Thinking About Technocracy

Find it here.

Here…at the original green.

It takes very little argument to persuade that money is a means governance.  It settles who commands resources, who has certain liberties, and who can take certain actions.  Looking back over the last few thousand years, we have lived in an Age of Money as Means of Governance.   So why would this Age come to an end?

Money as a means of governance requires several social facts to be in place:

1. Money users must trust that the money used has value to obtain desired things.

2. Money can be “owned” and stored.

3. Money must have a certain rarity. 

The art and science of acting in the Age of Money as a Means of Governance is essentially the field of economics.  The field assumes that most actions are governed by money or value-related considerations and these considerations can be discreetly analyzed based on predicted rational (or irrational) operations.

I think we then look to problems with economics as a way to determine why and how the Age of Money as a Means of Governance begins to end.  What are the plausible issues with money? 

First, there is rarity.  If the production of money cannot be controlled, it is of declining value.  Money systems where value declines at a certain pace are like dishes that leak.  Their function is denigrated by the rate of decline.   People who worry about “fiat” money are particularly obsessed with this issue.  

Second there is storage.  Storage requires safety which implies insurance, time value/interest rates and all that entails.  Ownership of course leads to estates, probates, bankruptcies, etc. 

Third is trust.  Can I get the safety, permanance, continuity, stability, etc. that I want for the currency I store at some point in the future?  This issue is the prime motivator of governance in our Age. 

So we need to consider, are these items under threat?

Cyberocracy?  See iRevolution’s article here.

Follow the link that follows to a series of classic technocracy videos now more than 25 years old on a future that, in part, may yet evolve:  Technocracy ideas and archive

I’m curious if there are any technocratic software tools out there in the open source world such as means of implementing energy accounting or other similar processes on a wide scale?

Tbone offers a link to a classic video on the history and core ideas of technocracy…25 minutes from 1981:  View here.

Gerald Edelman in Discover provides an amazing little article about his insights into self based on the structure, function and organization of human brains. 

All the more reason why collaboration is sooooooo important.

I got this via a blurb at BreakthroughAlerts.com.  It’s published at ICT Results and covers the seemingly rapid rise of the eTEN system.  While the hosannas are rolling in, I must say that nothing about eTEN strikes me as particularly new or interesting.  They have systemized their product quite well into something governments can absorb and purchase.  Whether that is good or bad depends on one’s perspective.  Maybe I’m being too snarky about this.  Product use often leads to open systems copies and broader acceptance even if the sort of product developed was originally more along open access lines.

Why do households work as collaborative organizations?  Perhaps they don’t.  Divorce rates are high.  But households remain a consistent venue for sharing and common use.  Why?  Princeton University Press has a new book out on the topic and a review is presented at On the Commons.