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AdCiv.org :: Advanced Civilization

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Welcome to the Advanced Civilization Wiki

This website is for developing ideas and practical solutions to help bring forward the coming post-scarcity age.

Ideas to take us to the next level of civilization. Concepts that totally change the game, enabling whole classes of problems to be solved at once, and allowing us to achieve what is currently unfeasible.

Many problems and restrictions today

We obviously have great technological potential but there is plenty that modern society simply hasn't got right, allowing significant suffering to many people and unecessarily restricting what should be possible.

It is obvious there are major problems in the world today, still here far beyond the point where we gained the ability to solve them. Some affect Western society as much as the rest of the world, some mainly affect those living in developing countries - which after all contain the majority of the world's population.

Progressing to the next level

These problems and restrictions will not remain forever, the necessary changes to the framework of society will inevitably happen, sooner or later. Of course sooner is better than later, and the speed at which our culture and technology are now evolving mean that we witness the results of our efforts in ever shorter periods of time.

Self-interest and short-term thinking are part of the problem. Alarmingly governments and corporations are great at both. It is up to the collaboration of individuals on a global scale to make the future work. If you help make life better for everyone, you make it better for yourself, but the opposite rarely holds true.

Main ideas

Here are two emerging concepts to start with, perhaps at first glance seemingly unconnected, that are likely to have a large impact:

Open design

involves applying the highly successful open source software methodologies to the design of physical artifacts and systems. The designs are freely available for anyone to use and help evolve. From the simplest things that can be made by individuals and groups, all the way up to large-scale systems of national infrastructure.

Design problems get ironed out due to the involvement of enough interested people who are able to see an obvious solution and are willing help improve the design for everyone's benefit. This way of working also minimizes the massive duplication of effort that occurs worldwide today in commercial design and engineering.

See the open design page for more information.

Advanced closed-loop automation

is the development of highly advanced automated systems capable of self-repair, maintenance and even self-assembly that need almost no human interaction to operate, apart from top level guidance. These systems will magnify our capability for production creating an abundance of anything required, using the minimum of natural resources. This will give us the ability to easily provide for everyone's basic needs and beyond, while allowing modern society to integrate far better with the environment.

See the advanced automation page for more information.

These two ideas working together are potentially a very powerful force for the progress of modern society in the near future. Open design will be important, among other things, in helping to implement useful examples of advanced automation.