I've Seen the Future and It Will Be
Oct. 12th, 2006 04:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
talktoolooseI've been thinking a lot about the future lately and having some of my assumptions nudged.
I realize that for many years I've bascially believed that as a human race, we must take a step back from destructive technologies and find a way to simplify our lives if we want to live sustainably in a way that the biosphere can support long-term. But recent input has made me adjust that thinking a bit.
First, there was listening to William Gibson in No Maps for These Territories in which he pointed out the extent to which we are already living "post-human" lives. So much of what we take for granted as "normal" in our life is already completely dependent on technology. We no longer die in our 30s, toothless and disease-ridden. We regularly listen to the voices of the dead without finding that the least bit strange or sinister. We communicate without bodies and our wealth is encoded in the ether.
The next input was reading Stephen Baxter's Manifold: Time, a novel about the future of the human race, or rather about the battle to preserve mind in a mindless multiverse. Baxter clearly argues that human growth (population and prosperity) are incompatible with the biosphere and we must expand outwards from this planet if we are to survive.
Ultimately, the book becomes a coded screed for the concept that continuous growth is the only viable model and he shows a great sympathy for the idea that capitalism is the best model for human potential. Here he begins to lose me and the book starts to seem ludicrous. The main character (waggishly named Malenfant) is finally dissatisfied when shown the future because ultimately, in the heat-death state of the far future, intelligence will only be able to remember, not create. Luckily, a solution is found that only has, as its price, the complete destruction of the human race.
(The scene in which a future UN must take dictatorial control and force an unwilling populace to live sustainably is infuriatingly right wing.)
So, stepping back from this reductio ad absurdum, I am forced to conclude that appropriate use of technology is vital to a future I want to see. For instance, it's all well and good to say we should grow organically, work where we live and otherwise back off from the growl and grunt of our greed. But if we also have as a goal raising of the developing world to a decent standard of living, we are going to have an impossible economic problem on our hands.
Even if we cut our level of consumption in half, does the Earth really have the carrying capacity for 6 billion all to be at that level? Right now, there is an explosion of consumption in China and India and that's just leading to stress on resources and increase in greenhouse gas emissions.
So, in conclusion, I still don't believe we can just power on with this lifestyle, watch it spread further and then wait for a technological magic bullet (COLD FUSION IN A TEST-TUBE!). Nor do I believe we can turn back the clock far enough to both stop catastrophe and, at the same time, preserve what is just and beautiful in our civilization. I think we'll be forced to simultaneously crank way back and to use all our technological smarts to save ourselves.
The upside is that such an effort could well be a flowering of all that is best in humanity. I would like to still be around to see some of that.
I realize that for many years I've bascially believed that as a human race, we must take a step back from destructive technologies and find a way to simplify our lives if we want to live sustainably in a way that the biosphere can support long-term. But recent input has made me adjust that thinking a bit.
First, there was listening to William Gibson in No Maps for These Territories in which he pointed out the extent to which we are already living "post-human" lives. So much of what we take for granted as "normal" in our life is already completely dependent on technology. We no longer die in our 30s, toothless and disease-ridden. We regularly listen to the voices of the dead without finding that the least bit strange or sinister. We communicate without bodies and our wealth is encoded in the ether.
The next input was reading Stephen Baxter's Manifold: Time, a novel about the future of the human race, or rather about the battle to preserve mind in a mindless multiverse. Baxter clearly argues that human growth (population and prosperity) are incompatible with the biosphere and we must expand outwards from this planet if we are to survive.
Ultimately, the book becomes a coded screed for the concept that continuous growth is the only viable model and he shows a great sympathy for the idea that capitalism is the best model for human potential. Here he begins to lose me and the book starts to seem ludicrous. The main character (waggishly named Malenfant) is finally dissatisfied when shown the future because ultimately, in the heat-death state of the far future, intelligence will only be able to remember, not create. Luckily, a solution is found that only has, as its price, the complete destruction of the human race.
(The scene in which a future UN must take dictatorial control and force an unwilling populace to live sustainably is infuriatingly right wing.)
So, stepping back from this reductio ad absurdum, I am forced to conclude that appropriate use of technology is vital to a future I want to see. For instance, it's all well and good to say we should grow organically, work where we live and otherwise back off from the growl and grunt of our greed. But if we also have as a goal raising of the developing world to a decent standard of living, we are going to have an impossible economic problem on our hands.
Even if we cut our level of consumption in half, does the Earth really have the carrying capacity for 6 billion all to be at that level? Right now, there is an explosion of consumption in China and India and that's just leading to stress on resources and increase in greenhouse gas emissions.
So, in conclusion, I still don't believe we can just power on with this lifestyle, watch it spread further and then wait for a technological magic bullet (COLD FUSION IN A TEST-TUBE!). Nor do I believe we can turn back the clock far enough to both stop catastrophe and, at the same time, preserve what is just and beautiful in our civilization. I think we'll be forced to simultaneously crank way back and to use all our technological smarts to save ourselves.
The upside is that such an effort could well be a flowering of all that is best in humanity. I would like to still be around to see some of that.
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no subject
Date: 2006-10-12 09:06 pm (UTC)Really? Wouldn't the fact that I'm attracted to it make it infuriatingly leftwing? I mean the UN ain't the christian coalition. It ain't even the chamber of commerce.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-12 09:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-13 06:02 am (UTC)