
Part 8. The Disease of Intellectual Property: https://medium.com/@anatolyvolynets/67ef8718113c?source=friends_link&sk=1da4f7c199d2c8e08f2b20b84d7d5682
