Splinter Groups
Speculating on a social inflection point
How many of the top ten singles of 2023 would you recognize if you heard them? I’ll bet you could recognize more out of any random set of ten singles from the top 100 of 1965.
Pop music has splintered. This is true of culture in general. A much larger share of households tuned their TV sets to “Bonanza” than to whatever is the most popular streaming show today. Everybody went to the movies to see “Love Story” or “Star Wars” or “Titanic.” Many saw them multiple times. There is no equivalent today.
I can imagine that we are headed in this direction in general:
In the future, there will be no durable forms of collective mass identity.
I think that we near an inflection point, where social relations are drastically changed. Some types of people lose status, while other types gain. The nature of the “glue” holding societies together changes.
Two types of technological change produce inflection points. One type of change concerns the technology of communication. The invention of writing, the invention of the printing press, the invention of electronic communication, the invention of digital communication.
The other type concerns the technology of warfare. The invention of the stirrup, the invention of gunpowder, the invention of the machine gun, the invention of the tank.
I am not saying that all inflection points come from technology. The Industrial Revolution qualifies as an inflection point. I believe that the 1960s can be considered an inflection point. I would not say that those changes were brought about entirely by technology.
Today’s key innovations
The new communication tool that we have is the Large Language Model, which enables direct, rapid communication with computers. This means that computer capability will eventually be embedded everywhere, not just in special devices like smart phones or PCs. The special devices will fade in importance. Instead, we will be able to state a query or request a service any place, any time.
Another innovation is small-machine warfare. This will neutralize the advantage that large industrialized states had until recently.
Ever since the Axial Age, people have had durable collective identities. We had religious identities. We had national identities. I speculate that these will fade away. People will feel loyal to smaller groups, and they will be willing to switch loyalties often.
Governments will be much weaker than they are today. We will not need them as much for dispute resolution. Instead, the standard way to develop contracts will be to. “have my AI negotiate with your AI.” The importance of reputation management will be sufficient to deter people from breaking contracts.
Large armed forces will be vulnerable to small groups of determined militants. Political leaders will become timid and eager to please, like college presidents today. They will strongly desire to censor speech, but their efforts to do so will prove clumsy and ineffective.
People will regard governments as stationary bandits, and try to interact with them as little as possible. For protection from criminals, people will turn to the equivalent of spam filters. We will subscribe to services that use AI to identify and block criminals.
Celebrities will be famous only in narrow realms, for short periods of time. Many cults will emerge around all sorts of bizarre beliefs. The most durable social forms will be extended families and tribes.
I suppose that an alternative forecast is that the future will look like today, but with more embedded intelligence and with more small machines as military weapons. I would bet against this particular alternative, even though my own speculations could be way off.
"Large armed forces will be vulnerable to small groups of determined militants."
No. Large forces can be even more determined when they want to be. What is already happening today and AI means much more of next week is ultra-panopticon.
There is "seeing like a state" but then there is also "failing to see like a state".
It will help if you imagine you are Xi Jinping or ask "WWXJD?" He / CCP has social technological and digital technological capabilities that just exploded in power, and he need never be worried again. "Small groups of determined militants? There's an app for that." Lots of people are very upset at the CCP. Zero groups of determined militants are able to do anything about it, and never will be able to ever again. Game over.
What was once the one-child policy and now a norm meant, "One Mouth, Six Pockets" for the two parents and four grandparents. What AI means is "One Billion People? One Trillion cameras!"
What AI means is infinite cheap scalability of security functions for which there is unlimited demand but for which the supply is currently limited only because until now these functions needed to be done by humans who are slow, unreliable, scarce, and expensive.
Every single human being, everywhere they go, and everything they say, write, or do will be tracked 24/7 - and they will all know it. The more you try to evade the tracking the more suspicious you become and the more surveillance efforts automatically throttled up to whatever degree necessary.
It is now and forever technically possible to reduce personal privacy of everyone below the point at which any conspiracy of any significance whatsoever could possibly be planned, organized, and executed. Game over.
-This- is the key inflection point for the future of all human interaction and relations.
With enough surveillance, a large number of "tragic human condition" problems are feasibly solved forever if the government wants them to be solved (which is an awkward position for conservatives), though a large number of classic ways humans had to deal with problems caused by the existing power structure are likewise permanently off the table, if the existing power structure wants them to be.
It will turn out to be the case that the post WWII strategic matter of the highest significance was to make sure you had as good a state as possible by 2024 when whatever condition it was in at the time was likely going to get locked in for a long time.
Behold! You are (unusually) quite incorrect about small machine warfare. Large industrialized states (specifically China) will darken the skies with their ability to produce drones at scale in volumes far beyond everyone else. This in turn will allow them to conquer at scales far beyond everyone else. AI will allow them to then monitor and suppress dissent at scales far beyond today. The AI-powered drone panopticon will then allow them to establish Chinese Fasci-Communism as a universal ideology within the conquered areas and allow them to intrude on every aspect of everyone's lives except perhaps their internal monologue.
You are probably right that celebrities will be famous only in narrow realms.