[P2P-F] 'THE SINGULARITY & SOCIALISM' - AN INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR C. JAMES TOWNSEND

Mon Jan 11 20:55:50 CET 2016

Came across to this interesting interview on Facebook (via Miguel Caetano) :

The Singularity is near! That’s what a lot of us futurists have been planning for since we first came to understand the exponential growth rate of information technologies. What this technological singularity entails, however, is an entirely different question, and one of which requires radical thinking. One such author, C. James Townsend, has ventured himself on the quest of answering this very question – not just from a scientific or technological viewpoint, but equally an economic and political one as well!
In his newly published book, [easyazon_link identifier=”1503034739″ locale=”US” tag=”seriou03-20″]The Singularity & Socialism: Marx, Mises, Complexity Theory, Techno-Optimism and the Way to the Age of Abundance[/easyazon_link], Townsend explores past ideological ideas that critically examined the trajectory of our economies in relation to scientific and technological development, in doing so to reach a commonly accepted conclusion of which were shared by these various ideologies – a post-capitalist era of abundance and transcendence!

I was especially happy to finally get to speak with Townsend and discuss his work, his vision of the future, and what we need to do to ensure this future materializes. Below is the entire transcript of our conversation. Enjoy.

C. James Townsend, author of The Singularity & Socialism
Q: I’m very happy to be speaking with you, James. First and foremost, what inspired you to start writing this book of yours, The Singularity & Socialism?

A: It’s a pleasure B.J. I love the opportunity to be interviewed by such an author and futurist as yourself.

You can say that this book was over 35 years in the making and was a culmination of my many diverse interests.  I have one of those omnivorous minds and from my early years I had a thirst to know, especially to know how the world worked and where our ideas came from. Besides being an avid sci-fi fan in my early years I got a penchant for looking behind the scenes, to rummage through the dust bins of history as it were, for all of those juicy tidbits you never get in history courses in school. So I careened through such diverse topics as the history of philosophy, comparative religions, occult history, Gnosticism, Eastern and Western mysticism, physics, science and technology.  When I discovered Fritjof Capra’s The Tao of Physics in my early 20’s I thought I was in heaven and it was one of the reasons that I became a physics major at first in college. The Holographic Paradigm by Karl Pribram was also a real game changer for me. Though I didn’t finish my physics degree, which I regret now, I did receive a B.A. in Integrated Studies pulling all of my varied interests and elective courses together. One course that had a profound effect on me was a course on Christian Mysticism in which I was introduced to Teilhard of Chardin.  I thought that somehow he had read my mind as I had already come to a complex interrelated and evolutionary vision of the universe; his works set me on the road to eventually discovering the Russian Cosmists, which many Transhumanist’s have now done. So I had a great base and background in science that also became united to various complexity ideas which have fascinated me throughout my life.

In my late 30’s I became more interested in political and economic philosophy and its history. I hate to admit it now but I had a short “conservative period” and read works by Russell Kirk and a few other conservatives, I eventually left that path as the “conservative” writers became more and more constipated in their thinking. Along the way I one day discovered and became enamored with Ayn Rand and read through most of her works that are in print. A footnote in some book I was reading mentioned The Law by Frederick Bastiat and that led me to Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Murray Rothbard and the Austrian School of Economics. As an avid enthusiast in science and technology and its potential to change the world for the better I also ran across Dr. Julian Simon’s work The Ultimate Resource and then went on from there to read more extensively on Techno–Optimism.  Also Ray Kurzweil, Matt Ridly, Kevin Kelly and so many others along the way were also a great inspiration to me.

But the funny thing that got me into researching Karl Marx and his thought was Ludwig von Mises himself. I read his magnum opus Human Action and then his tome Socialismand I became enthralled by the “socialism calculation” debate and then Hayek’s “knowledge problem.”  I went on to read everything that was in print by Mises and a lot by Hayek. It was their debate with the Marxists and discussing the various issues, especially Mises comparing and contrasting Marxism with classical liberal theory as propounded by the Austrian School that really captured and fired my imagination. So I delved into reading Marx himself and any work on the socialist calculation debate or knowledge problem I could get my hands on. As I researched I began to see so many areas of convergence and cross fertilization that I was just stunned. When I came across Complexity Theory and Complexity Economics in my mid 40’s the die was cast and the Rubicon was crossed. I was brought around full circle and came to see a holographic quality, an interrelationship between all of these various ideas; Marxist, classical liberal, techno-optimist, and complexity theory that was just fascinating.  All of this percolated in the back of my mind until I had an epiphany one day and my mind leaped forward in an extrapolation based on classical liberal and Marxian economics teaching that as capitalism progressed it brought down prices as productivity constantly increased. Classical economists and Marxists know this as the law of immiseration. Suddenly I saw the entire steam of economic ideas, Marxist and classical liberal, unite into one stream leading to the same Omega Point, the event horizon of a coming economic singularity where all prices drop down an asymptote toward zero as technology advances exponentially.  It was this that really inspired me to write the book. I had to share that vision, that there is a way forward using “valid” economics to reach, for lack of a better word, utopia.

Rest of the text http://www.seriouswonder.com/singularity-socialism-interview-author-c-james-townsend/

Sent from my iPad
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