[ExI] Welcome to the Future

Stefano Vaj stefano.vaj at gmail.com
Thu Aug 2 12:09:55 UTC 2012


On 1 August 2012 10:26, BillK <pharos at gmail.com> wrote:

> It takes mass movements to shape the future.
> Like the automobile and mass-market air transport has shaped our world
> of the last century.
>

*Some* changes (eg, fashion) take place even in the Brave New World or in
the most stagnant period of European middle age.

The real issue is *which* changes at *which pace*.

I suspect for instance that one would not be too off-mark by saying that we
have shifted most of our personal and societal ambitions from changing the
world to replace it as much as possible with a purely virtual experience
thereof. Of course I am not tempted in the least by any neoLuddite or
moralistic attitude towards the latter technologies, only I deplore that
they are currently employed to replace rather than supplement and integrate
the former.

Moreover, it is nice to draw exponential (well, in fact, S-shaped) curves
profiting from and including the unprecedented acceleration in
technological developments and applications during the period 1870-1970,
but one would be hard-pressed to find similar improvements since which be
not directly based on the byproducts of Moore's Law.

And, as I mentioned a few times, we need not believe that some glass
ceiling of one kind or another has been attained. Hostile legal frameworks,
ideological biases, and dominant values - reflected, eg, by difference in
revenues of a banker vs an engineer or  researcher - are more than enough
to explain the predicament we find ourselves in.

So, yes, the mass movement we need is of a philosophical, cultural and
political nature. While technology may influence society, is (a certain
kind of) society that makes technology happen.

-- 
Stefano Vaj
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