6 ms·

James Burke predicted the future in 1973. Now he does it again

59 points by timthorn 13y ago

ch0wn 13y ago
There's a very relevant episode of Freakonomics Radio that discusses obsession with predictions and their actual value: http://www.wnyc.org/articles/freakonomics-podcast/2013/aug/22/folly-prediction-rebroadcast/ http://www.wnyc.org/articles/freakonomics-podcast/2013/aug/2...
27182818284 13y ago
I grew up watching the Connections series on VHS from my local library. More than a decade later Netflix recommended the DVD set to me based on my preferences—It was like running into an old flame. Watching them as an adult, they are even more amazing than I originally remember.
grannyg00se 13y ago
Some interesting bits: Nanotechnology will bring real personal manufacturing at the molecular level giving people the ability to produce nearly anything for virtually nothing. This will result in the destruction of current socioeconomic systems and government as there will be no need for any type of scarcity monitoring or control or labour. People will trend away from cities, and live in smaller more natural close knit communities. Realistic 3D holographic projections will further enable this. He attributed the nanotechnology factory idea to the great Richard Feynman.
dmoo 13y ago
Lots of gold on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/user/JamesBurkeConnection?feature=watch http://www.youtube.com/user/JamesBurkeConnection?feature=wat...
loceng 13y ago
I think he's naive with some basic human behaviours and economics of it all. What he says is 90% true though.
saejox 13y ago
Replicator and holodeck?
mdisraeli 13y ago
Half-transcript, half-paraphrasing of the key quotes: something is going to change within 40 years to change our lives as greatly as the changes since we came from the caves to modern day. The problem is that, as we try to solve privacy, feeding the world, etc we spend months of time discussing these short term problems in board rooms and parliament whilst labs around the world are working on nanotech Richard Fynman said that there is "no physical law against creating a personal nanofactory", like a 3d printer, to print anything from basically air, dirt and some Acetylene gas (for added carbon). Everyone will be able to make anything they need for practically nothing, and this will destroy current economic systems and government. When nanofactories appear, they will address the problem of scarcity. All our years have been spent constructing organisations and systems to share everything. There will be no need for any social institutions, as they all exist to share things, to address scarsisty. Why would we still live in massive cities, when we have no more factories, no more need for economies of scale? People will be able to then live by themselves on a mountain using solar panels for power and no need for utilities. Physical contact between people will happen, but be rarer and and 3d holography will be used to allow this over great distance, to allow you to talk to someone as if they are there, no screen, but if you try to touch them you'll just go through them. We are going to live through extraordinary times over the next twenty-thirty years! Edit - Further good bits I missed on the first pass: In response to "You seem as optimistic as you were in 1970": * laughs * Well you know what they say about pessimists: They jump out of the window and they're no longer involved.
- slurry 13y ago
  Bull market for acetylene gas and mountain wranglers.
  - peterjancelis 13y ago
    Our grandchildren will run ski mountain making startups.
- lucb1e 13y ago
  You forgot the last part: > You seem as optimistic as you were in 1970 > * laughs * Well you know what they say about pessimists: They jump out of the window and they're no longer involved.
raffi 13y ago
I've watched his series Connections about three times over. It's excellent and well worth your time.
lifeisstillgood 13y ago
The original on BBC : http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b038zhb9 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b038zhb9 see from 44 mins on. It is the simplest and clearest explanation of why nanotechnology matters and what's happening while we all play with Web 3.0 I can't agree it's all coming to pass as be says, nor in those timescales. But only a few technologies need to pay off and we will see an end to scarcity.
- timthorn 13y ago
  Minor nitpick - the PM programme had an edited version of this. For some reason they chose to host the full-length version outside the BBC - and only link to it from their Twitter feed.
  - lifeisstillgood 13y ago
    My mistake - I assumed the audioboo hosted version was just some random copy and pointed folks at what sounded like the original. No idea why they would host external to BBC - is it geo-restricted?
- sillysaurus2 13y ago
  We will never see an end to scarcity. It isn't merely a flaw that humans seek power. A society without concentrations of power is a weak society, and weak societies will always be subservient. Concentrations of power means inequality, and there can be no inequality without scarcity. Therefore scarcity is both unavoidable and valuable.
  - tel 13y ago
    Scarcity is definitely both a social and a physical phenomenon. If we didn't have it we'd be forced to invent it.
  - eli_gottlieb 13y ago
    On the one hand, I think people are downvoting you out of moral feeling rather than geopolitical argument. On the other hand, the geopolitical argument is simple: all that needs to happen is that someone anti-scarcity takes over the world and enforces their tyrannical power on everyone looking to reimpose scarcity and resource competition. You're welcome to have moral qualms with that, but it's basically just the capital-F Futuristic version of Communism.
drpgq 13y ago
We are already moving to a more and more service base economy though. People still pay in one way or another for movie or television content. Nanofactories won't change that.
- nickff 13y ago
  I would not classify movies and television content as services, but I agree that non-material goods provide real value that nano-factories cannot simply replicate. We will continue to require labor intensive services (, such as plays, restaurants, etc.), and non-exclusionary goods, (i.e. films, designs, concepts).
npalli 13y ago
Fascinating views. The privacy angle is quite in line with what is already happening. With the recent Snowden affair there has been a huge brouhaha about privacy etc. but if you look at “private” information that financial and retail companies already possess you will find that people actually don’t care. As long as you get a 0.5% less on your mortgage or credit cards and some 10% discount on purchases, people are more than happy to have companies record every transaction that you make. I’m not sure on the nanotechnology future that he has laid out though. Specifically, what is the source of energy to transform the air/water/dirt stuff into goods and what is the rational for saying that starting with water/dirt/O2 will be the cheapest route to getting whatever stuff we need. Not convinced on that front.
- dev1n 13y ago
  Yeah well retail companies won't just throw you in jail if you disagree with their new "marketing" campaign. There's quite a difference between a company you willingly give information to and a government trying to find out who are possible dissidents and how those dissidents could unseat those in power.
  - czr80 13y ago
    I'm not sure - if private companies maintain these databases, wouldn't it be easy for a hypothetical corrupt government to access them?
    - dev1n 13y ago
      This is absolutely true, however there are alternatives to companies that track you. Go to JCPenny and they don't force you to use a credit card to purchase some shoes. If you use cash, as opposed to a credit card, you won't be added to their database. The difference between a retail store and the government is whether you have the choice of having your information stored in a database. So yes, a government could just up and say "all your base are belong to us" to supplement any information they already have, but there is no opt-out for a government that might already have information on you based on phone calls and your Internet graph.
6ren 13y ago
He may soon be incorrect about them not being interested in the content of your calls, only "who you speak to". Before long, always-used speech recognition will be plausible, if it isn't already. Yes, imperfect, but more information than just who you're speaking to.
- abecedarius 13y ago
  It is doable already with the NSA's Utah data center to run existing speech-recognition programs on all U.S. phone conversations. (By my back-of-the-envelope estimate.)
ballard 13y ago
Burke's naivete about the externalities of an out-of-control surveillance apparatus are appalling: ignoring the fact that innocent people do get swept up for happening to match criteria of a secret scoring algorithm is just burying one's head in the sand. Instead, he alludes to a simplistic perspective that the world is a happy-clappy paradise where innocent people have "nothing to hide," and by virtual of volume of communication, shouldn't worry. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6304729 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6304729 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4453659 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4453659
6ren 13y ago
I would expect nano-printers to have the same effect as essentially free digital reproduction had on music, print and video. There'll be free stuff, and stuff you'll pay for. Why do people pay? Partly to be part of a community; partly because (hopefully) it's better if a whole lot of people worked on it to serve your demographic. I don't think it will change the structure of society, but will have pretty similar dynamics to present day internet.
- eli_gottlieb 13y ago
  Today's internet and the digitization of media have had a humongous effect on the economics of content production.
droopyEyelids 13y ago
Perhaps the most frustrating thing I've heard all day was when Burke said it was OK to collect all the data because it'll be ignored when those who control it are not interested in it. "They don't care about ME! They only take notice of people when they're connected to an group or event that is being monitored" Well no shit. Thats like saying a tyrannical government only silences those who oppose them. They don't care about you today, but as soon as you stick your head up everything you've said and all your human connections are immediately tagged. I find that discomforting! And what a poor showing from the interviewer not to mention this.
- infectoid 13y ago
  I think further to your point of "They only take notice of people when they're connected to...", the real issue is you have no way of knowing when you are connected to something you shouldn't be. Moreover, a group that was once seen as innocuous can all of the sudden be targeted for persecution when the new powers-that-be decide to move the goal posts. The HN crowd could be considered worth monitoring.
- codex 13y ago
  Having large amounts of collected data on citizens doesn't create a tyrannical government. Nor is it required for a tyrannical government: the Nazis did horrible things with very primitive technology. In the same vein, the U.S. government has had seventy years to become tyrannical with much more advanced technology, but it has not. The key to foiling a tyrannical government is to prevent a tyrannical government from being created in the first place though the political process--checks and balances, rule of law, preservation of values, citizen involvement, democratic and fair elections. It is not by employing a few lame technological defenses or prohibiting specific practice X, Y, and Z. Those are useless against any sufficiently motivated government, and, if anything, they create a false sense of security. Government is not as it has, but as it does.
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    Sidenote, the funny part is the people who tell you that, "No, the U.S. government of today is the most tyrannical government in history".
andyl 13y ago
For a man who specializes in foresight, Burke misses the boat on eavesdropping.
raintrees 13y ago
Yes! I still own all three sets of Connections (I, II, and III) as well as the game. He is _so_ good at taking ideas from many sources and presenting them, showing how they might fit together or did fit together to create whole new ideas....
treelovinhippie 13y ago
James Burke is brilliant. I uploaded the full Connections series last year (they had already existed on another channel but were split into 10min vids): http://www.youtube.com/JamesBurkeConnection http://www.youtube.com/JamesBurkeConnection
grumblepeet 13y ago
For a good examination of what kind of society you might get when scarcity is gone and humans can create stuff at the drop of a hat, read Michael Moorcock's 'The Dancers at the End of Time". He doesn't go into details of how they got there or how it all works, but very interesting nonetheless. The main characters seem to settle into some kind of permanent battle to outdo each other with lavish parties and collect people from passing civilisations and time travellers just so they can have someone to talk to.

59 points by timthorn 13y ago

ch0wn 13y ago

There's a very relevant episode of Freakonomics Radio that discusses obsession with predictions and their actual value: http://www.wnyc.org/articles/freakonomics-podcast/2013/aug/22/folly-prediction-rebroadcast/ http://www.wnyc.org/articles/freakonomics-podcast/2013/aug/2...

27182818284 13y ago

I grew up watching the Connections series on VHS from my local library. More than a decade later Netflix recommended the DVD set to me based on my preferences—It was like running into an old flame. Watching them as an adult, they are even more amazing than I originally remember.

grannyg00se 13y ago

Some interesting bits: Nanotechnology will bring real personal manufacturing at the molecular level giving people the ability to produce nearly anything for virtually nothing. This will result in the destruction of current socioeconomic systems and government as there will be no need for any type of scarcity monitoring or control or labour. People will trend away from cities, and live in smaller more natural close knit communities. Realistic 3D holographic projections will further enable this. He attributed the nanotechnology factory idea to the great Richard Feynman.

dmoo 13y ago

Lots of gold on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/user/JamesBurkeConnection?feature=watch http://www.youtube.com/user/JamesBurkeConnection?feature=wat...

loceng 13y ago

I think he's naive with some basic human behaviours and economics of it all. What he says is 90% true though.

saejox 13y ago

Replicator and holodeck?

mdisraeli 13y ago

Half-transcript, half-paraphrasing of the key quotes: something is going to change within 40 years to change our lives as greatly as the changes since we came from the caves to modern day. The problem is that, as we try to solve privacy, feeding the world, etc we spend months of time discussing these short term problems in board rooms and parliament whilst labs around the world are working on nanotech Richard Fynman said that there is "no physical law against creating a personal nanofactory", like a 3d printer, to print anything from basically air, dirt and some Acetylene gas (for added carbon). Everyone will be able to make anything they need for practically nothing, and this will destroy current economic systems and government. When nanofactories appear, they will address the problem of scarcity. All our years have been spent constructing organisations and systems to share everything. There will be no need for any social institutions, as they all exist to share things, to address scarsisty. Why would we still live in massive cities, when we have no more factories, no more need for economies of scale? People will be able to then live by themselves on a mountain using solar panels for power and no need for utilities. Physical contact between people will happen, but be rarer and and 3d holography will be used to allow this over great distance, to allow you to talk to someone as if they are there, no screen, but if you try to touch them you'll just go through them. We are going to live through extraordinary times over the next twenty-thirty years! Edit - Further good bits I missed on the first pass: In response to "You seem as optimistic as you were in 1970": * laughs * Well you know what they say about pessimists: They jump out of the window and they're no longer involved.

slurry 13y ago
Bull market for acetylene gas and mountain wranglers.
- peterjancelis 13y ago
  Our grandchildren will run ski mountain making startups.
lucb1e 13y ago
You forgot the last part: > You seem as optimistic as you were in 1970 > * laughs * Well you know what they say about pessimists: They jump out of the window and they're no longer involved.

raffi 13y ago

I've watched his series Connections about three times over. It's excellent and well worth your time.

lifeisstillgood 13y ago

The original on BBC : http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b038zhb9 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b038zhb9 see from 44 mins on. It is the simplest and clearest explanation of why nanotechnology matters and what's happening while we all play with Web 3.0 I can't agree it's all coming to pass as be says, nor in those timescales. But only a few technologies need to pay off and we will see an end to scarcity.

timthorn 13y ago
Minor nitpick - the PM programme had an edited version of this. For some reason they chose to host the full-length version outside the BBC - and only link to it from their Twitter feed.
- lifeisstillgood 13y ago
  My mistake - I assumed the audioboo hosted version was just some random copy and pointed folks at what sounded like the original. No idea why they would host external to BBC - is it geo-restricted?
sillysaurus2 13y ago
We will never see an end to scarcity. It isn't merely a flaw that humans seek power. A society without concentrations of power is a weak society, and weak societies will always be subservient. Concentrations of power means inequality, and there can be no inequality without scarcity. Therefore scarcity is both unavoidable and valuable.
- tel 13y ago
  Scarcity is definitely both a social and a physical phenomenon. If we didn't have it we'd be forced to invent it.
- eli_gottlieb 13y ago
  On the one hand, I think people are downvoting you out of moral feeling rather than geopolitical argument. On the other hand, the geopolitical argument is simple: all that needs to happen is that someone anti-scarcity takes over the world and enforces their tyrannical power on everyone looking to reimpose scarcity and resource competition. You're welcome to have moral qualms with that, but it's basically just the capital-F Futuristic version of Communism.

drpgq 13y ago

We are already moving to a more and more service base economy though. People still pay in one way or another for movie or television content. Nanofactories won't change that.

nickff 13y ago
I would not classify movies and television content as services, but I agree that non-material goods provide real value that nano-factories cannot simply replicate. We will continue to require labor intensive services (, such as plays, restaurants, etc.), and non-exclusionary goods, (i.e. films, designs, concepts).

npalli 13y ago

Fascinating views. The privacy angle is quite in line with what is already happening. With the recent Snowden affair there has been a huge brouhaha about privacy etc. but if you look at “private” information that financial and retail companies already possess you will find that people actually don’t care. As long as you get a 0.5% less on your mortgage or credit cards and some 10% discount on purchases, people are more than happy to have companies record every transaction that you make. I’m not sure on the nanotechnology future that he has laid out though. Specifically, what is the source of energy to transform the air/water/dirt stuff into goods and what is the rational for saying that starting with water/dirt/O2 will be the cheapest route to getting whatever stuff we need. Not convinced on that front.

dev1n 13y ago
Yeah well retail companies won't just throw you in jail if you disagree with their new "marketing" campaign. There's quite a difference between a company you willingly give information to and a government trying to find out who are possible dissidents and how those dissidents could unseat those in power.
- czr80 13y ago
  I'm not sure - if private companies maintain these databases, wouldn't it be easy for a hypothetical corrupt government to access them?
  - dev1n 13y ago
    This is absolutely true, however there are alternatives to companies that track you. Go to JCPenny and they don't force you to use a credit card to purchase some shoes. If you use cash, as opposed to a credit card, you won't be added to their database. The difference between a retail store and the government is whether you have the choice of having your information stored in a database. So yes, a government could just up and say "all your base are belong to us" to supplement any information they already have, but there is no opt-out for a government that might already have information on you based on phone calls and your Internet graph.

6ren 13y ago

He may soon be incorrect about them not being interested in the content of your calls, only "who you speak to". Before long, always-used speech recognition will be plausible, if it isn't already. Yes, imperfect, but more information than just who you're speaking to.

abecedarius 13y ago
It is doable already with the NSA's Utah data center to run existing speech-recognition programs on all U.S. phone conversations. (By my back-of-the-envelope estimate.)

ballard 13y ago

Burke's naivete about the externalities of an out-of-control surveillance apparatus are appalling: ignoring the fact that innocent people do get swept up for happening to match criteria of a secret scoring algorithm is just burying one's head in the sand. Instead, he alludes to a simplistic perspective that the world is a happy-clappy paradise where innocent people have "nothing to hide," and by virtual of volume of communication, shouldn't worry. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6304729 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6304729 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4453659 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4453659

6ren 13y ago

I would expect nano-printers to have the same effect as essentially free digital reproduction had on music, print and video. There'll be free stuff, and stuff you'll pay for. Why do people pay? Partly to be part of a community; partly because (hopefully) it's better if a whole lot of people worked on it to serve your demographic. I don't think it will change the structure of society, but will have pretty similar dynamics to present day internet.

eli_gottlieb 13y ago
Today's internet and the digitization of media have had a humongous effect on the economics of content production.

droopyEyelids 13y ago

Perhaps the most frustrating thing I've heard all day was when Burke said it was OK to collect all the data because it'll be ignored when those who control it are not interested in it. "They don't care about ME! They only take notice of people when they're connected to an group or event that is being monitored" Well no shit. Thats like saying a tyrannical government only silences those who oppose them. They don't care about you today, but as soon as you stick your head up everything you've said and all your human connections are immediately tagged. I find that discomforting! And what a poor showing from the interviewer not to mention this.

infectoid 13y ago
I think further to your point of "They only take notice of people when they're connected to...", the real issue is you have no way of knowing when you are connected to something you shouldn't be. Moreover, a group that was once seen as innocuous can all of the sudden be targeted for persecution when the new powers-that-be decide to move the goal posts. The HN crowd could be considered worth monitoring.
codex 13y ago
Having large amounts of collected data on citizens doesn't create a tyrannical government. Nor is it required for a tyrannical government: the Nazis did horrible things with very primitive technology. In the same vein, the U.S. government has had seventy years to become tyrannical with much more advanced technology, but it has not. The key to foiling a tyrannical government is to prevent a tyrannical government from being created in the first place though the political process--checks and balances, rule of law, preservation of values, citizen involvement, democratic and fair elections. It is not by employing a few lame technological defenses or prohibiting specific practice X, Y, and Z. Those are useless against any sufficiently motivated government, and, if anything, they create a false sense of security. Government is not as it has, but as it does.
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  Sidenote, the funny part is the people who tell you that, "No, the U.S. government of today is the most tyrannical government in history".

andyl 13y ago

For a man who specializes in foresight, Burke misses the boat on eavesdropping.

raintrees 13y ago

Yes! I still own all three sets of Connections (I, II, and III) as well as the game. He is _so_ good at taking ideas from many sources and presenting them, showing how they might fit together or did fit together to create whole new ideas....

treelovinhippie 13y ago

James Burke is brilliant. I uploaded the full Connections series last year (they had already existed on another channel but were split into 10min vids): http://www.youtube.com/JamesBurkeConnection http://www.youtube.com/JamesBurkeConnection

grumblepeet 13y ago

For a good examination of what kind of society you might get when scarcity is gone and humans can create stuff at the drop of a hat, read Michael Moorcock's 'The Dancers at the End of Time". He doesn't go into details of how they got there or how it all works, but very interesting nonetheless. The main characters seem to settle into some kind of permanent battle to outdo each other with lavish parties and collect people from passing civilisations and time travellers just so they can have someone to talk to.