Beyond the Information Society: Reconciling People Planet and Progress 1 Caring Society 2030 The...

Beyond the Information Society: Reconciling People Planet and Progress 1

“Caring Society 2030”

The ASSIST Vision of the Future Global Knowledge Networked Society

David LeeversVERSAssociates

Virtual Environments for Real Societies

London

Background text on the ASSIST Vision athttp://www.vers.co.uk/assist/

http://www.vers.co.uk/assist/ASSIST%20Vision%20Feb%202002%20.htm







Caring Society 2030The ASSIST Vision

This slide show is a self-contained version of the presentation given at the EC Sustainable Decision Making Conference, Maastricht, February 2002.

The starting point is the “Immaterialisation Switch”, switching from material-intensive satisfiers of human needs to IST-intensive satisfiers.

Many different switches are required to ensure future cultures have a higher quality of life and are more sustainable than the consumer society of today.

These switches are increasingly made possible by advances in IST. Their impact is paced and mediated by the need for the next generation to internalise the required culture changes – ensuring they are both socially beneficial and globally sustainable.


The Immaterialisation Switch From Material-Intensive Satisfier to IST-Intensive Satisfier

Material Intensity

Time

But there are no one-for-one replacements for human Desires/Wants PCs do not supercede cars, VR headsets do not supercede rooms

Dematerialisation historyMaterial-Intensive Satisfiers about 2% per annum

Dematerialisation potential IST-Intensive Satisfiers 10- 40% per annum

The Switch,Immediate drop in material use

An IST-Intensive Lifestyle is the result of many Immaterialisation Switches


But a Globalisation Rebound Effect appears to be Increased Inequity

Income range within countries and between nations has, by some measures, doubled in the last 30 years of ICT supported globalisation

1, The most damaging conflict is no longer between developed nations but between the West and envious, educated outsiders; on the boundary between global middle class and traditional values - e-war, criminal networks, terrorists

2, Quality of life/happiness has not increased in the West - income has little effect on happiness above about

$20,000 - widening the income range in itself decreases

happiness


Social Change in the Information Society of the last 30 Years (UK)

1, One-Person Households Fraction of population living alone increased from 6% to 10%

from 1970 to 2000 (UK) Enablers

- Mature Industrial Technology (washing machines, microwaves),- Early Information Technology

(telephone, television, mobiles, the web)

Liberation of the individual or escape from traditional caring obligations?


Social Change in the Information Society of the last 30 Years (UK) - Continued

2, Births outside marriage: 8% in 1971, 40% in 1999 (Perhaps a good sign, spread of tolerant mixed culture society?)

3, Children brought up by lone parent: increase from 7% in 1972 to 21% in 2000

(What replaces the caring and attachment processes of the extended family?)

4, Suicides per 100,000, Decrease for 65 and over, 25 in 1971, 15 in 1998

(The most IST resistant group?)

Increases females 15-24, 3 in 1971, 4.5 in 1998 males 15-24, 7 in 1971, 17 in 1998

( NB 50-75% of male suicides were brought up by lone, poor parent)


We have to do better than this!from Global Wild West to Global Civic Society?

We are migrating

- from the central control of Information Society databases to the peer-to-peer social and knowledge exchanges of the Network Society.

- from one-to-many one-way delivery of information to the two-way rapport between peers

-From trade led globalisation to civic society led globalisation

Equity increases as settler families bring the rule of law to the law-less pioneer individuals of the globalisation frontier

The Digital Divide dilutes as expensive PCs are replaced by 3Gs - a second stage immaterialisation switch


Second Stage Immaterialisation SwitchFrom PCs to 3G Mobiles and Wearables

The PC offers an alternative Virtual Reality, an abstract knowledge environment unrelated to its desk and encouraging global travel.3G mobile will provide an augmented or enhanced reality, enriching the local community, linking to local environment, encouraging local travel

• Where am I?• Who is near me?• What am I looking at?

Occasionally co-opting fixed screens for visual information, e.g. Internet Walls, Internet Tables

Immaterialisation: a mobile has 1/50th the material content of a PC

From the standardisation of economic globalisation to the diversity of social globalisation

Perhaps the second switch is a “Humanisation Switch”?

1st Stage

2nd Stage


Towards theCaring Society

The fraction of life spent disabled has already decreased with increasing GDP

From 16% in Sub-Saharan Africa to 8% years in the West

As lifetime increases and disability decreases human life is valued more highly and support for people with disability increases


The Caring Process, from Needs to Wants

Higher level human needs such as social interaction and self-identity are expressed as culture and lifestyle specific wants (desires) that depend on attachment processes and belief systems acquired during infancy and childhood.

These wants used to be acquired from parents, carers and peers, but also from media and brands

Increasingly they are acquired from global media and brands:children's cartoons, intelligent toys, computer games, Internet

Although the formal education years are regulated by the state, the earlier more critical years are increasingly in the hands of the global corporations that comprise the global frontier society

Is this the best way to achieve a Global Caring Society?


Caring Society Scenario 1: ChildrenThe Virtual Extended Family

The new understanding of the development of personality can be used to compensate for the fragmented family of today (perhaps just mother and child): tele-present and virtually present alternatives to the child-care roles of traditional extended families:

• Multimodal awareness of remote members of family• Avatar substitutes for missing members of the family• Many television cartoons as well as a few bedtime stories• Computer games that help in acquiring social values• Caring instincts developed via intelligent dolls, virtual pets• Monitoring children at risk, historical record of childhood


Caring Society Scenario 2: Adults

E-health is an early type of Immaterialisation Switch

Privacy intrusion is integral to many forms of care (e.g. Intensive Care) but loss of privacy must proceed in step with growth in trust, opening of society and the benefits to the person monitored e.g.

Children at risk of abuse are protectedThose at risk of committing crimes have increased freedomThose at physical risk, e.g. advance warning of attack enables

epileptics to drive. Continuous support for learning and emotionally disabled when away from carers


Caring Society Scenario 3: Disability

The caring process is complementary - carer and cared, and ideally mutual caring, each catering for the complementary physical and social needs of the other. Future IST can be invisible matchmaker and can also enable long distance caring, social interaction via the network

e.g. the slower pace of the grandparent matches that of the baby, both gain socially from interaction, even at a distance

IST “Human Interface Transformers” – the eyes of the blind, the ears of the deaf, the “Semantic Web” for culture-bridging computer mediated communication with anyone, anywhere


Caring Society Scenario 4: SocietyThe Western Liberal Democratic Consensus

The Global Caring Society Framework must be able to support and protect a wide range of personal and community belief systems

Containment of aggression through the rituals of competition and democracy, supported by transparency and open society

The IST infrastructure has to balance loss of privacy against increase in rapport and trust, caring and commitment, across geographical, social, cultural and religious differences. (the early Internet and the emerging global academic/business culture are limited realisations of this ideal)

The polarisation that leads to tribal/national wars becomes difficult because intermeshed local and distributed communities spread family and community morality to everyone, everywhere


“Caring-Work and Caring-Commerce”! - a “New Ways of Working” Opportunity

Immaterialisation Switches and rapid subsequent dematerialisation frees up income that must be attracted to new IST supported luxuries.

Many of these will be new ways of caring and new ways of offering a high quality of life for people with disabilities

The emerging “claims culture” is a clumsy first step in this direction - everyone has the right to a high quality of life

If European levels of health care do no more than rise to US levels, from 8% to 15% then caring could be the biggest growth industry of the next 30 years, 8 million new care-related jobs in Europe


Towards the Sustainable Global Caring Society

The slow western progression from traditional to the approaching network society can be plotted on axes of Self v Others and Closed v Open Society. JRC IPTS Seville named this final quadrant the EcoCyber Society. Here it is the Network/Caring Society.

The West has prototyped the path from Traditional to Network. However this path has included the closed and self-oriented Industrial phase and the current entrepreneurial Information phase. Both are likely to be globally and socially unsustainable.

The developing world can combine what is best of traditional communities with what is best of open societies by leapfrogging straight from Traditional to Network/Caring Society to converge at the common

“Landing Place” of the Network/Caring Society


Towards the Sustainable Global Caring Society?

Care of Others,Social Actualisation

Care of Self,Self Actualisation (Maslow)

Closed Societies Open Societies

Traditional SocietyTribal

Industrial SocietyNational

Information Society

Multinational

Network/Caring SocietyGlobal

Developing World, 2001

West, 2001


Towards SGCS - Sustainable Global Caring Society?

Did 20th Century industrialisation and IT damage peer-to-peer relationships that ensured an adequate level of informal carers in traditional communities?

Is the peer-to-peer architecture of the web already starting to turn the tide? – a culture shift already seen in children who are above the digital divide – more immaterial, more equitable, more global and more sustainable?

When today's children mature will the unreliable web of today have become a reliable digital environment as dependable as the physical environment?

Are we investing too much in Ambient Intelligent Adult Environment, leaving the Ambient Intelligent Nursery to global corporations?

Are we investing enough in long term IST R&D to ensure future generations will be able to reach a Sustainable Global Network Society?


The ASSIST Vision – IST-Intensive LifestylesThe next chart shows how an increasing number of immaterialisation switched take us from the unsustainable rate of dematerialisation of material intensive satisfiers of the consumer society to the sustainable Moore’s law compliant dematerialisation of IST-Intensive satisfiers.

Dematerialisation of Material-Intensive goods, about 2%Subtract growth in Global Middle Class, about 2%Subtract GDP growth, 3% for West, 8% for rest

Rapid Global Catastrophe

Immaterialisation Switch followed by fast Dematerialisation of IST-intensive services ~ 10-30%

(NB the 40% rate for processors and bandwidth cannot be achieved at the Human Interface)

Long-Term Global Sustainability


The ASSIST Vision – IST-Intensive Lifestyles

Total Environmental Stress

Rising due to Rebound-D

Lifestyle Changes triggered by many Immaterialisation Switches

Falling due to fast Moore’e Law Dematerialisation from IST-intensive satisfiers

Year 2000 2050Time 2030

Subsequent generations enjoy a high quality of life that is increasingly affordable by all

Income released from rebound-I


Survival - The Choices“Expansion and Divergence”The do-nothing scenario, the global “Frontier Society” of today Rapid Global Catastrophe

“Contraction and Convergence”Conventional sustainability of those who distrust IST, perhaps because IST, not the frontier society, is blamed for increased inequity. Marginal sustainability benefits but social disruption from contraction

Delayed Global Catastrophe

“Immaterialisation and Convergence”Loading the dice in favour of our social instincts through peer to peer architecture and the accelerated dematerialisation of Immaterialisation. Order of magnitude benefits and funding of the “Caring Society”

Long Term Global Sustainability

Is there a choice?

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