Accidental Revolution
Warning: this post is highly opinionated and likely controversial. So sue me. This is also not a political post - mostly.
Whilst the supposed leaders of our western world squabble over trivialities such as p**** grabbing, collusion with Russian diplomats and 'golden shower' debates, an encouraging sign of elevated humanity is quietly working in the background towards progress and survival.
The idea of 'government', in its current form, is coming to an end. There has never been a single successful democratic society, power or empire that hasn't cannibalized itself eventually. The repetition of history appears to follow a simple pattern:
1. Amazing feats of engineering, humanitarianism and brilliance give rise to an escalation of a particular nation or group of people, normally built on sound ideals and values.
2. This leads to an imbalance of power in the world which, for some reason, leads to powerful groups (or individuals) at the top of that echelon of power striving to rule the world.
3. The institutions in place that benefit the wealthy cause suffering for the masses, which inevitably backfires on the ruling monarchs and thus, chaos and societal self-canabalism takes place.
Without going into specific periods of history where this has occurred, it seems safe to say that there is reasonable grounds that it appears this current state of public incredulity and resilient incompetence from the top combined with arrogance, entitlement and overwhelming ignorance from the general masses parallels with previous historical cycles incredibly accurately.
But there is hope.
NASA gave up on space exploration after the final manned moon landing of Apollo 17 on 11th December, 1972. Today, SpaceX successfully launched another Falcon 9 rocket into space carrying an Echostar satellite for Brazilian TV; it's 3rd successful launch in the past couple of months. In the next 24 months, they will put two civilian customers on the moon. In 10 years, they anticipate Mars colonization commencing, for the median cost of an average home - and they have the numbers crunched as to how.
The U.S government just confirmed Betsy DeVos - a woman who's exceptional stupidity befits her name - as Secretary of Education. Mark Zuckerberg is building public schools with an intended curriculum that will be relevant in the age of tomorrow, where the minds of the young will be, rightly, focused forwards.
Governments around the world are squabbling like stubborn siblings about whether or not climate change is actually happening, much less focusing on infrastructure changes to help. Google Sidewalk Labs has partnered with Transportation for America and is building 16 smart cities that will eliminate carbon emissions and be ready for self-driving cars, ride sharing and will communicate initiatives that work and that don't to each other. And this is happening as we speak.
The list goes on:
Trump is trying to bring manufacturing of fuel-based cars back into America - Tesla has over 400,000 orders of it's next zero-emission, ferrari-performing, self-driving cars that can be bought for $34,000USD.
The Australian Government has wasted a decade and billions of taxpayer dollars trying (and failing) to bring NBN about - Just in time for 5g and low-orbit satellite internet to render it 100% useless.
Self driving cars are being developed by every major tech player and have been tested to be somewhere around ten times safer than an average human driver, infinitely more efficient and would allow commuters to work/rest/play during travel. Not to mention eradication of traffic jams, the need for roadworks and old-style infrastructure, road tolls etc.
You get the picture.
Governments are slow, in a world that needs rapid response more than ever. Governments are weak, absent of conviction lest the next vote go south. Governments are technologically incompetent, failing to adapt to a world becoming increasingly reliant on technological competence.
The reason is simple: The majority of decision makers are ailing geriatrics, stuck in a global society moving too fast for their little ego's to handle and only complicit in their shared love of outdated prejudices that should have been eradicated a long time ago. Along with them. Ahem - may be some bitter old man of myself coming out there...
But even as wikileaks again circumvented the CIA and released thousands of damning documents outlining surveillance of the masses by various technical means, a simple reddit search of Pangu or Tula Todesco casually breaking into the absolute pinnacle of sophisticated governmental security 'in their spare time' highlights the laughable concept of government tech being anywhere near the pinnacle of anything tech-related anymore.
Perhaps the greatest example of how technology has reached a stage where private organizations can finally bypass the bureaucratic nonsense was on 10th March, when Elon Musk stated oh-so-simply that he could fix South Australia's horrendous energy problems for next to nothing. Over Twitter.
When asked if he was serious about his proposal by tech Billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes, Elon Musk laid down the gauntlet: "Tesla will get the system installed and working 100 days from contract signature or its free. That serious enough for you?"
"@ElonMusk Legend! You're on mate. Give me 7 days to sort politics & funding. DM me a quote for approx 100MW cost - mates rates." - The verbatim response from Mr Cannon-Brookes.
Now it appears that a few tweets, one week and 100 days is all it takes to solve a country's energy crisis - if the government doesn't stand in the way. And all I can think is how amazing it is that so little went into undoubtedly the biggest revolutionary step in Australian clean-energy infrastructure in the shortest timeframe imaginable at absolutely no cost to the Australian tax-payers, as if almost by accident. In fact, it will likely reduce electricity consumption by... infinite. I have no doubt that the tax-payers won't see a cent of this reduction in energy, because I'm sure it will be squirreled away into the budget for other uses - but its still an evolutionary step.
Are governments still necessary? Absolutely. For now. But I can't see the current bipartisan system hanging around for too much longer - and nor should it. More on this in a later post.
The privately owned (or floated) tech enterprises have stood up, and taken it upon themselves to improve large-scale infrastructure. Love it or hate it, this will contribute to the growth of private enterprise and minimisation of governmental influence - but not the same corporate greed style of private enterprise. Positive private enterprise. Not a single party in which I've mentioned here is an 'evil' company. None of them are doing anything other than greatly taking huge strides in humanitarian progress and indeed, human survival. Which is just as well, because right now the Elon Musks and Mike Cannon-Brooke's of the world must be rolling their eyes at the state of politics and its' major players like parents wearily trying to separate their bickering, sooky toddlers.
The time for governments is coming to an end. The dominion technology is just beginning. Whilst the baby boomers are dizzy with the pace of current technology, millennials impatiently await the iPhone 8 and the next innovation, all the while both parties blissfully unaware that they're caught up in an Accidental Revolution.
What do you think? Comment below.