Comments on: The Last Bastion of Scarcity

By: Encon

Encon — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 14:43:32 +0000

Thanks! You’ve given me a terrific new perspective on this confusing issue. Is it possible that everything becomes abundant or do we continue to find new ways to make things scarce?

By: Daniel Stern

Daniel Stern — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 19:44:23 +0000

I think Wayne’s focus on processing power is an interesting addition, but somewhat misguided. One “invention” that will supersede in importance (but be augmented by it) extreme processing power, is artificial intelligence.

Artificial intelligence (in the Jeff Hawkins sense of the word, i.e not physically anthropromorphized machines but rather computers that can think inductively through analogy. see memory-prediction theory of intelligence) will render abundant Last Bastion #3 ‘Intellectual Bandwidth.’ This should happen within our lifetime.

By: Wayne Thomas

Wayne Thomas — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 01:31:47 +0000

Interesting article. Technology is accelerating and many don’t really understand the implications of that. Super computers have recently bridged the once fantasy, Petaflop level.

It has taken mankind all the time we have been on the planet until now to reach this milestone.

But now consider…

Within 10 years we should see Exaflop performance, or machines a thousand x faster.

Beyond this, Zettaflops, (a MILLION x Petaflop performance) by 2028, Yottaflops, (a BILLION x Petaflop performance)around 2036, and Xeraflops (a TRILLION x Petaflop performance) maybe in the 2043 timeframe.

Less than 35 years away…

And processing power will continue to grow exponentially beyond that point…

Most don’t appreciate what titanic positive changes this will bring to us in our daily lives, in everything from materials technology to life extension.

By: Bill Farren

Bill Farren — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 00:24:21 +0000

Thanks for this post. I like your “customer abuse index”–especially as it pertains to education (my field). If only fewer adults believed the idea that school is not meant to be fun or that learning is “work”, then maybe they’d respond to the CAI and demand better education.
You might want to watch Chris Anderson’s PopTech talk, if you haven’t already: “What happens when material things become free? Long Tail author and Wired magazine editor Chris Anderson examines new models of wealth distribution and claims we’re moving from economies of scarcity to an age of abundance.”
I posted some thoughts on education in a world of abundance here: http://www.ed4wb.org/?p=172

By: admin

admin — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 14:34:36 +0000

Thanks for the comment. I had considered using the title “Last Bastions of Scarcity” with bastions being plural, but decided against it. Perhaps I needed a better way to describe this, but I’m thinking in terms of how scarcity is being backed into it own little stronghold with the forces of abundance working its way ever closer. And the notion of a bastion being the final demarcation where scarcity can be pusher no further.

By: Dan McGuire

Dan McGuire — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 11:01:42 +0000

Good thoughts all, but your point has not been honed clearly enough, yet.

Last means last, so pick one of the things in the list and then we can argue (in the productive way) over whether that’s the one or not.

By: Ruth Howard

Ruth Howard — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 04:40:32 +0000

Hi Thomas, I’m wondering about the notion of work itself, if as you say (making huge sense to me)education/individuals/teams will cater to individuals/masses by provision of course ware then it follows (if only in my mind) that individuals will outsource themselves, each person will need to provide service. It will become a service economy, what have you got to offer?-,freely,paid,time,skills,intellect,emotion,other.And it will be in best interest to follow your interests because you have best chance of serving with both heart and mind aligned. This will become the potent measure of talent/collaboration/outsourcing, because those leading will have those integrated qualities and seek sync with complimentary others? Plus everything we do/act out will be recorded in various ways and reveal our preoccupations who we network etc so living authentically will be critical? Just where my mind goes in response to initial contact with your ideas.Thanks for the nudge!

By: The Last Bastion of Scarcity and the Future of the Boston Metro Rental Market

The Last Bastion of Scarcity and the Future of the Boston Metro Rental Market — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 04:27:57 +0000

[...] in lately, and Google alerts finds interesting things for me. This was a recent catch, from Thomas Frey’s blog. (He’s a futurist with an impressive client list. This as opposed to the type of futurist we [...]

By: Jay O'Connell

Jay O'Connell — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 03:46:47 +0000

Hi,

I wrote science fiction professionally for five years (published about 20 stories) and I was fascinated by what we were calling ‘post-scarcity’ culture. I had a bunch of radical libertarians (the Extropians) eventually drive me out of their community because I posited a world in which free-market type interaction was replaced with some sort of aboriginal, hunter-gather social interaction; shorn of a mass popular culture and the need for a single unified cultural experience, groups of nomadic, genetically altered humans roam an anarchic landscape, living off of bootleg freeware of various sorts.

I was called a socialist. Perry Metzger, a wizened napoleonic figure, finally created the term ‘jupiter brain’ to explain why post-scarcity was a foolish construct. He would want to have a brain the size of jupiter and an unending vicious marketplace which killed off socialist loafers like me would make sure that there would be no goofy hippy green men around wasting valuable carbon atoms which Perry would need to construct his infinitely large vast nanodiamond brain.

This is akin to the radical free market notion that killing off the American Indians was a good and necessary thing because they weren’t actually using the land. They weren’t mixing their labor with the land to produce excess trade goods and as such, had to be exterminated like vermin.

Currently, I’m working in the post scarcity, how do you compete with Craigslist world. We have an alternative, SPAM free site, a kind of walled garden which we hope to expand into a kind of MLS for rentals in the Boston Metro region. The story is rich and complicated, and I’ve had conversations with Craig Newmark about his Terms of Use, our challenge to the massive redundancy and fraud created by post scarcity listing services, and Web 3.0, the next big thing, which I think my group, in it’s small way, is working on.

You can check out the site by typing the word ‘real’ and the words boston apartments and seeing what you get with google. Our sites are the first two hits.

If you don’t search for REAL, you get black hat SEO spam. That’s our new meme.

Great article. I have more thoughts. We should talk sometime. You rock.

Jay O’Connell
realbostonapartments

By: Monica Savage

Monica Savage — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 21:52:29 +0000

I believe you are right. There is so much of the world as we know it that this shift will change. Since I am attending an e-Learning conference right now, add that to your list: e-Learning will experience the scarcity/abundance shift, I believe in the next couple of years.