Jonathan Kolber’s book paints the future we want to create!
A far reaching elucidation of many of today’s (and more importantly, tomorrow’s) global problems, but he has also done that rare and difficult thing – provided a thoughtful and detailed solution to them….The coming economic disruption that will be caused by automation and robotics in the next few decades will create enormous social upheaval – and whether that effect is negative or positive depends on how many people will seriously embrace the principles in this book.
This is an unusual book that you have to read. Most works on “the future” are familiar treatments of fairly well-known issues, whereas Jonathan Kolber has given us exactly what the title suggests—a celebration of the marvelous breakthroughs ahead and their profound possibilities. Well-researched and beautifully written, this book will inspire you.
Well-researched and instructive, this is a must-read for people interested in creating a more positive and meaningful society.
An excellent book which is a par excellence achievement that connects 26 widely disparate domains. Very well written…. every chapter and page had great insights.
A monumental work that not only examines the human condition from numerous perspectives but, based on scientific research into many areas, offers real solutions to the many problems we humans of this planet face today and will most likely face tomorrow. Jonathan Kolber has done a masterful job.
The research and writing of this book has obviously been a massive undertaking.… I started to read it as just another attempt at idealizing a Utopian Society. I had all the usual misgivings about his glossing over of inconvenient truths, or leaving gaping holes in his logic or reasoning. However, the further I read, the more my misgivings were addressed and answered convincingly.
Jonathan Kolber has created the blueprint for growth and effortless prosperity by shifting from the competitive model to the cooperative model.
Takes a systematic look at every function of a civilization: from economics to well-being to governance, and paints a picture of a civilization that is based on abundance instead of scarcity.
If ever there was a book that came close to sufficiently collecting all the most intelligent ideas and thoughts on potential consequences of future technology, Kolber has achieved it with A Celebration Society. He addresses a wide array of topics ranging from government, education, energy, ethics, access to life’s essentials, lacking only a discussion on issues of private property. It is a rare treat to find a book with an intriguing subject, an engrossing writer, and a well researched topic. In A Celebration Society, we have all three.
A Celebration Society is a monumental undertaking and a masterful presentation. The depth and breadth of your research is impressive and convincing.
The analysis of the issues that will force change is solid. The proposed solution requires a large number of cooperative people, a vast amount of shared capital, and a new form of government.
Nothing short of Mr. Kolber’s proposed celebration society will address this long ago warning from Albert Einstein, ‘I don’t know what weapons will be used to fight WWIII, but WWIV will be fought with clubs and stones.’
Mr. Kolber has set forth a coherent, thoughtful and brilliant alternative for our consideration, in the form of what he calls A Celebration Society. I see his dedicated work, if sufficiently and properly endeavored, as having the power to become the rudder steering us towards a future, without which, to paraphrase Paolo Soleri, all other accomplishments may turn out to be nothing ‘but way of wrongness.’ It is a wrongness which is tending to be on automatic pilot.
Sooner or later we will have to face these consequences. In summary, I see Mr. Kolber’s intellectual and poetic reasoning as being what needs to become our shared commitment.
“A meticulously researched, fascinating and thoroughly engaging speculative-nonfiction treatise on a post scarcity, technologically-unemployed society during an age of instantaneous information, zero-marginal-cost abundance of resources and decommodified human labor utilizing existing and emergent technologies.
Of particular note was Kolber’s philosophical reevaluation of what it means to be a valued, “unemployed” human being in a society that traditionally values paid work in a game of artificial scarcity. His broad, far reaching knowledge of societal pitfalls as we careen toward the end of capitalism.
His ideas are incredibly thought-provoking, sound and should be carefully considered as an achievable and celebratory alternative to a potentially troubling time in our near future that will usher in a new industrial revolution and upset the very foundations of Western Society.”
“I came across A Celebration Society (ACS) several years ago and was inspired by the breadth of Jonathan Kolber’s vision. While utopia’s spell out a single vision, Jon has suggested ways in which different groups may explore alternate futures; where ‘paid work’ is no longer the norm because machines provide our daily needs. The way forward is not for the faint-hearted. It requires three things: capital, land and people with a pioneer mindset and the required skills.
The logistical problems are daunting but surmountable. It will require careful planning, and an experimental mindset. One of the best aspects of the ACS proposal is commitment to evidence-based decisions and use of the scientific method. Silicon Valley has proven that this can be used to roil industry after industry, successfully. I’ve long wondered why no one is proposing the same for societal design. Well, now someone is.
Of course, Silicon Valley is essentially an amoral place—neither moral nor immoral. It’s all about making money. That’s fine, as far as it goes, but it won’t suffice for a society. Fortunately, ACS proposes that a society be built in which the core values are decided first, and then all major decisions and laws flow out of those values. This is how a society should operate, and it’s a major deficiency of existing ones.
There’s no shortage of unused land that could be repurposed to create such a society.
Speaking personally, I do appreciate how Jonathan—after declaring UBI a ‘mirage’ in one of his articles—completely reversed his position after listening to my MOUBI proposal. He demonstrates the ACS principle of letting evidence drive beliefs, not the reverse (which is all too common among people who have decided that their opinions should be facts).
These new societies could become tomorrow’s tourism destinations; Disneyland for adults (but with activities for children as well). Tourism revenues could provide most of the income they need to operate.
It’s a bold, audacious proposal, perhaps the most audacious I’ve seen in my decades as an executive in diverse industries. Yet I think something of exactly this nature will be required if we are to escape the major crises now looming on the horizon.
Jonathan admittedly doesn’t have all the answers, but more importantly he’s created a framework in which we can find them, together.
“For those of us who work in Artificial Intelligence and also think about what the future will look like on a twenty to one-hundred year timeframe, A Celebration Society is a very welcome contribution to the literature, and the topics it addresses seem eminently sensible.
For everyone else, it presents a set of ideas and relatively deep elaborations that may seem shocking or implausible. Beginning with the prospect of widespread technological unemployment, and flipping that on its head in a kind of “Copernican Revolution,” the book envisions how we might exchange potential dystopian outcomes for a positive (and yes, somewhat utopian) “celebration society.” It asks and attempts to answer the crucial question: as we transition from an economics of scarcity to one of abundance, how do we want society to be organized to take advantage of this shift to benefit us all?
The initial premise of the book is that automation, and in particular artificial intelligence, will progressively and ultimately eliminate the need for human labor in meeting human consumption demand. We have heard this sort of proposal (almost always presented as a worry) many times before; historically, while technological progress usually causes some employment disruptions, it also ends up creating more jobs than it destroys in the long run.
There is something different this time. The author briefly argues for the premise, based on continuing exponential improvements in computing power and the impact of “narrow” (task-oriented) artificial intelligence. I have offered some further argument at the end of this review, as it is crucial for those who are skeptical. In any case, the author has elected to emphasize the what, why, and how of his post-scarcity vision, and does so to great effect.
After posing the issue and providing initial context, Kolber sketches out details of his vision for what a post-scarcity society would look like. The essence of this vision is that instead of seeing the elimination of the need for human labor as unemployment, we see it as leisure. Instead of having to work for a living, we play at life. This does not mean no one does anything “productive,” but it completely changes the nature of motivations and productive outputs, with concomitant changes in how society is organized.
It is crucial to understand that Kolber presents one particular Celebration Society as his vision, without imagining that it is correct, perfect, or preferable to everyone. He wants to “spark discussion of a different path,” and he says “This book should not be the final word on a Celebration Society; far from it. It is only the beginning.” You will find ample details to disagree with, some practical, some ethical, some technological. This is all within the book’s intent to spur consideration of the more general idea, which is that eliminating the need for human labor can be a boon rather than a curse, if appropriate organizations of society evolve. He is proposing a testable hypothesis, not a dogmatic political prescription.
The tail of the book elaborates some of the technological capabilities that we will need, or that seem likely to enhance, a Celebration Society. Think of it this way: if everyone stopped working tomorrow, where would we come up short? Kolber details how abundant energy, abundant matter, and organization of intelligence will fill the gaps. Again, the specific technologies he addresses may or may not be realized, but these are the areas in which research must focus. Then he moves on to technologies that are not strictly required to close the gap, but will make life even better in a post-scarcity world. Some of these, like the “mortality option” (living longer or indefinitely), might seem a little off-topic, but are important because they work well in a post-scarcity world and poorly in one of scarcity. Isn’t it a sign that something is wrong with our societal organization, that people living longer is generally viewed as a big problem?
In summary, anyone interested in the future of humankind in a world of continuing and inevitable technological advancement should read A Celebration Society. It will give you a jump start toward thinking about our technological reality in a very different way – where automation and technological disruption represents opportunity rather than calamity.
* * *
As mentioned I want to briefly argue for the idea that recent innovations have put us on a path to eliminate the need for human labor, even in the face of the historical evidence that technological progress generally creates more jobs than it destroys.
Machines automate physical labor; computers automate cognitive labor. In both cases, however, there are many tasks that machines and computers cannot perform, because those tasks require a level of cognitive flexibilty that neither mechanical devices nor software as it is historically constituted exhibit.
One reason for this is sometimes called “Moravec’s Paradox.” In the early days of computing, it was thought that the “higher” human cognitive features like logical thinking would be difficult to build, but the sort of things that animals can do, like perceive the world, would be easy. It turned out to be the opposite. Logic, mathematics, and other fully “symbolic” operations were straightforward in traditional software, but no one knew how to, for example, identify objects visually with software. In the past twenty years, we have learned a great deal about how human brains perceive and produce actions in the world. The foundations of these capabilties have been implemented in an AI technology called “deep learning.” A deep learning system, from an architectural perspective, looks a lot like the human visual, auditory, or motor cortex.
While this leaves us still a long way from AI with human-equivalent cognition, it vastly increases the sphere of tasks that can be addressed with automation. Computer systems can learn to flexibly recognize patterns in circumstances, with sensitivity to context, and therefore make the kinds of decisions that only humans could previously make. Robotic control systems can make sense of the world through visual and tactile sensors and navigate flexibly within it, without the brittle and catastrophic failures, or need for a highly constrained environment, that characterized older systems. This enables not only autonomous vehicles but autonomous mining, manufacturing, and distribution.
As these capabilities are deployed in the economy, they have the potential to eliminate a very large swath of jobs, including many that require skill or education to perform. They will likely eliminate the low-paying, unskilled jobs that have sometimes served as transitional or fall-back work for those displaced. And the jobs created in the expanded industry of automation will require very high levels of education and skill, such as mechanical engineering or software development.
Economies and markets are extremely robust, and it is of course possible that the labor market will adapt to these changes, too. A Celebration Society further asks: should it? Perhaps the current system is a treadmill that we can step off, even if there is not a wrench approaching to stop it abruptly.”