Re: Future coltures of people?
Re: Future coltures of people? I think the Cold War nuclear terror kinda got people to vastly overestimate how easy it is, even with nukes, to wipe out huge chunks of humanity.People were kinda horrified at one point when the official Chinese position was that they were not scared of nukes, because it would cost them a small handful of cities at most. But... it would cost them a small handful of cities, at most. Hiroshima and Nagasaki still exist, and actually got nuked. It took a literal nation-moving 8+ Earthquake and associated tsunami before the Fukashima meldown could happen, and even after what might well be the worst case scenario, life goes on.Of course, people overreact. They always overreact. It doesn't have to be something that can literally kill you, like a plane crash or a nuclear explosion. It could be something as simple as someone waking up and starting to read evil messages into something semipopular, be it comicbooks or rock and roll or DnD or video games or the internet or v ideo games again. Planes crash considerably less frequently than cars, but since people ride in cars more often than planes, they have mental room to think planes are scarier. There were only ever 3 nuclear reactor accidents ever: one was deliberately mismanaged, one was completely forgettable because all the fail-safes are not a waste of time, and the other was hit with the most powerful force the Earth could bring against it, which is not exactly a common occurrence.Scary stories about things happening to children in the news, and suddenly a generation comes up fearing that every knock on the door or even unexpected phonecalls might be a serial killer, and that everyone is probably out to get them.It is really hard to wipe out humanity. You'd need something smarter and vastly more powerful--if the world tries to kill us, we engineer something to save us. Diseases? It might have taken a few millenia, but we survived Smallpox long enough to wipe it out. Every nuke in the world might end post-industrial civilization, if used very carefully, but wouldn't put a dent in the survival of humanity... and so long as enough people survive and remember how to build a technological civilization, even that is vanishingly unlikely.But where is culture heading?Well, it really seems like the whole idea of people unifying to achieve a goal is collapsing. Even outside threats aren't doing it anymore. If someone nuked Washington DC today, we'd just have one big group blaming racists and calling for more guncontrol, and the other blaming hippies and calling for more military intervention abroad, and they'd probably just fight each other if they can be bothered to do something other than post how much they hate the other group on Twitter... even though the other group had nothing to do with it and GH!Globalization and connectedness helps people find communities they can fit in, true... but it allows people to get away from communities they don't like, and that seems to be encouraging people to separate into mutually adversarial teams that would rather watch civilization burn than work with the enemy that they hate for the crime of not waving the exact same banner as them at all times. Yeah, this has always been a failure mode of humanity... but it seemed like we might just possibly be doing something to deal with it. Probably World War II facilitated the most unity, and the Cold War kept it going (Oh, sure, the world was divided into Capitalist / Communist / the Third World, but that it could be divided into so few groups speaks volumes).It seems like humanity is having a "we survived global war, defeated our ancient enemies Smallpox and Poleo, went 50 years without nuking anyone, and completed the experiment to see whether Stalinism or Capitalism was better... now what?" identity crisis.You know, 10 years ago, when someone was trying to unify the west against an enem y and use nationalism to accomplish things, it did a lot to make me think those ideas were horrible. Now I'm starting to think they were only horrible because the only goal in the mix seemed to be "Invade Iraq, because a couple guys in Texas always wanted to do that". Oh, make no mistake--blind nationalism and the use of enemies as a rallying point is a very dangerous plan that could easily backfire (see World Wars again), and it certainly relies on people being idiots. But... ur... people are idiots (see the earlier point about people panicking over every little thing, hating people by designing morality t-shirts, etc).Oh, wait. I think I just became Dr. Doom. Dangit, now Reed Richards is going to foil all my plans and force me to make several tons of robot body doubles, all while never actually using any of his amazing technology to do anything useful. I'll defeat you some day, Mr. Fantastic! Then the world shall know Doom! URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=242099#p242099 __
Re: Future coltures of people?
Re: Future coltures of people? Maybe, but the USA and the UK can be the greatest of allies, and still get wiped off the face of the planet as collateral damage when a couple of crazies in the middle east decide to duke it out with nuclear weapons or some other form of mass destruction.And then there's the planet itself, even if we avoid killing ourselves off. We are affecting its climate and rapidly depleting its resources while it is still our only viable home.We talk a lot about doing something about climate change and improving conservation of the planets resources in the hopes of creating a sustainable civilization, but we don't really do anything towards actually achieving it.As lazy as the human race is, we'll finally decide to really do something about climate change or resource depletion when we realize it's too late and all we can do is maybe buy ourselves a little more time. But that won't do any good, because once mankind precieves the end of civilization as he knows it, we'll squander what remaining resources there are by fighting over them. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=241983#p241983 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Future coltures of people?
Re: Future coltures of people? Well in terms of neuclear capability, it's unlikely even if a smaller nation did! kick off, we'd have as bad a time as predicted in the cold war, sinse remember the cold war appocalyptic predictions were always based on hitting strategic targets to both cause maximum loss of life and stop the enemy nation's retaliations asap, ie, all the missiles would be shot off in short order to prevent the other side shooting all their missiles, hay nobody said it was logical! . That sort of coordination wouldn't happen from one of the fanatic fringe groups, neither would they really have the facilities for the manufacture of missile delivery systems, (remember all that jolly fun with those mythical weapons of mass distruction). What would be more worrying and probable would be biological, chemical, or major explosive attacks by terrorists. These woul d certainly be bad, but probably not enough to end civilization as we know it in one go, though fear of such might create something pretty Orwellian. As to the resource arguement, one thing I will say for the basic capitalist model is that sinse it's always based on prophet, there will always be a point where alternative means of getting resources or more efficient means of producing them will outway the cost of setting up such alternatives. Eg, when the price of Oil starts to get so high that it's cheaper for Shell, texico etc to convert to alternative fuel than to go on with what they're doing, which is always the arguement made against conservation, indeed I do think it is likely that patants for producing alternative are already held by such companies, that's one bit of conspiracy theory I see as quite likely sinse coorporations don't like giving up their strangle hold too easily. Of course that doesn't necessarily mean said cost s of changing over from unrenewable to renewable energy won't be pushed onto the consumer in the future, still more so given that another major way of maximizing prophet is minimizing the amount of people you actually employ and automation is improving all the time.That I actually see as one of the major worries for humanity, the fact that instead of automation and technological production freeing people to explore their individuality, people instead have more often than not been just made another part of said automation process. One very worrying comment I heard on a Doctor who story set in ancient Persia which dealt with slavery, was that the writer came up with the idea after a friend of his worked at Mcdonalds and was told during basic training to literally deal with customers as though he was a machine, just push out what was ordered and collect the money saying the standard phrases with no humanity so customers had the experience of automation even though the re was a real person serving them.What is doubly frightening of course, (or it is to me), is that there is no one in charge of these trends or indeed of the world generally. Coorporations just grab after prophet and continue for their own acquisition because that is how coorporations act and circumvent or bribe the governments when needed becausee prophet justifies all.Similarly, the rich justify their privilige because it's "the way things are" and elected ministers, however good their intentions just play the game behind closed doors because it's "what's gone before" Again, it's the collective, all the assumptions and expectations and tiny little conceits and slights and group identities that causes a large part of the world's suffering and might be what dooms humanity in the end. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=242073#p242073 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Future coltures of people?
Re: Future coltures of people? Maybe, but the USA and the UK can be the greatest of allies, and still get wiped off the face of the planet as collateral damage when a couple of crazies in the middle east decide to duke it out with nuclear weapons or some other form of mass destruction. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=241983#p241983 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Future coltures of people?
Re: Future coltures of people? @Cw, I'm increasingly of the opinion that the sf writers (especially the mid twentieth century ones), got it backwards. It's not technology that is the force behind social change, but social change that is the force behind technological development. People in the past weren't any more stupid than we are, it's just that when society is as it is and isn't changing people don't bother to change it. Case in point, the principles of a steam engine were worked out by Hero in ancient Griece (his name was Hero), and ceasar's diary actually mentions the motive power of steam. Even the Egyptians were able to mix and use concrete, heck, the romans regularly had teliscopes. The problem? Why the hell bother building a steam engine or a concrete road when you've got x thousand slaves ready to leap to your beck and call and do whatever needed doing, hell the pyramids would be a major achievement today even with all our modern mach inary. Look at why human kind walked on the moon, not for discovery or science or to establish a colony, but so one lot of American apes could say they could climb literally higher up the tree than a lot of Russian apes. Of course, this isn't to say social change can't! happen, but until we actually get to a position where social change is necessary, I don't see any technological or life style changes following, indeed the increasing tendencies towards uniformity and mass production implicit in capitalism (changes which marx himself predicted), are fairly dangerous as far as social change goes. Indeed, I myself see alianation of the individual as a primary motivation in a lot of world events, after all people would not feel the need to go and blow up buildings if they felt their religious perspective was validated by the wider world.Oh, and no this isn't to condone terrorist actions, the actions are bad things whatever the motivat ion, only to note that I do see cultural and individual alienation as motivating factors behind what makes people join such organizations. After all, how often has a blind person felt utterly lost as part of a crowd? Or utterly rejected from any group identity through differences? Unless we become more caring of individuals and better listeners, I can see more and more people taking the extreme and unethical way out, and social control by those in power getting increasingly draconian as a result. Then again, there is another side to things, sinse one of the better consequences of globalisation is indeed the formation of communities not bound by distance, and if that! trend continues it could have far nicer consequences for valuing the individual in a society which seems not to. Indeed we've already seen bits of that, in the nee sincerity cultural movement, bronies and friendship is magic, and some of the kinder internet acceptances among alternative culture. It's also true on an economic level that there are those looking at the current evidence who realize we can't! go on forever, hence some of the efforts made to curb the lengths companies may go to in despoiling individuals, the environment etc for prophet. All in all we'll see. The technology is there, the no how is there, the question is do we have the motivation?Btw Cw the sheep was called Dolly and was cloned in the mid to late nineties. She was grone completely from a cloned cell into an adult sheep. At the time it was seen as the next step in biological engineering, along with the human genome project. The problem however is that sinse the cell also cloned her telemeers at the age the original sheep was, she aged super rapidly and died quite young, (In I believe 2005). This is why cloning androids might be a ways off yet, though clone organs for transplant is already a miner thing in surgery (there are people with cloned ears). I susp ect clone organs are something we'll see fairly soon, in the next couple of decades, though a more important question is whether anyone but the mega rich will be able to afford them or whether the drug companies will only sell them at ridiculous prices, as is their wont. As to space faring, again, it'll depend entirely upon whether the social pressure exists to get there. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=241798#p241798 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Future coltures of people?
Re: Future coltures of people? I don't think humanity has a future, we seem to enjoy killing each other so much, that I think it's inevitable that we will one day, exterminate ourselves. If you think that's a bleak outlook, consider that, ever since mankind invented or learned how to use some object as a weapon, that we have not seen any period of time where some group of people wasn't at war with some other group of people. Q was right, we are a grievously savage race. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=241831#p241831 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Future coltures of people?
Re: Future coltures of people? Well True when considering humanity as a hole, however less true when looking at individual nations and fudes. I'm fairly sure that 200 years ago if you said that one day England would be a regular ally of France through two major wars, you'd get a right royal wellington booting, after all England and France had been at war off and on for pretty much the preceeding millenium, right from the Norman invasion onwards.Similarly, we have had two world wars with Germany and the Germans are now a strong economic power and again ally, and look at all the cold war neuclear predictions? So while it is certainly true that humanity as a hole! always have been at war somewhere, individual human nations or even groups of nations seem quite good at peace. I also do not know how nationalism or imperialism based only on a national group will survive in a world of mass communications and more uniform global culture, (nobody said multinational capitalism wa s all! bad). It's what individualist fringe groups may arise, how those groups are controled and what social forces encourage the formation of those groups that worries me, especially in an era when we've learnt to kill so well with so little effort. I used to be farely convinced we were heading for a crash, collapse and factionalism, and a pretty horrible point and it was whether we would learn from said crash. Now I could see the crash as preventable, but whether or not it will be I don't know. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=241841#p241841 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Future coltures of people?
Re: Future coltures of people? I can't get this song of yours to play cw, did you copy the link right? I don't really see a youtube address there unfortunately and that's the sort of thing I'd be interested in hearing. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=241655#p241655 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Future coltures of people?
Re: Future coltures of people? It's not even a valid internet address. http colon slash slash coltures slash URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=241674#p241674 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Future coltures of people?
Re: Future coltures of people? Ok. I changed the link. I can't believe I was stupid to over look the address. LOL. Just in case it didn't copy, the following is the address.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yesyhQkYrQM URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=241683#p241683 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Future coltures of people?
Re: Future coltures of people? Lol Cw, actually I've heard that song before, Futurama had This awesome parody version in an episode featuring a time machine which is pretty funny. As to the sort of distant future predicted by the song, I'm not personally too optimistic about humankind, given we're a pretty skummy species over all, and our survival will probably depend ultimately on our lack of scummitude. I'd love to imagine the predictions of a Eutopean, startrek style future will come true, however I'm increasingly of the opinion that even if we have the technology, or the knowhow to produce the technology to improve life, such will depend entirely on our social and individual natures, ie, what is prophitable, what is for the good of the state. maybe if we first learn to stop being the greedy, self centered arrogant little mob of apes we are then we can set about reaching for the stars, however unfortunately for al l the love and the kindness and the good of the individual, there is the greater evil of the crowd. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=241690#p241690 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Future coltures of people?
Re: Future coltures of people? Ok. I changed the link. I can't believe I was stupid to over look the address. LOL. Just in case it didn't copy, the following is the address.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yesyhQkYrQMThe name of the song is called "in the year 2525". URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=241683#p241683 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Future coltures of people?
Re: Future coltures of people? Reaching a future like in star trek is iffy at best. The longer we live, the more I wonder if tech would bring out more of the bad side of us instead of the good. Also, how will the music, books, pictures, and etc reflect that? How far will we go before we self destruct? Will we get so far that we are mostly machines or will we be ruled by them? Then again, tech may not even play a part in it. LOL. On the other hand, you got the food production. I wonder how fast that is changing. Add to that, I remember, at some point, something about a sheep being cloned. I will have to look that one up. Look at how warfair has changed over the years. Now days, I bet you can attack another nation over the web even before you get people on the ground. I would hate to see other things that could happen from afar... URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=241721#p241721 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Future coltures of people?
Re: Future coltures of people? As much as it is nice to hope for such things in our future, if we ever become a space faring race, I don't see anything like Star Trek or Star Wars evolving. Instead I see something more like Babylon 5, where there is relative pease, but it is something we have to work at constantly to maintain. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=241759#p241759 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
