The Internet
SWIFT
Social Media
The Human Mind
The above are all good examples of substrates, or base layers. They are all types of medium through which information flows. Whilst they do nothing of themselves, nevertheless, without them life would be vastly less rich.
Without the internet, we would have no websites, no social media, no easy global communication.
Without SWIFT, the international interbank payment system, it would be much harder to send money to other countries. International trade would be more of a drama.
Without social media, we would struggle to keep up with friends not living in our town.
And without the human mind, none of this stuff would have any meaning! And we would not be able to forge our own opinions, concepts and beliefs.
So, call them what we like - base layers, substrates or media - human culture and society would not be possible without them.
One of the truly amazing things about a good base layer is that it allows novel forms to manifest.
No one predicted, when the internet was born, that Airbnb or Uber would be one result. But they rocked up and have now transformed the lives of many ordinary working people, giving them novel options to make money and improve themselves.
This process of entirely new, novel forms arising from base layers is usually termed emergence. What is so exciting about it is that it allows useful, transformational possibilities to happen, without us having to plan them! This is radical.
It’s radical because, traditionally, if we wanted to invent something new we had to go through a long process of conceptualising it and trying to bring it to fruition. Our frontal lobes had to work overtime. Then we had to struggle and fight to get it physically completed and in front of people. And, as often as not, there was little to show for it at the end of the day.
With a good, neutral substrate that whole process is much easier. Amazing potentialities can take shape and manifest with minimal work. The possibilities for transforming our society on a global scale are vast and largely untapped.
I say “neutral” because that aspect is key. If we try to direct the substrate to achieve our own limited ends, then we vastly limit the emergent possibilities that can result from it.
For example, the global payments system SWIFT was first rolled out in the early 70s and it quickly revolutionised interbank payments. Countries all over the world were super-keen to sign up because it allowed them to better participate in global trade and create income for their people. It was just an awesome system that made things more efficient.
Then, in 2012, SWIFT was withdrawn from the country of Iran, as a means of punishing them for their nuclear enrichment program.
Suddenly, the world woke up to the reality that SWIFT was actually a Western invention, controlled by the West. It was not purely an awesome idea through which people’s lives might get better. It could also be used for geopolitical ends.
SWIFT had become weaponised.
What had been simply a great way of making people’s lives better had become a means for one geopolitical group to leverage power over others. In the years that followed, other countries began planning their own systems for interbank payments, to avoid the possibility of being punished by the West in the future.
The potential for SWIFT to create exciting emergent possibilities was reduced as trust lowered, and as alternatives began to slowly manifest.
This same process of weaponisation has now taken place in other base layers too. During Covid, social media quickly found itself weaponised to promote certain narratives surrounding the pandemic, and to marginalise others. Even though Covid is now off our front pages, the weaponising continues, with certain viewpoints deemed suitable for propagation and others treated to marginalisation or censorship.
This process is now becoming extended to the human mind. If we are living in the West, we must uphold vaccination and hate Russia and China. If we are living in Russia or China, we must do something else. Everywhere I look, I see the human mind becoming regarded by the State (whichever state) as simply a resource that can be weaponised for its own ends.
Regardless of our political opinions, I think it is important to grasp that allowing our mind, our social media, or our banking systems to become weaponised like this comes at a price. That cost is to greatly diminish their potential to allow novel, spontaneous forms to emerge.
Weaponised base layers reduce the possibility of emergence.
With each social media platform, each bank and each human mind that becomes weaponised, so our future potential becomes more limited.
With each social media platform, each bank and each human mind that stays open, or becomes unweaponised, our future potential is vastly increased.
Unweaponised, unbiased and open base layers are intrinsically attractive to the human mind because, I suggest, deep inside we know that they can free us. We somewhere recognise their potential to allow liberating possibilities to emerge.
A week or two ago, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk bought Twitter, unquestionably a platform that, whatever you think of it, had become considerably weaponised. Will he unweaponise it, and keep it that way?
I suggest that it would be considerably in his interest to do so. Neutral base layers are like neutral therapists. We trust them more because we can see that they don’t have a hidden agenda.
Unweaponised base layers are intrinsically attractive, because of the potential they invoke. They both represent and facilitate a future so potentially amazing it could liberate our planet and our species. And this can happen naturally, without our minds having to labour endlessly trying to create it.
Unweaponise your mind!
Interesting perspective. However no single individual is going to solve the problem of weaponisation, as the fate of Swift shows. If one person or one state owns a platform, then sooner or later that platform is bound to be turned or "weaponised" to suit that person's interests. Seems to me the best solution lies in "open-sourcing" the platform to allow some form of democratic oversight.
The weaponization of these base layers is a form of diminished thinking. It points to weakness, insecurity, and essentially a decline in capacity by institutions and their leaders to function at a high level. It reveals a loss of vision and a marginalize perception of the world. The elite are the marginalized because they cannot see what many of us see.
Several years ago, I came up with a perspective that I call the Two Global Forces. There is the global force of centralized institutions of governance and finance and there is the global force of decentralized networks of relationships. I believe the former is descending in its capacity to fulfill the promise that they have claimed as their manifesto. I believe the latter is ascending because of two things. One is the emergence of digital technologies that allow for immediate interaction with people around the world. As a result, a global world is becoming much more a local world because we relate to people in the context of the specifics of their lives, rather than through news headlines and restrictive narratives. It also means that these base layers will eventually be restored to their once vital purpose.
Two is the recognition that you describe here of neutrality, though it is only neutral in regard to the political binary conflicts that are thrust upon. Actually, I am finding people moving toward a third pole, which is the recognition that the spectrum is not left / right or capitalist/socialist. Instead, it is global/local. The global functions like a simulated reality, The Matrix captures this picture. The local functions in terms of direct relationships focused on local needs and opportunities. It is difficult to deweaponize if our perception of the world remains a weaponized one. If, however, we turn our focus to our local communities, then we can begin address issues that have a real impact upon people.
I like very much what you have to say here. Thanks.