A commenter mentioned in passing modesty, “I am not a futurologist.” Well, those of you who have read my stuff carefully may have noticed that I have just a little tendency TO look down on “experts.” My immediate reaction was to say that, precisely because of this lack of qualifications, the commenter wouldn’t make the dumbass mistakes futurology is famous for.
But since then I have deeply impressed by the discussion about the future between our commenters. The joy of a good professor’s life is to get things to the point where the discussion rolls on without him. Of course, good professors are a practically extinct species.
The reason futurology is such a fake is that no futurologist gives a damn about the future. Like every other “expert,” his job is to get grants and tenure NOW, not fifty years from now.
BUGS is precisely the opposite. Our ONLY concern is what the future will actually be like. THE FUTURE IS OUR BUSINESS.
The establishment gives grants and university money. You do not get money from them by saying that something awful might happen to them, or that they will be forgotten in times to come as other establishments have been.
#1 by Simmons on 05/30/2008 - 1:47 pm
An expert on “guilt” gets my brief reply at http://fray.slate.com/discuss/forums/1322584/ShowThread.aspx?ArticleID=2191906#1322584
#2 by Simmons on 05/30/2008 - 3:05 pm
I tried to hyperlink that but I failed, maybe something is wrong with the blog.
#3 by BoardAd on 05/30/2008 - 3:09 pm
You typed it in wrong, you forgot to put a space between at and the http.
#4 by Pain on 05/30/2008 - 3:49 pm
Who would have thought that after the Nazis invented steroids, American gyms would be filled with physical supermen? Genetics will do the same thing much more cheaply; you will no longer depend on expensive periodic shots for brawn and there will also be something new: brains for baby on request.
The status quo will fight that technology even harder than they have been fighting steroid-use. But think of the profits to be made from babies destined to be brawny, brainy, and beautiful?
So the elites will realize that their best bet will be to use their money and connections to be the first to have the super babies. And so the new super bloodline will be born to power. It is has been many millennia since the best and the brightest were also the leaders. Think of the potential.
#5 by Tim on 05/30/2008 - 7:24 pm
Pain,
You might remember seeing that Super Dog scientists or geneticists created?? This dog had double the muscles. Instead of one leg muscle, he had two. Every muscle was double! Super Dog, and he looked like he belonged in a comic book.
I immediately had a flashback of reading stories about the Giants. There are tons of stuff about them online. Many had DOUBLE rows of teeth and most of the skeletons were found with red hair. Pretty wild stuff. All the “natives” said they were what color???guess??? guess the color of the giants???
lol Maybe Hercules and Zeus were real!
#6 by AFKANNow on 05/30/2008 - 10:33 pm
One quick random observation:
The politics of the Future seem remarkably dystopian, for a season. I do not see how the Malthusian Reality can be avoided, and with that comes very rigid political structures, with tight controls.
I was thinking about the religion of “political correctness,” which serves the God of Equality, and I thought about it in terms of the emotional motivation of its adherents.
There must be an emotional need which a religion addresses, and solves.
The emotional motivation of the supporters of political correctness, servants of the god of Equality, is envy – the envy of those who can not achieve what it is they admire, and will thus destroy what they admire, by destroying the possessors of what they admire – and can not Create for themselves.
We are dealing with – literally – the rage of Children, the Children of the Sixties, based on their envy for what they can not Create on their own.
Creating the Future – a much better Future – is, literally, beyond them.
However, their envy – and their rage – are quite obvious.
We shall have to deal with these issues, and these people, in a direct and substantive manner, sooner or later, one way or another.
#7 by BoardAd on 05/30/2008 - 11:03 pm
This has been on my mind since we started this topic, but science fiction is literally swimming in references to a future neural interface. In recent tests they managed to create one for a monkey that can control prosthetic limbs.
Now the above is a far cry from a data link, but wouldn’t having a neural connection to the internet where you can download knowledge throw a kink in the need for genetically engineering Intelligence?
#8 by AFKANNow on 05/30/2008 - 11:53 pm
Good question.
I think data downloads are less than a generation away; we already have subvocalization for one hundred words, and directly accessing the neural system saves a lot of effort. Already, speakers are available that let anyone setting DIRECTLY between them hear what is being broadcast, and no one else – apparently, this frequency goes right to the auditory nerves.
We are awash in knowledge; what we need is more intelligence to put this knowledge in a useful framework.
This is where the unique Talent of the Creative Race comes to the fore.
In Africa, they see reddish sand.
WE see iron ore, and the ability to make iron, steel, and tools from iron and steel – an abstract, Creative thought process.
The problem is, the incredible growth of Artificial Intelligence – the IQ Amplifiers that would hook to the neural interface – and enhanced raw genetic material – more, faster connections, for example – would create Homo Novus – something beyond our ken.
This is the great challenge to genetic engineering; obviously, they can engineer to a defined Purpose – Gammas, from “Brave New World,” for example.
Designing DOWN is easy.
Yet, given the tools of genetic engineering, Homo Habilus would not have – COULD not have – developed Homo Sapiens. Super Apes, yes; Man, no.
Right now, we can build better raw material, and just have to sit back and see what happens.
I have argued that Civilization, and the spark of Creativity, are only possible with the Western Soul.
THAT having been said, there are software programs out there that design something that developers could not have imagined, and the stuff works.
Quantitative increases are additive; it is when these force a phase shift event that they become Qualitative – and, in the case of our Race, that Qualitative something needed the foundation of the Western Soul as the soil, and the raw material, to work with.
A lot of money is going into artificial intelligence (they just call it something else), and when THAT AI System gets to the point it can work with the petabytes of genetic data that is being developed, we will see remarkable changes, in a short period of time – less than a century, to be sure, and Homo Novus will be Homo Superior.
THAT is the far distant goal I am organizing my nephew’s studies around.
The Pope can condemn until Hell freezes over; the fact that human chimera research is being admitted to publicly tells me there is a LOT more going on behind the scenes than anyone dares talk about.
Human experimentation for raw material?
China.
Remember, China did not – and still doesn’t – see itself as stagnant.
The Asian Soul incarnate, China saw its government system as perfect; the tools offered by the young upstarts of the West are useful, but America has been around for less time than even minor Chinese dynasties.
Take the ability to plan in terms of centuries, and let that loose with genetic engineering, and artificial intelligence.
Meanwhile, the Children of the Sixties will have killed off America as we knew it.
My nephews will be very busy…
#9 by Bob on 05/31/2008 - 6:44 am
Good job, Simmons!