Here is a set of insights from Marc Andreesen discussing how the trend to a fully digital economy has radically accelerated with SARS Covid-19, and, while I wasn’t planning to discuss this topic early on in the life of this blog, I found this set of ideas to be succinct and useful for my own Humanity 3.0 sausage-making, and will definitely want to reference these ideas again soon.
In a nutshell, the shift to a fully digital economy is an important path-dependent step that can be further leveraged into the vision that I’m imagining for Humanity 3.0, i.e. creating a blockchain technology layer to perform all of the functions of the “government middle-man” so that we can move to a digital and distributed model of human political and economic organization not premised on violence.
Here are Marc Andreesen’s observations:
- Covid has not been nearly as destructive as it could have been
a. We’re coming out of it years early, with many livelihoods and businesses
preserved…and much of the credit goes to technology - Examples of what technology did for us:
a. Most amazing Covid technology story has to be the vaccines
b. Covid provided the final push for health insurance reimbursement and therefore mass adoption of telemedicine
–> State-of-the-art healthcare will be available regardless of geographic
location
c. Due to technology, virtually all knowledge work in the economy simply kept going
–> Banking, insurance, communications, media, healthcare, etc. kept going
without interruption
d. Many small businesses reached out to new customers virtually and even expanded their businesses under Covid
–> Restaurants and grocery stores pivoted immediately to delivery and
contactless payments
–> Therapists, fitness instructors, tutors, all went online
e. Schools and colleges went online (not perfectly, but they overcame their inertia)
f. Online and streaming entertainment made being home enjoyable
g. The internet provided human connection
–> Social media kept people from feeling totally isolated (particularly sick
people)
h. Many churches, synagogues, and mosques also went online
–> Weddings, baptisms, and funerals - Possibly the most profound technology-driven change of all is that we no longer need to live where we work
a. The best jobs have always been in the bigger cities where the quality of life is inevitably impaired by the practical constraints of colocation and density
–> This has also meant that governance of bigger cities can be truly terrible, since people have no choice but to live there if they want the good jobs
b. It turns out that many of the best jobs really can be performed from anywhere
–> People really can live in a smaller city or a small town and be just as productive
c. This is a permanent civilizational shift – perhaps it is the most important thing in Andreessen’s lifetime, a consequence of the internet that may be even more important than the internet
–> Permanently divorcing physical location from economic opportunity gives us a real shot at radically expanding the number of good jobs in the world while also dramatically improving quality of life for millions or billions of people
–> We may finally shatter the geographic lottery, opening up opportunity to countless people who weren’t lucky enjoy to be born in the right place
Humanity 3.0 