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by mark_l_watson
2481 days ago
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I have also wondered about the inevitability of the dominance of a tiny number of increasingly powerful corporations. I used to joke about William Gibson’s cyber punk novels being future history, but now perhaps it is nothing to joke about. Since (mostly) retiring I have been volunteering at my local food bank which is both a positive example of local self organization and serves as an introduction to many other small specialized groups that make sure kids get new school clothes, and other specific community needs. By nature I am a happy and optimistic person and I think that the future might still turn out just fine, but with better AI and other tech, different social structures, etc. I bet that changes in society will accelerate. Nothing is the same except for change, but I argue the that second derivative of change is going to exponentially skyrocket. |
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Whenever people talk about change, I look at my flush toilet which uses the same technology which was invented in 1592. Feeding into a sewage system built in 1866. With waste water treatment standards from 1912. This helps ground me in expectations about how quickly things change.
There are countervailing forces to change as well. Society has had the internet for 20-30 years which has changed the means with which society forms opinions (for the better and worse), but it has had little impact on the actual method of government and laws. Nor has it changed how these things change much. Why not? Should we expect more changes in these things or not? This is all a bit unknowable.
We now exist in two-three ( western/china and possibly russia) spheres of influence in the on-line world. Lack of small disconnected regions has been hypothesised as a cause of china's stagnation. Will it be the same for us?
Another countervailing tendency is energy (or lack of it). Change requires energy and energy is problematic right now. We cannot agree how it should be produced (carbon is out, but nuclear and renewables are at loggerheads a bit) and it seems like it we have some negative feedback loops in progress already (increased numbers of droughts due to climate change will decrease the amount of food energy we can capture as a whole).