[ExI] Is future progress moving to virtual reality?

[Anders Sandberg]

On 10/03/2013 10:07, BillK wrote:
> Surely that is an indicator of the direction that public interest is 
> moving in? The general public like the retro 1950s science fiction 
> view of the future.

Maybe because the kind of future *we* envision actually scares them? Or 
for that matter, most of the other future visions peddled by groups with 
some kind of vision (say a green ecotopia) tend to be off-putting?

The 50s sf future was 50s society writ large, thanks to big technology. 
There were roaring starships, but the crews would be blond captains with 
neat haircuts and no minorities in sight. There would be super-cities 
powered by endless energy, but what went on in those cities was *normal* 
stuff. What has happened since then is that we have realized that 1) 
technology and the future means social change - views on what is normal, 
moral and acceptable change. 2) we live in a far more overtly diverse 
world, were we recognize (even if we do not like it) that a lot of 
people with very divergent views will have a hand in shaping the future. 
3) we have learned (or made it part of our culture) to recognize risks 
and unintended consequences everywhere. Together, 1-3 makes the future 
weird and risky. Visions like neat ecotopias that try to ignore this 
feel fake. Visions that include the full complexity are hard to convey 
neatly and are not unalloyed good futures.

I think it is generally true that people are less positive about the 
future. But at the same time, it looms much larger. The word has risen 
in usage since 1970 to a plateau higher than the bump in 1940-1950. This 
coincides with a steady growth of the word "risk" that also start around 
1970.
http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=risk%2C+future&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=

What to do? I think it would be a mistake to try to promote merely 
optimism or technology will solve everything memes. Rather I think we 
need to promote memes of ambition, willingness to take risk, willingness 
to work at *making* the future. People feel much better about things 
that are within their sphere of control, or even where they feel they 
are doing something.

-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Faculty of Philosophy
Oxford University