Protopia

[For over a decade I have been talking about protopia, but I have never written out my description of it. What follows is my best case for this idea, which I first coined in 2011.] Protopia is a plausible, desirable future, marked by small measures of improvement. It is positioned in contrast to a utopian future at one extreme and a dystopian future at the other. Utopia is that mythic future that has no, or at least, reduced problems. The idea is that through our collective efforts we can eliminate the fundamental causes of problems in life. Maybe through the powers of AI we can identify and correct the ailments and inadequacies of current processes, and over time overcome basic problems like scarcity, inequality, conflict, and even accidents. The scale of problems would decrease over time. The results for humans would be both levels of prosperity unknown previously, but importantly, a world crowded with benefits and diminishing new problems. Yet the prospect of utopia is both…