Cog wrote:If all you utopians want to run off to a fantasy community then I am all for it.
Timo wrote:... the eventuality of government by a computer, rather than people. The computer would allocate resources as needed to maintain a healthy, sustainable equilibrium between humans and the carrying capacity of their environment.
KaiserJeep wrote:Jacque Fresco is a systems engineer greatly influenced by architects Paolo Soleri and Buckminster Fuller. Soleri coined the term arcology (architecture + ecology), and Fuller was a futurist and inventor of the geodesic dome. Fresco actually drafted many of their concepts during a time when drafting meant getting hunchbacked over a drafting table making technical drawings on paper with pencils. He also built models of many of their concepts. Then he struck out on his own and founded the Venus Project in the late '80's or early '90's, about 15 years after I studied him in Engineering 101, an introduction to engineering process.
All three were considered "fringe" minds then. I was amused to be updated on Fresco in a "60 Minutes" article in 2011.
Note that after decades of trying and making hundreds of pencil sketches and dozens of models, Fresco has yet to produce and sell a commercially successful building design.
Plantagenet wrote:Timo wrote:... the eventuality of government by a computer, rather than people. The computer would allocate resources as needed to maintain a healthy, sustainable equilibrium between humans and the carrying capacity of their environment.
Who will be in charge of programming the computer?
AND wouldn't that computer programmer inevitably write the code so the MASTER COMPUTER will say that computer programmers are very very important people and so must receive the largest allocation of resources?
Plantagenet wrote:AND wouldn't that computer programmer inevitably write the code so the MASTER COMPUTER will say that computer programmers are very very important people and so must receive the largest allocation of resources?
Timo wrote:I just came across this article about the Venus Project in Central Florida. I'd never heard of it, but apparently, a lot of people have. Reading through this, i was struck by the founder's mention of the eventuality of government by a computer, rather than people. The computer would allocate resources as needed to maintain a healthy, sustainable equilibrium between humans and the carrying capacity of their environment. All decisions would be subjectively measured.
The programmer's ideas/beliefs are going to very likely influence the decision points in the code for allocating resources.
"There was war... convulsions... the world was destroying itself. Landru saw the truth; he changed the world."
– Reger, 2267 ("The Return of the Archons")
Landru was first a man, and then a machine.
In approximately 4000 BC, war threatened to destroy the planet Beta III and its inhabitants. The leader at that time was a gifted engineer and philosopher, Landru. He believed the way to preserve his people was to take them back to a time of peace and tranquility. He sought to end war, crime, disease – all of the evils that plagued his world, and to produce "the unity of good" – a world without hate, without fear, without conflict. To that end, he built and programmed a sophisticated machine, which took on his identity.
The machine Landru built was powerful enough to manage the affairs of an entire planetary population. It ruled Beta III for about 6,000 years, managing the affairs of each individual and striving to meet the ambitious goals its builder set it. Its subjects were oblivious to the fact that they were ruled by a computer. Since Landru was hidden behind a solid wall, it is likely that its builder intended this; even millennia later, some of the citizens of Beta III believed the Landru who ruled their world was the same one who saved it so many centuries ago, and none realized it was a machine. The passing years of peaceful rule had inculcated in the people a kind of reflexive worship of Landru. This could be seen even in members of the underground who sought freedom and actively opposed Landru's will......
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