Visionary // Current

Einstein: A Socialist?

A clear, concise and comprehensive case for socialism, written by Albert Einstein in 1949. He discusses our nature as both solitary and social beings, simultaneously conditioned by biological and cultural constitutions, and what this means for the individual's role in society. He then asks "how the structure of society and the cultural attitude of man should be changed in order to make human life as satisfying as possible." The final passages prove particularly poignant in presaging the greatest atrocities committed by Soviet tyranny. The challenge: How is it possible, in view of the far-reaching centralization of political and economic power, to prevent bureaucracy from becoming all-powerful and overweening? How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured?

Part of the answer may reside in bypassing the power of large bureaucracies through a decentralized system of democratic planning directed by workers' and consumers' councils. Moreover, with today's information communication technology, the capacity for mass collaboration and self-government/self-management has never been more viable and effective. Your thoughts?

An Excerpt:

"The individual has become more conscious than ever of his dependence upon society. But he does not experience this dependence as a positive asset, as an organic tie, as a protective force, but rather as a threat to his natural rights, or even to his economic existence. Moreover, his position in society is such that the egotistical drives of his make-up are constantly being accentuated, while his social drives, which are by nature weaker, progressively deteriorate. All human beings, whatever their position in society, are suffering from this process of deterioration. Unknowingly prisoners of their own egotism, they feel insecure, lonely, and deprived of the naive, simple, and unsophisticated enjoyment of life. Man can find meaning in life, short and perilous as it is, only through devoting himself to society.

The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil. We see before us a huge community of producers the members of which are unceasingly striving to deprive each other of the fruits of their collective labor—not by force, but on the whole in faithful compliance with legally established rules. In this respect, it is important to realize that the means of production—that is to say, the entire productive capacity that is needed for producing consumer goods as well as additional capital goods—may legally be, and for the most part are, the private property of individuals...

(The) crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.

I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society."A clear, concise and comprehensive case for socialism, written by Albert Einstein in... more

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SpaceCollective; An Awesome Window Into Mind,Reflection and Exploration

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When Man & Machine Merge

Technological visionary Ray Kurzweil discusses the future of humanity and its place in a world of super-intelligent machines and super-human intelligence.

...Over the past four decades, Ray Kurzweil has established himself as one of the world's most prolific and influential inventors. His specialty is pattern recognition — teaching machines to classify data and learn. He created the first program to enable computers to read text — the basis of modern scanning — as well as the first program to translate text into speech. Stevie Wonder, a close friend of Kurzweil, calls the inventor's print-to-speech technology a "breakthrough that changed my life." In 1983, with Wonder as an adviser, Kurzweil built the Kurzweil 250 — a synthesizer that revolutionized the music world with its uncannily realistic re-creations of acoustic orchestral instruments.
For his contributions to artificial intelligence, Kurzweil has been enshrined in the Inventors Hall of Fame and has received White House honors from three presidents — including the highest prize in his field, the National Medal of Technology. But nothing he has done in the past has shaken the scientific community as profoundly as his latest prediction. In our lifetime, Kurzweil believes, machines will not only surpass humans in intelligence — they will irrevocably alter what it means to be human. Cell-size robots will zap disease from our bloodstream. Superintelligent nanotechnology, operating on a molecular scale, will scrub pollution from our atmosphere. Our minds, our skills, our memories, our very consciousness will be backed up on computers — allowing us, in essence, to live forever, all our data saved by super-smart machines.
"Right now, people think it's irresponsible not to back up our PCs," Kurzweil says. "But increasingly, we'll be backing up the information in our brains. People will think it was remarkable that we couldn't back up our brains in 2010."
Kurzweil is very specific about when this epic shift will take place. By 2045, he predicts, machines and humans will merge, redefining life as we know it. The moment is known as the Singularity, referring to the term used in astrophysics to describe the point inside a black hole where the ordinary laws of physics cease to apply. To prepare himself and the rest of the world for the era of conscious machines, Kurzweil has turned himself into the chief prophet of the coming Techno Rapture. He crisscrosses the globe to rally top scientists, hosts an annual Singularity Summit that draws leaders from places like Google and MIT, and has even developed his own line of nutritional supplements to extend people's lives until the day when their existence can be endlessly preserved by technology. At 61, Kurzweil pops 150 of his own pills every day, determined to live long enough to see the day when, thanks to machines, he will never age.

To say that Kurzweil's prediction is controversial is to understate the scientific firestorm it has generated. No less a pragmatist than Bill Gates has hailed Kurzweil's vision, calling him "the best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence." But to other leading thinkers, Kurzweil has gone off the deep end, venturing into an almost messianic fervor with his promises of life everlasting. "The Singularity is a new religion — and a particularly kooky one at that," says Jaron Lanier, a top computer scientist who pioneered the realm of virtual reality. "The Singularity is the coming of the Messiah, heaven on Earth, the Armageddon, the end of times. And fanatics always think that the end of time comes in their own lifetime."

Kurzweil shrugs off such criticism: He has the self-confidence of a man who is used to being so far ahead of the curve that others can't see where he's headed. The only time he falters is when he's asked if he could be wrong about the Singularity. For a moment he stares blankly into space, as if receiving an otherworldly transmission.

More...Technological visionary Ray Kurzweil discusses the future of humanity and its place in... more

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Hildegard von Bingen

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The Articles of Confederation - 1777

After the ratification of the Declaration of Independence, establishing the "united colonies" as Free and Independent States, the Continental Congress set to work on the task of drawing up a document that would provide a legal framework for that Union, and which would be enforceable as the law of the new land.

The Articles were written during the early part of the American Revolution by a committee of the Second Continental Congress of the now independent thirteen sovereign states. The head of the committee, John Dickinson, who had refused to sign the Declaration of Independence, nevertheless adhering to the will of the majority of the members of the Continental Congress, presented a report on the proposed articles to the Congress on July 12, 1776, eight days after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Dickinson initially proposed a strong central government, with control over the western lands, equal representation for the states, and the power to levy taxes.

Because of their experience with Great Britain, the 13 states feared a powerful central government. Consequently, they changed Dickinson's proposed articles drastically before they sent them to all the states for ratification in November 1777. The Continental Congress had been careful to give the states as much independence as possible. The Articles deliberately established a confederation of sovereign states, carefully specifying the limited functions of the federal government. Despite these precautions, several years passed before all the states ratified the articles. The delay resulted from preoccupation with the revolution and from disagreements among the states. These disagreements included quarrels over boundary lines, conflicting decisions by state courts, differing tariff laws, and trade restrictions between states.

The small states wanted equal representation with the large states in Congress, and the large states were afraid they would have to pay an excessive amount of money to support the federal government. In addition, the states disagreed over control of the western territories. The states with no frontier borders wanted the government to control the sale of these territories so that all the states profited. On the other hand, the states bordering the frontier wanted to control as much land as they could.

Eventually the states agreed to give control of all western lands to the federal government, paving the way for final ratification of the articles on March 1, 1781, just seven and a half months before the surrender of Lord Cornwallis and his British Army at Yorktown, October 19, 1781, the victory ended fighting in the War of Independence and virtually assured success to the American cause. Almost the entire war for five long years had been prosecuted by the members of the Second Continental Congress as representatives of a loose federation of states with no constitution, acting at many times only on their own individual strengths, financial resources and reputations.After the ratification of the Declaration of Independence, establishing the "united... more