I've seen the various Zeitgeist movies, including most of the first one which was pretty dubious and has been widely criticized. Here is some commentary on the latest such movie, called Zeitgeist: Moving Forward.
If you've seen any of the other Zeitgeist movies beyond the first one then you can save yourself quite a lot of time because the latest version doesn't contain much in terms of new concepts, but rather it presents the existing ideas in a slightly more entertaining way. If not, then here is the latest one.
In my estimation, I'm sympathetic towards the resource based economy idea, and taking a systems approach to running things. In the long term actually I don't think there's going to be very much alternative to managing economies as integrated machine-managed systems, as opposed to the highly unsustainable and periodically dysfunctional way in which things work currently. The depiction of future cities is nice, but there's also a vast amount of hand-waving here (practically flapping) and not very much depth to the grand visions.
A world without money
One of the major themes of Zeitgeist is the possibility of a world without money, where nanotechnology - or some other futuristic wizardry, perhaps involving robots - can synthesise and recycle products on demand. For many sorts of consumer products this may be quite feasible, and it's not too difficult to imagine bigger and better RepRaps combined with more traditional forms of industrial automation. But there may still be competing zero sum interests, and how should these be arbitrated? Suppose citizen X wants a boat and citizen Y wants a car, but the computerised management system indicates that there is not enough resources in the environmental inventory to satisfy both demands simultaneously. There may still be a need for some forms of trade, and where there's trade there is inevitably a need for some kind of abstract representation of value. The non-homogeneous distribution of resources around the planet will surely mean that there will be surpluses of resources in some areas and deficits in others, and traditionally this has been addressed with some kind of trading system.
If money still exists in the distant future, perhaps cryptocurrencies are the way forward, avoiding the issues of financial fraud and centralized banking which currently bedevil our monetary system.
Scientism
My other main criticism is that the depiction of science in the Zeitgeist movies.
Firstly the treatment of the role of genetics and environment seems rather loaded towards a notion that genes don't matter very much. In human society there are numerous phenomena which have little or nothing to do with genes, but claiming that none of our behaviors or biases are in any way regulated by genetics I think is probably not well founded in contemporary biology. For instance, it's quite likely that it is to some degree "genetically determined" that most humans have two legs, and five fingers on each hand. If the morphology of the body is regulated by genes it seems at least plausible that the morphology of its organs, including the brain, are also influenced to some extent by genetics. Our understanding of genetics is still at quite an primitive stage, so there will be much more waiting to be discovered, but it's likely that life is a deviously complex mashup of genetic and environmental interactions, where genetics does have some role in setting up biases and propensities towards certain kinds of behavior or emotional reactions. An example would be that it's believed that some people possess tetrachromatic vision, which gives them slightly different visual sensing capability and maybe different behaviors or behavioral biases become possible as a consequence.
Also in Zeitgeist it's assumed that there is a single "correct" solution to resource management problems. In complex systems such as a society usually there are a range of possible solutions, all with their own accompanying costs and benefits. None of these may be "the best", and choosing one depends upon what direction you wish the society to move in. This may be something which requires decisions to be voted on by citizens, rather than made automatically, otherwise you're putting a computer system in charge of the long term overall evolution of society - which may be asking too much of a system whose main function is resource allocation.
Future Architecture
In the podcast there's some criticism made that the circular cities envisaged aren't easily scalable. This is a reasonable criticism, but not really a show stopper. I can imagine other designs which would scale in a modular way.
If we're thinking about the architecture of the distant future, say a century or more from now, then this is a time when resource shortages of raw materials is going to be ever more acute and an increasingly large fraction of resources will need to be either reusable, recyclable or decomposable (made from organics). Assuming more advanced genetic engineering capabilities it might be possible to have buildings which are partly or entirely organic - made from a wood-like material which can self repair by extracting carbon from the air using sunlight as an energy source to assemble it into a super-strong nanotube like material. Another idea would be to have the walls of buildings contain a soil layer within which the roots of plants could grow. This might mean that you can grow vegetables along the sides of high rise buildings (rather than only in the windows) and have robots periodically harvesting them as part of a localised intensive food production system capable of supporting the appetites of megacities. These green buildings could be fertilised by processed sewage produced by the occupants, reducing the strain on sewer systems which has been a perpetual issue for large conurbations, and I think there are existing "vertical farming" proposals of this kind already. Under this scenario buildings would from a distance have a fuzzy appearance and varying colouration, depending upon what type of vegetation was growing on them. Residents could also get creative with configurable robotic plantation schemes to create artwork, brand logos, slogans or badges of status/allegiance along the sides of their residences. Another, perhaps more likely, situation would be that all buildings are coated with a photovoltaic material which produces electricity.
As for monolithic "totalitarian" style of construction, I agree with the comments made in the podcast about this not reflecting the diversity of human culture. Cities in the future are likely to be at least as diverse as they are now, containing a combination of old and new. A good example of this is the city of York in which I lived for quite a while. It's a 2000 year old city, where you have architecture which is many centuries old standing next to modern office blocks, and a sewer system which was constructed by the Romans in the first few centuries of its existence. It's a rare occasion where cities are built entirely from scratch, and even then all cities evolve over time in a way which is difficult to plan for unless you have a crystal ball which can foresee future transport systems and types of economy (the original roads of York were the width of a chariot, i.e. two horses side by side). I've seen the totalitarian architectural style myself in various cities. Typically it was built in the 1960s and consists primarily of grey concrete blocks as far as the eye can see. It's pretty depressing, and no doubt is a contributory factor to the psychosocial stress of its inhabitants. But people can be more imaginative than this, especially when they're empowered by technology.
Zeitgeist as a meme
On the whole in spite of their failings and vagueness the Zeitgeist movies (at least the later ones) are a well crated attempt to bring ideas from cybernetics into the public arena. I'm not aware of anyone in the mainstream media who even remotely touches upon these sorts of issues. If you're not paying attention then it's easy to adopt a whiggish attitude towards the way that current societies and economies operate, but the only thing which is for certain is that the way we live now is definitely unsustainable, and that things will need to change in what by todays standards are fairly substantive ways if there is to be any longer term future for human civilization.
Zeitgeist also provides a much more optimistic counterpoint to the the frequently gloomy presentations about the future made by Singularitarians, who don't take a systems viewpoint (hence the runaway scenarios) and all too often rely upon scare stories to get their message across.
If you've seen any of the other Zeitgeist movies beyond the first one then you can save yourself quite a lot of time because the latest version doesn't contain much in terms of new concepts, but rather it presents the existing ideas in a slightly more entertaining way. If not, then here is the latest one.
In my estimation, I'm sympathetic towards the resource based economy idea, and taking a systems approach to running things. In the long term actually I don't think there's going to be very much alternative to managing economies as integrated machine-managed systems, as opposed to the highly unsustainable and periodically dysfunctional way in which things work currently. The depiction of future cities is nice, but there's also a vast amount of hand-waving here (practically flapping) and not very much depth to the grand visions.
A world without money
One of the major themes of Zeitgeist is the possibility of a world without money, where nanotechnology - or some other futuristic wizardry, perhaps involving robots - can synthesise and recycle products on demand. For many sorts of consumer products this may be quite feasible, and it's not too difficult to imagine bigger and better RepRaps combined with more traditional forms of industrial automation. But there may still be competing zero sum interests, and how should these be arbitrated? Suppose citizen X wants a boat and citizen Y wants a car, but the computerised management system indicates that there is not enough resources in the environmental inventory to satisfy both demands simultaneously. There may still be a need for some forms of trade, and where there's trade there is inevitably a need for some kind of abstract representation of value. The non-homogeneous distribution of resources around the planet will surely mean that there will be surpluses of resources in some areas and deficits in others, and traditionally this has been addressed with some kind of trading system.
If money still exists in the distant future, perhaps cryptocurrencies are the way forward, avoiding the issues of financial fraud and centralized banking which currently bedevil our monetary system.
Scientism
My other main criticism is that the depiction of science in the Zeitgeist movies.
Firstly the treatment of the role of genetics and environment seems rather loaded towards a notion that genes don't matter very much. In human society there are numerous phenomena which have little or nothing to do with genes, but claiming that none of our behaviors or biases are in any way regulated by genetics I think is probably not well founded in contemporary biology. For instance, it's quite likely that it is to some degree "genetically determined" that most humans have two legs, and five fingers on each hand. If the morphology of the body is regulated by genes it seems at least plausible that the morphology of its organs, including the brain, are also influenced to some extent by genetics. Our understanding of genetics is still at quite an primitive stage, so there will be much more waiting to be discovered, but it's likely that life is a deviously complex mashup of genetic and environmental interactions, where genetics does have some role in setting up biases and propensities towards certain kinds of behavior or emotional reactions. An example would be that it's believed that some people possess tetrachromatic vision, which gives them slightly different visual sensing capability and maybe different behaviors or behavioral biases become possible as a consequence.
Also in Zeitgeist it's assumed that there is a single "correct" solution to resource management problems. In complex systems such as a society usually there are a range of possible solutions, all with their own accompanying costs and benefits. None of these may be "the best", and choosing one depends upon what direction you wish the society to move in. This may be something which requires decisions to be voted on by citizens, rather than made automatically, otherwise you're putting a computer system in charge of the long term overall evolution of society - which may be asking too much of a system whose main function is resource allocation.
Future Architecture
In the podcast there's some criticism made that the circular cities envisaged aren't easily scalable. This is a reasonable criticism, but not really a show stopper. I can imagine other designs which would scale in a modular way.
If we're thinking about the architecture of the distant future, say a century or more from now, then this is a time when resource shortages of raw materials is going to be ever more acute and an increasingly large fraction of resources will need to be either reusable, recyclable or decomposable (made from organics). Assuming more advanced genetic engineering capabilities it might be possible to have buildings which are partly or entirely organic - made from a wood-like material which can self repair by extracting carbon from the air using sunlight as an energy source to assemble it into a super-strong nanotube like material. Another idea would be to have the walls of buildings contain a soil layer within which the roots of plants could grow. This might mean that you can grow vegetables along the sides of high rise buildings (rather than only in the windows) and have robots periodically harvesting them as part of a localised intensive food production system capable of supporting the appetites of megacities. These green buildings could be fertilised by processed sewage produced by the occupants, reducing the strain on sewer systems which has been a perpetual issue for large conurbations, and I think there are existing "vertical farming" proposals of this kind already. Under this scenario buildings would from a distance have a fuzzy appearance and varying colouration, depending upon what type of vegetation was growing on them. Residents could also get creative with configurable robotic plantation schemes to create artwork, brand logos, slogans or badges of status/allegiance along the sides of their residences. Another, perhaps more likely, situation would be that all buildings are coated with a photovoltaic material which produces electricity.
As for monolithic "totalitarian" style of construction, I agree with the comments made in the podcast about this not reflecting the diversity of human culture. Cities in the future are likely to be at least as diverse as they are now, containing a combination of old and new. A good example of this is the city of York in which I lived for quite a while. It's a 2000 year old city, where you have architecture which is many centuries old standing next to modern office blocks, and a sewer system which was constructed by the Romans in the first few centuries of its existence. It's a rare occasion where cities are built entirely from scratch, and even then all cities evolve over time in a way which is difficult to plan for unless you have a crystal ball which can foresee future transport systems and types of economy (the original roads of York were the width of a chariot, i.e. two horses side by side). I've seen the totalitarian architectural style myself in various cities. Typically it was built in the 1960s and consists primarily of grey concrete blocks as far as the eye can see. It's pretty depressing, and no doubt is a contributory factor to the psychosocial stress of its inhabitants. But people can be more imaginative than this, especially when they're empowered by technology.
Zeitgeist as a meme
On the whole in spite of their failings and vagueness the Zeitgeist movies (at least the later ones) are a well crated attempt to bring ideas from cybernetics into the public arena. I'm not aware of anyone in the mainstream media who even remotely touches upon these sorts of issues. If you're not paying attention then it's easy to adopt a whiggish attitude towards the way that current societies and economies operate, but the only thing which is for certain is that the way we live now is definitely unsustainable, and that things will need to change in what by todays standards are fairly substantive ways if there is to be any longer term future for human civilization.
Zeitgeist also provides a much more optimistic counterpoint to the the frequently gloomy presentations about the future made by Singularitarians, who don't take a systems viewpoint (hence the runaway scenarios) and all too often rely upon scare stories to get their message across.