Cloudscape

As machines become more advanced, more and more humans lose their jobs as machines replace them, until only creative jobs will be left, but there will likely also be a time when machines may also become creative. However, as and when our computers become creative, they will become part of ourselves and so of our own species, for either we will already have found a way of uniting them with our own brain, or we would set these computers to the one task of finding a way to do so until they would, since this would be the most important thing we would need at this point.
There might be a chance that by this time, many people who remained unemployed would have become so decadent that they would no longer care to set these computers to any other task than to find better ways of stimulating the pleasure centers of their brain, but, fortunately, they would be in the hands of the scientists that invented them, and they would certainly choose otherwise.
Thus, even if humans and computers will not yet have united by the time that computers become creative, humans will still be needed for creativity until then, and, because creativity gives meaning to life and our need for meaning is so great, then as soon as they are more creative than we are ourselves, they would be fully focussed on the task of enabling us to have their creativity by unifying them with our brain.
As long as computers are not conscious, our own lives as humans could still have meaning, and as soon as they would become conscious, we would become one with them. In a time when the only work that is left is creative, everyone could likely achieve an equal level of creativity through cognotechnology, as the creativity of someone altered through that time's cognotechnology would be vastly greater than that of anyone who has ever lived anyway. This does not mean that everyone would become identical, however, as there are infinitely many ways of being creative; these need not be scientific or artistic, as they can also be social.
By the time when man and machine will become one, both will be quite different from what they are now. Machines will no longer be the contraptions we see today, as their machinery, just as our own, will entirely have advanced to molecular levels, whereas men will no longer be the animals that we are now, as our abilities will have advanced to cosmic levels. Machines will become more like organisms in structure as they achieve nanotechnological levels, as they will then make more use of analogous media like chemistry, rather than relying only on black-and-white digital media as they do now. Meanwhile, men will also become more like machines in power, as they, as well, integrate aspects of their mechanical counterparts into their bodies. Our computers will become subtler and more complex, whereas we will become stronger and more skillful.
It would seem that a unification of man and machine would make society shift further towards the material and away from the spiritual, but the opposite is true. Our spiritual as well as our material world will grow, but they will also grow toward one another. It's just that spiritual evolution comes more subtle than material evolution.
Moreover, when man and machine will become one, we will still have use for our biological aspects as well as of our electronic aspects, as both have their own unique qualities. Both man and machine will keep evolving, and either evolution will help the other, but both evolutions will themselves unify.
The unification of man and machine is only one aspect of a greater unification, that of mind and matter. Our power to change reality becomes so great that reality becomes like a dream, while virtual reality become so immersive as to become like reality.

When communism rose in the previous century, as is now clear, it was much too early for the world to be ready for it, and thus it remains to this day. The failure of communism has shown that people are too self-centered for it to work, and unless people change, it can never work. People work out of necessity or out of greed, but not out of love, at least for now.

Communism is bound either to fall or turn into despotism as long as it is not the choice of the people themselves, and because of this, the communism we have seen so far has little to do with its actual ideals. Nonetheless, it is probable that communism will be the next step in the evolution of society, though in another form than is seen today. However, today, it is still too soon for us to take that step.

Every kind of government has its place in the evolution of society, and when it is time for one to succeed the other, this happens almost spontaneously, not through revolution. There was a time that democracy could not have succeeded, or even republicanism. When a nation tries to get ahead of itself in this evolution, it is bound to turn either into despotism or into anarchy, and so evolution is usually the best way of change.

In the beginning of this evolution, despotism is the only viable government: at this time, republicanism cannot or barely succeed, as there is too little cooperation between people for it to work. At this point, cooperation must be imposed by a despot. It is crude, but the only thing that works at this point. Without a single ruling power, everyone would become a despot. There is, fortunately, the mercy that the worst despots are often the quickest to be overthrown by the people.

Every society begins in anarchy, and, if it lives long enough, it eventually ends in anarchy, in much the same form, but on a larger scale. Anarchy is viable in the beginning of the formation of a society, when people still live in small clans, which are much alike to a large family. Sometimes, these clans are communistic. Superficially, it seems that these clans are more cooperative than most societies, but this is only so because they are so small; so small, in fact, that every or almost every member of the clan usually knows every other. As these groups grow, this level of cooperation is no longer possible, because although they may be cooperative towards people they know, they are quite uncooperative towards strangers. The people of a clan are so little used to strangers that they will often kill them on sight. Wars between neighboring clans are frequent. If the people of ten clans were put into one tribe overnight, most would be dead before long.

There is a lot of cooperation in early societies, but little cooperativeness. The cooperativeness in societies grows as they evolve, until they eventually achieve the level of democracy and eventually (though this has never happened so far) anarcho-communism. So far, however, anarcho-communism is not feasible, as people have yet to achieve the level of unity for it to work.

However, we live in a world were everything is being automatized through robotics and informatics. This is already posing problems in many developed capitalistic countries as more and more people become (or remain) unemployed as they are being replaced by computers. Because of this, many countries already find themselves to be forced into a compromise between capitalism and communism, in which unemployed people receive benefits during the time they are unemployed.

As work in the primary and secondary sector continues to be automatized, and not everyone can or wants to work in the tertiary sector, more and more people will become unemployed. Eventually, the rate of unemployment will become so high that it can no longer be resolved in any sensible way, forcing the government into offering people benefits in order to help them survive.

With the trend of robotization, it is only a matter of time before we achieve a state where our necessities are provided for automatically or largely so, and so become almost free. Eventually, it will be possible to produce anything through software, and since software can be duplicated freely, this will mean that all necessities will be available in sufficient amounts without any work being done. In such a society, it would be nonsensical to still pay for software, as everyone could as well have all software there is if no one asked money for it. In a society where everyone has enough to survive and where software offers so many possibilities, many people will see software (which by then would encompass all art, science, and culture of civilization) as being more important than money. It only takes a certain percentage of the population to believe this before the system collapses, all the more because many of these people would themselves be artists and programmers. The more people would believe spiritual values to be more important than material ones, the more the capitalistic system would be subverted, and software would be hacked and shared illegally. Moreover, artists and programmers who would be of this view would release their works for for free, so that, eventually, those who would still charge for their works would be likely to be ignored, all the more because their work would be motivated purely out of greed, rather than out of love, and therefore be seen as being of lower quality. It is therefore inevitable that, at this stage, software would become free or practically free.

The need for socialism will increase with unemployment, and eventually, artists, scientists and social workers will be the only people left to be employed. Most scientists, many social workers and some artists (in some countries) are already being paid by the state, but in future, all will depend on the state for payment. For now, scientists, artists and social workers are still required to work in order to be paid, but this is only because much of their work is not fully creative and involves routine. However, as the routine component of their work will eventually be done by computers (robot scientists already exist for genetic research, for instance, as do computer programs for educations), only the creative and social components will be left, and neither can be done on demand. Ideas come best when they are not forced, which is the only thing scientists (and, of course, artists) will still be needed for, and the same counts for compassion, which is what social workers will still be needed for. When I say creativity, I'm not talking about the ability to remember the right idea at the right time, but the ability to think of new, unique ideas that have never been used before, as anything less can be done by computers. With compassion, I'm not talking about commitment, patience or politesse, but genuine and heartfelt sympathy, as, again, anything less can be done by computers. Attempting to enforce creativity will lead to loss of inspiration. Attempting to enforce compassion will lead to detachment (as is seen in many psychologists and psychiatrists today). Either how, the best ideas will come from people who seek them because of their passion for the idea, not from people who seek them because they must. The same counts for compassion. The true scientists, social workers and artists of the future will not need money as an incentive to work. Those that would, would be incompetent anyway.

Obviously, the unemployment would also put many people before the problem of finding meaning in their lives, or rather, it would confront them with that problem which was already there, now they could no longer seek distraction in vacuous mind-numbing routine. By and by, people would learn to find meaning either in love or some form of creativity.

Uncreative people who would want to become more creative could be made more creative through cognotechnology (technology applied on cognition). Because of the significance cognotechnology will have on humanity, it is extremely important that everyone be given equal chances, and here, we are once more faced with a need for socialism: the means of cognotechnology should be equally allocated among those who desire it, for if this does not happen, a disastrous technological divide will result which is so great that, over time, humanity itself would actually split up into two separate groups, one being vastly more intelligent than the other. The intelligent group would become more successful, so acquire increased access to cognotechnology, and so forth. Of course, the more intelligent group would eventually realize the necessity to give the other group equal chances.

In the past, communism has failed because the interests of the individual are capitalistic. In future, capitalism will fail because the interests of the individual will be communistic.

In an infinite, or even just a very large Universe, there must have been at least some race which had lived long enough to achieve a state of godlike power and enlightenment. It is very possible that most sentient species would not have come that far, but even so, part of them would have, and in an infinite and eternal Universe, it would not matter how few there would be. Even in a very large and very old universe, it would still not matter very much how few there would be. Considering that as many of sixty have been observed as of 20/12/2008 which appear to be in the habitable zone of their star, and considering that there must be many, many more which we have as yet failed to discover with our currently primitive means of observing exoplanets, it is nothing less than prejudice to claim that there is nothing "out there."
Given the pains we take to attempt to communicate with extraterrestrial intelligence, if there are indeed intelligences besides our own, at least some of them would have taken the initiative to send forth Von Neumann probes. These are hypothetical spacecraft which would travel from exoplanet to exoplanet to explore, sending back information about their explorations either waiting for instructions or, more likely, make decisions on their own accord which would, with sufficient AI, get most obstacles out of the way. Every time they would have reached another exoplanet, they would replicate, meaning that they would produce more of their own kind, much like robots in factories today are already produced by other robots. Upon their replication, their now greater numbers could explore yet other exoplanets. Supposing these probes were nanoscale or even microscale, their mass would be so low that near-light speed would not require much energy -- - this would merely require more advanced miniaturization than we have today.
This energy could be provided mostly from an external source when the probe is still on or near its last exoplanet, for instance by the other probes, which then renew their own energy before departing themselves. Once it would be in outer space, its speed would not be braked by an atmosphere and could theoretically go on for many light years if it survived - it could use smaller amounts of energy to slightly adjust its course, to avoid obstacles or to enter into orbit around its target exoplanet. Because of their low mass, they could also be much, much greater in number, so that the chance that some would survive would be greater. In addition, they would not require much matter to replicate, as a proper micrometeorite would be enough. The most important problem with smaller sizes would be that less information could be contained in it. If the probe contained enough computing power, it could learn to communicate with us; this AI could be contained within a single computer, but it could also be contained within countless nanorobots. In addition, if it contained enough information, the computer could improve our knowledge by itself, for instance, or even improve ourselves, our very DNA and our thoughts, so as to "uplift" us as it is called in transhumanist jargon. The question here, of course, is whether we would want this, but some people among us certainly would (transhumanists, extropianists, many Buddhists, many mystics).
We have ourselves nearly achieved such level of technological sophistication, being at least a few decades and at most a few centuries away from it, supposing that our further development is unhindered by extinction level events (the most likely of which would probably be world-threatening terrorism). Since there occurred no actual events whatsoever which threatened to wipe out the entire human race since it arose, we may assume that many sentient species would probably have achieved the technology needed to build nanoscale Von Neumann probes. These could have explored the Universe practically at near-light speed, with only relatively very slight delays to replicate every time they would have reached new exoplanets.
Assuming that there have been such civilizations in the galaxy (four hundred billion stars), then they would have found us by now if they had existed at least fifty thousand years ago, which is only about fifteen thousand years before the first traces of the Cro-Magnon man showed up. Sensing intelligent life, their probes could have given at the very least some information about their species and their position in the universe. Given another hundred thousand years, their species themselves could have interfered by controlling the probes directly, so that even if their AI was too limited to make them communicate with us, the species themselves would have done so - the question is then if by that time this species would still exist or have interest in communicating with us. This would perhaps not have been necessary, however, as it is likely that if such probes had been sent at all, their AI could perhaps have been strong enough to communicate with us by itself, albeit in some primitive way.
Even supposing that we have been alone in the galaxy, there must have been some civilization whose Von Neumann probes could have reached us from somewhere millions of light years away. There is no reason why the probes would ever stop in their mission to find life unless the species which had initiated it would also itself terminate it. Our local group contains 35 galaxies and is about 10 million light years across - it would therefore have taken at most five million years for any sufficiently advanced species in the local group to reach us, and there are many trillions of stars in the local group. On biological time scale, five million years is just a minute. Five million years ago, the first hominids started to arise, so it seems reasonable to assume that at this time there had been plenty of races elsewhere in the local group which had become more advanced than we are today; the same can still more or less be assumed for hundreds of millions of years ago - at this point whatever intelligence there was on earth was still unsophisticated, but there are plenty of planets, including, probably, habitable planets, which arose hundreds of millions or even billions of years earlier.
Thus again, the question arises: where is everyone?