If you compare turn-of-the-century radiotelegraph to the TV networks of the 1950s, and notice things move FASTER now, you can get a look at how I view the coming century. Look at us as 1908 instead of 2008, instead of wireless radio, look at biological advances.
I remember when cloning was declared impossible, about two decades ago. I remember when heart transplants were declared impossible, and then when those who had declared them impossible were banking on the fact that patients only lived a few extra months or years.
So I will put a news time here, which I seldom do:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/05/26/regrowing.body.parts/index.html#
SAN ANTONIO, Texas (CNN) — Last week in an operating room in Texas, a wounded American soldier underwent a history-making procedure that could help him regrow the finger that was lost to a bomb attack in Baghdad last year….
What the usual discussion of this would produce would be a set of comments by Super Doctor Gillboob saying this is nonsense or Respected Finger Specialist Gottlieb saying this one won’t work or Harvard Ethics Professor Finklestein saying it’s Evil and Pat Robertson backing him up. I would also receive the usual statement about the different between embryonic stem cells and others.
My idea of the future is entirely different. I have been described by those who have know me for decades as “so right it’s CREEPY” about the future because I see a PICTURE, not a bunch of current news or current commentary. I see a PICTURE.
As I said, I look at this finger replacement ATTEMPT the way I would have looked at wireless telegraphy as Marconi moved from sending signals room to room to sending them across his yard and so forth, year after year.
The reason Georgia dentist Crawford Long’s anesthesia was rejected and patients had to have surgery in agony for years was because, when he demonstrated nitrous oxide, the patient GROANED. That happened with NO2 though the patient was deep under. It justified the experts that anesthesia was impossible.
Cute joke. Look what it COST!
But Crawford Long clearly demonstrated that doctors were TRYING anesthesia long before they finally found out what the far more dangerous method later adopted was tested out. It was the key to the FUTURE, which is my concern.
If we are to influence the future, we must have a clear idea of what it will NOT be like. ALL our present discussions of the future are hopelessly mired in what IS and the expectations drawn from what IS.
I have discussed this before, but had no real comments on it. That was why I was so ecstatic to see Prometheus’ exposition on temporal provincialism below.
#1 by shari on 05/28/2008 - 1:53 pm
Well, Thank you! I think that you answered my question. I tend to get stuck, looking the wrong direction.
#2 by Simmons on 05/28/2008 - 3:06 pm
The same but different. How are we supposed to know unless you want us to sound like Popular Mechanics. Heck one time I mentioned Peak Oil you went junk yard dog on me. And I only mentioned it because plans would not be able to be made according to the “expert’s” predictions of limitless oil, nothing more.
To be constructive I will write that we must depose the story tellers of the 20th century. That they are jewish supremacists only makes that easier since they have about alienated everyone. People like Jared Diamond, Gould, Adorno, Freud, Boas and their junior partners should be easy to set up as the fall guys since the latter two have fallen into the humor category.
If you want soundbites this is my first try; “Ideology is dying, genetics is being born.” Not very good but I’m in a hurry.
#3 by AFKANNow on 05/28/2008 - 4:27 pm
My concerns are the future of a century from now will seem to be – from the perspective of one of the Elite – damn near a different world.
We have seen what Cultural Eugenics could do in less than forty years, with Singapore.
My concern is two areas will merge – Artificial Intelligence, and Eugenics.
These areas are compounding out in terms of growth of knowledge, and could work together to usher in a phase shift event for Mankind, at the expense of Humanity – homo superior.
Take an extra 10% increase in intelligence, and compound it over several generations.
At a certain point, certain trends become obvious, and Homo Superior will look at us as we look at pets.
I have no doubt the Chinese are working on this full tilt; even Britain has admitted to “chimera” experiments – human/animal engineering.
We of the “Limits to Growth” crowd see what they will see – there is little to no need for about ninety percent of humanity.
It will make “Brave New World” seem like Paradise Island.
If I had my schooling to do over,I would have skipped the business courses, and taken a ton of biology, because the future will be shaped by Living Systems.
And not all of them will be “human,” as we know it.
Let me repeat this – ninety percent of humanity AS WE KNOW IT will be net negatives, in Malthusian terms.
I am brutally determined that MY nephews, and THEIR Posterity, will be on the Winning Team.
By. Any. Means. Necessary.
#4 by backbaygrouch4 on 05/28/2008 - 6:15 pm
My mental meanderings about the uncharted future focus on the possibility that we may be among the last people to die. In that we may be fortunate or not. Oh, there will be murders accidents and suicides, but the natural death may, well, be dying out. As each and every part of the body becomes replaceable or capable of being regenerated death will be postponed indefinitely.
This will lead to a horde of problems. Large numbers of births will become unnecessary. Marriage for ten thousand years is just asking too much. The population will be overwhelmingly adult and healthy. Then there will be the problem of upgrades. There will be pressure to eliminate inferior beings for newer models and somewhere along the line everyone will become obsolete with no natural end in sight. A very ticklish dilemma. The social moral, ethical, religious and economic consequences of such a scientific advance are myriad.
What if DNA manipulation would allow race transference? The ever more rapid cascading of human understanding is going to lead to unimaginable new experiences. What will it mean? Damned if I know. I’m not a futurologist.
#5 by shari on 05/28/2008 - 6:33 pm
Perhaps Jesus will return. Not to put a stop to everything, but to council and direct.
#6 by Dave on 05/28/2008 - 10:41 pm
The most difficult thing in life is to be in the business of fundamentally making sense.
Most of the “learned” people in the world do not make any fundamental sense.
When Steve Wozniak was fiddling around with a Commodore computer trying to get it to do something useful, he was in the business of fundamentally making sense.
In contrast, today there are thousands of “scientists” in the climate change field crunching data sets of limited longitudinal duration and coming up with opinions, getting paid for it, who do not make any fundamental sense.
A priori, they believe and are practitioners of the RELIGION of climate change. They entered the labyrinth from the get go, where no matter what turn they take, there is a barrier before them and a barrier behind them and they cannot see.
All over the developed world there are young people getting sucked into wasting their lives in the fields of “ecology” and “climate change. They have taken that turn into the labyrinth where no matter what turn they take, there is a barrier before them and a barrier behind them, and they cannot see. They were conditioned and indoctrinated into taking that turn. It is a labyrinth that is fully supported and encouraged by the Establishment (of the RELIGION of climate change).
No one ever warned them how hard it is to be in the business of fundamentally making sense.
The world is bifurcated in this way. Completely bifurcated between those that make fundamental sense with their lives and those that don’t.
The lion’s share of “ PROFESSIONALS” in any field DO NOT make any fundamental sense. And they actually get paid for not making any fundamental sense. They are practitioners of socially supported rituals (a pretense of benefit, no real benefit) and do not know it.
The measure of “making fundamental sense” is the real benefit to others derived from your efforts.
It is those real benefits that determine the future.
Ask Steve Wozniak. Ask those who succeeded in re-growing a finger.
“Temporal provincialism” is just another term for submersion into religious cults and Wordist tomes and catechisms that make no fundamental sense, producing no real benefits.
#7 by AFKANNow on 05/28/2008 - 10:59 pm
in reply to Shari:
I suspect the truth is, Christ has Returned, but the language used in the Revelation was using words to describe the future states of Consciousness that, well, words can not deescribe, but pictures can. In short, Christ, the author of Revelation, was using the Universal Language of Light to communicate with His foremost disciple, who then used the language of words to try to describe the pictures.
The pictures would makes as much sense, to another Initiate, as the Consciousness of that Initiate could handle; sort of like words and language, if you think about it, where the same words have different meanings to more advanced states of Consciousness.
Think of small children, and Adults, using the same word – with two very different meanings.
I think He never really “left,” and has been the Guardian that guides and steers Western Civilization – the manifestation of the Soul of Western Man – forward.
As you can imagine, I don’t go to church very much…
😉
I go to Something Better.
I go, daily, to focus on helping my nephews lay the foundation for a much better world, one way, or another, starting where they are.
I picture a future for them I can only dimly outline; they have to fill in the outline, and I am trying to kerp them, focused on setting their goals ever higher.
I am trying, desperately, to stop them from falling into the Wordist traps their Family fell into.
#8 by Bob on 05/29/2008 - 11:34 am
Shari, I like to think that Jesus is doing just that, right here, right now, with us
#9 by shari on 05/29/2008 - 12:43 pm
Bob and Afkan, No, I don’t think that we have been left entirely on out own. But since I think that a literal resurrection took place, I don’t discount anything else, like a literal return. From the things that Backbay was musing about, it could be that we could use some more immediate help. After all, Bob will be frozen, at least for a while. Ha!
#10 by Bob on 05/30/2008 - 11:38 am
Shari, Jesus would not be Politically Correct.
I think it might be a bit much to ask him to go through ANOTHER crucifixion.