Not Distopia or Utopia, Xenotopia
Jul. 27th, 2012 12:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mishalakThe future will not be a recycled and updated Blade Runner with the 1% living in unimaginable luxury with all the power and the rest of us hoping for some crumbs from the table. Why? Because the future was not be a moment of railroad singularity where the expansion of steal rail continued exponentially until it consumed all the world and collapsed. Nor did chemigedon happen with all of us using breathing units to filter increasingly smoggy air. In the other direction, hugs and puppies will not suddenly result as a result of uploading utopia.
Instead the world has changed enormously in some ways and not at all in others. Water still comes out of taps much as it has for a century in the industrialized world. Nearly everyone has a personal phone in the industrialized world and even many people in the rest of the world.
None of those reasons constitute real proof. Just because infinite compounding growth never has happened to humans in the past does not mean it will not happen in the future. But I know which way I will bet. The future will be darker, lighter, and stranger than anyone can imagine.
Instead the world has changed enormously in some ways and not at all in others. Water still comes out of taps much as it has for a century in the industrialized world. Nearly everyone has a personal phone in the industrialized world and even many people in the rest of the world.
None of those reasons constitute real proof. Just because infinite compounding growth never has happened to humans in the past does not mean it will not happen in the future. But I know which way I will bet. The future will be darker, lighter, and stranger than anyone can imagine.