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Friday, August 06, 2010

Simple Answers to Futurological Questions

Is A 500-Year Human Life Span Around the Corner?

No, it is not.

Some Bonus Questions:

Is artificial intelligence around the corner?

No, it is not.

Is nuclear-plastic-digital-robotic-nanotechnological superabundance around the corner?

No, it is not.

Do futurologists ever ask anything but the same rhetorical questions over and over again?

No, they do not.

Are futurologists ever right about anything?

No, they are not.

Will pampered ill-educated greedy American consumers realize any time soon that techno-pop predictions are nothing more than advertising hype in its most extreme form selling them the status quo in futurological drag?

No, they will not.

2 comments:

admin said...

Yep, the status quo. I was honestly surprised when I tried to push green energy as a transhumanist issue some four or five years ago and got heavy opposition or indifference. Why develop sustainable energy when we can pump nanobots into the air to fix carbon dioxide?

Except that that's treating the symptoms, not the disease, and if you want to live forever, you better damn well figure out how to live sustainably at some point.

Dale Carrico said...

All true enough -- however, it is also true (and I think this is probably worth stressing), that if one is talking to people who not only want to live forever in the generalized common or garden variety way that most people might occasionally say that they want to live forever, that is to say, as a way of expressing annoyance about life being too short to visit all the national parks one might want or have sex with all the people one might want or, you know, to grumble about the aches and pains of aging, that sort of thing, but instead say they want to live forever and think they actually might manage this feat or something like it because they confuse science with science fiction and/ or think if they clap loud enough or remain in denial ferociously enough that they will find their way to a sooper pill or sooper cyborg shell or sooper uploading their brain into the internet scheme, well, honestly the problem is not really that they aren't being consistent in failing to grasp the environmental implications of their desired techno-utopian sooper longevity plan but that they are obviously crazy (at least in this area of their lives), and one can't exactly reasonably expect consistency or practicality from crazy people.