Better be in a deep mood, cause we'll be deep here - hang tight. Many philosophical questions will be raised along the way -
all I will do is expose scientific facts.
I said it recently : "you have to think it through to believe it".
So, let's start "backwards", with some assumptions/conclusions :
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The impact of what I am trying to summarize is a deeper change than we can imagine in our societies - the "time traveller guy" had some great points,
wether he was fake or real himself : I believe that tomorrow is about individuals complementing each other and acting as a whole - NOT about
national pride, religious pride, tomorrow is not about ego. Tomorrow is not about "who has the best belief", it is about
"how different beliefs can complement each other and evolve from one another" for a better perception and integration of mankind into reality.
It is about mankind finding it's common "soul" and tuning in to it.
Tomorrow is about a global society where "walls" of all kinds tend to become thinner and people will
have to develop the best of their individuality to serve the whole - competition and the principles of evolution will still apply,
but the economy and industry will be very different and our everyday life will be very different.
The theory behind these conclusions could easilly turn into a novel sized post - so I'll cut what's next, paste it to a text file,
and preserve it for counter arguments.
From: Happy Hunting Grounds... Insane since: Mar 2001
posted 01-12-2008 12:42
I see tomorrow as being very, very different than what you have put forth.
In the future, the need of the individual to be an individual and to "rise out of the crowd" will become more and more important and critical - thus, groups and micro-communities, societies will become more pronounced, not less.
We see this in internet phenomena like MyPlace, Facebook, YouTube, etc. And groups like the Rock Band that offered their Album for download for whatever their fans wanted to pay (including free, and I cannot for the life of me remember the name of the group right now) have shown that this type of contact with one another is becoming increasingly mainstream.
Places like SecondLife, etc, Online Realities, will become more and more vital and real - I rather suspect that careers can and will be made soley online - that persons will become like present day superstars, movers, rockstars, etc, but wholly in the internet.
I do beleive that information will become more global (as almost all humans will have some sort of access to the internet), but that governments will become increasingly more and more controlling of the access to that information, and constant surviellance of access to such; I think we are headed towards a confrontation between the private internet user and Big Government and control. How that turns out will be critical to how the Internet of the future looks.
Things will become increasingly networked together. Houses, appliances, cars, everyday devices will have some sort of internet access to them, or at least BT, IrDa, 2.4 GHz, etc. I suspect that most will have some sort of device that can do "everything" to accomplish this - much like the iPhone has shown is possible, but much more complex, with a much more powerful CPU(s) and Memory galore.
I think there is going to be a real bunch of nasty conflicts - China, India, Russia and the Western World (USA-Canada-Mexico, Europe) will be locked in ever harder competition to secure dwindling vital resources. How these super powers solve these problems will determine the shape of the future, economically and politically.
I believe that Space will become fully Privatized - and that trips to Orbit will become commonplace and cheap. Somewhere down the line, enterprising Companies will put Space Hotels in Orbit, then the Moon, perhaps as far as Mars, who knows? I think that eyes will turn to the immediate Solar System for natural resources (astroid belt, perhaps?).
WebShaman | The keenest sorrow (and greatest truth) is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.
- Sophocles
Okay for your views Webby, but I think they are self limiting beliefs (at a global scale) - eg. I think that if mankind takes that route,
it's the route to oblivion and self destruction - it cannot work through conflict.
Why do I think so? Because technology is becoming more and more open source BY DESIGN.
Information tends to be free - hence the ever increasing difficulties in securing information, internet is meant for data exchange,
go patch that. Ajax and Flex have huge security drawbacks... by their very nature.
And the same goes for Java and .Net : in the course of securing my own app, I find that the best security I can give to the source code
is...
Breakable in 5 minutes and at no expanse regardless of the complexity of what I use to do it.
The same goes for all .Net apps, so future apps based on that framework, while providing the USER with more security
about their data, will be more prone themselves to reverse engineering.
All the current software technologies converge towards one thing : sources will get readable.
Information tends to be free by it's very nature, and information carriers
tend to be free by design, as a consequence - competing is therefore counter productive, and will only result in losses.
From: Happy Hunting Grounds... Insane since: Mar 2001
posted 01-12-2008 20:26
A brief glance at human history belays your ideas about conflict in a heartbeat.
There WILL be conflict - just what sort and how it is carried out and resolved is the question.
Knowing the human condition as I do, my bet is that there will be armed conflict - which I hope will be on a limited scale.
Regardless of whether or not they are "self-limiting" or not - my ideas and opinions here are based on human nature, a critical examination of human history, and the knowledge of how and why Government works and does things that I have gained working in the Intelligence Gathering Service.
Your mileage may vary.
WebShaman | The keenest sorrow (and greatest truth) is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.
- Sophocles
Regardless of my mileage, and regardless of the past in a thread about the future : I agree with some of your views (space, etc.)
But fundamentally, what I am saying is that the "call of nature" requires a difference in how we handle the changes to come -
technology evolves from needs which are subject to the laws of evolution, simply, and they are evolving towards unity.
As for "self limiting" beliefs : in self esteem & success psychology (management classes, google "NLP" and other advanced
mental programming techniques), they are known as the excuses we make for ourselves
to avoid a given task - most of the time, because we are afraid of not being able to handle it.
It's not YOUR beliefs that I despise, nope sir, bad phrasing probably, but :
- it's the belief that national identity means something (it doesn't according to Darwin and nature)
- it's the belief that conflict will be necessary to overcome challenges
- it's the belief that governments can control technology
...Etc.
Those beliefs are indeed rooted in history, but they will stop working (and most of our social conditionning is being challenged already,
example : how the social condition of women is changing through the past decades).
I'd say, and I'll bring more to the topic later on as I have time, that I actually agree with most of your views - they are probable -
but the main divergence is here :
>> In the future, the need of the individual to be an individual and to "rise out of the crowd" will become more and more important and critical
I believe that individuals can exist and shine while enhancing the society around them - and I believe
accepting this will be a necessity to survival of the species.
Had warned you, it will be a long and heated debate.
3) There will always be too many self-righteous, under-educated human beings out there who follow 1 & 2 blindly.
Had to add that in, considering we have begun our election cycle here in the states and things are getting crazy again. I was part of the insanity in '04. Today, standing more or less on the outside and looking in, I am starting to get sick already. Any room in Canada for a disaffected American who is seriously loathing his society?
As far as the topic is concerned, have to agree with WS 110%. What is of special interest to me is information and access to it. The Internet is becoming a "bad influence" as far as many of the world's leaders are concerned because it allows people to break out of the reality that has been so carefully constructed for us throughout the 20th century, a reality that has been kept in place by the old media and those who benefit from the status quo. Thus, methods of control will become commonplace, all in the name of stopping "child pornography", "copyright violations" and "terrorism". The slippery slope may lead us down other avenues such as political dissent considered a threat to the state. Entrenched institutions are also seeing what a powerful force the Internet can be in terms of grassroots organizations rising up and raining on their parade, such as "insurgency" candidates garnering huge support online. They have no chance at winning, but it is enough to the muddy the waters with unacceptable logic being broadcast over the airwaves.
I see, at least in our lifetimes a more dystopian slant to technology, meaning it will be used to restrict our freedoms and mold societies in way that a ruling minority see fit, rather than utopian. RFID and newer technologies based on the concept will play a big part in the real world. We will all be numbered and one way or another we will lose much of what we consider to be privacy today. You may have noticed this is well underway also. There will be much resistance to these sweeping changes and states will clamp down on it. Flashmobs will be commonplace, as will the use of so-called non-lethal technologies to quell such uprisings from the peasant classes.
Technology is currently a slave to those who have power and money, and will be used by that group to garner more power and more money. It will not be until people start seeing each other as individuals rather than as groups, have an honest and rigorous education system to help develop this sense of self, and tear down the establishments of control that things will change. But, even then we are not guaranteed anything because when one establishment falls another one rises up and begins the cycle all over again.
As resources dwindle, as WS said, there will be more conflict. But the fact is, resources are getting scarce, which is going to affect this whole globalization thing and economies (at least in goods) will become more localized, at least until replacement technologies can be implemented. This will cause a rise in nationalistic behavior. We will see economic disaster throughout the world and the US will fall from glory in bankruptcy and countries like China and India will be the new superpowers.
We are headed into some dark and bumpy times, IMHO of course.
It always happens under the guise of safety. First it was pets, then it was to get into nightclubs, then children, then employees, now prisoners. Eventually, it will spread too all facets of socety. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgcZUIc3oks
So I'll plow at deconstructing the parts of your talk that I find self limiting
(this said, I understand the political context of your country a bit better now, and if I am correct that you haven't been around for a while, welcome back!) : SLB 1 : Technology is currently a slave to those who have power and money,
Squeeze me? Firefox and Opera are now defining the tech standards of tomorrow - and Mac OS is finally a mature (and truely superior) contender to Windows,
and able to beat it in free market economy. This comes from the people decisions : web standards are built here. This is "power to the masses" in reality -
the illusion that technology is a slave to those who have power IS an illusion.
Bittorrent, Usenext, Limewire - pathetic gov attempts at stopping the information flow have failed. And they will keep failing. "Sorry to disagree",
but this is reality - technology is a slave to nobody, and the money and desires that drive it are those of the MASSES.
This very place, where people generate ideas that will forge new technologies, is the shining proof that freedom of expression exists, still.
IN SPITE OF GOVERNMENTS ATTEMPTING TO LIMIT IT.
They cannot. So fear not.
SLB 2 : As resources dwindle, as WS said, there will be more conflict.
But there is also more creativity to circumvent the problems, and a deeper interest in cultural exchanges with the third world,
plus a chance for the same third world to catch up and access "western knowledge"
- China and India, for example, are indeed rising economically, and this is fair game.
And more and more businesses worldwide, (at least, in Europe, it is a strong and clear trend) are now forced to find ways
to foster proper "eco practices" (ah yeah, don't even mention the corrupt Napoli - where I come from, a shame in the face of the rest
of the world) - aside of that particular case, we see more and more new ways to deal with the environmental problems.
Granted, it's a small step forward yet, but it is happenning - alternatives to serve everybody, rather than "stealing from the neighbour".
SLB 3 : We are headed into some dark and bumpy times, IMHO of course.
No way as long as you and I have a CHOICE about it, and we do : people shouldn't be afraid of their governments.
Governments should be afraid of their people - we are responsible, in democratic countries, of standing for our beliefs as masses.
We are responsible for the leaders we elect - and we still are responsible if elections do not work as expected :
we can at least communicate honestly about it.
At the very least.
quote:
It will not be until people start seeing each other as individuals rather than as groups, have an honest and rigorous education system to help develop this sense of self, and tear down the establishments of control that things will change. But, even then we are not guaranteed anything because when one establishment falls another one rises up and begins the cycle all over again.
Couldn't agree more with this.
But are we guaranteed to wake up alive after any single night of our lives?
Is there such a thing as a "100% guarantee" about anything?
..And yet, every morning as I wake up, I keep doing all I can to teach and communicate the right and ACT on my beliefs.
For each one of us has that terrible weakness of "just being alive", just a grain of sand in history,
but at the same time.. Each and everyone of us has the tremendous POWER to reason, express, and CHOOSE.
Thus, the future will be what we choose to make it.
posted 01-12-2008 11:02
I think they are self limiting beliefs (at a global scale) - eg. I think that if mankind takes that route,