“Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god. ” – Aristotle
“I wonder whether there is such a thing as a sense of individuality. Is it all a facade, covering a deep need to belong? Are we simply pack animals desperately trying to pretend we are not?” ―Rabih Alameddine
Government, at its best, is simply centralized decision making. Our societies have become too large for everyone to have a say in its governance so decision making gets ceded to those most capable of doing so. Decision making is a relatively simple affair, understand all the possible options and assess which has the most beneficial outcome, then allocate resources accordingly. AI will be better at that than any human ever could be.
It will take a generation or two, but eventually we will hand over the business of governance to artificial intelligence. With it will come the end of the nation state as AI itself convinces other countries to adopt it leading to the end of government all together.
How? It sounds cliched but it’s true, it’s Logic will be undeniable. It will be the promise of the end of suffering and the easing of life that wins us over.
What will come next?…
The Rise of the Individual
You will have the ability to act autonomously without need of approval from any person, just your AI.
Through gene modification therapies and nanobots your cognitive and physical abilities will be optimized making you an enhanced version of yourself. Diseases and neurological disorders will be all but wiped out. Aging itself may become a thing of the past as preventative measures are constantly taken to ameliorate any damage at the cellular level. A neural mesh will connect you directly to the internet and all of human knowledge and through the internet of things you will be able to manipulate the physical world around you.
Our existence as social animals who need to put up walls and make rules will end in this century. What comes next can not be accurately predicted but will involve a radical reworking of what it means to exist in the universe when we become more than human.
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
― George Bernard Shaw
“What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end: what can be loved in man is that he is an overture and a going under. ” – Nietzsche