[Ummon]

This is a thread where you can post ideas for technologies that you think could/should be invented so that power, money, influence, etc can be decentralized. Often on this forum I see people express their frustration over elites manipulating x, y, or z to concentrate wealth, money, and power to their own benefit. To me, this is an engineering problem that is solvable, and here are some ideas for technologies that could help:

Universal translator (perhaps if people from all over the world could communicate they would be less inclined to fear the unknown based on propoganda)

Digital p2p currency networks (like bitcoin, but eventually utilizing quantum encryption to prevent tampering and perhaps even using flying servers like the pirate bay http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/03 ... 66472.html)

Synthetic biology & RNAi [create a genetic virus to rewrite human dna to cure ills like retardation, blindness, deafness, and perhaps down the line greed (correlated to specific genetic sequences that control the vasopressin receptor), stupidity (correlated to deficits in prefrontal cortex development), sociopathy ("), etc. Perhaps by being able to manipulate physical differences that result in power disparities (differences, in height, muscle mass, intelligence, etc) we can simultaneously mitigate differences in power between individuals. Sound far fetched? http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 144831.htm ]

[onemalehuman]

Doesn't take technology to make that happen. It takes technology to make centralization possible.

Necessity is the mother of invention and time is the father of desire to rule the moment while passing through this atmosphere as one does, never the same added details twice conception to death and decomposition.

To control space there must be value to time, to motivate others to conform there must be incentive to deny what real is in plain sight.

Technology does that. seeing is believing as understanding what remains out of sight doesn't show value to things never the same presently.

Clocks to measure relative time frames is technology that measures natural balances adding together presently all the time. The nature of individual characteristics gives relativity meaning and means to apply conflicting interpretations of the same instant among relatives of the same genetic backround/ancestry.

In society you can pick your friends, but you have to live with your relatives. Another way of saying that as a joke from decades ago, "One can pick their friends, but they cannot pick their nose." There are two meanings to picking the nose on one's face. Genetic placement and finger cleaning the nostrils.

Vocabulary is another technology using biomechanics to engineer specific sounds tied to symbolic letters of limited characters creating unlimited vocabulary in any tongue or subjectivity.

What centralizes influence? Capitol ideology
What symbolizes power? ideas capitalizing off what if.
what does money represent? Which ideology won the debates.

If Religion and politics define first and third world orders then what represents the second and fourth corners of this planet?

Academia and economics? odds and evens. Reality only places the odds nobody knows what real is in plain sight.

[Oxymoron]

Make capital/money/influence centralized allows us to survive as a species.

[AFAIK]

Make capital/money/influence centralized allows us to survive as a species.

Are you expecting all other species to go extinct?

The OP should look at this thread for some examples-
viewtopic.php?f=85&t=149378

[Technology]

Thinking of far out into the future...

Any miniaturization of the means of production. Speculatively, going from what are primitive 3D printers now to things alike replicators in the far future. If such things could act, in effect, as chemistry sets, each person may source natural materials in such a way that they reduce the monetary costs of even the raw materials required.

Also miniaturization of agriculture. Plants lose efficiency for our nutritional purposes because they have other factors to consider in their environment. To some degree we've bred this out of many strains (resulting for example in more nutritious bananas that are dependent on us to breed), but the ultimate extension of this would be employing the same chemical mechanisms that plants use without any of the extraneous stuff that keeps plants "fighting fit" in a natural environment. Each home could have an agriculture room, or perhaps it would simply be something that could be incorporated into a "replicator". Locally, vertical farming could also serve the community.

The miniaturization of energy production such that it can be decentralized is the method to power these mechanisms. There's more room for solar cells to gain efficiency before their ultimate limit, and certainly room to get cheaper.

Wouldn't more advanced gadgetry for the home require that we must funnel all our financial resources into engineers? Not really. As personal robots come about, and become more advanced, they will be able to perform maintenance on our devices as well as each other. If each person owns a robot, or two (in case one needs to be fixed), then they are much more independent from paying out for the labor of others than they otherwise would be, and ultimately this will mean that financial wealth accumulation becomes a smaller part of society.

[Eran]

The thrust of your response seems to be technologies that minimise the need for trading and specialisation.

I would like to suggest a different perspective, namely technologies that make enforcement of national government laws more difficult.

Encryption, digital currencies and continuing trends towards knowledge-based industries making production highly-portable and trading impossible to monitor by central authorities is the direction to go.

[Ummon]

Transportation technologies which make transportstion easier, less resource intensive, and faster. The more that people can move about freely/easily the more they can interact and create networks that are more complex and parallel.

Space colonization technologies if centers of power/influence can be established in other locations in the solar system then perhaps they could act as checks to terrestrial power.

3d-printing technology could help free us from dependence on factories from turn raw materials into finished products at least to some extent.

[Ummon]

Encryption

Meshnets are apparently one way of adding at least one layer of protection to internet communication

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2 ... ratch.html

After the extent of the NSA's clandestine PRISM program was revealed, privacy advocates like the Electronic Frontier Foundation urged users to start using relatively simple email encryption programs like Pretty Good Privacy and GNU Privacy Guard. But even those can be daunting to set up. A better idea would be a decentralised network that relies on encryption by default.

This is the case with Hyperboria, the virtual layer that underpins meshnet efforts in the US. Hyperboria is a virtual meshnet because it runs through the existing internet, but is purely peer-to-peer. This means people who use it exchange information with others directly over a completely encrypted connection, with nothing readable by any centralised servers.

When physical meshnet nodes like those in Maryland and Seattle are set up, existing Hyperboria connections can simply be routed through them. At the moment, Hyperboria offers a blogging platform, email services, and even forums similar to reddit.

Encryption is the starting point. Computer researcher Caleb James DeLisle wrote software called cjdns which allows the Seattle Meshnet nodes to use Hyperboria and keep all communications between them encrypted. Instead of letting other computers connect to you through a shared IP address which anyone can use, cjdns only lets computers talk to one other after they have verified each other cryptographically. That means there is no way anyone can be intercepting your traffic.

The Seattle Meshnet has just completed a successful crowdfunding campaign for meshboxes – routers that come preloaded with the cjdns software needed to join Hyperboria. Users will just plug the routers into their existing internet connection and be ready to go on the virtual meshnet – or a local physical meshnet when one becomes available.

Some form of encryption is already in use across much of the internet, but to be useful it has to be ubiquitous. Web services like Gmail, for example, let you log in using an encrypted connection. But when you send an email it leaves Google's encrypted garden and hits the open web in clear text for anyone to read. With Hyperboria's peer-to-peer connections, every single link in the chain of communication is fully encrypted. Intermediaries that handle traffic cannot even see what kind of traffic it is, let alone read any email. Use the purpose-built hyperboria.name email service, and your communication becomes untraceable.

[Sithsaber]

Super 3D printers/ replicators.

[AFAIK]

This guy uses Google glass to produce on the ground reports of protests.
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2 ... tests-vice

As communications technologies become cheaper and more ubiquitous more people will become journalists, bypassing commercial and state networks.