If we give a fundamental explanation to the current human society, it is the four words "vertical efficiency improvement". The so-called "vertical" is compared with the self-organizing ecosystem.
Vertically expressed in human society's science and technology, politics, and economy, the centralization strength is continuously optimized, and strategies and tactics are emphasized as the basis for action, and at the same time, strategies and tactics are continuously refined to achieve a result that maximizes benefits.
Self-organizing systems are systems such as ecosystems and neural networks. For example, global warming, it is difficult for people to empathize with global warming, because this is an ecosystem thing, and most people's work is something linear to improve efficiency, work planning, learning planning, and therefore not Consider these effects on ecology. If people have physical problems, the first thing they think of is stomach pain, and the stomach is broken, but they will not think that eating before going to bed yesterday caused gastrointestinal problems. People are used to a linear life, and they will lack perception of systemic things. .
So why can all the mainstream technology, politics, and economy find that vertical efficiency improvement is the mainstream? Because all superstructures are built on economic foundations, so far we are still stuck in the productivity improvement brought about by technological progress in the industrial revolution Society.
The historical significance of the industrial revolution's efficiency-enhancing thinking to social progress is enormous.
In the age of agriculture, people’s lives for thousands of years have hardly changed. What has changed is the invention of some tools and the circulation of crop species, thereby enhancing agricultural productivity, tempering better weapons, and bringing more abundant food. Only papermaking Technology and printing have promoted the preservation and dissemination of culture. But people's quality of life has not been qualitatively improved for thousands of years, which is very scary.
Fortunately, the Industrial Revolution sprouted in the West. Starting from textile technology, the industrial revolution has greatly improved the efficiency of weaving. Due to the increase in efficiency and the reduction of costs, the price has been reduced and people’s needs have been increased. From then on, the industrial revolution has adopted the same thinking in the industries of food, clothing, housing and trade Sprout. We have automobiles, railways, airplanes, and the production line is also one of the most important inventions of the electrical age, forming the foundation of the entire modern industry.
The industrial revolution not only allowed us to live in more beautiful houses, but also made a qualitative leap in science and technology. People can reach particles, and can even do emission experiments one photon by photon. When technology can reach the smallest particles, medicine The security of is also continuously enhanced, and high-order physical theories such as Einstein's theory of relativity can finally be proved. The efficiency-improving thinking of the second industrial revolution helped various countries optimize the production efficiency of the primary industry, and helped each country establish a secondary industry to improve people’s lives.
Vertical efficiency improvement thinking has played a great role in history, but how far can vertical efficiency improvement go? Will it keep going?
If I were a magician, guessing the subconsciousness of all readers, I would say that everyone in the subconscious mind would think that the efficiency-enhancing thinking would last for a long time, otherwise they would not immerse their entire life in linear learning and work in.
However, just like Moore's Law, components can continue to become more refined, but they will eventually face the physical bottleneck of the smallest granularity. At this time, you will find that the road to improving efficiency through continuous small components has been exhausted.
Looking at the macro from a single case, all industries will enter the bottleneck stage of vertical efficiency improvement. As business services continue to be vertical, you will find that the scene needs to be made more and more detailed, and the algorithm should be made more and more detailed. The benefits and the costs that need to be paid are completely disproportionate, which is unsustainable.
Sartre said that man is a kind of "existence is nothingness" creature. Man himself is constantly building new scenes and exploring new forms of existence. It needs continuous development. This is also the characteristic that distinguishes man from animals. Animals have "essence". ", and man is a developing and dynamic existence that exists beyond the essence. From this perspective, mankind is also the first time to experience the efficiency-improving thinking of the second industrial revolution. Without much experience, no one knows how the next era will develop.
Sartre said that human existence is nothingness, and deduced "human freedom" on the basis of nothingness. This freedom is not based on powerful ability, but on existence, based on the most fundamental nothingness. Above. "
What makes it so different? It is the ability of people to build scenes. Man is not a part of the objective world. Man is a species that can dominate and promote the continuous change of technological and social scenarios. Humans and animals have different philosophical perspectives because of this. This is the fate of human beings after the Industrial Revolution as a truly intelligent creature, and it is also a huge stone of Sisyphus. He no longer has a stable life, he is always creating and changing the scene itself.
If you understand the nature of human beings, you still don’t know where "efficiency-enhancing thinking will develop". Let me tell you a story.
This story is currently known to be divided into 2 stages:
Once upon a time, a peanut exploded. Primitive, single matter burst out of the core at a very fast speed. At this time, the universe was full of collisions, dust, and primitive matter. The purpose of these ashes was to collide, aggregate and form a planet. Why To form a planet? Because the planet creates gravity, the planet creates the gravity and forms a galaxy. The interaction of the galaxies produces matter and conditions for material exchange.
This first stage is actually the preparatory period of the universe. In the philosophical sense, it has changed from a chaos to a vessel that can cultivate new existence. In the first stage, the universe created light, gravity, time, space, and all the primitive laws of physics. This is like human industrial efficiency-enhancing thinking-first laying the foundation for food, clothing, housing, and transportation, but it is definitely not the ultimate goal. just started.
This needs to talk about the second stage. When the universe has passed the efficiency-enhancing thinking, the purpose of the universe begins to change. Each planet is full of nitrogen and hydrogen. They synthesize organic matter and even form primitive fungi. After enriching the number of elements on the earth and storing a certain amount of "entropy increase", the universe began to enter the "self-organization" stage.
The universe we are talking about here is matter. If there is a God, then the first peanut in the universe is God itself, the foundation of the entire present existence. Every particle is a part of God, is dead, and evolved from a peanut, just like It's like the dead Pangu.
When life was born, everything was different. The power in this world was not just Pangu cells, but many spontaneous and self-organizing creatures began to appear and moved "on the head of God". .
My story ends here. What I want to explain to you is this relationship: from a peanut to the formation of a group of galaxies, this is a stage of vertical development, because all the power is triggered by the initial explosion What did the universe do for the first 10 billion years? Laying a foundation, doing an entropy increase.
What people say is: preparing conditions for the emergence of independent moving creatures. That is to say: "All vertical entropy accumulation and the creation of scenes behind all technologies are in themselves to create preparatory conditions for independent movement and thinking ability individuals."
Human beings are developed. Although it is not certain whether human beings are the only intelligent creatures in the universe, such intelligent creatures are definitely not sitting and enjoying their achievements. Human beings will always bear the curse of "Sisyphus's megalith". You see human civilization as well. An ancient civilization has a rate of elimination. Humans may be extinct due to their own mistakes at any time. Humans are not destined to succeed. It requires the efforts of generations of people who are not stupid to be worthy of rising intelligence. This is the truth of our world.
Having said that, I really appreciate Sartre's perspective.
Similarly, the universe is also developing. The current universe is not the same as it was 10 billion years ago, and it is not the same as the peanut. Things are always changing, and entropy increases and entropy decreases. As far as the universe we currently live in, the future is completely uncertain.
Then if we follow the broader evolutionary trend of the universe, you will find that all the efficiency-improving thinking brought about by the second industrial revolution is nothing more than a "preparation" for mankind's basic life. What humans are doing is a pyramid structure. I have used pictures to express this relationship diagram that contains overflow and depends on layers.
This is this:
What I want to tell you is that in industries such as clothing, food, housing, transportation, and other industries, productivity has really developed to a level sufficient for people to use decades ago. How many industrial enterprises and daily necessities companies are decades old? How long ago did the airplane high-speed rail exist? People's lives have changed so much in the past 20 years. Everything is because of the birth of information technology. People have found a new direction to improve efficiency, which is "mobile communication."
The changes in these 20 years are all due to the birth of a "mobile communications" industry. Why has this industry completely changed our lives?
In the past 20 years, information technology has played two core roles. The first is industry empowerment. With the help of online algorithms and systematic computing power, information technology has empowered all old industries and produced The direct benefit of the company is that the productivity and sales ability of the enterprise are further improved, and people's consumption needs and consumption costs are also continuously reduced.
The second core role is to improve efficiency. Everything can reach their end audiences faster. This means that there are unlimited possibilities for creating new scenarios, unlimited possibilities for optimizing services, and people’s entertainment life begins. Explosive development.
And a particularly interesting thing, you will find that after the emergence of information technology, the world has undergone a huge change, that is, in the B2C world, people suddenly have the Internet to start the C2C era. My generation remembers clearly that when there is no Internet, the world you live in and your perspective are both regional and passive, but with the Internet, your perspective is "netizens" and you can express yourself According to the opinion, everything is more transparent, leading to all funds and resources are beginning to tilt towards netizens, you can cluster online. When there are no Internet tools, this is unimaginable, because people don’t have tools to communicate and speak, and the Internet allows all netizens to participate in social life more globally.
Thanks to the Internet, thank you Tim Berners Lee!
However, when the Internet has completed the purpose of improving the efficiency of the industry, that is, at the node of the cold winter of the market in 2019-2020, some people still do not understand why. In fact, the essence is that the thinking of improving efficiency is also facing "Moore" in the existing business world. The same dilemma as the law.
In the PC Internet era, people engaged in blogs, social networking, search, multimedia services, and e-commerce. When the mobile Internet came, people engaged in the richness of instant messaging, travel, entertainment, and in short, one after another. , It looks like the law of Moore's law, in fact, this is not like, this is the fact that I am trying to draw inferences from you.
Now that we have so many Internet products, it looks like the universe has just formed a planet. The scenes of all products are controlled and designed by the company. In any field: social, e-commerce, and entertainment, there is no C-end scene. Place to build. The planets of Jinmu, Water, Fire, Saturn do not have any meaning of creating scenes from the bottom up.
Speaking: There are only top-down scenes, but no independent individuals create connections from the bottom up.
And our Mother Earth has done this. It has created tools that can be used for every small life. Life has achieved several great prosperity with the help of Mother Earth, and finally evolved into a human being after billions of years. The same smart brain gave birth to intelligent creatures that can think, form social relationships, and continuously refine and create social scenes.
The productive forces created by the second industrial revolution are like the earth with all the conditions for the birth of life. The earth allows small individuals to produce "deep connections" and make complex structural connections. For example, the DNA changes of many organisms are irregular, and the DNA of many microorganisms breaks and merges into other DNA strands, which mutate and allow natural evolution.
Whether it’s the ocean, rainforest or grassland, the essence of all organisms in the ecosystem is the same, that is: "As a biological entity of "Existence is itself", they themselves can generate fundamentally innovative value in the scene. Replacement, which leads to evolution."
For human beings such as "Existence is Nothingness", the essence of human beings is to maintain their own essence by constantly creating scenes. They must have the tools to build their own scenes so that they can achieve evolution.
Humans and creatures are essentially two things. I really didn't expect that Sartre's philosophy could be used to solve this problem.
Let me give you an overview. Although humans are different from living things, after comparing the efficiency improvement brought by the early days of the universe and the second industrial revolution, a new stage of new development is formed. On this basis, whether it is living things ) Or people (existence is nothingness, constantly creating new scenes) if you want to develop further, you need to have the "freedom" that is conducive to the development of your own attributes.
Biological freedom = free reproduction
And Sartre said that the freedom of man is: man does not "be" what, but always "becomes".
This means that people always have to fill their own: nothingness, the way is to create more new scenes, and top-down creation of scenes is much more difficult and inefficient than bottom-up creation. . And now all the giants are superstitious that top-down control can conform to the real development trend of human existence, which is stupid.
I once drew that when people build a campfire scene, human beings truly form human beings because they have the ability to build scenes.
Thanks to philosophy for helping me complete a difficult inference.
The conclusion is:
1. The industrial revolution faces the same limits as Moore's Law
2. The essence of mankind's "existence is nothingness" requires mankind to constantly create new scenes
3. In order to create new scenes, people will use everything, requiring Internet technology to build a function that can collaborate and build scenes for individuals with an extensible technical structure
Of course, there are still problems to be solved, which are also questions I left for myself:
1. After the collaborative construction scene is set up, what impact will it have on the world? When power presents a bottom-up structure, will humans make the same choice? As a self-organizing system, how will human beings deal with issues such as climate warming? Will there be new theories for new social formations? Will there be a better explanation for all ecological problems in the world? These are all what I am curious about, because you know, the world of vertical efficiency has already had a great impact on the world, and no one can be sure whether global warming is irreversible.
How will the self-organizing human power structure play a role in social issues?
2. Product design. This is the second step after I explained the question of "why there should be", which is "how to design". My initial idea was very simple.
I will make it.