Communitas: Means of Livelihood and Ways of Life (Addendum)

Addendum:

Previously I forgot to mention an important distinction that the Goodman's stress. They make a point of stating that "standard of living" as we use it is a social construct and often bears little or no relationship to the concept of "subsistence."

The other thing I may have forgotten to mention, at least outright, is their stress on regional autonomy. Not necessarily full autonomy, but that each city can support most of its population locally, through farming and local industry. One of the points they stress is that with the post-World War II tooling and prevalence of electricity nearly every home has the ability to be a miniature factory. Sewing machines, power tools, and so on are available in the home, so production could take place there.

The other point they make in this regard is that in terms of production having multiple assembly lines in one building or small geographic area is no necessarily more efficient. When a surplus of goods ia generated in one location it must then be transported, possibly great distances, to the place where it will be used. The need for all this transportation may outweigh the "economy of scale" in one large factory versus multiple smaller factories where smaller pieces are locally assembled into the usable whole.

I found those discussions particularly interesting.

Communitas: Means of Livelihood and Ways of Life

Structure:

The first things the authors do is outline what the book is about, how they hope the ideas will be received, and what the limitations of those ideas are. It is a self-imposed limiting of the book by the authors. The first section is more or less a decree of aspired intention.

The Goodman’s then move on to discuss historical city plans. Their discussion is primarily a critique of the old plans. Paris and Moscow are discussed a lot as is the development of New York City. The issues come from the old plans of green belts and suburbs which allowed richer people to get away from the density of the cities. This exodus causes blight as money moves away from the cities and the services provided by cities are duplicated.

To resolve these issues the Goodman’s suggest much smaller metropolises. They discuss how our urban sprawls push the forests and farmland away to the fringe so that we often have to travel hours and many miles to see any nature. That we build cities as hubs of commerce and industry and suburbs for living and that the inflow of people causes massive congestion.

What’s kind of funny is this book was written in 1947. And it is perhaps even more relevant now than it was then.

One of the primary goals of their suggested cities is to have farms, residential, light industry, and sometimes heavy industry all contained within a five mile radius. They suggest smaller produce farms be closer to the city and that heavier industry and commercial and livestock farms be pushed to the outskirts among the forest areas. How is this all resolved and supporting a large population? Housing density and the incorporation of houses, school, and parks all in the residential areas while having light industry within walking distance. The suburban homes so familiar across U.S. cities become small produce farms.

They draw a distinct line between subsistence, the essentials to support life, and the economy of goods and services and everything we desire but are not necessary to live. One thing that is certainly interesting, and that I see in my daily commute while living in the DC metropolitan area this summer, is their complaint about transportation.

Time spent transporting goods or a person is essentially life wasted. As we construct urban sprawls we make necessary transportation and middle men to transport goods and people. The time adds up tremendously, I spend three hours a day in transit. The same is true for food. In all our major cities most of the food has to be trucked in from at least thirty to fifty miles outside the city, if not farther, just so that we can have people live an hour away by train or car to all feed the economy of the city. Essentially, we are too concentrated.

It may seem like I agree with all points of the book, but I was not a big fan of the structure (more of which is to come) and I found some ideas questionable.

The Goodman’s, and I think it is Paul Goodman who writes this, sees a necessity for structure in adult human lives, that children should spend most of the time running free (almost sounding like reading is a waste of time for children) and that everyone should have access to high society, be it theater or whatever. To me this discounts academic pursuits children may be inclined to, discounts the idea that adults may like to think and have free time, and discounts that culture exists in the barn dance just as much as it exists in the ballet. That part and tone did not sit well with me.

Anyways, if you’ve read this far and are still interested chances are you should read the book. I am not doing it justice, but I am not really trying to. The point more so is to bring out some of the ideas proposed and to perhaps entice another reader.

From the proposal there is another discussion of old plans. This discussion not only includes what the plans entailed but was more about how they were implemented. And from there the Goodman’s discuss the need for an interim plan.

One of the key factors of an interim plan and any plan according to the Goodman brothers is its flexibility. When planning for people and large groups of people change will occur. A key point they make is that any plan must include the fact that the plan may eventually not be followed.

From there it is another review of the limits of previous plans and a statement of the limitations of the ideas and information within the book. The book kind of opens, ascends, peaks, and follows the same path back down that it used to get to the peak.

Lastly, there is an appendix with a proposed plan for Manhattan Island laid out in detail. This I am currently finishing and will not add any more regarding this book.

More Than Human

(Technically taken from a book report I wrote for my Biotechnology Intellectual Property class...)


The most refreshing part of More than Human by Ramez Naam is the tone and point of view. Mr. Naam is upbeat and positive about the future of genetic and prosthetic research, and the incorporation of those technologies in both treatment of disease and future use in human enhancement. The book, published in 2005, will always suffer from being frozen in time acting as a bookmark in human technological and medical developments because some of the research mentioned in the book will come to fruition and other research will have been abandoned.

I share Mr. Naam’s worries regarding regulation being imposed that would impede progress. I disagree that this poses a significant barrier to the further development of these technologies or their use in human enhancement. Simply, these technologies will provide a competitive edge for those who are able to successfully implement them. Anything that reduces health care needs, increases human strength and longevity (and thereby the useful working life of an individual), or a computer implant that allows for better communication, memory, or faster calculations will necessarily be implemented. 

The largest barriers in the United States are likely to be a lack of allocated funding by the government and resistance from members of the Religious Right who would see such enhancement as ‘defiling the sanctity of the human body.’ Such notions are likely to provide great resistance to early adoption and may even lead to such technology being outlawed. Once the competitive edge and benefits are proven on foreign soil it will not stop those who can afford such procedures from obtaining them or a black market arising to cater to the demand. At this point the government will be forced both to legalize and attempt to regulate such enhancements or to dedicate resources in an attempt to stop all such implementation. Attempting to stop all implementation would likely meet with similar results to “The War on Drugs” which has met with limited success abroad and led to a large healthy black market domestically.

The issue of funding will be the second large hurdle in the United States. There is a lot of money in pharmaceuticals and health care. From a profitability standpoint they are interested in demand for their product. Permanent immunity or curing of a disease is less profitable for those corporations than a onetime cure or treatment. It will come down to a cost benefit analysis regarding the potential profits of a onetime treatment applicable to the effected population versus a recurring treatment that provides a constant revenue stream. With the current state of corporate law and Citizens United as a standing decision it is the duty of the corporation to maximize shareholder profit and when practicable, an obligation for a corporation to lobby Congress in such a way as to keep the business profitable. Lobbying will likely result in less funding towards permanent cures and preventative treatments, unless such treatments can be mandated to the population as a whole, this would interfere with First Amendment rights and personal autonomy. Basically, if there is no profit in it, private industry will not stand behind it. This scenario would be less likely to play out in a country with nationalized or socialized health care. Research can be conducted at the tax payer’s expense and the implementation, which would result in lower private profits and lower public costs would more likely be pursued. The result is that preventative and permanent genetic treatments are likely to rise outside the United States and may not be adopted until they are necessary to remain competitive in the global markets.

The technology described by Mr. Naam, as stated before, is a bit dated at times. Some things have taken new directions. Things I wish he had discussed more were brain plasticity and the limitations presented between humans and prosthetic devices, including implants, by bandwidth. One great hurdle as we are able to increase sensor density and create bio-inert implants and interfaces with the nervous system will be whether we overload the natural bandwidth of such nerve bundles and fibers and how we will get around them. Granted, at the time the book was written, it seemed like one or eight electrodes was a lot, and not with ever decreasing silicon printing size, and the accompanying transistor and microchip densities, such interfaces seem obsolete.

The most important point that Mr. Naam makes is that we need to fund research into both the curative applications of biotechnology and genetic treatments as well as their potentials for human enhancement. A problem he brings up, and that cannot be stressed enough, is that technologies and treatments, like EPO are out there and used medically but have potential to be used for enhancement. Without research into the enhancing properties such technologies they will continue to be used at great risk to the user because little is known of what amounts are safe. It will be safer for the general population to know the safe uses and risks rather than operating blindly in ignorance.

The most optimistic points of the book were in the paragraphs describing successful human application. The use of gene therapy to cure a little girl’s disease in India and allowing her to recover something so completely debilitating that her life was forfeit and now she has enjoyed a normal childhood. There is a man who had an implant and can now communicate with text, something that would benefit from cellphone technologies such as T9, allowing predictive words and faster typing. These are the beginnings of developments that will allow for future human computer interface and pave the way for gene therapy in order to treat disease and individual’s genetic flaws. One thought that Mr. Naam presents, and one that studying biomedical engineering and these potentials I had not considered is that any given enhancing gene may come some detriment such that a “perfect human” could not be created but that we could choose certain propensities while sacrificing others. This gives strong encouragement to map the genome and to know as much as possible about the gene’s effects.

This book provides an optimistic outlook for future human use of genetic engineering and treatment as well as human and computer integration. It is a photograph of one point in time, that hopefully we will surpass its expectations. At the very least, it is nice to have a public opinion out there encouraging a march towards progress rather than debating whether we can still go forward and remain “human.” One thing Ramez Naam says loud and clear throughout More than Human is: ‘Go forward humanity, toward progress!’

Key point I missed in the report:

In the book there is a discussion about hypothetical cloning of humans. Which, sounds really interesting. Most naysayers are against this because it will result in a copy of a person walking around. One that will be a "clone." While genetically it is true, they will be a clone the reality is that such a person, say born 10 or 20 years later than their genetic original will grow up in a different world, a different environment, and so on. More so, if we can use genetic engineering to eliminate diseases and genetic defects as we go along, all the better. To me, at the moment, my main objection comes from lack of methods for revitalizing the DNA we would be cloning from. Basically, right now you clone something and it is the age of the original's DNA only in a developing body that is undergoing very high rates of cell division (also known as a bad idea). So... technically it's a moot point at the moment because we're not technologically where we need to be for it to work.

As for cloning organs to greatly reduce biological rejection I am all for it!

Introduction

Simply put... I've taken to reading a lot more recently, and while currently a law student and not getting to read as much as I like, it is in fact a summer and I have more free time.

My plan is to parse some thoughts here as I go along in my reading, maybe discuss some books I've read in the past, and so on.

Feel free and comment, discuss, and argue regarding the books.