One breed of futurism
I read an article in the Wired Magazine about the famous futurist and inventor, Ray Kurzweil. Mr. Kurzweil talks about the technological singularity, a hypothesized point in future in which intelligent machines will be able to improve themselves at an accelerated rate and he is hoping that he lives long enough to see that day. He is taking thousands of dollars of nutritional supplements and blood transfusions to extend his life and has medical experts working with him on this project. You can read more about him and his views online.
I understand that we need different specialties to tackle different problems and the same way that we need economists to take care of economy we also need futurists to provide visions for our future. But here is my problem with this breed of futurism: whose future are we talking about? The future of MIT and Harvard and Stanford graduates who live in the suburbs and make millions of dollars? What about the future of those billions of people who don’t have clean drinking water and electricity? Wouldn’t it be more fun if we all move towards the future together?
| 2.5 |
May 6th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
I totally agree.
It’d be more fun.
But i have to add that scifi-like futurism and humanitarian futurism are not mutually exclusive (I’m not saying kurzweil thinks about both, but say, me and you can).
anyway.. the thing is, futurism can be cool.
especially visionary futurism that influences the direction of history (in both respects) for the better. (recall MLK for example, for the humanistic type).
At least It can wake you up from the indoctrination that we have reached the end of history. Both in terms of the evolution of the government/economy and of the specie.