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The Futurologist In The Nehru Jacket


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#1 advancedatheist

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Posted 15 September 2002 - 01:13 AM


Newsweek's Website has an article about the declining fortunes of the field of futurology or futures studies:

http://www.msnbc.com...?0cb=-415104790

Futurology was born during the cold war and initially had an alarmist tinge. In the R&D labs of America’s military, scientists began doing mathematical trend analysis of such questions as: how fast will the Soviets develop new submarines? The Air Force set up the Rand Corporation, and a visionary there named Herman Kahn began developing scenarios for what the world might experience in the event of a nuclear war. A foundation, the Stanford Research Institute, began using similar methods to predict trends in general society: what would the future of transportation look like? “It was quite an idealistic period,” recalls Edward Cornish, president and founder of the World Future Society. “America was going to the moon. There was a lot of money.”

Then futurology hit the mainstream, and started to rise on the pop charts. In 1970 a former Fortune magazine editor named Alvin Toffler published a landmark best seller called “Future Shock,” an epic vision of how the “roaring current of change”—job mobility, the decline of the small town, the throwaway consumer society—had left Americans in a state of “shattered stress and disorientation.”

Thousands joined the World Future Society, where they came up with answers and visions, to which Americans listened quite seriously. There were more best sellers, media attention, the Ford and Reagan visits. Sure, their grandest predictions were of-ten wrong. Columbia University physicist Gerald Feinberg predicted in 1960 that in 2000 a baby would be born on an artificial planet for the first time. But in some sense the early pioneers were influential beyond their wildest dreams. The forecasting techniques spawned by futurologists are widely used in government and private business. Many multinationals employ forecasters who predict 10, 25, even 50 years into the future.

But futurology as a kind of faith is gone. Toffler hasn’t had a best seller in years. No futurist of comparable stature has stepped up to take his place.


Could the decline of futurology reflect a general discounting of the idea of progress?

#2 Bruce Klein

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Posted 15 September 2002 - 02:52 AM

On a similar note, Betterhumans.com has a recent article about the supposed waning interest in technology.... My own feelings are that as the baby boomer populace starts to age, their minds are looking to shorter term goals not necessarily utopian future scifi worlds.. or maybe there is a real backlash from the internet bubble as many see their investments plumit in the market... or this could just be a combination of quite a few things.. Sept 11 being only one. Question is, will this hurt the immortalist and transhuman movement. Will we see a resurgence toward a more "simpler" life, one more dominated by religion and family values.. or will the promiss of technology prevail... I believe in the latter.

Did September 11 Kill Humanitarian Progress?
Yes, it was horrific. But our misguided response is creating more horror
By George Dvorsky


http://www.betterhum...ID=2002-09-10-2

[Tuesday, September 10, 2002] The events of September 11, 2001 shocked the world. The horrors and callousness of that day were unthinkable.

But as we reach the one-year anniversary of that infamous day, we should pause to reflect on what has happened since.

If we take off our emotional blinders, I think we'll see that from a humanitarian perspective the path we're on is heading backwards.

Spending spree

Over the past year, global military and security spending has spiraled: Over $1.6 trillion is now spent annually on military weapons (all figures in US dollars), up from $812 billion in 2000. For comparison, in 1985, during the Cold War, the world was spending $1.2 trillion -- and at that time there were two superpowers.

At the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, organizers spent an estimated $300 million on security measures, or approximately $125,000 per athlete. By contrast, the 1999 WTO meetings in Seattle had a mere $5 million to spend on security.

Misdirected resources?

All this military and security spending is in response to the deaths of less than 3,000 people.

By contrast, in the last 12 months:


More North Americans were murdered by their spouses
Three times as many people died from food poisoning
Five times as many people were killed by drunk drivers
10 times as many people committed suicide
100 times as many people died from smoking

And the misguided spending is getting worse.

North American governments are now planning to spend more than $20 billion a year to help fight terrorism. Coincidentally, $20 billion a year just happens to be the amount the World Health Organization has estimated it would take to end world hunger.

On September 11 alone, it's estimated that:


24,000 people died of hunger
6,020 children were killed by diarrhea
2,700 children were killed by measles
1,411 women died in childbirth
3,288 children were made homeless by war

For an additional investment of $48 billion a year (or less than 0.4% of world military spending), we could:


Ensure that all children -- both boys and girls -- receive a primary education
Reduce the number of maternal childbirth deaths by three-quarters
Rreduce the number of children who die before the age of five by two-thirds
Stop the spread of AIDS

Neglected responsibilities

Military and security spending is obviously important. Yet, one cannot help but think that a disproportionate amount of resources are being poured into alleviating a threat that has been grossly over-exaggerated.

Moreover, it is obvious that the industrialized nations of the world are neglecting their humanitarian obligations to the people living in the underdeveloped parts of the globe.

And what's worse, the money is clearly there.

This article was prepared with information from INFACT, The New Internationalist, CBC Radio, The Toronto Star and the UN Forum on Global Poverty

#3 Lazarus Long

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Posted 15 September 2002 - 01:48 PM

The Pendulum swinging societal Conscious.

Actually the history of Futurism should be placed as parallel to the history of Modern Sci-Fi. Jules Verne and H.G. Wells being literally classic examples. Their ability to construct dynamic dystopic scenarios based upon realistic extrapolations of technological direction was a major improvement over the philosophical musings of even the brilliant Sir T. More and comparable earlier authors of Utopia.

It also paralleled the end of the "Age of Discovery" (as they defined it by the Lost World concept of the developed frontier) and the wrongly perceived impasse for Industrial Progress as defined by Malthus and Thermodynamics. In a way we are confronting similar conceptual obstacles.

Look at Art History. The subjects of the beginning of the Futurist School, look at the history of such forms as Cubism, Surrealism, and Photo-realism. They all date their origins back to almost before the First World War and predate World War Two by over a decade. But the idea that it began with such as Toffler is losing sight of the fact that he was not only very much a "Johnny Come Lately" but was really just popularizing the studies of more serious but now nearly forgotten authors such as Marshall McCluenn (sp?). We do have a TV generation in place.

Most people's functional memory can barely get from commercial segment to commercial segment so please don't start lamenting the End of Futurism, it is still a bit premature. Most people are behaving like children with a shiny new toy they are getting frustrated with because of that famous axiomatic expression from computer science "I hate this damn thing, It NEVER does what I WANT!!! It only does what I tell it to do." Or as they say in the crafts "Don't blame the tool when it's the craftman's fault". Very few people are honest enough to willingly accept fault in themselves.

In other words no matter how shiny the toy, many people will lose interest if they fail to get any practical feedback from their interaction. No reward and the monkey mind loses interest fast. Their toys are becoming burdensome, they are fun at first but don't really fit into many older peoples lives and many younger folks are using them not out of appreciation or understanding but out of a form of peer pressure expectation.

And god forbid if you don't know how to use them because then it can be presumed you are an idiot. So even when people aren't getting it they won't admit it for fear of rejection. This process leads to resentment against the behavioral expectations causing them and inevitably results in a social backlash. It won't be the first time and we should hope that this time won't be the last. Each time we have been going around this wheel the stakes have been getting higher and the risks of failure greater.

Part of the swing in the pendulum is also caused by a natural desire on the part of society to digest (incorporate) the advances into social paradigms, to rest a little from that effort, and to examine the effects after a little time to assess the real value (risk/reward analysis) of the product. Also a cycle of resentment develops between those that would accelerate advances and those that would repress them. This last element is global in its scope and is at the heart of the clash between Fundamentalist and Progressive Cultures. There are even parallels to this phenomenon going back to ancient societies such as the Romans.

They too tried to develop a global culture and found themselves confronting issues of rapid transport, cultural diversity and conflict, the definition of citizenship, hyper inflationary economics, and too many more similar concerns to denote them all right now.

Futurism isn't dead and it isn't gone but there is only a little more interest in it then there is in poetry. People love to hear the song but they find reading the lyric word, too much work. People love to see the visual special effects in Sci-Fi movies but the idea of actually contemplating how the new technologies will integrate with society is not only too much work it is more than a little unnerving for those that don't grasp the technology and instinctively are afraid of what they don't understand.

We are really discussing memetics again and the difference in Cognitive Awareness between individuals. Many people are hard wired to passivity and don't want to work to learn, they wan't ideas (as they erroneously define knowledge) just spoon fed into their brains. Because most of our fellow monkeys depend on principally sight and sound they require visual and auditory stimulation and don't interact with the source directly, they are uncomfortable reading, they don't like producing, (singing, public speaking, exposing their work, writing, etc.).

In fact as they feel "obligated" to produce they become resentful and expend a significant portion of their effort in the wasted direction of avoiding the process of production. But the flip side of this is that very few people are doing what they would define as anything meaningful for themselves or the ones they love, what they are in fact doing is performing a social necessity that believe in but don't understand. Hence the underlying issues are memetic in character and the areas of concern are the new religious paradigms of Consumerism and Politics.

You see technology is about as meaningful to most people as a discussion of theology, give them a God that turns water into wine and that they are attracted to. The Protestant Work ethic is a memetic construct of the Industrial Revolution and it is no coincidence that its origins coincide.

Buying things regardless of their intrinsic worth is both a psychological feel good function for socio economic reasons and as a subtler form of devotion. But beware of speaking sacrilege because Gods have no value today but god forbid I undermine by questioning our Economic Ethos. Nevertheless, question is what we need to do and is at the heart of what the Futurists IN FACT DO.

People are scared and they are searching for something to believe in, their cults and sects are now defined by such complex relationships as RACE (actually traditional tribalism), CLASS (stratified wealth, education, and socioeconomics) CULTURE ( Both traditional and Non traditional), GENDER (Power struggling between classic Matriarchal and Patriarch interests) and the subtler personal identification areas that a few still feel vis a vie NATURE, (Human versus Natural Selection and how we each fit into that picture).

People will object and say they want the right to make up their own minds but the truth is that many are still dominated by their fears and would rather be lead than lead themselves. They are allowing their fears to determine their course of action and they dislike futurists because WE (and I should be honest enough to include myself here) disturb the tranquility of ignorant bliss. Nobody is innocent. People prefer to blame the messenger than examine the message.

BTW, on the question of charity at the heart of this is the paradox that it is impossible to obligate generosity. It is not only an oxymoron to apply the words together it corrupts the meaning of generosity so much as to make it perverse.

My personal misgivings with charity is that I don't want to contribute so that I feel good about it, I want what I do to have a practical and positive effect not simply a means a contributing to a machine that consumes the intent for itself. I don't even want to get ito the level of waste and its discouraging aspect, or even the misguided efforts that for all their well meaning often do as much, if not more harm than good, or even the more sinister element that an awful lot of charity is ministry and meant as a form of social conquest without weapons other than wealth.

I am in fact a simple person, I would rather help build someone's house with my own hands and know they are intending to use it personally not just sell it along with their future's for tomorrow's meal. But I understand the principle of being a friend and good neighbor and would not tolerate suffering among my community, especially should I possess the power to effectively intervene. I don't wan't to give charity so I feel good about it I wan't to assist so that my aid is no longer needed, and who knows, it is not the reason to do it but "what goes around does come around" and maybe you should call it an investment in sanity and a healthy world.

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#4 thefirstimmortal

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Posted 11 October 2002 - 02:28 AM

Things are better now than things have been since men began keeping track of things. Things are better than they were only a few years ago. Things are better, in fact, than they were at 9:30 this morning, thanks to Tylenol and two Bloody Marys.

But that’s personal and history is general. It’s always possible to come down with the mumps on V-J Day or to have, right in the middle of the fall of the Berlin Wall, a piece of it fall on your foot. In general, life is better than it ever has been, and if you think that, in the past, there was some golden age of pleasure and plenty to which you would, if you were able, transport yourself let me say one single word:

“Dentistry.”

#5 thefirstimmortal

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Posted 11 October 2002 - 02:36 AM

Things are better now than things have been since men began keeping track of things.

Existence has improved enormously within the life-times of our immediate family members. My Grandfathe was born into a pretty awful world. The average wage was little more than a dollar a day. That’s if you had a job. The majority of people were farmers, and do you know what time cows get up in the morning? Working outside all day before sunblock or bikinis had been invented, agricultural laborers got very spotty tans. People had to make their own fun, and, as with most do-it-yourself projects, the results were . . . witness quilting bees. And the typical old-fashioned diet was so bad it almost resembled modern dieting.

Of course, there was also no health care. And not much health. Illness was ever-present, and the most trivial infection might prove fatal. The germ theory of disease as argued by Pasteur was just another wacky French idea. Men customarily wed multiple wives, not by way of philandering but because of deaths in childbirth. The children died, too, sometimes before a suitable foot-long nineteenth-century name could be given them. A walk through an old graveyard shows our ancestors often had more dead children than we have live ones.

Pollution was unchecked and mostly unthought of. Sewage was considered treated if dumped in a river. Personal hygiene was practiced, when at all, on the face, neck, and hands up to the wrists.

Everything was worse for everybody. Blacks could no more vote than women could and were prevented from doing so by more violent means. About 10 percent of America’s population had been born in slavery. “Coon,” “kike,” “harp” and “spic” were conversational terms. It was a world in which “nigger” was not a taboo name, but the second half of “Beavis and Butt-head” would have been.

#6 thefirstimmortal

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Posted 11 October 2002 - 02:38 AM

Nowadays we can hardly count our blessings, one of which is surely that we don’t have to do all that counting-computers do it for us. Information is easily had. Education is readily available. Opportunity knocks, it jiggles the doorknob, it will try the window if we don’t have the alarm system on.

The highest standards of luxury and comfort, as known only to the ridiculously wealthy a few generations ago, would hardly do on a modern white-water rafting trip. Our clothing is more comfortable, our abodes are warmer, better-smelling, and vermin-free. Our food is fresher. Our lights are brighter. Travel is swift. And communication is sure.

Even the bad things are better than they used to be. Bad music, for instance, has gotten much briefer. Wagner’s Ring Cycle takes four days to perform while “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” by the Crash Test Dummies lasts little more than three minutes.

#7 thefirstimmortal

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Posted 11 October 2002 - 02:41 AM

Life is sweet. But you could spend a long time reading, going to the movies, and watching TV and not hear this mentioned. Especially, watching daytime TV. Of course, if you’re watching a lot of daytime TV your life probably is dreadful.

History is on a roll, a toot, a bender. No doubt it will all come crashing down around our ears one day when a comet hits the earth or Sally Jessy Raphael becomes Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. But, in the meantime, we should be enjoying our-selves.

Live Long and Well
TFI

#8 thefirstimmortal

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Posted 11 October 2002 - 02:44 AM

More North Americans were murdered by their spouses
Three times as many people died from food poisoning
Five times as many people were killed by drunk drivers
10 times as many people committed suicide
100 times as many people died from smoking

And the misguided spending is getting worse.

North American governments are now planning to spend more than $20 billion a year to help fight terrorism. Coincidentally, $20 billion a year just happens to be the amount the World Health Organization has estimated it would take to end world hunger.

On September 11 alone, it's estimated that:


24,000 people died of hunger
6,020 children were killed by diarrhea
2,700 children were killed by measles
1,411 women died in childbirth
3,288 children were made homeless by war

For an additional investment of $48 billion a year (or less than 0.4% of world military spending), we could:


Ensure that all children -- both boys and girls -- receive a primary education
Reduce the number of maternal childbirth deaths by three-quarters
Rreduce the number of children who die before the age of five by two-thirds
Stop the spread of AIDS


Moreover, it is obvious that the industrialized nations of the world are neglecting their humanitarian obligations to the people living in the underdeveloped parts of the globe.

And what's worse, the money is clearly there.

....nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.

#9 thefirstimmortal

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Posted 11 October 2002 - 02:49 AM

Moreover, it is obvious that the industrialized nations of the world are neglecting their humanitarian obligations to the people living in the underdeveloped parts of the globe.

And what's worse, the money is clearly there.

And the poor of the world cannot be made rich by redistribudon of wealth. Poverty can’t be eliminated by punishing people who’ve escaped poverty, taking their money and giving it as a reward to people who have failed to escape. Economic leveling doesn’t work. Whether we call it Marxism, Progressive Reform, or Clintonomics, the result is the same slide into the stygian pit.
TFI

#10 thefirstimmortal

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Posted 11 October 2002 - 03:36 AM

Athiest, But futurology as a kind of faith is gone. Toffler hasn’t had a best seller in years. No futurist of comparable stature has stepped up to take his place.


I have an exhaustive analysis of the future, in the sense that if you held your computer above your head for several hours, you would become exhausted. I recommend you do just that before reading this so you’ll be groggy and won’t notice that the paragraphs don’t all fit together-like this next one.

I’m more of a sprinter than a marathoner when it comes to many aspects of life. For example, when I’m running. Over short distances-up to two yards-I can run faster than cheap panty hose on an itchy porcupine. But over long distances, I’m not so impressive.

I'll try to compensate for my lack of long-distance endurance by having good form. I’m told that my running style is quite majestic. That’s probably because I learned to run by watching nature films in which leopards chased frightened zebras. Now when I run, I open my eyes real wide and let my tongue slap the side of my face. If you saw it, you’d be saying, “That’s very majestic.” And then you’d run like a frightened zebra. That’s why my homeowners association voted to ask me to do my jogging with a pillowcase over my head.

If you think none of this is relevant to the future, you’d be oh-so-wrong,
because it leads quite neatly to my first prediction:

#11 thefirstimmortal

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Posted 11 October 2002 - 03:40 AM

....it will take a long time to get to the point. Especially if you're immortal.

There are many methods for predicting the future. For example, you can read horoscopes, tea leaves, tarot cards, or crystal balls. Collectively, these methods are known as “nutty methods.” Or you can put well-researched facts into sophisticated computer models, more commonly referred to as “a complete waste of time.” While these approaches have their advantages, none are appropriate for me, because they require more work than sitting in front of my computer and typing. Instead, I will use these far-more-efficient methods to divine the future:


Methods for Divining the Future

1. My awesome powers of logic.

2. My crystal-clear observations.

3. My almost frightening intuition.

4. My total lack of guilt.

#12 thefirstimmortal

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Posted 11 October 2002 - 05:04 AM

The future is such an excellent and easy topic. By the time you realize I was wrong about everything I predicted, you'll have forgotten what I predicted.

Writing about the future also has a nice upside potential. For example, let’s say most of civilization is destroyed by some huge calamity. (That’s not the good part.) And let’s say a CD copy of this somehow gets encased in amber and trapped in a tar pit. (It happens more often than you’d think.) Eons from now, when our descendants find it they will read my predictions and believe I was a wise holy man. I think I’ll like that, except for the part about being dead.
As with my previous posts, I will say a lot of obvious things that you already agree with, thereby making me look like a genius. But in a departure from the past, I will also say as many controversial and inflammatory things as I can (i.e., pretending to have actual opinions). If lots of gullible Induhviduals get mad at me, it might generate enough publicity to get me invited as a guest on Larry King Live. That’s really the goal here. So if you see something that makes you mad, don’t just sit there, organize a protest. I’ll chip in for the poster boards and Magic Markers.
Throughout this post, I will delve into many areas in which I am thoroughly incompetent, including politics, history, economics, physiology, and particle physics. My intellectual shortcomings will manifest themselves as inaccuracies, misconceptions, and logical flaws. I recommend that you read it quickly so you won’t notice.

#13 thefirstimmortal

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Posted 11 October 2002 - 05:26 AM

...there will be two types of people in the world: the bright and attractive people like yourself, and the 6 billion idiots who get in our way. Since we’re outnumbered, it’s a good idea not to refer to them as idiots to their faces. I deviously suggest calling them “In-duh-viduals” instead. The advantage to this word is that you can insult someone without risk of physical harm. Example:

You: You’re quite an Induhvidual, Tim.

Tim: Thank you.

If you’re not already surrounded by Induhviduals, you will be soon. New ones are being born every minute, despite the complexity involved in breeding. Frankly, I think much of the procreation of Induhviduals happens purely by accident when two of them are trying to do something complicated-like jump-start a car-and they suddenly get confused. Whatever causes the breeding-and I truly don’t want to know the details-it’s safe to assume there will be more of it.

The way I see it, you have three good strategies for thriving in a future full of Induhviduals:

1. Wear loose clothing and pretend your car battery is dead.

2. Keep Induhviduals in your car so you can use the car-pool lane.

3. Harness the stupidity of Induhviduals for your own financial gain.

Option one is dangerous. I recommend that you stay away from anything that involves Induhviduals, electricity, and sex. It’s just common sense.

Option two requires you to be in your car with Induhviduals for long periods of time. There is a real risk that they will attempt to make conversation. That would negate any benefits you get from avoiding traffic congestion. And if you accidentally leave them in the car and forget to crack the window open, they’ll die. You’ll need more than one of those little Christmas-tree air fresheners to solve that problem.

I recommend option three: Harness the stupidity of Induhviduals for your own financial gain. In order to do that, you’ii need to be able to anticipate their moves well in advance. This can be difficult, because the average Induhvidual does not anticipate his own moves in advance.

If you asked the average Induhvidual about his plans, he’d say he has no plans. But if you yanked the eight-track tape player out of that Induhvidual’s Pinto and then repeatedly hit that average Induhvidual with it, you could make him confess that he has some plans, even if those plans are not very exciting:

Average Induhvidual’s Plans

Become shorter and more crotchety over time.

Lose all appreciation of popular music.

Cultivate ear hair.

Get a new eight-track player.

Clearly, with a world full of people who have goals like that, most of the things that happen in the future will not be the result of good planning. That makes the future difficult to predict. That’s why you need my posts.

I have compiled my predictions here so you won’t have any unpleasant surprises during the next millennium. Any morning you’re wondering whether it would be better to drown yourself in your cereal bowl or face 6 billion Induhviduals again, at least you’ll be making an informed decision.

#14 thefirstimmortal

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Posted 11 October 2002 - 05:30 AM

Some people try to predict the future by assuming current trends will continue. This is a bad method. For example, if you applied that forecasting method to a puppy, you’d predict that the puppy would continue growing larger and larger until one day-in a fit of uncontrolled happiness-its wagging tail would destroy a major metropolitan area. But that rarely happens, thanks to the National Guard.

The future never follows trends, because of three rules I have named after myself in order to puff up my importance.

O'RIGHT'S RULE OF THE UNEXPECTED

Something unexpected always happens to wreck any good trend. Here are some examples to prove my point:
GOOD TREND UNEXPECTED BAD THING
Computers allow us to work Computers generate 300
100 percent faster. percent more work.

Women get more political power. Women are as dumb as men.

Popular music continues to get better. I get old.

#15 thefirstimmortal

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Posted 11 October 2002 - 05:33 AM

Whenever humans notice a bad trend, they try to change it. The prediction of doom causes people to do things differently and avoid the doom. Any doom that can be predicted won’t happen.
Here are some examples of dooms that people predicted and how the indomitable human spirit rose to the challenge and thwarted the prediction:
PREDICTION OF DOOM HUMAN RESPONSE
Population will grow faster than Scientists realize you can call
food supply. just about anything a “meat patty.”

Petroleum reserves will be Scientists discover oil in their
depleted in twenty years. own hair.

Communism will spread to the All Communists become
rest of the world, ballerinas and defect.

I might have some of the details wrong; I’m working from memory here. But the point is that none of those predictions came true once we started worrying about them. That’s the way it always works.

#16 thefirstimmortal

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Posted 11 October 2002 - 05:37 AM

All trends have logical limits. For example, computers continue to shrink in size, but that trend will stop as soon as you hear this report on CNN:

This just in. A computer systems administrator sneezed, and his spray destroyed the entire military computing hardware of North America, leading to the conquest of the United States by Haitian bellhops. More on that later, but first our report on the healing powers of herbal tea.

At that point, we’ll say, “Hey, maybe those computers were too small.”
That will be the end of the shrinking computer trend.
If all trends end, what can we look at to predict the future? There are some things in life so consistent that they are like immutable laws of human nature. You can predict most of the future by looking at these immutable laws and applying logic.

Immutable Laws of Human Nature

Stupidity

Selfishness

Hominess

Those are the things that will never change, no matter what else does. People don’t change their basic nature, they just accumulate more stuff upon which they can apply their stupidity, selfishness, and hominess. From this perspective, the future isn’t hard to predict.

I realize that by telling you this I’m not only opening my kimono, but I’m also doing jumping jacks in front of your picture window, if you catch my visual gist.


PREDICTION

In the future, you will wish I had never put the image in your head
of me doing jumping jacks in an open kimono.

#17 thefirstimmortal

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Posted 12 October 2002 - 03:52 AM

Human life expectancies increase every year. This is not necessarily a good
thing.

PREDICTION 3

On average, Induhviduals who are alive today will experience 80
years of complaint-free living. Unfortunately, they’ll live to 160.

#18 thefirstimmortal

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Posted 12 October 2002 - 03:57 AM

The aging of Induhviduals will create some big challenges for businesses. Senior citizens are never in a hurry, and they’re not willing to put up with any crap. The average retail transaction will take up to three days.

It won’t even be that quick unless stores start accepting as legal tender whatever elderly Induhviduals find in their pockets. Merchants will be forced to accept hard candy, tissues, and bird seed as payment. But that’s okay. The merchants will handle it the same way they handle Canadian pennies and Kennedy fifty-cent pieces-by giving them to timid customers as change.
I make fun of senior citizens, but obviously I aspire to be one of them, the alternative being what it is. Unfortunately, not all older people will be pleasant, intelligent, and reasonable-the way I plan to be. Many will be Induhviduals who somehow managed to survive for years without ever eating anything from a container with a skull on it. This means trouble, because the only thing worse than being surrounded by Induhviduals is being surrounded by senior citizen Induhviduals.

Young Induhviduals sometimes feel pressure to keep their thoughts to themselves, but that impulse goes away over time. Eventually, we’ll have several billion senior citizen Induhviduals who will feel the need to complain loudly about things they don’t understand, which, as you can guess, will include just about everything. The cumulative noise from all that whining will cause planet-wide deafness in small animals

However, there is a solution. It’s called cryogenic freezing. The theory is that when someone has an incurable illness, you can freeze their bodies and then thaw them out in the future when scientists have invented a cure. This seems like a perfect solution, assuming we have enough storage space.

Cryogenic freezing has several advantages:

1. The Induhvidual pays for it himself.

2. Technically, it’s not murder.

3. There’s no gooey stuff to clean up.

4. You can convince their relatives to kiss them and watch the fun as their lips get frozen stuck.

All you have to do is convince the Induhviduals around you that they have incurable illnesses and cryogenics is their only hope. You’d get the hypochondriacs first. They’d be the easiest. You could get a few million more Induhviduals to sign up for the plan by sending them a computer virus through the Internet. You’d be surprised how many Induhviduals think they can get viruses from their computers.

For the rest of the Induhviduals, you’d need accomplices in the medical community. But I don’t think it will be a problem because unlike retailers, doctors won’t put up with being paid in hard candy, tissues, and bird seed.

#19 thefirstimmortal

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Posted 12 October 2002 - 04:00 AM

Most people are not saving enough money for retirement. If you’re one of
them, I suggest you start exercising vigorously so that later in life you can
bully your frail peers and take their stuff when you need it.

I often see senior citizens in the park practicing Tai Chi Chuan. The alleged purpose is to increase balance and energy or some such baloney. What ever happened to TAKING A WALK?

#20 thefirstimmortal

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Posted 12 October 2002 - 04:02 AM

You don’t need to learn lethal skills to increase balance and energy. It’s obvious to me that those senior citizens are preparing to slap the bejeezus out of the rest of us and take our stuff. They’re just biding their time and waiting for us to realize there isn’t enough retirement money for everyone.

Many of you are saving money instead of exercising. It seems like a
smart thing to do, but later you’ll be cursing yourselves as you watch the
Tai Chi experts carry your stuff away in huge boxes.

PREDICTION

The people who are studying Tai Chi Chuan instead of saving
money are planning to beat us up and take our stuff when we’re
retired.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

#21 thefirstimmortal

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Posted 12 October 2002 - 04:11 AM

At some point-probably in your lifetime-we’ll have the technology to make all children tall, lean, and muscular. They’ll have smooth skin, perfect hair, good teeth, and 20/20 vision. All genetic abnormalities will be spotted and corrected in the womb. This is very good news for the people born in the future.It is very bad news for those of you reading this post. We’ll look like a
hideous Quasimodo society to the perfect generation that will follow us.

We’ll not only be old, we’ll have a whole range of physical imperfections.

#22 thefirstimmortal

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Posted 12 October 2002 - 04:13 AM

...and that is why, ultimately, we’re screwed unless we do something about it. If you haven’t noticed, the children who are our future are good-looking, but they aren’t all that bright. As dense as they might be, they will eventually notice that adults have spent all the money, spread disease, and turned the planet into a smoky, filthy ball of death. We’re raising an entire generation of dumb, pissed-off kids who know where the handguns are kept. This is not a good recipe for a happy future.

Fortunately, there’s a solution: Brainwashing.

#23 thefirstimmortal

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Posted 12 October 2002 - 04:15 AM

PREDICTION

In the future, we will accelerate our successful practice of
brainwashing children so they’ll be nice to us while we
plunder their planet.


Brainwashing the children is the only logical solution to our problems. The alternative is for adults to stop running up debts, polluting, and having reckless sex. For this to happen, several billion Induhviduals would have to become less stupid, selfish, and horny. This is not likely.

The path of least resistance is brainwashing the kids. We do it already in lots of ways and it works well. Obviously, we’ll have to use a different word than “brainwashing.” I suggest calling it “lessons in right and wrong,” just as our parents did.
Children’s brains are like fresh mashed potatoes that you can push around with your fork, making a little bowl to hold your gravy. If you get to them early, you create little citizens who grow up to enthusiastically volunteer for amazingly dangerous tasks-such as killing people in other countries.

I know you can’t always tell when I’m kidding.

#24 thefirstimmortal

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Posted 12 October 2002 - 04:17 AM

Some might say this view of the future is too cynical. They might say adults can learn to change their behavior and reverse the damage they’re causing the planet, thus protecting the world for future generations. My response to this argument is, “There’s no such thing as being TOO cynical

#25 thefirstimmortal

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Posted 12 October 2002 - 04:19 AM

There are so many Star Trek spin-offs that it’s easy to fool yourself into thinking that the Star Trek vision is an accurate vision of the future. Sadly, Star Trek does not take into account the stupidity, selfishness, and horniness of the average human being. In the next post, I will explore some of the flaws in the Star Trek vision of the future.

#26 thefirstimmortal

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Posted 12 October 2002 - 04:21 AM

Life in the future will not be like Star Trek.

Medical Technology
On Star Trek, the doctors have handheld devices that instantly close any openings in the skin. Imagine that sort of device in the hands of your unscrupulous friends. They would sneak up behind you and seal your ass shut as a practical joke. The devices would be sold in novelty stores instead of medical outlets. All things considered, I’m happy that it’s not easy to close other peoples’ orifices.

#27 thefirstimmortal

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Posted 12 October 2002 - 04:24 AM

It would be great to be able to beam your molecules across space and then reassemble them. The only problem is that you have to trust people to operate the transporter. These are the same people who won’t add paper to the photocopier or make a new pot of coffee after taking the last drop. I don’t think they’ll be double-checking the transporter coordinates. They’ll be accidentally beaming people into walls, pets, and furniture. People will spend all their time apologizing for having inanimate objects protruding from parts of their bodies.

If I could beam things from one place to another, I’d never leave the house. I’d sit in a big comfy chair and just start beaming groceries, stereo equipment, cheerleaders, and anything else I wanted right into my house. I’m fairly certain I would abuse this power. If the police were bothering me, I’d beam them into space. If I wanted some paintings for my walls, I’d beam the contents of the Louvre over to my place, pick out the good stuff, and beam the rest into my neighbor’s garage.

If I were watching the news on television and didn’t like what I heard, I would beam the anchorman into my living room during the commercial break, give him a vicious wedgie, and beam him back before anybody noticed.

I’d never worry about “keeping up with the Joneses,” because as soon as they got something nice, it would disappear right out of their hands. My neighbors would have to use milk crates for furniture. And that’s only after I had all the milk crates I would ever need for the rest of my life.

There’s only one thing that could keep me from spending all my time wreaking havoc with the transporter, namely the holodeck.

#28 thefirstimmortal

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Posted 12 October 2002 - 04:25 AM

I would not use the holodeck just for recreation during breaks from work. This just seems somewhat unrealistic. If I had a holodeck, I’d close the door and never come out until I died of exhaustion. It would be hard to convince me I should be anywhere but in the holodeck, getting my oily body massage from Cindy Crawford and her simulated twin sister.

Holodecks would be very addicting. If there weren’t enough holodecks to go around, I’d get the names of all the people who had reservations ahead of me and beam them into concrete walls. I’d feel tense about it, but that’s exactly why I’d need a massage. I’m afraid the holodeck will be society’s last invention.

#29 thefirstimmortal

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Posted 12 October 2002 - 04:29 AM

I would love to have a device that would stun people into unconsciousness without killing them. I would use it ten times a day. If I got bad service at the convenience store, I’d zap the clerk. If somebody with big hair sat in front of me at the theater, zap!
On Star Trek, there are no penalties for stunning people with phasers.

It happens all the time. All you have to do is claim you were possessed by an alien entity. Apparently, that is viewed as a credible defense.


Imagine real criminals in a world where the “alien possession” defense is credible.

Criminal: Yes, officer, I did steal that vehicle, and I did kill the occupants, but I was possessed by an evil alien
entity.

Officer: Well, okay. Move along.

I wish I had a phaser right now. My neighbor’s dog likes to stand under my bedroom window on the other side of the fence and bark for hours at a time. My neighbor has employed the bold defense that he believes it might be another neighbor’s dog, despite the fact that I am standing there looking at him barking only twenty feet away. In a situation like this, a phaser is really the best approach. I could squeeze off a clean shot through the willow tree. A phaser doesn’t make much noise, so it wouldn’t disturb anyone. Then the unhappy little dog and I could both get some sleep. If the neighbor complains, I’ll explain that the phaser was fired by the other neighbor’s dog, a known troublemaker who is said to be invisible.

And if that doesn’t work, a photon torpedo is clearly indicated.

#30 thefirstimmortal

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Posted 12 October 2002 - 04:32 AM

Given the choice, I would rather be a cyborg instead of 100 percent human. I like the thought of technology becoming part of my body. As a human, I am constantly running to the toolbox in my garage to get a tool to deal with some new household malfunction. If I were a cyborg, I might have an electric drill on my arm, plus a metric socket set. That would save a lot of trips. From what I’ve seen, the cyborg concept is a modular design, so you can add whatever tools you think you’d use most.

I’d love to see crosshairs appear in my viewfinder every time I looked at someone. It would make me feel menacing, and I’d like that. I’d program myself so that anytime I saw a car salesman, a little message would appear in my viewfinder that said “Target Locked On.”

It would also be great to have my computer built into my skull. That way I could surf the Net during useless periods of life, such as when my girlfriend is trying to talk to me. All I’d have to do is initiate a head-nodding subroutine during boring conversations and I could amuse myself in my head all day long.

I think that if anyone could become a cyborg, there would be a huge rush of people getting in line for the conversion. Kids would like it for the look. Adults would like it for its utility. Cyborg technology has something for everyone. So, unlike Star Trek, I can imagine everyone wanting to be a cyborg.

The only downside I can see is that when the human part dies and you’re at the funeral, the cyborg part will try to claw its way out of the cas-ket and slay all the mourners. But that risk can be minimized by saying you have an important business meeting, so you can’t make it to the service.




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