Revolution Now
By using language, we communicate, which transfer lots of information. It is emotional, spiritual, economic, logical and all are unique in its combination.
Protests Claiming Financial Fairness
Recently I happened to think about money, it is essential for human life nowadays, and sometimes, holding too much money is argued by the mass. The huge protest in Wall Street, riots in UK, they claim there has been outrageous unfairness in terms of their business and strategy.
I have no idea about what bankers and brokers have been doing in those places, but what I'm sure about is that they communicate in different language called money. Money is agreement. When we agree with the values of the products, we pay. As it turned out they were broken, we take back our agreement and demand our money back.
So truth or lie, the bankers and traders and so on have money, which is agreement despite how they were earned. To earn money from investment, they need to be proficient in the language of money. So as German major students all know, we need to sink in the sea of foreign language to make it our second nature, then our neuron realize they need to strengthen German parts instead of American Funniest Videos.
People inside Wall Street and outside there are using different language, people in the rally and rage hoist banners and signs which are often written in English, not money. Do bankers even care about them? Probably no. So protesters might think they are complaining very hard, but for money-speakers, they are speaking foreign language.
Revolution: from money to humanity
The value of money, of the value of the notion of money, is experiencing obscurity. Now we can do so much things at no cost except single laptop and wireless connection. We don't need TV, we don't need CD and DVD (huge part of Chinese economy is created by piracy), lots of software are free, we don't even need to worry about computer storage capacity since data storage is done online so we don't need to save data in our own local computer but on the Web. More and more people are spending money for what they really care about. Few people go to musicians live with little interest. Musicians post their songs on YouTube and audience get lured. More diversified, more core fans gather, which is fun in better quality.
For myself working as a freelance translator and a amateur singer (and a blogger), the expense is only rent and food, sometimes musical instruments and gears. That's all. No need to care about utility and broadband fee since it's included in rent. Money is mostly out of my concern. Instead of considering my budget, I take my time expanding my vision of future in every sense, financial future is just a part of it.
The Matrix showed us our world is what we perceive in our brains. If whole perception is controlled by information coming from electro magnetic tubes, the world becomes the person's world. So if we create our world by our perception, the information do not have to be "real" but all virtual and artificial stimulus. Our mirror neuron is amazing. Thanks to them, we can experience NY Knicks vs Chicago Bulls coming from information aired through fibre-opted tubes.
Objection here is quality. No one can argue which sound quality is better in movie and home theatre, mp3 and live. While digital freedom is exponentially expanding, our physical presence is still holding uninterchangeable value. As another possibility, even our physical presence is about to be delivered by Telepresence. I do not feel comfortable as holding meeting on Skype because it doesn't deliver all of my unique expression but only words and malfunctioning emoticons (they don't show my actual emotion). However, by this technology, people can communicate without physical but digital presence in much better way.
Although this technology is very expensive at the moment and not practically experimented enough, the time will come according to Moore's law. So humanity is getting stronger presence, while money is losing attention.
Humanity = Singularity
So instead of the value we can count, what alternative value will emerge? Key is very basic and obvious. Our technology is getting toward singularity. Reverse engineering is the most obvious example. Humanoid (artificial human) can live as a human without biological limitation, they do not need to sleep and eat, they can function 24/7 outside (so they don't need to pay even rent and food!). In terms of capacity, computer already exceeded humans, next is its complexity. Recently self-programming game called Robotany was partially revealed. Neurological science is hot, and will get even hotter by the sequence of inventions and improvement.
From scientific point of view, its improvement is very fast and astonishing, but on the other hand, technologies need good users as well as inventors, and to use it in fascinating way, we need literature. Literature give us vision and context which we find it hard to attain in daily life. Another thing is purified observation. This is in this sense science, but observation is for everyone in every occasion.
Reference
Free - Chris Anderson
Singularity is Near - Ray Kurzweil
MIT researchers develop self-programming AI video game - Robotany
