The Parable of the Tribes: Why the Evolution of Civilization Has Been as Tormented and Destructive as it Has Been: "For living things to persist, or survive, their environment must provide them with the substances and energy they need to maintain and to reproduce themselves. As life grows denser, the environment on which each organism depends consists increasingly of other living things. The survival of each, therefore, comes to depend upon how well all the others maintain crucial flows of materials and energy throughout the system. Life requires environmental reliability. The implications for natural selection are clear. Selection molds not just individual species but entire ecological communities, favoring those combinations of creatures that most reliably act synergistically to maintain the flows on which all the creatures depend. As life developed on this planet, the networks of interdependence and cooperation expanded until some of the major flows became global in scope. The earth's atmosphere as we know it is a product of the living ecosystem."

The Parable of the Tribes: Why the Evolution of Civilization Has Been as Tormented and Destructive as it Has Been: "History, then, has traditionally not allowed our vision to transcend the civilized condition that needs explaining. But in the last century or so, the perspective of 'natural history' has revealed to us how extremely truncated is that old view of time. Our infancy was not in the cradle of civilization, but far, far back before then. Our human ancestors go back hundreds of thousands, perhaps several millions of years. But our ancestry is still more ancient. Our story, as much as that of any creatures on earth, goes back to the beginning of life, more than three billion years ago. Walking a time line of the earth's history overwhelms our provincial sense of time. From the earth's beginning to the point where life emerges is a number of paces. It is a long walk before mammals have appeared, but only a few steps from there to the appearance of the human animal. The time of recorded history is scarcely visible. What we call history is like a period at the end of the long story of life on earth."

The Parable of the Tribes: Why the Evolution of Civilization Has Been as Tormented and Destructive as it Has Been: "The experience of a lifetime gives an inadequate perspective. Unlike Bibby's ancients of four thousand years ago, we can see change. But we have difficulty seeing what is constant amid the change. We were born into a vehicle already far along on an extended trajectory so that our present experience is intelligible only in terms of forces that acted in the past."

The Parable of the Tribes: Why the Evolution of Civilization Has Been as Tormented and Destructive as it Has Been: "One can add to the shortcomings of the human decision maker the extraordinary difficulty of these decisions. For the progress of civilization has been a continuous advance into uncharted territory. Even the wisest judge needs precedents, and civilized peoples have repeatedly been compelled to deal with unprecedented problems. Even intelligent people, under those circumstances, will adopt solutions which do not work or which work today but sow the seeds of tomorrow's problems. Irrigation brings a miracle of greenness in the short run but leads eventually to the disastrous spread of deserts over salted soils."

The Parable of the Tribes: Why the Evolution of Civilization Has Been as Tormented and Destructive as it Has Been: "This model of selection can account for much of the development and spread of new components of civilized culture. In part, culture is indeed a kind of market in which new possibilities - in making pottery, in telephone service, in musical expressions, in vaccinations - replace or supplement old because people want them. Without making any prejudgment about the nature and complexity of human wants, we may grant that choices based on those wants are important in determining the way our cultural systems evolve."

The Parable of the Tribes: Why the Evolution of Civilization Has Been as Tormented and Destructive as it Has Been: "This theory can be aptly illustrated by the development of a cuisine. In the beginning, people are surrounded by plants and animals, of unknown nutritive value and taste. Over the course of time, everything gets tried. People learn from their experience. They remember what tasted good, what was poisonous, even what diet made them feel healthy. They experiment with new combinations, new ways of preparing, storing, and curing foods. Constantly, they select for the most satisfying cuisine. As people from one region contact people from another, they exchange ideas and ingredients. Each group now benefits from the other's recipes, and altogether new recipes come into being as new combinations of foods become possible - one group's nuts are traded for another's herbs, citrus comes to the New World as the tomato is taken to the Old. Selection continually generates improvement."

The Parable of the Tribes: Why the Evolution of Civilization Has Been as Tormented and Destructive as it Has Been: "This commonsense theory of social evolution offers a benign and reasonable view of human affairs. According to this image, people are continually hunting for ways to better their condition. (One immediately recognizes the Economic Man of capitalist theory). The alternatives are readily generated by this pursuit of improvement. The longer the hunt goes on, the more alternatives are discovered. And, since man is an inventive as well as exploratory creature, what is discovered in the world is increasingly supplemented by what people have created. With the passage of time, therefore, more and more cultural alternatives become available for all aspects of our cultural business - how and what to produce, how to govern ourselves, what to think, how to travel, play, make music, and so on. The process of selection is done by people. The criterion for selection? People choose what they believe will best meet their needs, replacing old cultural forms when new and better ones become available. Again, the resonance with economic theory is striking: social evolution is the product of choices made in the marketplace of cultural possibilities."

The Parable of the Tribes: Why the Evolution of Civilization Has Been as Tormented and Destructive as it Has Been: "History's acceleration has made manifest what has been true from the beginning of civilization: the structure of life for civilized peoples has been constantly subject to profound changes as new cultural ways are developed and replace the old. We can see now that civilization is an evolving system.

The question is: what determines the direction in which civilization evolves? It is a vital question, for if we are shaping our destiny without comprehension, how likely is it we will shape it well? For our power to exceed our understanding is dangerous. What is remarkable about this question besides its fundamental importance is the paucity of attention it receives. There seem to be two principal reasons for this neglect: (1) some do not search for an answer because they believe none can exist; and (2) some do not search for an answer because they assume they already know it.
"

The Parable of the Tribes: Why the Evolution of Civilization Has Been as Tormented and Destructive as it Has Been: "People often do not recognize, much less grasp, the effects of their actions. Four thousand years ago (as Geoffrey Bibby describes in a book of that title, 1961) change in civilized societies was so gradual that people thought that life had always been as it was then. The question of explaining change hardly arose in their minds. Yet they were actively (if inadvertently) effecting one of the great revolutions in the history of life - the evolution of civilization. Change that was cataclysmic by the standards of life's previous development was nonetheless too slow to be visible in the perspective of a single lifetime.

Now, change has so quickened that one cannot help but witness dramatic metamorphoses in civilized societies. Before our eyes, ancient tribal groups are being welded into nations. Whole societies adopt new forms of social and economic organization. Intellectual revolutions and technological innovations constantly alter people's methods of production, transportation, housing. Traditional values and ideologies all over the world are altered or overthrown as they encounter new and unexpected conditions."

World population is currently growing by 1.1 percent annually. As shown in the chart above, nearly all of this population growth is occurring within developing countries. As a result, roughly 9 in 10 children (1.6 billion total children) under the age of 15 currently reside in developing parts of the world, up from 7 in 10 in 1950 (EarthTrends and UNPD). By 2050, total population is expected to reach 9.1 billion (medium projection) despite overall declines in population growth rates. Major growth is expected to occur in developing countries' urban populations; assuming current trends "poor countries will have to build the equivalent of a city of more than one million people each week for the next 45 years" (Cohen, 2005). Limited access to health care, contraception, and educa! tion in many of these countries has resulted in national demographic trends that exhibit stark contrasts to those of the industrialized world (e.g., fertility rates), leading to high population densities in developing regions of Africa and Asia (see map).

Global Population Density. Data are for 1995. For more information, please see the full source notes.

QuickStudy: The Singularity: "Kurzweil identifies exponential growth in the capacity of information technology with a biblical sweep that stretches from the beginning through six epochs:

1. Physics and Chemistry -- from the big bang through the entire prelife era of the universe.

2. Biology and DNA -- stretching from the beginning of life on earth.

3. Brains -- the advent of human dominance.

4. Technology -- approaching culmination in the 20th century.

5. Merger of Human Technology and Human Intelligence -- which is the Singularity.

6. The Universe Wakes Up -- the other side of the Singularity."

QuickStudy: The Singularity: "published in 2001, Kurzweil wrote: 'Within a few decades, machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, leading to The Singularity -- technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history. The implications include the merger of biological and non-biological intelligence, immortal software-based humans, and ultrahigh levels of intelligence that expand outward in the universe at the speed of light.'"

According to Ward’s Communications, there were 603 million passenger cars on the world’s roads in 2004, the last year with such data, plus another 223 million commercial vehicles.

Chapter 8. Military expenditure — SIPRI Yearbook 2006: "World military expenditure in 2005 is estimated to have reached $1001 billion at constant (2003) prices and exchange rates, or $1118 billion in current dollars. This corresponds to 2.5 per cent of world GDP or an average spending of $173 per capita. World military expenditure in 2005 presents a real terms increase of 3.4 per cent since 2004, and of 34 per cent over the 10-year period 1996–2005. The USA, responsible for about 80 per cent of the increase in 2005, is the principal determinant of the current world trend, and its military expenditure now accounts for almost half of the world total. "

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "'Ballistic Missiles: A Crucial Strategic Issue for the United States and Europe'"

Seed: Look Around You: "Complexity is everywhere. It's a structural and organizational principle that reaches almost every field imaginable, from genetics and social networks to food webs and stock markets. Contemporary scientific and technological accomplishments—including mapping the human genome, decoding neural networks and opening up the ocean to exploration—have seen our ability to generate and acquire information outpace our ability to make sense of it. With a surfeit of facts and few ways to synthesize them, 'meaningful information' quickly becomes an oxymoron."

Banking & Finance: "The other issue is the fear that China is going to break up (decentralise). The interesting news is, it is already breaking up. China is the most decentralising country in the world. It’s an old Chinese idea that the periphery is the centre. That’s true of China now."

Banking & Finance: "Most things remain constant even when we see lots of change. People say the only thing constant in business is change. That is absolutely ridiculous. Most things do not change. But that does not make news. The only news that gets reported is change. If business develops a mindset only around change, it’s not going to be helpful."

Economics: League leaders - Accountancy Age: "Today, thinking of the Chancellor as the financial director of a company called UK plc is a redundant concept. It is more realistic to regard him as the chief financial officer of a subsidiary company called UK Ltd, while the parent company is now Global Inc. The Chancellor’s role is to ensure that his subsidiary is viewed as a competitive and attractive location for the multinational investment that underpins growth."

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "The new strategic context in the region has also posed important challenges for Iran. Although Iran has welcomed the fall of two of its historical enemies -- the Sunni Taliban regime in Afghanistan and the Ba'athist government in Iraq "

People's Daily Online -- The limitation of the Gini Coefficient in China: "Countries, which have finished the urbanization process and industrialization process, enjoy social stability and economic rise under a Gini Coefficient of 0.3-0.4. Those with a Gini Coefficient higher than 0.4 have too large an income gap and suffer from a sluggish economy and serious social problems. In these cases, the criteria and analysis of income gap overlaps with that of the impact of income gap.

In China' case, however, where urbanization and industrialization are far from being finished and urbanization lags far behind industrialization, criteria applied to economies which have completed the processes may not work well.

Theoretically, the industrialization and urbanization process brings about a flow of labor and capital to urban areas and industrialized sectors, which in turn benefits urban residents and capital owners more in the income distribution and deteriorates the income gap.
Once the urbanization and industrialization process has been finished, the capital will return to the agricultural sector to relieve the income inequality."
Therefore, the Gini Coefficient will first go up and then down. It is natural to see countries in the process of urbanization and industrialization with a higher Gini figure than those that have completed the process.

"Half of all Africans live in four countries - Nigeria
(127 million), Ethiopia (64), Democratic Republic of
Congo (51), and South Africa (43). "

ISN Publishing House: Global Responses to Global Threats: Sustainable Security for the 21st Century: "This paper examines threats to global security in the 21st century. The authors argue that international terrorism is a relatively minor threat when compared to other more serious global trends. The report offers an overview of four factors identified as the root causes of conflict and insecurity: climate change, competition over resources, marginalization of the majority world and global militarization. The authors propose a new approach to global security that does not attempt to unilaterally control threats through the use of force, but rather aims to cooperatively resolve the root causes of those threats."

Wired 14.07: People Power: "Previous industrial ages were built on the backs of individuals, too, but in those days labor was just that: labor. Workers were paid for their time, whether on a factory floor or in a cubicle. Today’s peer-production machine runs in a mostly nonmonetary economy. The currency is reputation, expression, karma, “wuffie,” or simply whim.

This can all sound a little like, well, ’60s-style utopianism. After all, Marx himself believed that the industrial proletariat would revolt against the bourgeoisie, creating a state where the workers own the means of industrial production. It’s easy to see an echo of that in blogosphere triumphalism."

Wired 14.07: People Power: "Now we have armies of amateurs, happy to work for free. Call it the Age of Peer Production. From Amazon.com to MySpace to craigslist, the most successful Web companies are building business models based on user-generated content. This is perhaps the most dramatic manifestation of the second-generation Web. The tools of production, from blogging to video-sharing, are fully democratized, and the engine for growth is the spare cycles, talent, and capacity of regular folks, who are, in aggregate, creating a distributed labor force of unprecedented scale."

Wired 14.07: People Power: "First, steam power replaced muscle power and launched the Industrial Revolution. Then Henry Ford’s assembly line, along with advances in steel and plastic, ushered in the Second Industrial Revolution. Next came silicon and the Information Age. Each era was fueled by a faster, cheaper, and more widely available method of production that kicked efficiency to the next level and transformed the world."

Stupidity Without Borders – The Alliance of Utopias | The Brussels Journal: "Writer Spengler in the Asia Times Online commented that demography is destiny: “Never in recorded history have prosperous and peaceful nations chosen to disappear from the face of the earth. Yet that is what the Europeans have chosen to do. Back in 1348 Europe suffered the Black Death.” “The plague reduced the estimated European population by about a third. In the next 50 years, Europe’s population will relive – in slow motion – that plague demography, losing about a fifth of its population by 2050.”"

Stupidity Without Borders – The Alliance of Utopias | The Brussels Journal: "“Europe and Japan are now facing a population problem that is unprecedented in human history,” said Bill Butz, president of the Population Reference Bureau. Countries have lost people because of wars, disease and natural disasters but never because women stopped having enough children. Japan announced that its population had shrunk in 2005 for the first time, and that it was now the world’s most elderly nation. Italy was second. On average, women must have 2.1 children in their lifetimes for a society to replenish itself, accounting for infant mortality and other factors. Only one country in Europe – Muslim Albania – has a fertility rate above 2. Russia’s fertility rate is 1.28."

Stupidity Without Borders – The Alliance of Utopias | The Brussels Journal: "The 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries have witnessed the most spectacular population growth in human history, most of it in Third World countries. The world’s population, estimated at 6.4 billion in 2006, grows by more than 70 million people per year. In sixty years, Brazil’s population has increased by 318 per cent; Ethiopia’s by 503 per cent. There are now 73 million people in Ethiopia – more than the population of Britain or France."

The Epoch Times | Reading the Vital Signs of the World: "The good news in Vital Signs is that in the year 2005 there has been a dramatic growth in renewable energy technologies and also energy efficiencies technologies. The positive side of the high oil price is the incentive it provides for finding alternative energy sources. The best example of growth, said Flavin, are the biofuels, which have become a 'boom industry,' attracting venture capitalists and the like, said Flavin."

The Epoch Times | Reading the Vital Signs of the World: "The record production and consumption masks the other news in Vital Signs that is alarming. For the economic gains there was a high cost in natural resources, most of which are not renewable. Behind the prosperity and unprecedented consumption lies a very troubling fact that the majority of the major ecosystems—like fresh water and clean energy—are being pushed beyond their sustainable limits.

'Business as usual is harming the Earth's ecosystems and the people who depend on them,' said Erik Assadourian, Vital Signs 2006-2007 project director. 'If everyone consumed at the average level of high-income countries, the planet could sustainably support only 1.8 billion people, not today's population of 6.4 billion.'"

The Epoch Times | Reading the Vital Signs of the World: "The world productivity increased last year according to a variety of economic indicators. The gross world product (GWP)—the sum of all finished goods and services—reached 59.6 trillion. Important components of the economy like steel production were up as was aluminum production. More vehicles—45.6 million—were produced than ever before. Meat production was also up.

These facts and similar trends are discussed in Worldwatch Institute's, Vital Signs 2006-200"

KurzweilAI.net
"What surprises me is how few people have been working on higher-level theories of how thinking works. That's been a big disappointment," says Marvin Minsky, whose forthcoming book, The Emotion Machine, reinterprets the human mind as a "cloud of resources," or mini-machines that turn on and off depending on the situation and give rise to our various emotional and mental states.

: "a computer needs to know a couple million things in order to make common-sense connections."

ID21 - communicating development research: "Some key issues in the official as well as private flows include:

* China’s has invested three quarters of its US$660 billion foreign reserves in the USA. But any shift of official flows towards assets denominated in currencies other than the dollar are likely to lead to a decline in the dollar which could in turn result in a sharp slowdown in the USA and world economy.
* Asian central banks are starting to reassess their investment strategies and diversifying their portfolios towards assets in other countries so that the risks related to possible strong dollar devaluation are reduced.
* For China, inflows of private foreign direct investment (FDI) is a means to acquire foreign technology, while FDI to other developed or developing countries means establishing distribution networks abroad and relocate traditional industries to countries with lower wages.
* India through its FDI abroad is seeking new markets, establishing distribution networks, acquiring foreign technologies and brand names
* China and India’s recent need for natural resources to sustain their high growth rate is an important factor for the investments abroad."

KurzweilAI.net
The coming elimination of the barrier between living and nonliving materials will lead to "animats" (living materials) -- nanobiotechnology devices that can survive and function inside human beings, derive energy from biological metabolism, and copy themselves by molecular self-assembly. When that moment happens, it very likely may be beyond our control....

PINR - Economic Brief: The New Role of Coal in Energy Security: "ore than any other energy source, coal increased its share of production, consumption and exports in energy markets during the last two years. The analysis of the current trends and policies in the energy industry suggest that a revival of coal is destined to last for the foreseeable future, which will have important consequences for both political decision-makers and investors.
"

Why Dollar Hegemony Is Unhealthy: The World�s Dangerous Dependence on the US Dollar Risks Hurting All - Social and Economic Policy - Global Policy Forum: "East Asian countries, especially China, have been particularly willing to run trade surpluses with the US because this has fuelled export-led growth. These countries rely on exports to keep their factories operating. Export success then attracts foreign direct investment that advances development. Undervalued exchange rates are vital for this strategy as it keeps exports competitive. Countries have therefore channeled their trade surpluses into dollars, keeping the dollar overvalued and enabling them to sell in the US market. This explains both the continuing strong demand for dollars despite the US trade deficit and the dollar�s dominance in official foreign-exchange holdings."

Why Dollar Hegemony Is Unhealthy: The World�s Dangerous Dependence on the US Dollar Risks Hurting All - Social and Economic Policy - Global Policy Forum: "With US Federal Reserve chairman warning about inflation, the US dollar is in the news these days, and there�s a sense that the world economy has become excessively reliant on the dollar. This reliance smacks of dysfunctional co-dependence whereby the US and the rest of the world both rely on the dollar�s strength, but neither is well served by it.

The US dollar is the world�s premiere currency, with approximately two thirds of world official foreign-exchange holdings being dollars. Moreover, many countries appear willing to run sustained trade surpluses with the US, supplying everything from t-shirts to Porsches in return for additional dollar holdings. This willingness to exchange valuable resources for paper IOUs represents a form of dollar tribute."

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "Undoubtedly, most of Russia's crude oil exports to Asia will go to China. Relations between Russia and China are at their strongest ever. In addition to unified foreign policy positions against Washington's regime change goals, Moscow and Beijing have cultivated close military and energy trade relations. China has also strengthened its energy relations with Iran and Venezuela, inking multibillion dollar energy investment deals with both countries in the past two years."

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "Russia's foreign policy has increasingly diverged from U.S. foreign policy in the past several years. During the past 18 months, conflict has replaced divergence. Moscow has assertively pursued stronger military, political and economic relations with countries whose governments have been targeted for regime change by Washington. These include Iran, Syria, Venezuela and the Palestinian leadership."

Are you reading the news? (July 2006) - News - PhysicsWeb: "The researchers found that the overall half-life distribution follows a power law, which indicates that most news items have a very short lifetime, although a few continue to be accessed well beyond this period. The average half-life of a news item is just 36 hours, or one and a half days after it is released. "

When humans transcend biology - The Boston Globe: "WITH EVERYTHING else that's happening in the world today, debates about whether humanity should embrace as yet nonexistent technologies that could enhance our physical and intellectual abilities and someday make us ``more than human' may seem frivolous. Nonetheless, a debate on ``transhumanism' has been going on for the past few years, with naysayers and doomsayers on one side, optimistic futurists on the other, and too little in between."

KurzweilAI.net
Tissue-engineering researchers are working on tissue replacement projects for practically every body part -- blood vessels and nerves, muscles, cartilage and bones, esophagus and trachea, pancreas, kidneys, liver, heart and even uterus.
A more immediate goal is to improve upon a multitude of smaller therapies: transplantable valves for ailing hearts, cell-and-gel preparations for crushed nerves, injections of skeletal muscle cells for urinary continence or new salivary gland tissue to rescue radiation patients from dry mouth.

Biologists Take a Turn at Raising Eyebrows - New York Times: "Engineers, particularly of the nuclear kind, are used to seeing the fruits of their knowledge refused by a doubtful or distrusting public. For biologists, this bitter experience has become common only recently as they have gained the power to manipulate the genes of crops, animals and people."

[PINR] 05 July 2006: Intelligence Brief: North Korea's Missile Tests
More revealing will be the response by China and South Korea. If Beijing does not take significant action against Pyongyang after the tests, it will demonstrate that Beijing will maintain its current status-quo policy toward North Korea. If Seoul refrains from harshly criticizing Pyongyang, it will demonstrate that it does not see the missile tests as a significant threat to its interests and will continue to pursue its policy of increasing economic ties with the North. The missile tests could, however, weaken moderates in South Korea and result in the country moving back toward the more hard-line U.S.-Japan policy toward Pyongyang. The coming days will be critical to assess changes in the power balance in this festering East Asian conflict.

People's Daily Online -- China now 4th largest economy, says WB: "China has overtaken Britain by the tiniest of margins to become the world's fourth-largest economy, according to the World Bank's latest calculations.

The World Bank said that by its official measure China produced US$2.263825 trillion in output in 2005, just US$94 million, or 0.004 per cent, more than Britain."

The United States, Japan and Germany remain the world's first-, second- and third-largest economies respectively, according to the bank, which posted its 2005 rankings on its website over the weekend.

ABS-CBN Interactive: "Yet, for all its engagement with the world, many observers and analysts also ask if the US is retreating from the international legal system. The Washington watchers have noted that, especially under the Bush administration, America has walked away from important agreements that its allies have embraced or espoused."

FileContent (Objet application/pdf) In examining these issues, this report offers an overview of four groups of factors that the
authors have identified as the root causes of conflict and insecurity in today’s world and the
likely determinants of future conflict:
1 Climate change
2 Competition over resources
3 Marginalisation of the majority world
4 Global militarisation

People's Daily Online -- Democracy makes a difference: "China and the West are at different stages of development. While the West is already in the post-industrial era, industrialization and the universal application of information technology has yet to be completed in China."