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Getting Past the Dominance of the Nation State

One of the important topics that I have not yet addressed in World After Capital is the role of the Nation State. So I am gathering up some of my thoughts in a post first. I believe it is critical that we get past the dominance of the nation state as the key organizing principle in the world. That doesn’t mean doing away with nation states (at least not overnight), but gradually de-emphasizing their importance.

Here are my arguments for why we need to de-emphasize the Nation State:

1. Nation states, true to their name, tend to emphasize the interests of a particular nation above others. The “America First” policy pursue by Trump is a prime example of this. As I have written repeatedly in World After Capital, by emphasizing superficial differences, this goes against the fundamental need for humanity to focus on our commonality.

2. As a first approximation problems today come in two forms: global and local/regional. The nation state sits uncomfortably between the two. Global problems include climate change, infectious disease, corporate and individual taxation. These cannot be solved by any one nation state. Nor even by a small group of them. They truly are global in nature. Conversely, problems such as transportation, education, healthcare can and should be solved at the local or regional level. This problem is particularly acute in a country with the size and diversity of United States.

3. We are in a time of profound change and as such we need more experiments on anything that doesn’t absolutely require global coordination. The Nation State is too large a unit for good experiments. Take education as an example. Having a national policy makes little sense at a time when technology is fundamentally changing how learning can occur.

4. Information technology allows new approaches to regulation through transparency. In many instances what the federal level role should be is provide requirements for transparency of and interoperability between local/regional policies. This means we could have a significantly smaller Federal Government in terms of the number of direct employees, size of agencies and body of regulations.

One reason to be excited about a truly decentralized internet, including decentralized yet consistent state (aka blockchains) and crypto currencies, is that these technologies have the potential to help us get past the Nation State. These decentralized systems are not constrained by the existing boundaries. They are truly global in nature, connecting all of humanity.

Taking nation states as a given permanent feature of humanity is mistaking a short period of history for something permanent. I grew up near Nuremberg in Germany and it is useful to look at a historic map of the area from around the year 1200.

It shows a large number of tiny principalities that had their own rulers, spoke widely varying local dialects, used different currencies, etc. Over time these fused into larger units and in the early 1800s Franconia became part of Bavaria. Today Bavaria is part of German, which in turn is part of the EU. This process of change and and should continue on a global scale.

How should we determine at which scale to address a particular problem? The key principle here is the one of “subsidiarity”: decisions should be made at the lowest possible level. Since we have one global atmosphere we need to make some decisions globally, like how many greenhouse gases we should have. But staying with the same issue, the actual ways of achieving a limit should be decided a lower levels, such as regions.

Given that all of the most pressing problems – climate change, infectious disease, taxation, death from above – are global, now more than ever is the time to get past the dominance of the nation state.

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I put my book down My cat sits in the window Surrounded by stars

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The other day, we had the most delicious corn.

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Mr. Rogers talks about drawing

These images are grabbed from episode 1481:

In the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, King Friday talks to Miss Paulificate about an idea he has for a “Draw the Neighborhood Contest.”… Harriett Elizabeth Cow is not very excited about the contest because she says that everyone’s talents are different and art contests are very difficult to judge.

You can watch it on PBS.org or on Netflix.

(Thanks to my friend Frank Chimero for this.)

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Petition HBO or Netflix and Rick Owens to collaborate on a sci-fi movie. Rick to take a season off to design costumes and sets for it.

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Soap & Milk

Interactive installation by Waltz Binaire is a large high definition display that presents fluid dynamics and data retrieved from social media:

soap and milk is a visual experience to portray information in social media as an organic landscape of fluids. We envisioned droplets spawning on surreal liquid surfaces, melting and interacting with each other till they fade into the depth of their micro cosmos. Tweets referring to a predefined hashtag, seem to become alive as bubbles as they bounce, playfully simplified and yet unpredictable within their behaviour. To witness the lifespan of this data, we wanted the observer to be able to touch and manipulate its visual representation. The installation is designed as a visual oxymoron, between a larger-than-life experience and the microscopic insight into interacting droplets. By using a giant LED screen to expose the interactions of tiny bubbles, we wanted the viewer to shrink into the fluids – allowing new perspectives and interactions towards complex and detailed procedures.

More Here

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Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, in a letter to his daughter (via)

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38

I found some cold water to swim in.

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Happy 58th birthday to Keith Haring.

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AI Neuroscience

Image preview from Evolving Artificial Intelligence Lab illustrates huge improvements of neural network object recognition.

What you see in the top images are top-layer neural network finalisations of what it has learned from studying images of various objects - these are some of the most higher definition understanding to date.

The bottom image looks at some of the lower layers of the neural network which focus on certain aspects of the data of a given object.

Think of neural networks like a live drawing art class where the students focus and draw on certain parts of the subject, these would be the numerous collective sketches they have made. The top layer is what someone decides is the best parts of the collective sketches and puts them together to what they believe satisfies the best representation of the subject.

More info from this is expected in the future - Link

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🎶💞🎶

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There is so much space junk out there.

Such a weird metaphor. I'm totally stealing it. Also, I'm so happy for her.

“I was miserable being a widow. But I knew it was going to be hard to meet someone new. There is so much space junk out there. And a lot of older men are looking for a younger woman. But I had great hopes. I did my visualizations. I pictured a nice, younger, good-looking man. Every morning I wrote down just what I wanted. Then I found him on one of those dating sites. I was a little worried at first because his profile said: ‘I’m back, ladies.’ I thought that maybe he was a womanizer. But he also quoted a psalm in his profile, and it was a good psalm, so I sent him a smile emoji. We started chatting and decided to meet at the Metropolitan Museum. I walked up the stairs and there he was! Suit! Tie! Overcoat! So much better than his picture! We spent six hours at the wine bar. They had to kick us out. We started seeing each other regularly. I felt like I was sixteen. Nothing could bother me for months. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. Everything worked out just like I imagined. It will have been eight years together, this July.”

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Is this a great flowchart? Or the GREATEST flowchart?

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The Space Shuttle Discovery blasts off on December 9, 2006.

(NASA)