Martial Law
I have no doubt those in power would declare martial law if they think they could get away with it. The reason they haven’t, is they know they can't. If they did, how could they possibly enforce it? It would take massive amounts of military and law enforcement resources, way more than is available. Look at the situation in Iraq. Iraq is the size of the state of California, and the entire might of the United States military is finding it more and more difficult to maintain martial law and order. How then, could they possibly enforce any lasting order over a landmass the size of the United States? Another factor is those who would enforce such a draconian police state would be the men and women of our own country, our friends, brothers, sisters and children. And if there is one thing I know about our military personnel, they will not as a group fire on their own citizens. This fact is acknowledged by most conspiracy theorists, which is why their theory requires the placement of foreign/UN troops on American soil. Even without our current strained relations with most other countries, can you honestly believe sufficient foreign troop placement would ever happen? If there were to be Martial Law in the United States, it would have to be an invading army like China. But is this even possible, without willful complicity? We have nukes, they have nukes. Since nuclear war is unwinnable, no nation will ever engage in it.

New World Order/Fourth Reich
This idea is synchronous with martial law. To pull off a global order of this magnitude is almost impossible, as to be laughable. They can barely contain the Iraq situation; so imagine an attempt by the Neocons to do this over the entire world. This has been their agenda all along, but I’m afraid it’s way too ambitious. Most of the world is simply not going along with such imperial ambitions. As it is, many nations are in open revolt to the American Neocon’s agenda. How about the United Nations? Maybe, but that would mean the entire world is actually cohesively aligned within the UN, and the UN is pretty weak at the moment. Personally, I don’t believe in a world government because it means even more consolidation of power. But like I said, I don’t see how such a consolidation can be cohesively maintained. There are too many competing power interests, especially at the grass-roots levels, whether they are malicious terrorists or benevolent decentralized emergent democratic forces. Look recently at what happened in Spain to understand the power of the ends. A Centralized order is not sustainable under any circumstances. The only way I see a peaceful world emerging is one that values the ends first, then the connections between them - a bottoms-up, grass-roots democracy enabled by the network.

World War 3/Global Thermonuclear Exchange
Some people are already saying that we are seeing the beginnings of WW3 right now. The situation in Iraq is heating up with no exit strategy in site. So this could happen. Who would be the players, and how would it play out? The worst-case scenario is Russia, China and many other nations joining forces to take the US down. But we are no longer on any remotely level playing field. There is nothing close to a conventional war theater. We all have nukes. If WW3 does happen, we all die. Nobody wins, so why would Russia or China even consider it? They would lose; it would be a suicide mission if they attempted to take the US down. Since such a global war would be between large nations, I believe the same rules apply as they did during the Cold War. Stalemate would be reached quickly in any global showdown of force. If global chaos were to ensue it would have to be large-scale guerilla terrorism. If anything that is the most likely of the scenarios. If a nuke is set off in the states, you can kiss the mid-east goodbye, maybe. If the US did nuke the Mid-east it can also kiss goodbye one of its major assets - oil. There have been hundreds of billions, probably trillions of dollars spent building and maintaining the oil supply infrastructure. If the US did nuke the area, it would be like nuking it's own foot, or more accurately its own food supply. So the global economy, like it or not, will be just the thing preventing it from happening. Could it still happen? Yes. Will it happen? I doubt it.

An Orwellian 1984 Panopticon Surveillance State
This is a very complex issue, but I don’t think it can be sustained either, for lots of micro and macro-economic reasons. For some background on my thinking in this area, please read Capital, Power and Ecology.

A much anticipated issue about the Singularity and an article called the Panopticon Singularity was set to appear in the latest issue of Whole Earth Review, but before it was published WER went out of business.

The article talks about the inevitable emergence of surveillance technology that has the potential of rendering every aspect of our lives visible and policed. These technologies, many of which are discussed at length, are smart cameras, p2p surveillance networks, gait analysis, terahertz radar, Celldar, ubiquitous RFID 'dust', un-Trusted computing and Digital Restrictions Management, cognitive radio, Lab-on-a-chip chemical analyzers, and comprehensive data mining.

It's a very thorough and brilliant piece and I suggest you read it. Here are some salient quotes:

We are all criminals, if you dig far enough: we've broken the speed limit, forgotten to file official papers in time, made false statements (often because we misremembered some fact), failed to pay for services, and so on. These are minor offenses -- relatively few of us are deliberate criminals. But even if we aren't active felons we are all potential criminals, and a case can be -- and is being -- made for keeping us all under surveillance, all the time.

A Panopticon Singularity is the logical outcome if the burgeoning technologies of the singularity are funneled into automating law enforcement. Previous police states were limited by manpower, but the panopticon singularity substitutes technology, and ultimately replaces human conscience with a brilliant but merciless prosthesis.

There is no doubt that within 10 years all of the technologies will exist to create such a society. There is also a societal trend based on fear and need for security that will encourage the proliferation of these technologies. However, I don't think it's going to happen. Here's why:

Such a system would be so thorough that everyone would eventually fall into its trap - and that includes the very wealthy and powerful. Currently if you are rich and powerful enough you can afford privacy. For example, I doubt anyone could get access to Bill Gates or Larry Ellison’s credit report or social security number. And even if we could, we would be powerless to actually make use of it. That's because they have enough money to make themselves invisible and immune to all but the most trusted parties. But such a panopticon as outlined in this essay will even make their lives completely visible to Joe Six pack with a $20 PDA circa 2012.

What this means in real terms, is that for the first time in centuries we'll start seeing a massive effort to rid ourselves of all but the most useful and practical laws. The Panopticon society will probably survive, but the majority of the laws most definitely will not. If they did, not only would this bring down the most powerful, as so many of their "enemies" have a vested interest in doing so, but it would throw so many people in jail, detention or probation that any legal system no matter how automated couldn't handle the overload, let alone the HUGE drain on the economy. With the best and the brightest falling into jail along with the rest of us, this panopticon society will collapse under its own very stupid weight. Natural economic selection would not favor a panopticon society with draconian laws over another one with looser restrictions. Same goes for copyright.

Wired has an excellent article about how if the US maintains it's ever increasing extremism on intellectual property, the real innovation will move elsewhere. Same goes for a panopticon society.

Grass-roots terrorism
Of all the dystopian scenarios I've covered so far, this is probably the most likely. But before we even tackle this problem it would help to actually know the truth of what terror is. The problem is we are constantly lied to by the Bush administration on the true extent of terrorism. They have been all-too willing to use terrorism as an excuse to do conduct global piracy and plunder of world resources. I think the real terrorist threat is much less than we are being told. I think the Al Qaeda threat, although existent, is mostly fiction created by the Bush Administration to provide them with the necessary boogeyman to carry out their agenda.

I think the very best solution against any kind of terrorism, as well as virtually all forms of corruption, whether government or corporate can be reduced by transparency. I think transparency is inevitable. For my analysis of the inevitability of transparency, read my article The Coming Leisure Society.

Ultimately, I think terrorism is only going to be solved when we address the vast descrepancies in economic health and democratic choice around the world. You can almost always trace the route cause of terrorism to people who are marginalized by their government and/or economic conditions. Remove these problems, and the root stressors that cause people to pursue extremest religiious/political terrorism evaporates.

These economic disparities are entirely artificial. There is no reason for it, and I believe they are happening in large part due to special elite interests mucking up the true global economy, which would work just fine if these same special elite power brokers are exposed through transparent systems, which are becoming more available as the net grows.

Also, coming this week is an International Workshop on Inverse Surveillance. For a good overview of this workshop and the implications of grassroots democratic sousveillance, read Flemmings recent post.

There are so many other trends going on that our working on the side of creating a new, more open, democratic society to cover in this article. But I hope I've given you enough food for thought to get you thinking in this direction.

Here's some good follow-up links:

A Participatory Panopticon?

Unmediated - Tracking the tools that decentralize the media.

Spark - Spark is a new magazine about the good things that are going on all over the world, and the people working to create a brighter future for us all.