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Peter Diamandis: Technology Is Dissolving National Borders
An anonymous reader writes: Peter Diamandis, creator of the X-PRIZE Foundation, has a thoughtful piece on how technology is wearing away at the barriers between nationalities. He asks, "[W]hat really defines your nationality these days? Is it where you were live? Where you work? The language you speak? The currency you use?" Diamandis then proceeds to point out the following facts: Working remotely is now widespread, and will only become moreso once telepresence robots become ubiquitous. Translation services, both for written and spoken language are approaching sci-fi-level capabilities. The rise of cryptocurrencies is providing a method for people worldwide to move away from national currencies. He argues that in the coming decades, these technologies will mature and begin to make the concept of nationality much less important than it is today. Do you agree?
It's the food you eat, the beer you drink, and which football/rugby/cricket team you support.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Why, I'm (insert nationality of the day here).
You can't tax me for living here, I'm actually (insert different nationality of the day here).
Sure, I expect this locality's police and army to protect me and my shiny things, but surely you don't believe I should PAY for such service?
How about the laws that you should abide. Your startpoint in life. Most of your family's location. Local culture (despite global culture there are still significant differences). Your ancestral history. Your first language. I'm not saying that all of those are equaly or at all important but they make yuour life different in a significant enough way. Cryptocurrencies instability makes great high risk high reward investement and dont affect immiediate transactions but you cannot trust them for your savings on the same level as regular currencies. The flucruations in ther value even in a month make them not so great for regular pay and spending use. Translation services will eventually get to a usable point but some expressions are inherently not that translateable and wont beat a speaker that can think in that language and form their sentences that are coherent in that language. I'don know if translation telepresence cryptocurrencies will "remove" borders altogether but automation wil mak us unemployed ;] and at that point watching firefly for the hundreth time while robotic overlords will run the world will trully make nationality irrelevant ;]
So, we are in Nerdonia here?
Table-ized A.I.
If we get truly universal human rights, yes. But is that a given? In some parts of the world what you say can get you killed by the state, or by the church. Some parts of the world will pay for you to have that expensive medical treatment, others will watch you die. In some parts of the world you can have that life saving abortion, and in others you are doomed to die. The list goes ever on. So if we ever evolve to a point where human rights are truly universal, it sounds great.
Police don't protect anything. They are called after a crime, not before (unless there's a protest against the state that pays their wage). They are called in hopes they can arrest a criminal and enforce the law which usually relates to property. If your squishy little body was damaged you may be awarded financial compensation. But if the crime was serious enough the police can't put Humpty Dumpty back together again, so your insurance better be paid up and the coverage adequate.
Right now we are born in one spot of this spaceship and are forced to stay there unless we pledge allegiance to another spot. We need to start recognising we are all on a captainless ship that has no idea of its resources and supplies or cares about the integrity of the ship. I'm not calling for a single "world president", rather cosmopolitanism requires a new system of government and one in which I predict AI will handle a large amount of governing.
"Working remotely is now widespread, and will only become moreso once telepresence robots become ubiquitous."
Telecommuting (much discussed on slashdot over the past decade) is fairly common, but still hardly 'widepread' - only 2.6% of the U.S. employee workforce 'considers the home their primary workplace', and the single largest group of telecommuters are federal employees (3.3%), ahead of private for-profit sector workers (2.6%) (http://globalworkplaceanalytics.com/telecommuting-statistics). And even among those (like myself) who would say my home is my primary workplace (I live about 3 hours drive from my employer) still need to go in to the office once a month or so. Which might work in some parts of Europe, but for most fo the world is unreasonably complicated and expensive. And I suspect the vast vast majority of those of us who telecommute or work remotely are still doing so within national boundaries.
"Translation services, both for written and spoken language are approaching sci-fi-level capabilities."
Bullshit. Well, so far anyway. The linked slashdot story contained a bunch of comments from people saying the skype translation was just about good enough for scheduling another meeting time, but you couldn't use it to do actual work.
"The rise of cryptocurrencies is providing a method for people worldwide to move away from national currencies."
Right up until you need to buy groceries or pay rent.
Of course, all these things will change. Machine translation will definitely get better. Telepresence might get beyond novelty and/or uncanny valley and genuinely make 'going for a beer with the boss' on another continent work. And my landlord might even start accepting bitcoin. But with the possible exception of machine translation, the rest of it will remain the province of fairly well off people for a long time. Well off people like Peter Diamandis.
Why can't we segregate? I prefer not to know the habits of random female mutilation techniques that are common in the middle east. Oppressive China can keep their ideas of control to themselves. What goes on behind closed doors is something that cannot offend or disrupt me.
All I see happening is that the internet is tearing down the concept of living your own way privately. I'm starting to realize that privacy is the method of freedom. Not the freedom itself.
Let me explain. Some people rock climb for fun, some build high horsepower drag cars, others want to go out in the woods and shoot off guns. What usually happens is that they keep private and no one knows any better. No one can judge them because they are *PRIVATE*.
The issue is that now the internet has people posting their life online and finding that no matter what you do there is a bunch of criticism. Certain positions are harmless like shooting off guns in the woods which hicks do all the time, while others are much more serious like the human rights violations against females in 3rd world countries.
The more people are sniffing around your business the more trouble you can come to expect if you are an innovative thinking person who scares the dumber folks. The best medicine is to simply stay away from those people and remain private. Internet is making that harder and harder. Even if you aren't sharing, others with cameras will the second you outrage them.
I think of the situation where a father did some off-roading with Jeeps and slowly taught his young daughter the practice. When he was on private property (no drivers license needed) he was training her to off-road.... Until of course he put a video on the internet. People were outraged a 9-yr old girl was behind the wheel of a jeep with her father 2 feet away coaching her on how to go over an obstacle at roughly 1-2mph max (off-roading on private land remember).
People in the country routinely have their kids operating jet-skis at over 30mph, 4x4 quads at over 60mph in the fields, and playing with bb-guns and learning to weld on farm equipment at a young age.... As soon as you move from the South to the North and take your kid out in the far away woods to do the SAME THINGS, people freak out and try to revoke your parental rights. Are you really wrong or are these people just segregated from you way of life and through misunderstanding, harmful to your quite-free and safe way of life. Likewise if city-folk move to the south and never make a point to have dinner with their neighbor the people in the South will treat them differently and impact their safe-to-them way of life. (probably a better example could be had going north to south)
So just stay segregated. Doesn't have to be race it can just mean that you want to live only near people who share your points of view.
The combination of globalization and remote working is changing the definition of the corporate culture. I've lived in Japan since 1991 and have clients not only all over Japan, but in Europe and North America. This has given rise to a shift in my cultural outlook from the perspective as a service provider. I think our cultural alliances are now more defined by where and with whom we hang out online. Rather than being more identified with nationality, I think we're more defined by the groups and activities with which we engage. I'm Canadian, but I've lived abroad so long that I have adopted various idiosyncrasies from other languages/cultures.
I can't say I feel very Canadian anymore. I do, however, feel very much in allegiance with software localization and server administration.
I just hope it happens. Discrimination based of location of birth is just as bad as gender, or any other kind of discrimination. We all have a natural right to migrate where we want. Unfortunately the alphas claim the right to mark and rule their territory, puts us in kind of a bind. Borders serve no purpose other than economic stratification, to ration resources
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Perhaps tech can dissolve the border around Peter Diamandis's bank account? I think his money wants to be free...free to move into my bank account. This Peter Diamandis's article is just more neoliberal fake-leftist, corporate-centric, wage-depressing propaganda. We own this nation, the voters, and it should be run for our benefit. And right now there is a benefit to being able to work in the USA. That value and benefit rightfully belongs to us the owners, the voters, and not to the corporations that want cheap foreign labor. Same for Peter Diamandis's bank account, right, Peter? You fakeleftist, corporate toady....
Wealthy people said pretty much the same thing in (pre-August) 1914. Didn't mean much.
National borders have become more irrelevant as material distribution, finance, education, supply chains, etc. go " on the wire. That said, human beings evolved from small, tribal communities. Our human heritage has left us, for at least the time being - far beyond the near-long-term - with an embedded presence for tribal affiliation. National borders may dissolve, but other "borders" will take their place. "Difference" is a primary defining factor in identity. National identities are learned, yes - but they are learned because we have a proclivity for closely identifying with like -minded, like-language, and look-alike physical similarities. Even if the latter disappear, we will invent new realms of "difference" that will lead to conflict and negotiation. This is a part of the human dilemma: how to deal with and co-exist with "difference".
Until we evolve - assuming we are able - beyond beings who define ourselves via tribal likenesses, we will not be able to do away with the problems (and some rewards) of identifying with those who seem "like" we do. New categories will appear; some will be stronger in some ways; smarter in some ways, etc.
because seriously, thats the only thing those borders are, and usually they do more harm than good.
In the digital world, stores enforce my nationality. I can order a music CD or a movie on DVD from Amazon.com, but if I want to buy digital music or stream a digital movie I can't. The more we move towards digital content the more borders there are, paradoxically.
Already in the world we have people working next to each other, speaking the same language but who actively maintain separate nationalities. I can't see how the internet will succeed here when co-location and shared languages didn't.
"Companies will forgo bricks and mortar, and instead allow its work-force, from around the world, to beam into the same environment and work cooperatively. Think about a ‘kinder-gentler ‘ version of The Matrix." ref
:)
While you and Elon Musk, James Cameron, and the rest will be free to jet about the planet, the rest of us will be stuck in real cubicles under virtual observation by our PHB. Besides, telepresence will never replace tactile sensation, ask anyone who attended the fappening
FTFY
unless there's a protest against the rich people that are controlling the state.
Information and informational service boundaries are slowly softening and breaking down since the Internet has made access to information ubiquitous and due to that you're able to consume or create content and reach a multinational audience easily. Some goes for providing information services such as web commerce, development services, or systems administration across the Internet. You can do those types of jobs that don't require any physical access or presence in an Internet virtual environment.
Some places such as New York State are riding that Internet telecommuting band-wagon by taxing income from telecommuting done to a New York based business with a state and city tax as high as 12.7%. So those borders do come into play, and not even national ones, state and city ones too want a piece of the Internet action.
Otherwise try to move any physical resources or objects across national boundaries and you'll be smacked down by a slew of import and export regulations, tariffs, and taxes on national, regional, state, county, and city levels when moving physical objects around. Those aren't changing anytime soon for physical resources that are required to get those virtual resources and services working.
A governing body for each continent controlling local policies like resource management and wildlife preservation, and whatnot, and a global governing body dictating global stuff like how much we must pay in copyright taxes and other such wildly important politics.
I'm not saying it's a good idea or not, but I can see it happening. We're already moving in that direction. Japan takes over Australia, Korea and the island nations, China absorbs India and all the other surrounding countries that don't particularly like China, including Russia once it collapses, Africa experiences a growth boom and becomes the new defacto place to be like China once was, European Union is already there, as is USA. South America just needs to stop fooling around and get on with it.
Tbis is an American view, because your 'pollce' forces don't accept the peelian principles.
All police forces tend to diverge from the ideal, but yours are worst than most (outside the 3rd wormd).
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Hey, most Jews won't turn into Muslims anytime soon. And I can't think of a mass movement from Buddhism to Christianity either, or, Richard Dawkins losing it and believe in anything superstitious. DNA? Not in many centuries. Look at Brazil, USA, Turkey, were segregation is rampant despite centuries of a mixing effect. Culture? Hmm. We're almost there.
No mention of the timezone problem then. I'm in the UK and occasionally have to work with teams based in the US. No language or cultural problems there, it's always a less than efficient process though because there's often only a couple of hours in the days where we can work together.
I guess the blocker to remote working will always be what time in the morning (GMT) do you get up.
There are ways around the alphas' imagined right to fence us in.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Some places such as New York State are riding that Internet telecommuting band-wagon by taxing income from telecommuting done to a New York based business with a state and city tax as high as 12.7%. So those borders do come into play, and not even national ones, state and city ones too want a piece of the Internet action.
Well, it is like shoveling water using a pitchfork! They are choking their own golden-eggs-laying goose. Telecommuting based businesses don't have any particular reason to be based in NY or anywhere in particular, and moving data from one data center to another is much easier then moving brick-and-mortar offices. We will see rise of large companies existing only in virtual space, registered in tax haven islands, having zero count non-telecommuting staff.
...the total dissolation of all national borders is always 20, or 50 or whatever years in the future.
My GF is from Russia. We know first-hand how real borders are, with all the residence permits, visas and other paperwork we need to go through all the time. Things have become easier compared to 20 years ago or so, when my parents went to Russia for a holiday, and russians were barely able to visit Europe.
But it's not because of technology. It's because of politics. Within Europe, the creation of the Schengen zone (basically: Every EU citizen can travel to any EU country without paperwork) has done more to make national borders become invisible than any technology ever. I could go to the airport right now and book a random flight to any EU country and just go there, with zero preparation, zero paperwork and no border controls. Show me the technology that has accomplished something comparable.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The pampered and spoiled youths of what used to be called "Western Civilization" are being propagandized to NOT believe in defending their nations and their cultures at a time in history when the deadliest of weapons are spreading and getting into the hands of more and more nations and movements AND the youths of the east and of the middle-east are being mobilized for civilization-level struggles.
This is called civilizational suicide, and elites who push this on younger generations who they have been intentionally dumbing-down on the campus ought to be severely sanctioned for this form of political/cultural treason. Any western survivors of WWIII will curse fools like this, for when western nations go away, so too will all the benefits and rights they provided.
Nationality, as in "having a national identity" is overrated. Every country has things they can collectively be proud of and things that are decidedly backwards, but which you can't see are wrong unless you've experienced otherwise. Once you have, you will not fully identify with that nationality anymore. Only then you'll see that you get to pick and choose what matters to you - and that's not a national identity but your identity.
Nationality is really just a legal construct, anyway - it allows a body of people (known as a 'government') to determine what rights and responsibilities you have by virtue of being in a particular physical location.
I think that most people have a stronger affinity to a culture - especially the culture they grew up with - than they do to a nationality, since culture evokes a more emotional response. Of course, for many people, the two are the same - but if you're a naturalized immigrant, they are two very different things.
Nationality will become even less important to people if more countries start trying to attract people to live in them (for economic or social reasons), but I don't see happening for a long while yet.
Deal with reality - the world as it is - rather than ideality - the world as you would like it to be.
I believe that technology improvements in general are improving world trade. You design something in place A, mail it to production co. in place B, and get it transported to your customers at place C, and get paid in place D where taxes can be optimized for your company or product. Widespread adoption of digital techniques and the Internet is improving world trade in general and that is why borders seem less important than they used to be. It will be interesting to see what will happen when the eu/usa free trade agreement will be signed next year, creating a single market containing 45% of the world GDP. My guess is that distribution of goods in different countries, through the Internet or other ways, will become a lot easier.
While we didn't spend much time on it in school, it was a complete shock to me that if you draw a line between any of the major Asian cultures (to this day), it's guaranteed they hate each other still. China-Japan, hate. China-Korea, hate. Korea-Japan, hate. etc.
Even domestically technology hasn't overcome basic problems - like the still too large religious right. I keept thinking that it was just the old folks who were rooted in nonsense but unfortunately that's not the case. Technology hasn't really done much for things like this.
Wow totally unpredictable.
Regards, the borg.
There is so much wrong at that assumption, I wonder why this was posted at all. On second thought, this is slashdot.
Anyway, his premises are all wrong. For example, the tele presence thing. If we can built robots so we can do our work somewhere else then these robots can do simple labor by themselves without being a tele presence device. Tele presence would also require a lot of energy and a lot of resources. To be a truly replacement a large quantity of those devices are needed. In addition, there are already people everywhere on the globe. Why not let those people do the job who are there? With capitalism this will also not work, as a tele presence device + a human is always more expensive than a human alone. For caring jobs such devices would not work, as humans require humans. For brain jobs, we already have tele presence in form of Internet video conferences. Even if we would have machines for tele presence or goggles it is not the same as with humans. I know many technology freaks do not understand that fact and therefore they deny it. However, human interaction is very important.
Working remotely is not widespread. We in the tech industry and science do it. However, we still have personal meetings. And this is not going away, as see above.
The money things is also very strange. I live in the EU. We have this Euro currency. However, I still feel the same way about my origin (Swabian, German, European) as before they introduced the Euro. It is just money. An money is good for paying things, but it is not part of my identity. When they revoked the German Mark, many people thought the Germans would freak out, as it is the center piece of their reality. The truth is most do not bother today.
Your cultural context is based on what you eat and drink, what customs you have, what celebrations you have, and it is not a logical formula with a set of criteria. Nation is a feeling, just as to be a local patriot to your town, school, football/soccer club.
And I am absolutely sure that I will speak German and English (to some extend) also in future. Maybe I am able to learn Spanish or Portuguese or Chinese. However, that will not blur where I am from, where I think I belong to. Even so, nation is a construction form the age of the enlightenment.
A yes. And in recent years I have the distinct feeling that there is a lot of re-nationalization going on in Europe. Look at the Scottish, Catalans, North Italy, the UK itself and many more. The true boundary distructor is capitalism with its idea of globalization. It causes rasistic tendencies to rise in many countries coupled with hate against religions. Technology cannot fix that. If you want to fix that you must change the effects of globalization. He thinks technology is the solution to all problems, mistaking the tool they are for the solution. The solution to our problems are based on social processes including politics.
My loyalties (not nationality per se) are to those who share my beliefs on the important things in life: politics (limited government, officials held to high standards and held accountable), metaphysical matters, and a high regard for liberty, the rule of law, civility, personal responsibility, and ownership of private property. These things define who a person can get along with, trust, deal with and so on. Therefore, they define who can constitute a cohesive group of people.
By the way, the number of people who share these beliefs seems to be shrinking.
Likely that hacking will tear it down faster than it builds up.
More complex that things are, the more there is to go wrong (and easier it is for someone to intentionally make it go wrong).
McLuhan, a Canadian philosopher, wrote the book "The Medium is the Message." One of the threads In the book was similar to peter diamonds' comment that new technologies have the effect of negating political boundaries and in doing so reorganizing society into larger groups. (Largely by speeding up information transfer). I would agree with peter diamond. Marshall McLuhan gave some solid examples of the process at work throughout history. Good read if you are interested.
Not for me it isn't.
Show me one engineer working from home and I'll show you ten that have a boss that thinks productivity looks like a beige cubicle.
Yes, perhaps in the past it didn't matter as much but, now that it's possible to hop on a jet plane and be literally on the opposite side of the planet in a little over 24 hours, confining people to live out their lives in whatever arbitrary geographical borders they were born into is ridiculous - particularly for people who are born into the smaller countries that can be less than a hundred miles wide. I'd like to live in a world where people create their own cultures by mixing and matching - where some guy from Japan would be free to go live in the Middle East and east palak paneer while wearing a sombrero and listening to Beethoven.
Tech doesn't make national border less relevant, it makes it easier for them to remain. If you can move information without border then there is less need for people to move. Instead of opening your borders to skilled labour you can instead offshore that skilled labour and keep your borders closed.
Legally citizenship still has meaning, but his point is that the reality outside the legal realm has changed. I'll grant that. Instead, I'd point to "language and culture", part of which probably includes religion (or lack thereof). I was born in and grew up in the U.S. If I emigrated to India, renounced my U.S. citizenship and became a citizen of that country, then lived the rest of my life there I would probably remain "culturally American" for the rest of my days. Note: this doesn't mean I can't appreciate other cultures. Far from it. Just that it's very hard to internalize a foreign culture to the extent that it entire displaces what was there before.
1. Jews aren't monolithic. Some Jews want open borders. Some Jews don't. Some non-Jews want open borders.
2. Jews live in the countries where (some of them) are pushing for open borders. If open borders turns a country into a third-world hell hole, why would a Jew want to turn his own country of residence into a third-world hell hole? It's not in his own self-interest.
3. Singapore: diverse, not a hell-hole. Ditto Canada.
in 1995.
Now its just a bunch of 'No Shit'
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Your passport.
... but there is also ample evidence that technology is contributing to polarization and tribalization within populations. Does it really matter if warring factions are defined by borders?
[W]hat really defines your nationality these days?
One is the products that you're allowed to buy in your region. There are several reasons why a product may be available to someone in another country but unavailable to you. One reason is embargoes; good luck finding substantial quantities of legit American imports in Cuba or Iran. Another is different safety regulations; Kinder Surprise is unavailable in the USA because food isn't allowed to enclose non-edible goods. A third is entertainment media because of decades-long exclusive territorial distribution contracts that predate the Internet.
A second thing that defines nationality is the countries for whose companies you're allowed to work. Some service jobs still aren't completely mechanized, such as food service and retail, and people new to the work force are expected to work one of those jobs in order to demonstrate their employability and pay for college. And even for people who have graduated from college with skills that can be used remotely, some countries are starting to disincentivize the importation of labor from foreign contractors and employees (which politicians call "exporting jobs").
A third thing that defines nationality is the Internet regulation of your home country. There are still parts of the world where the high-speed, low-latency Internet access needed for telepresence is cost-prohibitive. This goes double for people who live in countries that lack enough economic development to offer sanitation and a social safety net.
Finally, consider taxation. People are expected to buy local goods and services and pay sales tax and income tax in a national currency. The article claims that "Bitcoin dematerializes the banks, and demonetizes transaction fees", but there are still fees to exchange money in and out of the Bitcoin system.
The nation is the sovereign People deciding on laws and having a state to enforce them on a territory (in some rare case like medieval Iceland it can work without the state).
Technology sometimes make the territory part irrelevant, but I am not sure this is a good reason to toss the People sovereignty part just because of that. If the People is not sovereign, then how will be instead?
The North Koreans, Chinese, Russians, Muslims, etc. will weaponize this. The Japanese and West Virginians will consider it an offense to their culture. But in any case the billionaires will not allow it unless they can see a profit.
Not having borders means migration to steal jobs from 1960's born non-ethnic non-college American males like myself, right?
Borders allow me to speak my mind and not be harassed by foreign powers. Borders allow me to worship the Transcendent according to the dictates of my conscience. It's not all about financial security, for there is more to life than that alone.
As someone who has lived in various countries over the years, I can definitely relate to a loss of identity with the country I was born into and grew up in. I find my identity evolving over time, picking up aspects of people I spend time with, how I spend my time (work and hobby/intellectual pursuits), and local culture. I don't think this is good or bad, better or worse, it just is.
So here is my global citizen wish list:
- unfettered access to socialized, first-world quality healthcare - probably the biggest bugbear as I grow older
- mobility of accumulating payment into various social security and equivalent systems so I have some hope of return on that "investment"
- the right to live someplace and cross its boarder without hassle, paperwork, and/or bribes; same for moving my personal affects, please don't lock them in a warehouse for months without telling me and then freezing my bank account because I owe you money for storing them
- the government and others don't have an easy or arbitrary way to seize my assets. It's no fun being fearful about buying a house or maintaining a bank account in a country that can tap it when the government wants (hello Cypress)
Sure, if I do naughty things I shouldn't receive these rights. And there can't be completely unlimited movement as it could crush local carrying capacities. And I don't mind paying reasonable taxes into a system to pay for it all.
If we expat-nomads had these rights, we wouldn't have to be the ultra wealthy to live in a world without (non rich people) borders. Living here and there isn't all bad, be nice to open the door a bit wider for more of the world.