RESHARED POST FROM PBS NEWSHOUR

vis +James Wood. Pasting his comment below:

“An effect of the constant advances in technology is a complete restructuring of the way we think about the division of labor and citizens’ roles in a future society. As our lives become ever more digitalized, we realize many real concerns–namely the fear that a handful of extremely wealthy and extremely powerful individuals will take over the world, leaving the rest of us to fight over the few “real” jobs remaining. However, in an #attentioneconomy , such disparity can not exist. First of all, the Internet in future forms can reach the point that it itself functions as an economy–one of attention and attenders. Imagine that machines have evolved to the point at which manual human labor is truly obsolete; they become in a way our “digital” infrastructure. then whatever frontier remains unconquered will become the platform for our human interaction (the Internet). This network will still be just as competitive as any free market system to date, only it will be wholly self-organized, meaning that the behavior of the network as a whole will be more or less equally influenced by each individual node. The main obstruction to this practically in the future is that in this vast digital infrastructure, you might ask, who controls that? Who owns it? Who makes sure it is functioning properly? If a few people do own it, then wouldn’t the very phenomenon we are trying to avoid still happen in an attention economy (other-organized network)? The answer is that no one owns the infrastructure (or anything). The infrastructure will become advanced enough that it becomes essentially self-improving, self-organizing, self-replicating, etc. The technology will become intelligent, or I daresay, alive (oooh). It will become integrated into our very consciousness–it will become us, or rather extensions of us. We will become a digital species.”

PBS NewsHour originally shared this post:

Paul Solman has been showcasing the future of technology from a recent conference run by a California think tank — things such as 3-D printing of prosthetic legs and iPhone heart tests. But the conference also resurfaced an age-old question about the future of human workers.

Where do you see technology going?