A New Vision for Latvia: Technology, Cultural Creativity & Identity Resolution / Transformation

Since the fall of the Soviet Union the Latvian-American community has been working hard to redefine its identity and goals.  This has left many young Latvian-Americans, such as myself, wondering how exactly we fit into the social chain.  After spending well over a decade wrestling with this issue, while working in media and discovering new technology and communication paradigms, I believe I have finally come across some new concepts that may prove useful to further the ongoing dialogue.

Growing up in Katskilu Nometne, full-time, year-round, was a rich and enjoyable experience, yet planted deep inside me the seeds of a cultural identity conflict.  All throughout my adolescence I struggled to make sense of two powerful and competing social inputs.  Was I more Latvian than American?  Was I more American than Latvian?  Where did my allegiance lie?  I wanted to give back to the system.  But which system?  And in what manner?

In college, where I studied politics and history, I concluded that I valued people over nationalism, which I viewed as ineffective and even dangerous.  After all, history demonstrated that culture generates in-group / out-group mentality, frequently fueling conflict and war.  I struggled to understand why the world wasn't a more ideal, peaceful and economically balanced place.  How could we as a species fail to react to suffering and economic disparity?  Why could we not act as a whole to organize an effective international body?  I greeted nationalist sentiment with skepticism and hoped that Latvia's inclusion in the EU would bring its citizenry around to a more global and communitarian view of the world.  Likewise, I hoped that moderate U.S. leadership would help strengthen U.N. authority and help to stabilize the world.  And yet my brain continued to search for a more functional and sensical understanding of the world. 

Entering the work force forced me to grow up a bit.  I realized that life was fundamentally a game in which many actors competed for scarce resources.  My idealism was decapitated as I became more aware of the evolution of man over time.  It was a miracle that order existed at all.  While not perfect, the nation-state was in fact the most effective mass organizing structure.  I now viewed Latvia and the United States in a different, more realistic context.  The existence of these organizations had directly bettered and protected the lives of millions of people.  Nationalism, the cultural glue that kept them intact, was an essential component of ongoing progress and social development.  The betterment of mankind required cultural competition.  And so my positive view of Latvian culture was restored.  I now better understood why Katskilu Nometne had been established and why it was so important to keep alive such cultural systems. 

As I continued to assemble and refine my understanding of the world I came across the works of technologists and futurists like Toffler, Kurzweil, Gelertner, Rheingold, Friedman, Lessig, Malone and Sachs.  This literature offered insight into the convergent dynamics of technology, globalization and social evolution.  Things began to "click" as I cross-referenced this new thinking with my professional and life experiences.  Their web of well-argued theories, such as exponential technology growth and the economic repercussions of network effects, led me to agree with them that civilization as we know it is about to experience an unprecedented transformation.  Hence, I now subscribe to the belief that we are transitioning into what Toffler has dubbed "The Information Age."  A quick look around confirms that constantly evolving communication technology is empowering individuals and leveling the global economic playing field.  Market fluidity is increasing and the best ideas, no matter where they are generated, are more easily rising to the top.  The world is becoming "flat," as Friedman likes to put it.

So today I am a 27-year-old Latvian-American futurist media producer who believes both all of the above and that nationalism and culture still have a big role to play in a rapidly changing world.  Because change can cut both ways, it is important for both Latvia and the U.S. to 1) assemble the knowledge base necessary to understand these new global dynamics, 2) utilize this knowledge base to inform socio-economic policy, 3) generate new behavior that maximizes growth while protecting culture and way of life, 4) continue scanning the road ahead because the rate of change is only getting faster.  Interestingly, it appears that smaller nimbler countries like Latvia are better positioned to adopt or encourage systematic predictive thinking than large countries, like the U.S., that are bogged down by a great deal of social inertia.  It seems that a window of opportunity is opening that may allow Latvia to take a great leap forward and to thus encourage America to do the same. 

First and foremost, Latvia needs to encourage and implement Future Studies programs among its citizens to arm them with better scientific context for social and business decision making.  There is some basic literature that can easily be incorporated into business, social sciences and technology classes.  To start with, Latvians would do well to digest The World is Flat by New York Times writer Thomas Friedman, "The Law of Accelerating Returns" by futurist Ray Kurzweil (http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html) who has consulted for Bill Gates, and The Future of Work by MIT Professor Thomas Malone.  Additionally, Latvia should look to existing Future Studies at institutions like Univesity of Advancing Technology, the University of Hawaii, and University of Houston – Clear Lake as possible templates for more expansive programs.

Via these Future Studies programs, Latvia should encourage its citizens, particularly the young to interface with powerful new communication technologies such as Web 2.0, video phones, and emerging Virtual Worlds.  Latvians should be encouraged to learn and use applications like Google Earth, elance.com, monster.com, and socialtext wikis, etc.  Latvia should seriously consider subsidizing effective new 3G mobile communications devices for its citizens as these hit the market.  Most importantly, Latvia should encourage students and businesspeople to start using robust new Virtual Worlds, particularly one called SecondLife.com, to conduct distance meetings and generate income.  By doing so, Latvia can position itself to capitalize as hundreds of billions of dollars are spent to convert the web to the 3-D over the next 3-6 years. 

Last, but certainly not least, as Latvia adapts to the accelerating pace of technological evolution it is imperative that our nation act as a team, like a giant corporation with common goals.  For that to happen, we must all rally around a clear cultural identity.  In my mind, that cultural identity, the concept of Latvia itself is based on Creativity.  The worldwide Latvian population boasts many exceptional storytellers, musicians, dancers, actors, producers, painters, master craftsmen, and authors.  These individuals can express themselves in three languages: Latvian, English and Russian.  In a flattening world, Latvians have the ability to generate creative content (text, audio, video, 3-D simulations) and export it to the billions of English and Russian speakers worldwide.  By mastering new web principles, Latvians can market their creative output to wealthier markets like Europe and the U.S. and employ human resources in lower minimum wage markets like Russia and the former Soviet Republics to help generate this content.  From my standpoint as a producer and internet entrepreneur, the niche opportunities for Latvian creativity appear dazzling indeed.

And so it seems that I have finally figured out a way to give back to not only the two nations and cultures that impacted me the most, but also to the global community as a whole.  By encouraging Latvians to proliferate their creativity and network with the world, I believe I am proposing a win-win-win scenario.  As a direct result of technological evolution, human brain power and creativity is rising in value.  New technology has set the stage for a big leap forward.  It is now time for Latvians to thoughtfully and deliberately take advantage of these new tools and establish themselves as one of the premiere creative cultures on the planet.  Everyone could use some original Latvian content in their daily lives.

That being said, everything I learned at Nometne just "clicked."

Written Sept 2006

Alvis Brigis is a media consultant and TV producer/writer whose network credits include NBC, FOX, MTV, VH1, The Sundance Channel, and TBS.  As a futurist, he has contributed to the Metaverse Roadmap forecasting project, consulted on MTV's Virtual Laguna Beach, and served as Board Member for the Acceleraton Studies Foudation.  Mr. Brigis is currently in the process of launching a new-media portal.  

Metaverse = Web 3.0

Why read this post? The new argument here is that Web 3.0 will continue to evolve off of Web 1.0 and 2.0 into an even more integrated platform.  As markets, communication, information, technology, and interface evolve and exert pressure and influence on the broader web, Web 3.0 will evolve to "feel" like one seamless integrated 3D world rather than a diverse set of websites.

Points Discussed: 

• What is Web 2.0?
• What is Web 3.0?
• Web 3.0 is a new ICT.
• Why will Web 3.0 feel more like one integrated experience than many different experiences?  

To understand what Web 3.0 is, we must first understand Web 2.0. 

Wikipedia says, "Web 2.0, a phrase coined by O'Reilly Media in 2004, refers to a supposed second-generation of Internet-based services — such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies — that let people collaborate and share information online in previously unavailable ways."

Web 2.0 has facilitated the evolution and development of highly efficient and financially/socially lucrative new structures like Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, YouTube, ITunes, Hollywood Stock Exchange, Digg, Public Insight Journalism, EBay, Monster, Lulu, and many more.

Given that the evolution of Communication, Information and Technology is accelerating, we should expect Web 3.0 to emerge faster than we might expect or feel that it will happen.

So then, how do we define Web 3.0?  While there has been a great deal of debate about this term, I tend to agree with the assessment of Tim Berners Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web that "I think maybe when you've got an overlay of scalable vector graphics - everything rippling and folding and looking misty - on Web 2.0 and access to a semantic Web integrated across a huge space of data, you'll have access to an unbelievable data resource."  That being Web 3.0. 

I think the first part, "an overlay of scalable vector graphics - everything rippling and folding and looking misty", is synonymous with 3D virtual worlds like Everquest, IMVU, There, & SecondLife. 

Part Two, "on Web 2.0 and access to a semantic Web integrated across a huge space of data", makes a lot of sense to me because it fits with the notion that Virtual Worlds are fundamentally a new Interactive Communication Technology (ICTs) that has the ability to integrate all previous ICTs.  (See this earlier post)

Already, virtual worlds are allowing this to occur.  My experiences in the rapidly exploding virtual world Second Life (SL) have convinced me that Web 2.0 will soon be fully useable via the SL platform.  When that occurs, as Berners Lee puts it, "you'll have access to an unbelievable data resource."

But the question remains whether there will be many different virtual worlds, just as there are many different websites out there, or if all of these worlds will evolve into one super Metaverse.

The answer, I think, is both A and B.

While there will be multiple competing platforms, (there already are), my imagination suggests to me that in the end, regardless of whether or not these virtual worlds are fundamentally designed to be compatible with one another, they will "feel" like one giant world to the end user.  Already, the World Wide Web is beginning to feel more like a single location than a set of multiple locations.  When I use Google, it feels as though I am using one huge website rather than accessing lots of individual parts.  I believe that a few years form now the perception of seamlessness of the 3D web will put this current feeling to shame.  The 3D web will feel like one gigantic world we can all fly through. For a variety of reasons, the web will evolve to feel more like the real world.  New software that allows for seamless transfer of POV from one virtual world to another will end up being the dominant new internet browser.  People will perceive that they are teleporting from one location to another, rather than starting up a brand new experience.  While this may seem like an overly-technical distinction, I think it is an important one because it will greatly affect the design of new virtual worlds.

By designing virtual worlds that are designed to function as part of the broader Metaverse, world builders will appease coveted surfers by reducing the amount of time and effort required to get to the information and experiences they seek.  Those sites that do not integrate will ultimately lose out on human traffic. 

In the end, the benefits of network effects and the desire to attract human surfers, on a local level, will force/condition the development of a single broader Metaverse. 

And so Web 3.0 will be viewed as one broad interoperable world rather than an assortment of many little worlds.

Hence, The Metaverse = Web 3.0

IS TOTAL HUMAN KNOWLEDGE INCREASING EXPONENTIALLY?

I found very poignant this reply to my Convergent Exponential Curves post: 

"Information includes words, phrases and new ways of describing things. To truly state that information is exponentially increasing would be to say that we are finding new facts about the universe at an exponential rate. … Is information knowledge?" 

It would not surprise me to learn that we are in fact discovering new facts about the universe at an exponential rate.  It is fundamentally in our interests to do so and seems to be happening automatically.  If we are getting smarter and generating more and better tools then it follows that we can unlock the secrets of life and the cosmos at an accelerating rate.  This seems to be happening bottom-up, in a broadly distributed manner as scientists, scholars, business folks, inventors etc. all strive to do more with less.  As they reduce the amount of Matter Energy Space and Time required for a process (see Buckminster Fuller and John Smart), and essentially MEST Compress, this allows them to behave in a more complex manner, perform more operations per MEST unit, combine technologies and forms in new ways, etc.  MEST Compression lets us create new tools for quantifying the universe, allows us to continue MEST Compression, and allows us to extrapolate physical laws and information by enabling complex new behavior.  It seems that the compulsive human instinct to MEST Compress is a primary driver of broader accelerating change.  (Check out John Smart's Laws of Complex Systems for more on this http://www.accelerationwatch.com/laws.html.)  

Is information knowledge?  I think not completely.  I believe that knowledge requires context and a consciousness component.  Information is knowledge if it is useful to a human, organism or agent that can then apply it.  Interestingly, if Comm, Tech, and IQ are also on exponential curves, then it follows that our collective human Knowledge too is evolving at an exponential rate. 

As we MEANINGFULLY QUANTIFY our system at an accelerating rate, it would make sense that Knowledge is also accelerating.

4) Why is the Metaverse so Important?

When I first posted about the Millennial Toolkit on slfuturesalon.blogs.com I received the critique that the toolkit is overly communications-centric and discounts other evolving technologies.  Being that this was a solid and valid point, I then acknowledged my bias toward communications, which is due to the fact that I regularly work in the communications field.  Of course other harder technologies will play a huge role in the ongoing development of the species.  But nevertheless I find myself sticking to the belief that communications technology, particularly the emerging ICT called the Metaverse or 3D/4D web, will be the most important driver of change in the near-term (say 5-10 years). 

While all technology interdependently co-evolves, ICTs (technologies like cave paintings, chants, whistling, songs, money, language, books, the telegraph, radio, television, the world wide web) have historically caused/allowed humans to broadly change their socio-economic behavior.  The Metaverse is a technology that 1) for the first time in human history can incorporate all previous ICTs, 2) has the power to dramatically affect/empower Communication (superior comm. Platform, allows arrays and recombination of all previous ICTs), Human Neurons (allows news styles of and ultimately quicker learning), Information (allows for new dynamic and contextual information storage), Technology (many new soft and hard technologies will evolve and be developed in virtual worlds, the Metaverse is a new hyper-fluid prototyping substrate, it also allows for the faster development technologies externally by enabling quicker economic behavior and communication), and 3) it is being developed and is diffusing at lightning speed, FASTER THAN ANY PREVIOUS ICT, which proves its utility to the economy and the species. 

Yes, the evolution of the metaverse depends on the evolution of many other technologies, and yet it can be viewed as a technology or domain in and of itself.  Therefore, I think it's okay to view it as the primary driver of change that will probably play an integral role in the next American Fourth Turning (Strauss and Howe) and a much broader planetary shift into the Information Age.

2) WHAT IS A HUMAN?

We need to more systematically define the term humanity.  My hypothesis is that humans should be defined as an evolutionary system that consists of Communication (C), Human Brains (H), Information (I), Technology (T), and physical Environment (E).  I cannot think of any othe quantifiable domains that are not included in the above list.

By disregarding any one of these domains, one fundamentally leaves out an essential component of humanity.    By quantifying humans based on these domain areas, we can refine our view of what it means to be human and better forecast human behavior.  Just to name a few, the fields of Psychology, Human Resources and Career Counseling could benefit from such a systematic approach to defining humans.  (We can already see that these fields are naturally evolving toward such a systematic view.)  While such an approach may at first seem cold, it would not appear that way if it resulted in more successful self-actualization for many of us.

3) Are Humans Changing Exponentially?

If A) humans arise from a combination of C,H,I,T & E (see #2 below) and B) C,H,I & T are co-evolving at an exponential rate (see #1 below), then is it possible that humanity itself changing at an exponential rate?   

Thoughts:

1)   The one domain that is clearly not changing at an exponential rate is Environment, which can ultimately trump the evolution of C,H,I, & T.  An atomic bomb, global warming, a sudden shift in the behavior of other species, a mass phytoplankton death, or a mantle plume could all quickly put a stop to exponential human-centric growth.  Or through some other mechanism(s) that we do not yet understand, the environment could put the brakes on human evolution.  Or perhaps we will run out of computational phase space and everything will rapidly decelerate.  The later does not seem likely considering the vast amount of math and operational possibilities yet to be uncovered. 

2)   If CHIT is evolving at an exponential rate then we can expect a corresponding shift in human form.  This notion seems to be supported by many futurists, sci-fi prognosticators, transhumanists, and by rapid developments in fields like robotics, neurology, and computation.  Check out this interactive Wired diagram of the evolving human http://blog.wired.com/images/bionicanimation.html.

3)   The Futurist/Transhumanist Ego Bias:  Many of the future scenarios that people have speculated fail to take into account the recursive evolution of Human Brains with Comm, Information and Technology.  It is natural that folks tend to project a current image of the self into a complex future environment without adjusting the fundamental nature of the self.  This is a perspective based Ego Bias that we must get past when speculating about the future.  If C, H, I & T are co-evolving then we must take care to adjust H proportionately to C, I & T progress.  We can't have a crazy sci-fi future and continue to exist in our current state.  As we fundamentally change the world we are fundamentally changed.

 :)