I hope BoardAd will put this piece the next day after “Experts and Madam Olga.” I have pointed out and will point out again and again that futurologists have nothing to do with the future. It is time to propose some examples.
I pointed out that Ben Franklin, who was the original and ONLY expert in his time on electricity, was absolutely sure that electricity would never have any practical use. The terms he developed were the ones I had to learn when I got my ham license two hundred years later.
The development of what is now called Cold Fusion would change our world the way electricity came to dominate it in the centuries after Franklin died. Right now there are European experiments trying to develop sustainable fusion reactions, like the ones that exist in every active star. It is being done, but the energy produced is a bare fraction of energy put into it.
It was big day when scientists announced that the fusion energy produced was a billionth of the energy required, and another big day when the ratio went down to a million.
Fusion energy is like the suitcase bomb, a topic of abstract discussion but never actually happening.
We live in the fusion age the way Franklin did in his. Communication in his day, as in Caesar’s, was a fast horse, or, under very limited conditions, the heliograph.
And NIGHT! We have no idea today what NIGHT was in Franklin’s time. In scriptoria or libraries the chairs were aligned to get the most out of the sun’s light. Candles were expensive and their use destroyed the eyes of men like Pepys.
One science fiction movie I remember in the 50s had a man go far into the future and find that the technology of writing had taken a giant step: the pages of the huge book he opened were thin metal. In science fiction stories, the businesslike space travelers would have clipboards to write their notes in.
To take just one example, fusion power would change everything about space settlement and getting space materials, Right now the idea of building anything self-sustaining in space is a LONG way away because we have to get things out there.
With fusion energy, “out there” would be as close as Mexico is now, and as the power developed, it would become closer. Space colonies would develop like any other settlements.
But you can’t know what ELSE will develop. The locomotive and the telegraph united the East and West Coasts in a way Franklin would have thought absurd to predict EVER happening.
Throw in a version of a suitcase bomb and the small population needed in each space settlement, and you will have some pretty exclusive communities out there. Diversity is already reeling from the development of the American Prison Yard.
#1 by Dave on 04/26/2010 - 10:59 am
The central event of the 20th century was the treason against the white race wrought by Communism, mainstream Christianity, and Political Correctness.
The future has been determined by that event.
The races by the necessary nature of things will fall into relation.
But there will be no peace. You can count on that as assuredly as you can count on the sun rising in the east and setting in the west.
This, by the way, is the very opposite of what the Establishment believes the future to be.
#2 by Simmons on 04/26/2010 - 12:02 pm
One day we will have our Mantra moment and I believe it will roughly look like Milosivec’s Field of Blackbirds’ mistake.
As of now whites cannot get past our reactionary politics where we are on the defensive, but soon I venture to say events will push someone to say enough is enough.
#3 by BGLass on 04/26/2010 - 1:06 pm
Dave, that Disconnect between reality and ideological-desire is what I would think of –as a kid–as two different languages. People who are 50, could still remember the murder of JFK. The murderer was a communist and Rubenstein was dying of lung cancer when he did in the murderer and died, himself, cleanly erasing any voice. All assassinated presidents were after the Civil War, and almost back-to-back–each within 15 years of each other: Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley. In school, these things could never be seen as significant. But think about presidents being offed every 15 years. Kids would not believe it. Or it is just proof we gladly now live in a time of peace. But if you are just 15, it is a whole lifetime and seems like a long time.
#4 by Simmons on 04/27/2010 - 12:00 pm
For the sake of the Liberals and their Tea Party conspirators someone better develop something so they can keep their distance from the “diversity” they pretend to love. Maybe Scotty will come along and offer them the transporter function so the can beam up and away from the prison yard they did so much to create.
Anyway they say “race does not matter” and our ally the esteemed Mr. Obama is insisting otherwise, and the TPers gasp in horror as they proclaim they are not interested in race but race won’t leave them alone.
At some politico website there were 1800 comments mostly negative about Obama’s racialized campaign pitch he made this week. The respectables are starting to gasp in horror, and our own semi-respectables still reading from yesterday’s “Reactionary Times” cannot come to grip on how to overcome the residual anti-white attitudes and actions.
It is right there in the Mantra, “anti-racism” is nothing more than “anti-white.”
We get a decent percentage of American to say that and to believe that than we really have a game changer.
#5 by Truck Roy on 04/27/2010 - 5:50 pm
From the printing press to television, the new control points come from technological advances.
Within a few decades, barring some unforeseen problem the growth of computing power, the technology needed to replicate/augment many of the functions of the brain and to back-up memories will be available.
Computers and the internet are already changing and improving our ability to process information and communicate.
The ability to improve IQ more directly and quicker then with genetics, will be a crucial control point.
I don’t know what will come from our ability to replicate and enhance our own minds, but the motives of the people who develop this technology is important.
This is why motives matter: I heard Bob on one of his Porch Talk shows mention that the ability for a parent to choose the genetics of their children could mean that someday there are more blond, blue-eyed children in India than in the U.S., because the people of India treasure those traits, while many Americans don’t treasure them.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin built the most powerful internet company running today (Google) under the motto, “Do no evil”. Sounds good, but I these two guys are Jewish and their moral compass may not be the same as mine.
I cannot predict the future any more accurately than anyone else, but I want my people to have a future and that means that I take a big interest in the new technology.
#6 by Alan B on 04/27/2010 - 11:18 pm
Open and honest scientific debate these days is hampered by experts. The Big Bang Theory for example is taught, worshiped and defended as truth and rules like a religion, all other theories and evidence is ignored and treated as heresy. To understand this I call on some of you to visit the web sight, Electric Universe.com or holoscience.com. Here you can explore an alternative and facinating theory about the universe and how and what powers the sun. It also ties together ancient mythology and how it may have been influenced by the interactions of the planets Mars, Venus and Earth. In conclusion, the field of Astronomy is dominated by physics experts and these professionals do not have a strong Electrical Enginering back ground. Discoveries that are puzzling to one group can be explained by the other. Check out these websites it is worth it.