1. Virtual Environments for Real Societies
The Immaterialisation of Aspirations (consumer led global sustainability) Towards the Caring Society
David Leevers
VERSAssociates
Virtual Environments for Real Societies
London
Beyond the Information Society: Reconciling People Planet and Progress

2.   The Problem
Western lifestyle assumes continually increased consumption – values and aspirations are linked to material progress
Western/Global middle class of 1,300 million is growing by 30 million per annum
The planet cannot support 10 billion people at a European level of quality of life.
“Fortress Europe” alternative, for 5% of world population, is politically and ethically unsustainable
Ethical and Regulatory Push (exhortation, carbon tax, etc.) is unreliable and reduces quality of life. It might reduce Total Environmental Stress but will increase “Total Social Stress” a “Caring Society” perspective is needed
Beyond the Information Society: Reconciling People Planet and Progress

3. The Immaterialisation Switch 1, IST Pull, not Regulatory Push
The IST community has been hiding the solution for 40 years – Moore’s Law – the most IST-intensive products double in power every 18 months.
Can this “alchemy”, turning base materials into silicon, help achieve global sustainability?
Immaterialisation is the process of replacing a material intensive component of a satisfier of a human needs with an IST intensive alternative.
After the “Immaterialisation Switch”, costs follow a dematerialisation curve greater than the 2% typical of material intensive products and up to the 40% of Moore’s law.
Beyond the Information Society: Reconciling People Planet and Progress

4. The Immaterialisation Switch 2, Materials
From Material-Intensive Satisfier to IST-Intensive Satisfier
Time
Dematerialisation records
of about 2% per annum
Material Intensity
The Switch,
Immediate drop in material use
Dematerialisation possibilities
of up to 40% per annum
But – There are no one-for-one replacements for human Desires/Wants PCs do not replace cars, VR headsets do not replace rooms
Beyond the Information Society: Reconciling People Planet and Progress

5. The Immaterialisation Switch 3, Costs
From Material-Intensive Satisfier to IST-Intensive Satisfier
Premium Market Gimmick, prestige, fashion and affluent users
Dematerialisation
2% per annum
Cost
Dematerialisation possibilities
of up to 40% per annum
The Switch,
Immediate rise in cost,
small market, immature technology, unproved service
Mass Market, Commodity
Time
Beyond the Information Society: Reconciling People Planet and Progress

6. From Rebound-D to Rebound-I
The steady cost reductions of dematerialising products and services increases market size
e.g. cheaper cars and fuel leads to more travel
Rebound-I
Customers may spend the sudden release of funds from the Immaterial Switch on material-intensive luxuries
Rebound-I can be avoided by attracting the spare cash to new IST intensive immaterial satisfiers.
Windfalls often spent on novelties or on the
insurance and pensions that replace having
children as protection for old age and disability
Beyond the Information Society: Reconciling People Planet and Progress

7. Immaterialisation Switch 4, The ASSIST Vision
Rebound-D
Dematerialisation
Rebound
Fast Moore’e Law Dematerialisation of IST-intensive satisfiers
Total Environmental Stress
Culture Changes,
many Immaterialisation Switches
from maturing IST
Year
2000
2020
2050
Time
Beyond the Information Society: Reconciling People Planet and Progress

8. Immaterialisation Switch 5, Policy Implications
Rapid Moore’e Law Dematerialisation of IST-intensive Satisfiers
Stress increase from Rebound-D,
Dematerialisation Rebound
Total Environmental Stress
Culture Changes,
many Immaterialisation Switches
from maturing IST
Year
2000
2020
2050
Policy Examples:
Removal of carbon subsidies, develop immaterial alternatives.
Global warming fund for
early sufferers
Steady increase in carbon, etc. taxes but only after alternatives have become better
Beyond the Information Society: Reconciling People Planet and Progress

9. The Virtual Reality of the Parent is the Reality of the Child
UK Parents dismiss the theme park as an artificial replacement for a seaside holiday town
But UK grandparents saw the seaside town as an artificial replacement for open countryside or spa town!
Thus lifestyle aspirations depend on belief systems developed in infancy and childhood, modified by later learning
– this is the ASSIST Opportunity:
not replacing reality with VR but superseding a material intensive culture with an enhanced IST intensive one
Beyond the Information Society: Reconciling People Planet and Progress

10. The Caring Process, from Needs to Wants
Fundamental higher level human needs are species-specific (social contact, self respect, etc). Their expression in the wants and desires of a lifestyle within a society and belief system, depend primarily on how the brain grows and mind develops during infancy and childhood
Wants/desires framework acquired from parents/carers/peers - culture
Specific wants/desires come from peers and media - lifestyle
An increasing fraction of early culture is acquired from global organisations: brands, children's TV cartoons, intelligent toys, computer games, Internet
The later education years are controlled by the state but
the early most formative years are controlled by a mix of local community and global media business.
Is this the best way to achieve a Caring Society!
Beyond the Information Society: Reconciling People Planet and Progress

11. Can we achieve the Immaterialisation Culture Change?
a, We have changed culture in the past:
The garden is an enhancement/replacement for community territory:
- less space, less travel, more private, more flowers, easier to defend,
no snakes (after the Eden prototype!)
The local leisure centre plus mobile telephone, is an enhancement/replacement for sports ground, theatre and car
- less space, less travel, more social contact
b, We have to change culture in the future
ASSIST research has indicated that Immaterialisation without culture change reduces material consumption by only 25%
- not enough to meet even Kyoto requirements!
Beyond the Information Society: Reconciling People Planet and Progress

12. Immaterialisation Culture Change From Car and Home Care to People and Body Care
Readership of top five magazines, UK
Car and DIY magazines
Immaterial satisfiers
1980
21% 6%
(Mayfair
magazine)
2000 0%
47%
(FHM, Loaded,
Cable Guide, Sky customer, Sky view)
Material-intensive satisfiers such as cars and DIY are already being replaced by more direct, more immaterial experiences: travelling to remote football stadium replaced by short walk to local bar with big screen television,
peer-to-peer sensuality and media experiences
Perhaps the body is an immaterial car?
Perhaps the bar is an immaterial football stadium?
Are the young and the media
ahead of the policy makers and the professional middle classes?
Beyond the Information Society: Reconciling People Planet and Progress

13. What is Missing in Current Media Experiences?
Sense of sharing room with the physical presence of others
Freedom to look around and walk around
Kinaesthetic social skills including minimal visual cues that permit conspiracy
Touch and Smell, Coffee and Lunch
The rituals and pleasures of travel, socialising, joining and leaving the meeting
The affordances of location – particular places imply particular behaviours
If Mature IST can deliver all the above then a sequence of self-contained multimedia events will be superseded by the persistent multimodal reality of the Ambient Intelligence Environment
Beyond the Information Society: Reconciling People Planet and Progress

14. Towards the Network/Caring Society
The self-contained leisure-gadgets and work-facilitators of the 20th century Information Society are being superseded by an Ambient Intelligence Environment that will support the Network/Caring Society of the 21st century.
The self-contained gadgets and facilitators of the 20th century information/consumer society must have contributed to the enormous social and cultural changes of the last 30 years.
Have all these changes been for the better?
The Ambient Intelligence Environment will have an increasing impact in the next 30 years, particularly during infancy and childhood.
Can we predict the social consequences?
Beyond the Information Society: Reconciling People Planet and Progress

15. Increasing Inequity, Disappearing Frontiers
Income range within countries and between nations has doubled in the last 30 years
Globalisation has blurred national boundaries and encouraged the (slow) growth of the integrated mixed culture society of western/global liberal democracy
(NB not the polarised multicultural society of multiple ghettos)
1, Quality of life / happiness has not increased in the West
- income has little effect on happiness above about $10,000 level
- widening the income range appears to decrease happiness
- is caring becoming trapped within the “rationality” of the money economy?
2, Conflict is no longer between developed nations but between the global hegemony and envious, educated outsiders, excluded by alien values
- e-war, criminals, terrorists
Beyond the Information Society: Reconciling People Planet and Progress

16. Social Change in the Information Society of the last 30 Years (UK)
One-Person Households
People living alone increased from 6% to 10% of the population from 1970 to 2000 (UK)
Enablers
- Mature Industrial Technology (washing machines, microwaves and TV dinners),
- Early Information Technology (telephone, television the web)
Liberation of the individual or escape from traditional caring obligations?
Beyond the Information Society: Reconciling People Planet and Progress

17. Social Change in the Information Society of the last 30 Years (UK)
1, Births outside marriage: 8% in 1971, 40% in 1999
(perhaps a good sign, spread of mixed culture society?)
2, Children brought up by lone parent:
increase from 7% in 1972 to 21% in 2000
(what replaces the caring and attachment processes of the extended family?)
3, Suicides per 100,000,
Decrease for 65 and over, in 1971, in 1998
(The most IST resistant group?)
Increases females 15-24, in 1971, in 1998
males , in 1971, in 1998
( NB 50-75% of male suicides were brought up by lone parent)
Beyond the Information Society: Reconciling People Planet and Progress

18. We have to do better than this
We have to do better than this! - from Information Society to Caring Society
We are migrating
- from the centralised databases of the Information Society to the peer-to-peer conversations of the Network Society.
- from the one-way delivery of Information to the two-way sharing of two complementary components of the Network/Caring Society - Knowledge and Experience.
- from Social Control to Social Exchange?
Is the digital divide diluting as expensive PCs are replaced by
low cost wearables?
Is equity increasing as service workers are empowered by IST?
Beyond the Information Society: Reconciling People Planet and Progress

19. The Good News
Fraction of life spent disabled has already decreases with GDP: from 30% in Sub-Saharan Africa to 10% in the West. This leads to a very high value being palced on life and on avoiding disability Disability and lifetime lines converge at 100 Years, the “design lifetime” of the human species!
Beyond the Information Society: Reconciling People Planet and Progress

20. Caring Society Scenario 1: Adults The Virtual Extended Family
Immaterialisation of support for disability
- Physical – physical or genetic damage to body
- Mental – usually physical damage to brain
- Emotional – usually result of inadequate caring
Privacy intrusion is integral to care
(working outwards from Intensive Care)
Loss of privacy must proceed in step with opening and democratising society, permitting increased IST support for those with disability while preventing abuse of information.
IST can be an “Impedance Matching Device” for communication between the disabled and the abled
– the eyes of the blind, the ears of the deaf and a “reality transformer” for the phobic
Beyond the Information Society: Reconciling People Planet and Progress

21. Caring Society Scenario 2: Children The Enhanced Fragmented Family
The new understanding of attachment, enculturalisation and learning processes through infancy and childhood (from large scale longitudinal studies) can be used to enhance the fragmented family of today (perhaps only mother and child) with tele-present and virtually present alternatives for the many child-care roles played by members of traditional extended families:
Multimodal awareness of remote members of family
Avatar substitutes for missing members of the family
Many television cartoons as well as a few bedtime stories
Computer games help in acquiring social values
Caring instincts developed via virtual as well as real pets
Monitoring and historical record of childhood
Ideally enhancements, not replacements
Beyond the Information Society: Reconciling People Planet and Progress

22. Caring Society Scenario 3: Society The Western Liberal Democratic Ideal
Secular Rational Caring Social Framework
Containment of aggression through rituals of democracy – transparency – open society
Amplification of family morality to include the whole world
(as expressed in UN & EU Aspirations)
IST infrastructure behind the Ambient Intelligence Environment will support rapport and trust, caring and commitment across geographical, social, cultural and religious differences.
(the early Internet and the emerging consensus global academic and business cultures are limited realisations of this ideal)
Beyond the Information Society: Reconciling People Planet and Progress

23. “C-Work and C-Commerce”! - the “New Ways of Working” Opportunity
Immaterialisation Switches free up income for spending on new IST supported luxuries.
Many of these will be investments in new ways of caring and new ways of avoiding disability.
The emerging “claim culture” is a clumsy first step in this direction. It is based on the premise that everyone has the right to a high quality of life
Caring will be the biggest growth industry of the next 20 years if European levels of health care do no more than rise to US levels, from 8% to 15%
- 8 million new jobs over 20 years!
Beyond the Information Society: Reconciling People Planet and Progress

24. Immaterialisation must precede Dematerialisation - Economic Considerations
The dramatically increased rate of dematerialisation of IST based products and services is needed to achieve both
A high quality of life for all
Long term global sustainability
Implies the most cost-effective way of achieving long term global sustainability is:
Early investment should be in researching and developing a culturally and socially acceptable Network/Caring Society.
Later efforts should be devoted to the dematerialisation that will make it sustainable
NB a fraction of early funds will be needed for sufferers of particular “hot spots” of global warming (Alaska, Sahara, Asian deserts)
Beyond the Information Society: Reconciling People Planet and Progress

25. Immaterialisation must precede Dematerialisation - Culture Considerations
Discourage the Third World from adopting the unsustainable travel and accommodation aspects of Western society.
Avoids the potential threat of social instability from:
Global Warming
Widening gulf between rich and poor
(amplified by increased awareness from easy global travel)
This approach avoids issues related to preserving cultural heritage, issues which may implicitly trap much of the Third World in cultures that presuppose a brutal life for most of the population, particularly women
Beyond the Information Society: Reconciling People Planet and Progress

26. But: Credibility of Immature IST is Poor
The reliable PC in the Paperless Office - but paper is part of the solution!
Video Conferencing replaces face to face – missing affordances!
Virtual Venice replaces Being There – confused objectives!
Mature IST Infrastructure
The unreliable and self-contained IST gadgets of the past superceded by the pervasive and reliable IST infrastructure of the future Network/Caring Society - the GRID.
Mature IST User Interface
The “Ambient Intelligence Environment” of the future will use IST to seamlessly enhance reality, not to replace it, e.g.
a small amount of physical travel is enhanced by virtual travel
a small amount of physical space is enhanced by virtual space
Beyond the Information Society: Reconciling People Planet and Progress

27. Towards the Sustainable Global Caring Society?
Care of Others,
Social Actualisation
Network/Caring Society
Global
Traditional Society
Tribal
3rd World, 2001
Closed Societies
Open Societies
1st World, 2001
Industrial Society
National
Information Society
Multinational
Care of Self,
Self Actualisation
Beyond the Information Society: Reconciling People Planet and Progress

28. Venice Audience Discussion on the Network/Caring Society Quadrant
1, Enthusiasm for 3rd World leapfrogging Industrial and Multinational stages
2, Shock at the plausibility of future convergence of 1st and 3rd worlds
3, Combining an increasing quality of life with stronger community networking is alien for many of the European high-achievement individuals who are implementing it (high achieving parents often resent the security and contentment this brings to their children!)
4, Europe is seen as the guardian of heritage values rather than a promoter of global values of equity and sustainability
Actions:
1, A clearer description of “Network/Caring Society” is needed
2, How to convey the dynamic nature of cultural heritage?
Beyond the Information Society: Reconciling People Planet and Progress

29. Towards SGCS - Sustainable Global Caring Society?
Did 20th Century Information Society damage the peer-to-peer relationships that ensured an adequate level of informal carers in traditional communities?
Is the peer-to-peer architecture of the web already starting to turn the tide?
– a culture shift already seen in children who are above the digital divide –
more immaterial, more equitable, more global and more sustainable?
When today's children mature will the unreliable web, only suitable for play today, have become reliable enough to be the primary social infrastructure?
Are we investing too much in Ambient Intelligent Adult Environment, leaving the Ambient Intelligent Nursery to business?
Are we missing an opportunity for IST R&D to encourage future
generations towards the Sustainable Global Network Society?
Beyond the Information Society: Reconciling People Planet and Progress