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3G Is A Dog, And Other Truths
naylorjs writes: "This is an interesting article from the BBC about the technological future, in particular broadband and wireless. What makes it more interesting is the comments about nation states and such like. A certain amount of lateral thinking in use here, something that we don't see enough of in the technology field. IMHO."
There was an interesting article last year in MIT's Technology Review Magazine about Negroponte leaving the Media Lab, leaving the Lab's future uncertain. The article makes a number of references to the Media Lab, including Biotech Research. It's interesting that he still refers to the Lab as "we" - I assume it's hard to let go, and probably good for the Lab to keep him around as an advisor.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Q: You say digital technology will end the nation state and eventually produce a global cyber state. Now, speaking at this moment, that looks particularly wrong, doesn't it? You have a war being fought in defence of states; you have people who don't have states - Muslims and Palestinians - saying can we have a nation state, please? So, that prediction has turned out to be very wrong.
A: No, actually, it's turned out to be quite right. Let me explain how. Clearly, the notion of a piece of land, definable - these are atoms and they have an edge and a limiting contour - as something that you relate to as a culture or as an individual is extraordinarily important. What's happened is that the nation state as we know it today happens to be the wrong size. It's too big to be local and it's too small to be global; the UK is a perfect example.
For a better answer to this question, try reading Spiral Dynamics [www.spiraldynamics.com].
Spiral Dynamics theory concerns itself with what people and nations value, and according to SD there are about seven or eight basic value systems, or 'value MEMEs' that operate in people.
Each vMEME is colour coded for ease of reference--they are (very basically):
BEIGE: vaues instinctual basic survival eg. homeless people, starving masses
PURPLE: values ethnic tribes, family and mythic rituals, eg. superstitions, corporate 'tribes'
RED: values power, impulsivity, egocentricity, and rebelling, eg. streetgangs, frontier mentality, James Bond villains
BLUE: values conformance, absolutist principles of 'right' and 'wrong', Order, and the One True Way, eg. Puritan America, Confucian China, Islamic fundamentalism
ORANGE: values achievement, escape from the 'herd', the world is a chessboard and you play to Win, eg. Wall Street, Colonialism
GREEN: values sensitivity, communitarian human bonding, dialogue, relationships, multiculturalism, eg. Postmodernism, Greenpeace
YELLOW: values integration of all of the above, as life is a kaliedoscope of natural hierarchies, systems and forms.
So even with this very rough map of the different vMEMEs, we can tentatively see that the USA is predominantly an ORANGE (personal achievement, we protect our interestes) oriented culture, but also has a significant percentage of the GREEN (no culture is better than any other, USA is an oppressor) vMEME active.
Contrast that with other parts of the world that are still firmly set in BLUE--there is One True Way, Our God is the Only God, our culture is Good and it's order must be preserved.
Or even parts of Africa that value the tribe and where lines of kinship are considered very important (PURPLE).
And applying our vMEME map to the current conflict, it would seem that the Taliban is an unhealthy mixture of the BLUE 'our religion is True,' vMEME with the RED power striving vMEME (and we'll personally take power, commit terrorist acts, and kill any of our people who disagree with us).
And remember that many people devote maybe half their lives guided by whichever vMEME is operating in them, be it ORANGE achievement or BLUE conformity.
And yet, we're somehow supposed to believe that, given enough mobile phones, our differences are going to dissapear and we're going to form a Global Cyber State?
It's difficult to see how digitally connecting everyone on the outside is somehow going to make the differences on the inside dissapear.
Imagine a student phoning a terrorist:
Western student (GREEN): let's talk, for I aknowledge and respect your culture...
Arab extreemist (RED/blue): You are not of my culture, you are an infidel--die infidel, Die!!
Perhaps the trouble with Dr. Negroponte's answer is that he's looking, like a good technologist, from the outside, at the physical systems, and talking about stuff ilke 'the size of the state being wrong'.
But by using SD we can start to fathom the depth and breadth of the inner codes and values that are operating in people and nations, and why the conflict exists not just between states but also between the different vMEMEs operating within single states.
eg.:
'they attacked us and we are just in punishing them' (BLUE),
'we have to protect our oil interests and stabilise the area' (ORANGE),
'America is oppressive and interfering with minority cultures' (GREEN)