From: Adrian Tymes (wingcat@pacbell.net)
Date: Tue Apr 11 2000 - 20:33:45 MDT
john grigg wrote:
> I am curious to know what the list members think will be the real
> differences between the "haves and the have-nots" a half-century from now?
Education, and the mental - as opposed to physical - ability to obtain
new information as it becomes available and desirable, will probably be
one of the determining differences. Quite likely, anyone who wishes to
do so and knows how to will be able to log on from their home or nearest
public access terminal to find answers to the pressing questions of the
moment, in degrees of seriousness ranging from the humor behind a
friend's light jest regarding something one is not quite familiar with,
to the user-created manual on a tool one is using, to auto-generated
(and, one would hope, accurate) lists of customers for whatever creative
effort one has been inspired to do, to various media embodiments of
answers to "how do I do that". The main reason the have nots will not
be enriching themselves this way, is that they will not know or not
think to apply that to their problems.
Health is likely to be another distinguishing factor. Haves: enhanced
beyond human norms, rate of death approaching zero - though probably not
actually reaching it, unless one excludes death-and-revive (as, for
instance, is promised by cryogenic suspension and nanotechnology) from
the death count. Have nots: healthy by 2000s standards, but still
suffer from the common cold and such; generally not enhanced much beyond
2000-era human norms.
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