[el_zorro]

I am sorry you were downvoted (particularly because you were called a shill for daring to voice your reasonable opinion). There is a doom-and-gloom mentality on this site; people seem like they want the end-of-days. I noted, as you did, that almost all of the problems listed were independent of communications protocol.

This entire argument is one of "exaggerate the bad and completely ignore the good". We have companies working on cheap space travel, which opens up asteroid mining (mitigating resource crunches) and allows us to use space-based resources to alleviate problems on Earth (solar shades to reduce warming, etc). Asimov made a great point at the end of I, Robot, where he notes that the intractable problems of one age are rendered moot by the technology of the next. People feared that NYC would be uninhabitable by the year 1950 because there wouldn't be enough place to put all the horse manure - which became a non-issue with the advent of automobile. People feared mass starvation in the 1970's because we couldn't produce enough food - made irrelevant by the green revolution. People fear global warming and totalitarianism today, and it will be made irrelevant by the tech of tomorrow. We already see birth rates falling globally, to the point where we will soon be shrinking in population. This will reduce stresses from unemployment, and paired with a burgeoning space economy we will have more to share with fewer people.

There is no reason to cower from the ills of today; they are only a call to keep moving forward.

[Liesmith]

It is exciting to think that everything is collapsing and the world is changing and now is different than the past. And in a lot of ways it is. But there is no technological singularity that is going to make human beings irrelevant. We need to do something about the various crises of our time, but the guy you responded to is right. My first reaction on reading the article in the OP was "Wow, isn't it funny how bad things looked only a couple of years ago!" The whining 'democracy is a lie' part made me particularly nostalgic for a kinder, simpler time, a time when I could hate George Bush with all of my hate and could say stuff like "the system is totally broken, man" with a straight face.

While you can't trust governments and powerful individuals to reliably act in your interest (and never could), we need to take a step back here. There's a lot of nonsense and science fiction dystopia going around itt, a lot of people who think that 90% of humanity is worthless now that we don't need them for physical labor. That's ridiculous. Things are basically fine and while there are going to be some serious repercussions among tech people things will remain basically fine for the vast majority of westerners.

[ionwake]

Good comment

[happyscrappy]

Excellent comment and I too am very bullish on the future.

>There is a doom-and-gloom mentality on this site; people seem like they want the end-of-days.

Everyone feels like their struggles are epic because they are the ones fighting. Everyone has struggles, just at different levels, so some minor career setback feels crushing even though you are not in any real jeopardy. People also tend to romanticize about the past, when in reality if they went back they would be horrified.

>There is no reason to cower from the ills of today; they are only a call to keep moving forward.

True but I do think that there is the problem that technology is moving so much faster than society. The curve of tech is steepening, and though I never thought I would hear myself say this, I think we could pull back on the throttle a little.