Grey Goo and the Corporate Singularity: Can we avoid it?

Nanotechnology pioneer, Eric Drexler, author of Engines of Creation, imagined the “grey goo” phenomenon as follows:

en.wikipedia.org...

Imagine such a replicator floating in a bottle of chemicals, making copies of itself…the first replicator assembles a copy in one thousand seconds, the two replicators then build two more in the next thousand seconds, the four build another four, and the eight build another eight. At the end of ten hours, there are not thirty-six new replicators, but over 68 billion. In less than a day, they would weigh a ton; in less than two days, they would outweigh the Earth; in another four hours, they would exceed the mass of the Sun and all the planets combined — if the bottle of chemicals hadn't run dry long before.

What happens when the chemicals in the bottle run out?

The process comes to a halt, presumably. Unless, of course, nanobots could change and adapt to work with glass and then to work with whatever they came into contact.

At some point the planet would be converted into one seething mass of nanobots and finally one single nanobot that had managed to convert all previous stages of itself, into itself.

That’s the theory. It seems unlikely that such a thing could ever occur. Surely one or two superfluous molecules would remain, when all is said and done. Maybe not. Maybe the nanobot , by this time a gigantobot, would wear these as jewelry.

Imagine the political strife in bot society as the various bots struggled to survive and maintain their own integrity while being overcome by random bots who managed to get an edge on their fellows. Imagine the horrifying inevitability as those with an edge slowly but surely overcame all opposition to their hegemony, their supremacy, their . . . its ultimate singularity.

The whole process is just so depressingly obvious and logical. Fortunately scientists are on top of the problem and are already imagining ways to prevent such a scenario from ever, ever taking place.

In the realm of human economic and political activity, the nanobot issue makes an interesting analogy to the situation of the proliferation and growth of corporations in human society.

Corporations grow and in growing they tend to crowd out and eliminate competitors. They tend to use up resources and then to shape shift into other forms when a particular industrial activity is exhausted.

In some cases they recoil upon themselves and consume their own corporate bodies to keep the corporate head alive. In the society they have a parasitical activity that tends to subtract from the net value of the society. Essentially, human effort is converted into money.

Profit is subtraction.

To assert otherwise is to deny one of the fundamental laws of nature, which is the conservation of matter and energy. Yes, corporations enrich the consumers in one society, but usually at the expense of workers in another society. But even if that were not so, or could be equalized in some way, the fact remains that profit accruing to the few is subtraction from the many.

I should say, at this point, that I am not a Marxist and that I believe in capitalism, entrepreneurship, profit and the simple paradigms of business in the industrialized world.

While I accept these paradigms, I am also conscious of the fact that just as the capitalist journey had a beginning, it is a journey with a trajectory and processes that one must be conscious of, in order to avoid pitfalls and catastrophes that are built into that trajectory and those processes.

The ideal would be a journey with a beginning, one or more trajectories, but no end.

Does the current situation of corporatism in our society call to mind the problem of grey goo among the nanobots? Are corporations turning human society into grey goo?

Can the process be adjusted in ways which preserve the spirit of entrepreneurship and taking a healthy profit, while avoiding the catastrophe of turning the corporate world into the ultimate corporate singularity and society into grey human goo?

Fantastic post.

Originally posted by ipsedixit
Corporations grow and in growing they tend to crowd out and eliminate competitors. They tend to use up resources and then to shape shift into other forms when a particular industrial activity is exhausted.

In some cases they recoil upon themselves and consume their own corporate bodies to keep the corporate head alive. In the society they have a parasitical activity that tends to subtract from the net value of the society.

The analysis reminded me of this:

Civilizations in the final stages of decay are dominated by elites out of touch with reality. Societies strain harder and harder to sustain the decadent opulence of the ruling class, even as it destroys the foundations of productivity and wealth. Karl Marx was correct when he called unregulated capitalism “a machine for demolishing limits.” This failure to impose limits cannibalizes natural resources and human communities.

www.truthdig.com...

It's not wrong or unpatriotic to call BS on the existing paradigm. It's unsustainable. It's suicidal.

This is the stuff of Doctor Who.

There would have to be a breaking point though...Maybe 'Nitric Acid'.

I think even grey goo would be stopped by several things that might not seem apparent.

EM pulse, chemical reactions and beta radiation could all be possible weapons against nanites.

reply to post by kosmicjack


Thanks.

One of the things that started me thinking along these lines was the fixation that Alex Jones and Webster Tarpley have with megalomaniacs among the elite. They conceive of these people almost in the way that Ian Fleming conceived of his evil masterminds, out to dominate the world.

I think that this is a primitivistic point of view. I think these people, Tarpley and Jones, are actually anthropomorphizing what is really an impersonal process built into capitalism and its evolutionary sequel, corporatism.

Corporatism is like terminal stage cancer in society. We are moving into corporatism in the western world, but I think it is a mistake to finger the Rockefellers or the Rothschilds as the villains in the piece.

The dynamics of capitalism itself have the corporate singularity and the phenomenon of human grey goo built into them.

the grey goo doesnt really scare me, because presumably the nano bots would have a killswitch as it were. Much like the green goo in the first Gi Joe movie that came out a few years ago, it had a kill switch.

what terrifies me is the thought of the singularity, this AI or augmented consciousness will in effect become a living god. will the act of the singularity enlighten this being or turn it into the harbinger of our destruction? the only a few being wealthy enough to beable to afford this tech, the elite will truely be elite. an entity so smart that it would be impossible to outsmart or even destroy.

i dunno, im tired.

Originally posted by ipsedixit
reply to post by kosmicjack

 

[...] I think it is a mistake to finger the Rockefellers or the Rothschilds as the villains in the piece.

edit on 8-7-2012 by ipsedixit because: (no reason given)

i completely agree, i mean, we are the gears that keep this monster moving. if we staged an "atlas shrugged" situation, if we all said, oh? ____ yourself! and started digging up our front lawns and working on communal agriculture and stopped buying material goods or even going to work, this monster would starve.

we are to blame, is what i am saying.

reply to post by gostr

The idea is to develop mechanisms that don't feed into the tendency for corporations to evolve into fascistic combines with the State. There are a lot of people working in this area, everyone from people living on communes, to people investigating how the Cubans managed to do without the US as a trading partner, to people like Catherine Austin Fitts, who is developing strategies for communities to work around the financial domination of the big banks and to promote local industry, with its diversity.

The bottom line is that once you move into corporatism/fascism, and we are getting there in so many serious ways, then you really are in a heap of trouble.

reply to post by ipsedixit


I think my country is leading the charge on that one.

Canada is passing the C-11, C-38 bills, (essentially SOPA). CANADA FOR _____ SAKE, CANADA!?

... i am so disgusted with my country right now, and as a matter of fact I shouldnt even be voicing that since all outgoing and incoming data packets will be looked through for copyright infringement, because we both know thats ALL they will be looking for right? lol...

reply to post by gostr

Under both Paul Martin and Steven Harper Canada has definitely taken a turn to greater compliance with the terminal corporatist agenda.

We are supporting and participating in the American aggressions overseas and also in the revving up of the phony security state at home.

Our cultural elite have been almost completely silent on these issues. I don't want to single out people like Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro or really any of Canada's cultural luminaries, but I have to say, these people cannot be so stupid that they cannot see America's "War on Terror" for the fraud that it is. They cannot possibly be stupid enough to believe that 9/11 was anything but an inside job.

The fact of the matter is that as far as I am aware, the Canadian cultural elite are frightened little rabbits on these issues.

Oil is the issue in our times, but in our children's time or their children's time, the issue will be water, and Canada is the Saudi Arabia of water. I think our destiny will be forever joined to that of the Americans so we really do have to make our voices heard if we see our neighbor and ally heading down the path to corporatist/fascist totalitarianism.

The Canadian cultural elite should look at this video and ask themselves, "What is going on here and what does it tell us about US foreign policy?"



What I see in the video, is an American Secretary of State lecturing allies and instructing them to bring pressure on China and Russia. The issue is not our policy is the correct one, or the logic of our arguments is compelling. The issue is one of pressure, bringing pressure to bear on those who disagree with us, to force them to fall into line.

The Secretary of State is operating from a position of moral weakness, attempting to force compliance on a stand that is fundamentally flawed and that is merely a smokescreen in a much more elaborate agenda in the Middle East. Everyone at that table knows it.

What would happen if everyone in the room got up and walked out?

Mark my words, that day is coming. One day someone is going to bell this cat. Canada should be the one doing it, if not from the Prime Minister's office, then certainly from the individual orange crates that any Canadian with any constituency at all can step up on.

Originally posted by ipsedixit
reply to post by kosmicjack

 

Thanks.

One of the things that started me thinking along these lines was the fixation that Alex Jones and Webster Tarpley have with megalomaniacs among the elite. They conceive of these people almost in the way that Ian Fleming conceived of his evil masterminds, out to dominate the world.

I think that this is a primitivistic point of view. I think these people, Tarpley and Jones, are actually anthropomorphizing what is really an impersonal process built into capitalism and its evolutionary sequel, corporatism.

Corporatism is like terminal stage cancer in society. We are moving into corporatism in the western world, but I think it is a mistake to finger the Rockefellers or the Rothschilds as the villains in the piece.

The dynamics of capitalism itself have the corporate singularity and the phenomenon of human grey goo built into them.

edit on 8-7-2012 by ipsedixit because: (no reason given)

I think Alex & co are close to the mark.
research suggests an over average occurrance of management in business having psychopathic traits.
is your boss a psychopath (or search: psychopaths in management).
now look when these same people get to run large corporations, make millions, and/or decide to go into politics...
you end up with psychopathic leaders & ogliarchs running the place with no real care for anyone else in society. They are the grey goo - gone to black goo. Obama & Romney need their spin doctors, campaign managers, & trainers just so they can front the people and 'try' to appear caring, humane, and just like good-ol-joe. But, if you watch their eye's ... there is nothing in there that gives a damn.
I would bet all those in power worldwide, and the moneymen are psychopaths and are the cancer that stops us progressing.
Like it or not, humans are social animals, and capitalism will always eventually fail
Media and entertainment is geared to break the social bonds, de-sensitize us from our natural way.

(done on mobile. excuse if badly formatted)

reply to post by CitizenNum287119327

I agree to a point. There is definitely a problem with psychopaths in power and even with Luciferians, etc., various sorts of mountebanks and their mumbo jumbo as well. However, Jones and others put too much emphasis on this aspect of things, in my view. The real problem to me is the dynamic built into the capitalist process.

There are examples of it almost everywhere you look. Corporations are influencing public policy in all sorts of ways, compelled by the logic of competition and terminal competition in a corporatist society. Everyone is being squeezed by this dynamic.

The bailouts of the bankers in the US is the most egregious example of a brain dead public policy response to somebody's business problem.

It seems like an impossible idea now, but I think the future of a healthy, diverse world will be a result of policies that mandate a corporate life cycle. Corporations should grow to a certain size and a certain complexity and then like plants in the natural world, produce seeds of little corporations and then they should die.

How this can be done in ways that won't harm society? I don't know.

Maybe if the major oil companies had sprouted seeds of smaller corporations and died, we wouldn't be in the situation of violent political confrontations around the world and we wouldn't be way behind the eight ball developing alternate ways of generating energy. A hundred smaller corporations with diverse agendas and methods could then start their own life cycles.

The main point is that these are policy issues that should be decided upon and implemented through democratic processes. In the current situation in the West, policy issues are decided by corporate ogres who design everything to facilitate the corporate agenda. People can fit themselves into the picture as best they can, or they can just drop dead.

Phillip K. Dick, whose work the movie Blade Runner was based upon, just microwaved me from beyond with this scenario from the future.

We are almost a century into broad international acceptance by the human community of the fundamental foundation principle of the ecology of human societies, the principle of mandated corporate life cycles.

Unfortunately because of the recalcitrance of rogue plutocratic billionaire psychopaths, who continue to search for ways to prolong the unhealthy existence of senile, rotten financial conglomerates and megacorporations, it has been necessary to inaugurate the operations of a special unit of Interpol charged with tracking down fugitive billionaires and taking them into custody and ultimately transporting them to ashrams and contemplative communities where they are required to reprioritize their lives and to familiarize themselves with human spiritual values, preparatory to passing out of this terrestrial life.

In short they are sentenced to "dematerialize".

Has anybody checked out the ATS "Search" page lately?

Just sayin'.

Here is an interesting update to the "problem of the corporation". The article focuses on the issue of the corporation as "person" and reports that the United States Supreme Court is being asked to rule on whether the corporation can inflict its "religious views" on its employees.

www.washingtonpost.com... 73847c7cc_story.html?hpid=z2

If you thought this “corporations are people” business was getting out of hand, brace yourself. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court accepted two cases that will determine whether a corporation can deny contraceptive coverage to its female employees because of its religious beliefs.

Eventually, I think the whole concept of the corporation is going to get a rethink.

As I said earlier in the thread, I think corporations should have a life cycle at the end of which they should pass out of existence, transferring their assets on to independent corporate descendants. I don't know how this can be achieved but I think somebody should be thinking deeply about it.

This is a very serious issue for humanity.

Corporations should not be the only entity in nature endowed with potential immortality. That situation, statistically, guarantees an eventual corporate takeover of everything.

ipsedixit
In the realm of human economic and political activity, the nanobot issue makes an interesting analogy to the situation of the proliferation and growth of corporations in human society.

Corporations grow and in growing they tend to crowd out and eliminate competitors. They tend to use up resources and then to shape shift into other forms when a particular industrial activity is exhausted.

I wonder how many responses will be about the grey goo as opposed to your true meaning...

This has happened before and will happen again and again.. it's the cycle of revolution and progress.

Revolution

A revolution (from the Latin revolutio, "a turn around") is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time. Aristotle described two types of political revolution:

Complete change from one constitution to another
Modification of an existing constitution.[1]

Revolutions have occurred through human history and vary widely in terms of methods, duration, and motivating ideology. Their results include major changes in culture, economy, and socio-political institutions.

Scholarly debates about what does and does not constitute a revolution center around several issues. Early studies of revolutions primarily analyzed events in European history from a psychological perspective, but more modern examinations include global events and incorporate perspectives from several social sciences, including sociology and political science. Several generations of scholarly thought on revolutions have generated many competing theories and contributed much to the current understanding of this complex phenomenon.

An perfect example of the have nots revolting against the haves is this...

French Revolution

The French Revolution (French: Révolution française) was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France from 1789 to 1799 that had a fundamental impact on French history and on modern history worldwide.

The modern era has unfolded in the shadow of the French Revolution. French society itself underwent an epic transformation as feudal, aristocratic, and religious privileges evaporated under a sustained assault from various left-wing political groups, the masses on the streets, and peasants in the countryside.

Old ideas about tradition and hierarchy regarding monarchs, aristocrats, and the Catholic Church were abruptly overthrown under the mantra of "Liberté, égalité, fraternité." Globally, the Revolution accelerated the rise of republics and democracies, the spread of liberalism and secularism, the development of modern ideologies, and the adoption of total war.

[3] Some of its central documents, like the Declaration of the Rights of Man, expanded the arena of human rights to include women and slaves.[4] The fallout from the Revolution had permanent consequences for human history: the Latin American independence wars, the Louisiana Purchase by the United States, and the Revolutions of 1848 are just a few of the numerous events that ultimately depended upon the eruption of 1789.

In conclusion...

Your vision is already a reality, with corporations lobbying the governments and government ministers on the boards of directors.

What appears to be immerging is a picture of virtual monopolies that are forming through indirect interaction between industries that seem unrelated but when you follow the money the moves of one benefits the other and vis-versa.

This inter-connectivity between industry, governments and financial institutes is the cause of the recent downward spiral of the global economy.

I predict this will reach a tipping point in the western world as it has across the middle east and we will see civil unrest and ultimately revolution.

The power of the many will overcome the power of the few.

The biggest weapon against tyrannical systems is freedom of information and as I type this is exactly what we have through the internet.

Although the internet can be an early warning system to such event to the powers that be, it cannot stop a tidal wave of unrest.

This is as it should be... this is our future and it is how we get from our current greed based economy to a global resource based economy.

It's a sad truth that the cost of our utopia will be oceans of blood!

Korg.

Korg Trinity
It's a sad truth that the cost of our utopia will be oceans of blood!

This seems to be what everyone thinks in essence. Nobody has any confidence in education any more.

My own view is that the oligarchies that control corporations are mired in the worst crisis in education on the planet. Their ignorance is more dangerous than the ignorance of poor people around the globe. In addition, the education crisis among the ultra rich is much easier to address than the education crisis among the impoverished because there are so few oligarchs and one percenters.

If they could only be made to see how their activities, and by that I don't mean industrial pollution or tax avoidance, although those are things that need to be brought under control, but the very essence of their activities as corporatists, profit maximization and growth, if they could only be made to see how these activities undermine the health of human society and could be made to understand that their very own health and longevity as a ruling elite depend on mitigating and correcting the pernicious effects of these activities, we could get to a situation of vigorous health for human society without going through the process of yet another bloodbath.

The internet can work toward this end because it is a way for the elite to come into contact with the mass of humanity without risking "real human contact" and its pitfalls.

There is hope. There is the incipient "tax me more" movement among certain wealthy people who are hip enough to see more than the trees when they look at a forest. Michael Rockefeller did approach Aaron Russo and befriend him. That didn't turn out so well, but it does indicate at the very least a desire among some members of the elite to reach out to the public however feebly.

The rich have to be made to realize that there is more to life than elitism, snobbery and mountains of money. They have to be imbued with more vigor and with the excitement of the creative opportunities that life affords. They can make things happen for hundreds of millions of people who now wallow in misery. The rich don't need a revolution that starts hanging them from the lamp posts or gunning them down in their dining rooms and the rest of us don't need that kind of revolution either. The rich need a revolution in conscientiousness and social responsibility.

Scrambling to the top, by hook or by crook, in order to create a very unstable "inverted pyramid" needs to be made unfashionable.

Snobbery is the STD (socially transmitted disease) of the rich and the wannabe rich. It is as serious a threat as any other pestilence and should be wiped out among the elite.

reply to post by ipsedixit


The irony is that only those whom such changes would effect could put in place such changes... and I very much doubt they would do it of their own volition.

The solution is counter intuitive.... I can draw a parallel to this issue when talking about highways or motorways...

Cars that are allowed to travel at any speed will take longer to get to it's destination due to the slower moving traffic.... yet if you impose a steady speed limit traffic flows more freely. Impose both an upper and lower speed limit so all traffic travels at the same speed then all traffic get's to it's destination even faster.

You might say that this is the model of socialism or even communism.. and in some respects it is, as the above parallel highlights a principle that is the very foundation of the socialistic movements that have sprung up and declined over the years.

I fear there is only one way to avoid the clearly violent future. I predict one of three things will happen...

1. War within the elites to obtain intimate power and dominion over all of earth resources - the fall out of which would be a global catastrophe on an unimaginable scale.

or.

2. Global civil war against the Elite which would result in a global catastrophe on an unimaginable scale.

3. What may change this is somewhat of an interesting play on your original topic.... Technology.... We are just a mere 5 years away from a true quantum computer that can do computations faster than all the CPU's on earth combined. After that I predict we hit the Technological Singularity in less than 10 years after that....

Until we reach this point the global scocio-economic structure will harden and the weak will get weaker and those that thought they were rich will see their estates in ruins.. until we have global parity and single mindedness about which course of action needs to be taken.

So.. in 15 years conditions for a forced change may become benign based upon the abilities bestowed upon us post technological singularity.

The question is will the ever stretched populace snap before we reach a point of natural progressive soothing?

Peace,

Korg.

We need to end government protection of corporations, get rid of the corporations are people bs, and disassemble or break apart some of the larger corporations including most of the bigger banks in the country. That's really the biggest problem right now. If we were to do that, we'd see a resurgence of small business growth, manufacturing growth (since smaller businesses can't afford to export their manufacturing), end of much of the political corruption, and that is just some of the benefits off of the top of my head. Sure when these corporations are broken up or forced to go out of business when their subsidies end will cause unemployment to go up, but that will only be in the short term. In the long term we will finally see healthy economic growth again. Unfortunately the government doesn't want to approach this solution since the government is the corporation's private b#.