davidstephens.net

Science, Transhumanism, Free Culture

..welcoming all bots, friends of David Stephens, and other people called David Stephens typing random URLs since September 2007.

Welcome to my website. As you can see it's still under construction. Even when it has been constructed, for the foreseeable future I expect it will just consist of a few links, to which I'll add some comments, and perhaps I'll say a little about my interests, and what I'm about.

For the meantime, something for your satisfaction.

Noam Chomsky and Peter Jay discussing the economic and political organisation of anarchist societies

This is something I like to share with people. A lot of people, having identified much that is wrong about the world, and tracing these problems back to the economic system, are left feeling resigned that we can do little to change things fundamentally. Global capitalism, it seems, is the end of history; liberal democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others. Other people have a deep conviction that a better world is possible, but when pressed on exactly what kind of alternatives they have to offer, are embarrassed to have to respond with only vague ideas, before being promptly branded a communist. For these people, this is for you.

At present, the capitalist order seems so deeply entrenched in the west that this particular vision seems rather remote. However, I do believe that it is highly relevant to understanding recent trends in Latin American politics. It is also very relevant to understanding the present system, and to understanding that it is unjust and non-inevitable. Chomsky and Jay discuss the difference between applying these forms of organisation to an industrial and a pre-industrial society. My own view is that there will be an even greater difference between applying them to our present society, and to a society affected by the profound technological developments of the next half century, whatever that society may look like. It may well be the case that that society will simply be shaped in large part by laws of history that are unknown to us.

It's not so straightforward being a revolutionary in a time where technology is revolutionising every aspect of life. The role of the revolutionary will not be in planning and seeking to realise a better society, but in steering the revolution brought about by the forces of technological progress, and seeking to neutralise the poisonous elements that seek to corrupt that revolution. The stakes could not be higher though. It could lead to a post-scarcity world, or to the extinction of the species.