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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 the 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 great suffering to many people and unecessarily restricting what should be possible to achieve.
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.
Taking it to the next level
These problems and restrictions cannot remain forever, the necessary changes to the framework of society will 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 make life better for everyone, you make it better for yourself - the opposite rarely holds true.
Main ideas
Here are two major ideas to start with, perhaps at first glance seemingly unconnected. Please explore them and add your feedback, all contributions are welcome:
Open design
- This is the application of very successful open source methods (as currently used in the development of many important software projects) to co-operatively design machines, artifacts and complex systems in a similar manner. Designs freely available for anyone to use, mutually evolve and give useful feedback on. Designs from the simplest level that can be made and used by individuals and communities in the developing world, all the way up national and global infrastructure systems.
- Design issues soon get ironed out because there should be enough people with an interest 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.
- Click here for more info.
Advanced closed loop automation
- This 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 vast abundance while integrating much better with the environment.
- Click here for more info.
These two ideas tied together are likely to be a very powerful force for human-centric progress in the near future, with open design being important in helping implement useful examples of advanced automation for the benefit of all.
