Participating in a discussion is a great way to learn and contribute to ideas for superstructing. When you post a comment, try to provide information that others may not know, and avoid getting into arguments. Winning discussions are all about working together to get smarter.

Please login or register to post


    21st Century Ideas: Future Visions from the Past

    Analysis of long ago predictions of "the state of affairs" today. Where did they get it right? Where were they way off? Why?

    Started by: Kludge Raves:3

    Subscribe » RSS

    Recently, I've been scanning archival caches to see what I can do about not re-inventing the wheel. Many people, throughout human history have tried to given enlightened, fully thought-out, predictions for where the world would be, and how we would change as a society, in the future. By examining the ones who got close, and figuring out where and how they went wrong, I'm hoping to see what- if any- unknown trend(s) may be worth examining to help facilitate a better tomorrow.

    For instance, I recently discovered an interview with one Charles Hugh Smith, who was asked (his response follows): full link: http://www.boingboing.net/2008/10/14/of-two-minds-an-inte-1.html#more Putting on your long-range prophecy goggles, and assuming that we're coming out the other side of this mess ten years from now, what kind of a world will we have in 2018? (I cling to the hope that things will be as different in 2018 from today as the change was from 1960 to 1970). Charles Hugh Smith: While many predict doomsday scenarios, and those are certainly possible if we go into complete denial for another decade, I suspect painful adaptations will have been made by 2018. We will have learned to get by with much less energy consumption per person and how to create distributed networks of alternative energies. The Federal government and all state governments will be essentially bankrupt and the entire culture of entitlement will have been upended by this inability to pay everyone’s medical care and pension. Self-reliance and community will replace dependence on central government. The dollar may well be replaced with a “new dollar” or superceded by a global currency based on gold or a basket of commodities of enduring value. Hopefully we will have avoided “resource wars” but if we haven’t weaned ourselves from petroleum then we may well still be engaged in a “long war” over oil resources, perhaps even involving China or Russia. If we refuse to become energy-self-sufficient then a major global conflict is not impossible in the 2017-2021 timeframe.



    Over the years, I also have been stacking up possible scenarios. Some utopian, some malthusian. The ones that seem to stick were ones that used the evolution of technology as a back drop for something more human. While we are facing threats in 2019, something is also building. Where they got it right maybe, is that we have all this fantastic technologies that have the potential to make heaven on earth properly applied. They were also right in that we have all these fantastic technologies that have gotten us and the earth off balance and have the potential to kiss our butts goodbye as species here. Why? One thought is that in spite of tech fixes, our ethics have not kept up. We have been distracted from the most important aspects of being human.

    When people say "technology will save the day" i think two things - yes! cradle to cradle design can save the day. Then i think - for most people on the planet that level of design philosophy is totally out of their grasp - they are burning cow dung to heat their homes (and releasing carbon along with it) Then I think where is overpopulation and disease a major threat to the world - where they're burning cow dung. The deeper I go and the more aspects I look at (faith, morality, consumer culture, economics, national defense, civil wars, the failure of distrivution of aid, disease being spread etc... the more obvious it is that global POVERTY and the West's exploitation of the world's poor is the biggest global threat.

    We are not going to solve these problems until we escape from a "The future will be better tomorrow." mentality. Neither technology nor reasoned redesign of human institutions are going to avail us. Although our reason may often be a useful guide in policy, no single person's wisdom from eighty years of life can rival the accumulated wisdom of thousands of years of experience that the traditional institutions of human society represent. The fact of the matter is, we haven't changed that much. The roots of most of the superthreats can be found, ultimately, in our dismantling of these traditional institutions beginning in the Enlightenment. If we want to save ourselves, we need to look back at what values were crucial to our success and survival in the past, and examine which institutions were, historically, most successful in preserving those values.

    The mental demands to understand the world as it exists in 2019 is surely going to overtax the abilities of the masses to cope. Behavioral scientists have discovered decades ago that our minds are wired to deceive us. Our brains still responds best to a predictable Newtonian worldview where we tell ourselves simple stories to try to explain complex things our minds can’t comprehend. Only educated and disciplined thinkers can avoid the distortion created by our caveman brains, and even then we have difficulty accepting things like statistical uncertainty, complexity, and the unpredictable. Our oversimplified memeplexes of the world and our desire for predictable narrative have done a dismal job forecasting the future. I argue the case that the rare and unpredictable event in our future swings the evolution of social systems and culture in big jumps and makes our generalizable theories about current trend extrapolations worthless. Looking back at human history has shown us that really important events are rare and unpredictable, but at least opening the door to considering the impacts of future Black Swan or disruptive technological innovations, can help us plan for the unknowable. I ask you to consider the two potential examples of disruptive technological innovations that can drastically change our whole culture. One relates to sleep and motivation, and the other to our beliefs. Chronobiology (the study of biological systems through time) is not only a hot area of research but holds a potential reward that will be irresistible to most of us: the need to stop sleeping. Imagine taking a safe and effective pill once or twice a day and never needing to sleep again. And not only that, you find yourself with so much personal psychic energy (motivation) it gives you a real zest for life. You have just doubled your life span! You can easily hold down two jobs now to increase your income, or get your college degree earlier, or…. You get the idea. Consumers of this innovation would hold a big edge over those not having it. The very self identity people have could change dramatically as they throw off old paradigms and adopt new views of the world and what is possible. The world labor and economic markets would undergo unpredictable changes as the biological transformation of society caught on. Would people become more proactive politically now that they have more time and motivation? Would crime levels explode as criminals begin to use the technology for their own agendas? Okay, I think I scored one point but just remember, this may not be science fiction as real breakthroughs are being made in these research areas. Perhaps one of the most disruptive new technologies that may make an appearance in the future is the direct alteration of beliefs, values, and paradigms by means of force. Just like the allure to change your life by not having to sleep, some people will see meme warfare as a means to an ends. Yeah, this smacks of mind control but probably not in the way you expect. You can read my story about the Great Meme War of 2019 for a fictional scenario of what may happen. Our ability to tolerate the strange, the unpredictable, and be open about the challenges we can face, is one of our greatest assets.

    Augmentation, in other words, via evolution (natural(?) or forced) is the greatest effector of "How We Got Here". Which is, in effect, saying "Change is the reason Change Changes." Agreed. As to never being able to predict: Agreed, too many variables + Uncertainty + Unknowables + whatever. Shouldn't we still seek to try and predict? The basis of GEAS is this uncertain (stupid (?)) prediction of future outcomes. Given historical precedence, I'd say GEAS is wrong for one simple point: Everyone else who ever said it was all going to end was not only WRONG, but VERY WRONG. However, logic would state that someone, at some time will probably be right- and probably through accident. So does that mean we should consider all points of view/reference? Additionally, Isaac Asimov forward a (completely fictional(?)) theory in his FOUNDATION series that said: Analyzing statistics, and the psychology of crowds could lead to reliable and accurate predictive models. However, these models would become less and less reliable the smaller the population became; making them completely worthless for individuals. Thoughts?

    One parallel i would like to make is to Bill Maher's Movie "Religulous." The point he made -and the point i wish he had expanded on- was that humans are just too dumb to know how the creator of the universe works, or how the universe began, or why 'good/bad' things happen. And we need to get that. Some of the biggest things that humanity are going to have to overcome in this century are capitalism, racism, sexism, nationalism, tribalism, and, perhaps most importantly of all, infalliblism




    Nominate For A Badge

    Badge:
    More detail on badges



    NOMINATE CANCEL