The growth dynamics of the Internet and the long wave theory

The phenomenal growth of Internet users is slowing down and we expect to approach a world limit in the next decade of about 14% of the world population. On the basis of a historical analysis this basic innovation is placed in the context of the Kondratieff cycles (K-waves) and the associated Generational-Learning model. A quantitative analysis using logistic growth curves allows us to evaluate its growth dynamics and to assert that the Internet is coming to the end of the 4th K-wave downswing or innovation structural phase and will then embark on the 5th K-wave upswing or consolidation structural phase. The debate about the future of the K-wave pattern is considered, specifically the factors bearing on the continuation or alteration of the pattern and the trajectory.     

The struggle for space: Past and future of the space race

This article is geared toward shedding some more light on what may be the next space race and its contours.Space flight is undoubtedly a human achievement of the second half of the 20th century, and probably the most audacious one of the past century. The space race started suddenly in the 1950s and has grown explosively during the following two decades, but decreased steadily after the 1970s. After the 1990s, however, we have seen a shy rebirth of space-related activities, when many other actors (states) entered the stage, adding up to the agonizing role of the two-actor piece that we have witnessed during the so-called Cold War.The opening years of the 21st century provided a more complex narrative for space exploration. At the start of the new millennium a new technosphere [1] emerged, dominated by what is used to be called as the Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), with the Internet playing the leading role among the bandwagon of technological novelties that appeared during the twilight of space activities. In despite of the fact that artificial satellites represent the very backbone of the global communications system, space activities seem to play a secondary role amidst the apparently accelerated rate of change concerning the technological systems of the present technosphere. But, as it is demonstrated in this paper, things are changing, and very probably a renewed space race will unfold in the coming decades.A question may be placed: what happened? Why the Earth stood still with regard to the race toward the cosmos? Answer: futurists, even prestigious ones like Herman Kahn and Arthur Clarke, did not consider the existence of socioeconomic long waves (Kondratieff waves, or K-waves for short) with their two decades long economic downturn, which has contributed to the deceleration of space-related activities.Analyzing the worldwide evolving scenario of space-related activities during the last eighty years under the framework of the succeeding K-waves and applying some technological forecasting tools, namely the logistic analysis, technological surveillance and intensive data mining, scrutinizing more than 7500 events occurred in the period 1930–2010 related with space activities, it is demonstrated that the space race like the one that we have witnessed until now is a natural growth process that has saturated at the dawn of this century. The same analysis demonstrates that a new growth process in this field might be nowadays under way with contours very different from that imagined by futurists and science fiction writers sixty years ago. Also the main trends in the usage of launching vehicles and satellites are framed and discussed in this paper.     

The biological determinants of long-wave behavior in socioeconomic growth and development

In this paper, it is claimed that the effective causality of long-term macroeconomic rhythms, most commonly referred to as long waves or Kondratieff waves, is founded in our biological realm. The observed patterns of regularity in human affairs, manifest as socioeconomic rhythms and recurrent phenomena, are constrained and codetermined by our natural human biological clocks, themselves the result of instructions impressed in the human genome and human cognitive capacity by the physical regularity of fixed cosmic cycles. Considering that a long wave can be conceived as an evolving learning dissipative structure consisting of two successive logistic structural cycles, an innovation cycle and a consolidation cycle, and applying considerations from population dynamics, chaos theory and logistic growth dynamics, a Generational-Learning Model is proposed that permits comprehension of the unfolding and time duration of the phenomenon. The proposed model is based on two kinds of biological constraints that impose the rhythm of collective human behavior — generational and cognitive. The generational consist of biologically based rhythms, namely, the Aggregate Virtual Working Life Tenure and the Aggregate Female Fecundity Interval, both subsets of the normative human life span or human life cycle. The cognitive consist of a limiting learning growth rate, manifest in the alternating sequence of two succeeding learning phases, a new knowledge phase and a consolidation phase. It is proposed that the syncopated beats of succeeding effective generational waves and the dynamics of the learning processes determine the long-wave behavior of socioeconomic growth and development. From the relationship between the differential and the discrete logistic equations, it is demonstrated that the unfolding of each structural cycle of a long wave is controlled by two parameters: the diffusion-learning rate δ and the aggregate effective generation t_G, whose product maintained in the interval 3<δt_G<4 (deterministic chaos) grants the evolution and performance of social systems. Moreover, it is speculated that the triggering mechanism of this long-term swinging behavior may result from the cohesion loss of a given technoeconomic system in consequence of reaching a threshold value of informational entropy production.     

Technological innovation and the long wave theory revisited

The pattern of basic innovation clustering associated with Kondratieff long wave downswings raises questions when we consider the 4th downswing. There is increasing concern expressed that we may be facing “innovation starvation” or “innovation stagnation”. Among the questions: Is the internet a cluster of one? Or should the smartphone, ipad, Facebook, icloud, etc. be considered basic rather than improvement innovations as well because of their huge societal impact? Is the long wave pattern exhibited for the past two hundred years continuing or is it breaking down?     

How many singularities are near and how will they disrupt human history?

This paper reviews a large number of approaches that have been used for considering technologically driven profound societal change. We agree with Vinge's suggestion for naming events that are “capable of rupturing the fabric of human history” (or leading to profound societal changes) as a “singularity”. This is a useful terminology especially since a mathematically rigorous singularity seems impossible for technological and related societal change. The overview of previous work is done within the context of a broader look at the role of technological change within human history. The review shows that a wide variety of methods have been used and almost all point to singularities in the present century particularly in the middle of the century. The diversity of the methods is reassuring about the potential robustness of these predictions. However, the subjectivity of labeling events as singularities (even well studied past events) is a concern about all of the methods and thus one must carefully pause when relying in any way on these predictions. The general lack of empirical research in this area is also a concern.Quantitative considerations (by proponents and opponents) about past singularities or future singularities often confound two types of metrics. The first type is essentially related to diffusion of technologies (or bundles of technologies) where the logistic curve is empirically well established as the proper time dependence. The second type of metric is for technological capability where hyper-exponentials are empirically well established for their time dependence. In this paper, we consider two past singularities (arguably with important enough social change to qualify) in which the basic metric is alternatively of one type or another. The globalization occurring under Portuguese leadership of maritime empire building and naval technological progress is characterized by a metric describing diffusion. The revolution in time keeping, on the other hand, is characterized by a technological capability metric. For these two cases (and thus robust to the choice of metric type), we find that:

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  People undergoing profound technologically-driven societal change do not sense a singularity.

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  The societal impacts depend in complicated ways on human needs, institutional variables and other more uncertain factors and thus are particularly hard to project;

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  The societal impact is apparently not determined by the rate of progress on either type of metric or by projections to mathematical points with either kind of metric. This finding supports the existing concept that social change due to technology is a more holistic phenomenon than can be characterized by any technical metric.

In the final section, we use these empirical findings as the basis for exploring the possibilities for and nature of future singularities. In this we speculate that the potential for a future strong singularity based upon computational capability does not appear particularly probable but that one may already be occurring and is not fully noticed by those (us) going through it. Other possible 21st century singularities (life extension and fossil fuel elimination are two examples considered) may also be already underway rather than waiting for the predicted mid-century changes.     

Energy scenarios: Toward a new energy paradigm

Primary energy sources exhibited regular long-term logistic substitution trends from the mid-19th century through the third quarter of the 20th century. This analysis, based on an extension of the Fisher-Pry substitution model, accounted for the observed historical shifts of primary energy use from sources of wood, coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear. In the mid-1980s the substitution dynamics was replaced by a relatively constant contribution from oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear power, and hydropower. However, a major factor in energy use dynamics in this recent period was substitution of conservation and efficiency for actual fuel use. The energy efficiency is measured as the ratio of economic activity to the rate of energy use (energy intensity). To incorporate these data into the logistic analysis, a method for estimating the fraction of energy saved by the increased efficiency was used. With this interpretation, energy efficiency fits within the substitution model. Furthermore, to identify indications of future energy scenarios, as well as to test the logistic substitution analysis, another statistical approach using ternary diagrams was developed. The consistent results from both logistic substitution and statistical analysis are compared with recent energy projections, trends in decarbonization, Kondratieff waves, and other efficiency measures. While the specific future mix of renewables and nuclear energy sources is uncertain, the more general logistic dynamics pattern of the energy system seems to be continuing as it has for about 150 years now.     

Power law behavior and world system evolution: A millennial learning process

Is social change on the scale of the human species a millennial learning process? The authors answer in the affirmative, demonstrating that world system evolution, viewed as a cascade of multilevel, nested, and self-similar, Darwinian-like processes ranging in “size” from one to over 250 generations, exhibits power law behavior, which is also known as self-organized criticality. World social organization, poised as it is on the boundary between order and chaos, is neither subcritical nor supercritical, and that allows for flexibility, which is a necessary condition of evolution and learning, and these in turn account for the major transitions marking world history and serving as the general framework for long-range forecasting. A literature review confirms the close affinity between evolution and learning, mathematical analysis reveals the crucial role of the learning rate as pacemaker of evolutionary change, and empirical evidence supports the concept of a cascade of evolutionary processes. The general equation describing world system emergence shows it to be a project whose current period is now 80% complete, suggesting that its major features might now be in place.