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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."
So, we are in Nerdonia here?
Table-ized A.I.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Almost. It's about the laws that control where you may abide.
The author of the piece is a rich American. An Afghan living rough in Calais, waiting for a chance to sneek across the channel into the UK would never have written such drivel.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
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.
My, what a boring world you'd like me to live in, just so you can.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
A governing body for each continent controlling local policies
you need to look up the word "local" in a dictionary. The continent of Asia is home to 3 billion people, give or take a few, including places as diverse as tech-crazy geeky Tokio and Taliban Afghanistan. You want to govern them with one governing body? Good luck.
The EU has the right idea, even if lots of it is flawed: To keep and respect local identies, but build a unifying structure above it.
There is little that people fight harder then attempts to take away their identity
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
...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
Sorry, if you have lots of shiny things, then the localities police and army protect both your fleshy bits and your shiny things.
If you don't, then they don't really bother protecting either. They will write up a report afterwards, though, detailing how it was your fault it happened.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
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.
To restate: go ahead and visit us (we're actually friendly),
If you're friendly, a) why are you a coward, and b) why are your laws so shitty?
but if you feel the urge to change our culture and laws please fuck right off back to where you belong
If your culture is harmful to others, it needs to be changed, whether you like it or not. If you won't do it, we'll do it for you. You are invited and encouraged to get with the times on your own.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
Transnational companies are systems that help us eventually to reduce government power over people by connecting us in more ways than ever possible previously.
It will also drive average salaries down near zero, because that's what efficient companies do - reduce costs.
You obviously don't understand the basic hostility of a corporation towards its environment. Like predators, it will gladly eat all of the prey and then starve.
by lowering costs to as few as possible (including cost of government, cost of taxes, cost of regulations, cost of inflation, cost of doing business).
You forgot a lot of costs in there. Cost of labour, most importantly, but also cost of not harming the enviornment, both natural and social.
To say that a local company is better because ... what, it has to care about that locality?
Exactly. A local company lives within the community, and it suffers if the community suffers. If education in the community fails, the company will have less skilled labour to hire or has to pay the costs of education itself. If security fails, it has more crime to suffer from or has to pay for higher security itself.
As such, it has an interest in keeping the local community functioning, because it's a part of it.
A transnational corporation will just move wherever by chance or external factors the situation is better.
and in process they eliminate as many rules and barriers and taxes as possible.
They will also eliminate as much of humanity as possible. The human existence doesn't consist of consumption alone. There is art and politics, stories and music, society and culture. What you want is the total dominance of commerce as the only human activity worth considering.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org