Ephemeralization, a term coined by R. Buckminster Fuller in 1938, is the ability of technological advancement to do "more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing," that is, an accelerating increase in the efficiency of achieving the same or more output (products, services, information, etc.) while requiring less input (effort, time, materials, resources, etc.). R. Buckminster Fuller, '' Nine Chains to the Moon'',

Anchor Books Vintage Books is a trade paperback publishing imprint of Penguin Random House originally established by Alfred A. Knopf in 1954. The company was acquired by Random House in April 1960, and a British division was set up in 1990. After Random Ho ...

, 1938, 1973, pp. 252–59. The application of materials and technology in modern

cell phones A mobile phone or cell phone is a portable telephone that allows users to make and receive Telephone call, calls over a radio frequency link while moving within a designated telephone service area, unlike fixed-location phones (landline phone ...

, compared to older computers and phones, exemplify the concepts of ephemeralization whereby technological advancement can drive efficiency in the form of fewer

materials A material is a substance or mixture of substances that constitutes an object. Materials can be pure or impure, living or non-living matter. Materials can be classified on the basis of their physical and chemical properties, or on their ge ...

being used to provide greater

utility In economics, utility is a measure of a certain person's satisfaction from a certain state of the world. Over time, the term has been used with at least two meanings. * In a normative context, utility refers to a goal or objective that we wish ...

(more functionality with less resource use). Fuller's vision was that ephemeralization, through technological progress, could result in ever-increasing standards of living for an ever-growing population. The concept has been embraced by those who argue against

Malthusian Malthusianism is a theory that population growth is potentially exponential, according to the Malthusian growth model, while the growth of the food supply or other resources is linear, which eventually reduces living standards to the point of trig ...

philosophy. Fuller uses Henry Ford's assembly line (used by Henry Ford at his car factory), as an example of how ephemeralization can continuously lead to better products at lower cost with no upper bound on productivity. Fuller saw ephemeralization as an inevitable trend in human development.

Consequences to society

Francis Heylighen Francis Paul Heylighen (born 27 September 1960) is a Belgian cyberneticist investigating the emergence and evolution of intelligent organization. He presently works as a research professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (the Dutch-speaking Fre ...

. and

Alvin Toffler Alvin Eugene Toffler (October 4, 1928 – June 27, 2016) was an American writer, futurist, and businessman known for his works discussing modern technologies, including the digital revolution and the communication revolution, with emphasis on th ...

, ''

Future Shock ''Future Shock'' is a 1970 book by American futurist Alvin Toffler, written together with his wife Adelaide Farrell, in which the authors define the term "future shock" as a certain psychological state of individuals and entire societies, and a ...

'' (1970), '' The Third Wave'' (1980), and '' Powershift'' (1990) have written that ephemeralization, though it may increase our power to solve physical problems, can make non-physical problems worse. According to Heylighen and Toffler, increasing system complexity and

information overload Information overload (also known as infobesity, infoxication, or information anxiety) is the difficulty in understanding an issue and Decision making, effectively making decisions when one has too much information (TMI) about that issue, and is ...

make it difficult and stressful for the people who must control the ephemeralized systems. This might negate the advantages of ephemeralization. The solution proposed by Heylighen

,
Tackling Complexity and Information Overload: intelligence amplification, attention economy and the global brain
', draft paper, to be submitted to

The Information Society ''The Information Society'' is a Peer review, peer-reviewed academic journal on sociology, that was established in 1981. It is published five times per year by Routledge and covers topics related to information technologies and changes in society ...

, pages 20-44, 2002-04-12 is the integration of human intelligence, computer intelligence, and coordination mechanisms that direct an issue to the cognitive resource (document, person, or computer program) most fit to address it. This requires a distributed, self-organizing system, formed by all individuals, computers and the communication links that connect them. The self-organization can be achieved by algorithms. According to Heylighen, the effect is to superpose the contributions of many different human and computer agents into a collective map that may link the cognitive and physical resources relatively efficiently. The resulting information system could react relatively rapidly and adaptively to requests for guidance or changes in the situation. In Heylighen's view, the system could frequently be fed with new information from its myriad human users and computer agents, which it would take into account to offer the human users a list of the best possible approaches to achieve tasks. Heylighen believes near-optimization could be achieved both at the level of the individual who makes the request, and at the level of society which attempts to minimize the conflicts between the desires of its different members and to aim at long term, global progress while as much as possible protecting individual liberty and privacy.

Consequences to society

See also

References

Further reading