I stumbled across the TV lecture 'The Third Industrial Revolution: A Radical New Sharing Economy' just after it had started and the title drew my attention. Initially I confused Rifkin with Rivkin, probably due to my overheated brain in the current heatwave where I live, but they have nothing in common except Russian Jewish immigrant parents. The first is an activist and the second is a convicted insider trading stockbroker.
Rifkin undoubtedly has the charisma, tenacity and determination that revolutionaries need, fortunately he is a pacifist and uses the pen rather than the sword to fight his revolution.
‘The Third Industrial Revolution’ is a thinly disguised modernisation of Karl Marx’s Communist Utopia manifesto (1848). The lecture includes extracts from Rifkin’s books, THE EMPATHIC CIVILIZATION (2009), THE THIRD INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION (2011), and THE ZERO MARGINAL COST SOCIETY appropriately published on April 1st 2014.
The principles of ‘The Third Industrial Revolution’, most notably carbon policy, have been adopted and legislation drafted by Rifkin for several socialist and communist bureaucracies and administrations including the European Union, United Nations, Germany and China.
Rifkin has assembled and orchestrated teams of like-minded scientists and organisations over the years and these are the ‘scientists’ that bureaucrats refer to when defending their position.
You might say that Rifkin is responsible for the various carbon taxes around the world, but it would be irresponsible of me to suggest that.
The British philosopher J.S. Mill pointed out that many if not most decisions or beliefs were based on emotional response to an argument rather than on facts or logic. If one attempted to refute that decision or belief with facts or logic it would have an opposite effect by reinforcing that decision or belief.
The hidden promise of Utopia and/or Armageddon within ‘The Third Industrial Revolution’ would trigger an emotional response and quite likely produce an emotional decision. It is therefore unlikely that any decisions made will be reversed by the administration that made them.
There is no doubt that Rifkin has considerable political influence and power which is growing and is alarming political analysts around the world.
There is a similarity in Rifkins projections for the future and Science Fiction (Sci-Fi) published over the last century. Many of the Sci-Fi writers in the ‘Golden Age Of Sci-Fi’ were intellectuals and scientists in their own right, and their predictions for the future in technology have come true in many cases.
Some writers predict that the technology will produce Armageddon rather than Utopia, others feel that technology, similar to Rifkins ‘Internet of Things’, will produce a ‘Surveillance Society’ that will oppress and/or enslave Humanity.
I am a fan of the work of Serbian geophysicist and astronomer Milutin Milanković and believe that weather and climate changes occur in cycles (Milankovitch cycles) that can be predicted within reason.
Global warming occurs in cycles of about 1000 years the last two being the Medieval and Roman Warm Periods, the next one is due about now.
Rifkin’s promise to stave off global warming by closing coal fired power stations and making us all vegetarians thus seems ridiculous. Nevertheless J.S.Mill’s reasoning suggests that many people, especially children, will still think they are going to die in 2030 if Rifkin’s suggestions are not implemented.
Reducing marginal cost to near zero, creating a sharing economy and population globalisation have been discussed for over 150 years and mostly dismissed as impractical, improbable or unpopular. Notable successes include lending libraries and ‘free’ entertainment on the internet where it is easy to reduce marginal cost.
There are some communes and of course monasteries and nunneries that live a sharing economy, but most Western societies see it as something belonging to the middle ages, the poor, or primitive societies.
Some TV shows and advertisements are deliberately including mixed race couples in relationships, presumably to help convert the conservative public to population globalisation. As an aside same sex couples are becoming prevalent too.
Internets of renewable energy, driverless mobility, Smart Things (IoT) and 5G communications are all at the Bleeding Edge of technology and apart from some innovative or early adopters will have some way to go before they can be accepted by the majority and relied upon.
The adoption of battery farms for electricity baseload while in its infancy has given power suppliers the incentive to close some gas driven backup generators thus reducing costs. Hopefully that is not a bad decision.
Driverless mobility is not new, it has been used in aircraft, railway and shipping for decades. Those systems usually have three computers just in case one goes wrong, and an alarm to warn the human supervisor. Even so there are air, rail and sea disasters.
Driverless cars are a completely new paradigm that will rely heavily on IoT and very fast 5G communication. The roads infrastructure is not designed for autonomous vehicles although with the advances in AI it may be possible to use current road markings and signs if they exist.
Big Data is welcomed by Rifkin and one of the German political parties. They see it as an untapped opportunity and want it put in the public domain. It is surprising just how many apps collect data on smart phone users let alone PC mining.
Although the data miners claim the data is scrubbed of its identity the data nevertheless leaves a fingerprint that a person can be identified from. At one time the data collected was called a data pool, now its called a data lake.
Privacy is now an obsolete word.
Many of the methodologies Rifkin uses in his lectures and books reminds me of the comments that Hitler made when he brainwashed the German people into becoming 'The Third Reich'.
'Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way round, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.'
'I use emotion for the many and reserve reason for the few.'
'He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future.'
References
Activist Facts - Jeremy Rivkin
Watch VICE’s New Documentary, 'The Third Industrial Revolution: A Radical New Sharing Economy' (1H 45m)
Armageddon
Greenhouse Gas
Is Today’s Climate Warmer than the Medieval and Roman Warm Periods?
Milankovitch cycles
Prosumer
Commons-based peer production
Marginal cost
Technology Adopters: Innovators, Early, Late and Laggards
Tesla’s Powerpack battery farm starts killing fossil fuel backup plants in Australia
An introduction to the surveillance society
Big data definition
Predictions for Big Data Analytics in 2019
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Posted 20190303 0930 Australian Eastern Time