Monday 29 January 2007

A collaborative new world simulation “Third Life”

Idea Summary
To create a virtual world whose economy is based solely on human need, and not on profit. The Earth has more than enough resources to feed the world.

There are various degrees of belief and convictions in another possible form of world order, and you don't have to be an anarchist, Marxist, green or an anti-globalisation activist to observe the following: the world we live in yields over-production on the one hand, with one third of the world threatened by obesity, whilst another two thirds endures wars and starvation.

The last nail in our planetary coffin will be hammered in by a system which puts profit above long term survival of the earth’s ecosystem.

Necessity & Possibility
Not all would agree on the possibility of another economic system but if there is one thing a growing number of people tend to agree on it is the necessity for a new world order rather than suffering one dominated by profit, greed, wars, poverty, savage urbanisation and plundering of the earth’s resources.

What?
This new world order can be built!

At least we can simulate what a world would look like if it was built on other rules.
“Second Life” provides an interesting example if in negative. It has indeed been perfectly possible to create a simulation of the world in which we live, where people’s avatars interact.

In some ways it is a shameful waste that such wonders of imagination and technology are being used to replicate a lot of what's wrong with our world: everything there is for sale including sex.

We propose to build a brand new simulated world where production will be solely geared to fulfilling human needs; where the billions of dollars spent every day on improving military arsenals can be totally redeployed feeding bodies and minds; where the average working week falls well below 30 hours.

What is the use of millions of hours spent in the banking industry?
Answer: profits lining the pockets of a few, millions falling into a spiral of debt.

Billions of people, when they can hang on to a job, leading depressing and unfulfilled lives, working in a lot of cases 40+ hours producing nothing, but feeding the profit machine.

How?
This is open for discussion. The project could take the form of an open source development environment and we will need technical people to drive a number of activities.

There needs to be some kind of collective terms of reference which will define what rules will define this new world. "Gamers" or people joining this environment will be able to get familiar with the running of a world geared to human needs.

How would food manufacturing run now that it is no longer based on profit?

Overproduction will disappear and the working week will shrink to what is only necessary to sustain human needs, and not 20 or more times leading to wastage and destruction of food as well as pollution from intensive farming.

A large number of industries based on profit will disappear or shrink, liberating millions who will be able to work much less but in 100% productive ways.

The possibilities are endless.

Phase 1
The first phase does not need expensive graphics or complex user interfaces. There are a number of technical strategies already identified.

The most ambitious one would be a bunch of developers to re-use and re-deploy Second Life code which is now available in the public domain to build the foundation of our new world.

The least ambitious would probably be the use of Flash or a similar mocking-up tool to build a prototype and generate enthusiasm in the project.

This combined with a wiki containing the rules of our new world could become the foundations on which more sophisticated versions could later be built.

---Watch this space---

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mika,

if this should make sense I think you have two choices:

- build a "top down model" where all parameters are set by a different world authority

- build a "bottom up model" where in fact mid-range models are simulated.

like "how do me manage a region" or "living in a village and managing distribution and real life problems".

I cant help but feeling you have to speak about restrictions: what do we want to suppose and what do we want to invent?

Anonymous said...

Hello Mika,

These are beatiful thoughts, though the real game can be infinitely more fun to play.

best,

george dafermos

mika said...

Thanks both of you for your kind and helpful comments. What we need to do now is spread the word and find developers, programmers, graphic designers who want to collaborate on this project part time and in total freedom. The concept is a bit like a Wikitopia where we elaborate the rules collectively and come up bit by bit and piece by piece with the "rules" or what makes up this virtual world. Ideally I would like to have a small scale prototype built in Flash once we have a few rules defined or any lightweight environment before going deeper into the technology.

Anonymous said...

Hello all,

I'm not a programmer, but find the idea a very inspiring one and would at least participate in the Wiki, where we could discuss rules (did I get this right?). One of the most difficult questions is, how to manage distribution without a market system, that means at the same time without money as intermediary. I'm anxious to discuss appropriate alternatives. Hopefully there are enough interested techies...

mika said...

I have set up a wiki which will help elborate the rules:
http://wikitopia.wikidot.com/

Anyone wanting to participate can join and jointly edit.

See you there

Mika

Anonymous said...

Well written article.