At 01:06 02/07/2011, Natalia wrote:
Sam Smith's Progressive Review led me to this
thought provoking article about the near future.
Something in it for everyone, and many comments
to enjoy, too, especially on page 5 from Steven
Earl Salmony, Mike K. and Plowboy, cited below.
Natalia
Although I don't agree with many of his
subsidiary projections, I think James Kunstler's
"Back to the Future" essay is a brilliant general
statement about a future (at least for a century
or more) that's not going to be a great deal
different from what we already have in the
advanced countries. It parallels much of my own
thinking in recent years that the industrial
revolution is largely played out now. We are
becoming increasingly locked into a particular
way of life in which economic growth and consumer
expectations are not at all what most economists
presently assume (if they think about the future
at all). The recent credit-crunch -- by no means
fully played out yet -- is not so much an
indictment of our present currency/financial
system but as a warning that consumer-led growth has come to an end.
However, this doesn't preclude our continuing
innovative abilities. Whatever took place in the
genetic hard-wiring of our brain in the past that
caused homo sapiens to be super-charged with
curiosity above any other species, scientific
research will continue apace. I foresee
continuing production and distribution automation
that will, as a byproduct, cause even more jobs
than now to fall into the make-work category --
like the mythical Irish village in which they all
make a living by doing each other's laundry.
Also, Kunstler's essay doesn't include
considering what may be the longer-term
byproducts of the extraordinary burst in
evolutionary biology research, particularly since
the first draft of the Human Genome Project in 2003.
Keith
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/6336
Plowboy on Jun 24, 2011
Jon
.I dont want to presume to know what (J.H.)
Kunstler means in the context of his essay, but
judging from what else hes written over the
years, he might be referring to what he often
describes as a discontinuity. That is, the
reality that weve all been schooled in is that
technical progress, like time itself, only moves
in one direction. We might just be facing the
fact that tomorrow will look a whole lot more like yesterday than today.
_______________________________________________
Futurework mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2011/06/
_______________________________________________
Futurework mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
