From: Avatar Polymorph (avatarpolymorph@hotmail.com)
Date: Wed Jul 31 2002 - 01:51:10 MDT
Harvey Newstrom wrote:
"I am beginning to doubt the whole concept of Future Shock. It never really
hit during the end of the last century as was predicted. Science and
technology are accelerating as predicted, but the massive social disruptions
have been subdued compared to predictions.
I believe that this is due to the fact that there is too much information
for us to grasp already. We each can only keep up with a small portion of
technology. The rest blurs into a footnote that there is more information
available. That vague knowledge of more information remains uneffected by
all these advances. Sure, there are riots about GM foods, but only a small
percentage of people actually participate. For most people, this is some
news item on the television. They never actually stop to consider what is
in their own food. Cryonics has hit the mainstream news. But it is still a
wacky Jerry Springer type of story that makes people laugh at how outrageous
and outside the mainstream some people are. There are fights about stem
cells and cloning in Congress, but most people think these issues are
limited to laboratories and theoretical academic circles somewhere else.
Future Shock is just not hitting people. They will see digital movies with
VR-like special effects. They will get faster Internet service and global
communications which they use for games. They will see cars and computer
radically change, but all they know is that they buy a new model every few
years. The technology wave is not making any difference to the average
consumer. As soon as we invented TV to keep people at home and cubicles to
keep them boxed in at work, peoples lives stopped changing. Everything
happening outside their little boxes is a minor distraction to them. They
don't care, it doesn't affect them, and they aren't paying enough attention
to be shocked."
As a Singularitarian, I can't really agree with this. I think we are
actually in "shock" as it is - shocked at the effects of contraceptives on
women, shocked at the effects of the car and the television - all in terms
of cultural shock. Individually, those of us under 50 are used to all this
but many cultural norms are ceturies and millenia old and these are in shock
- thus the freeze we can see post 1969 in many respects. Society was already
unconsciously in shock culturally from the post-Enlightenment age expansion
- the last three centuries have seen survival rates rise for the first time
in human history from c.30-40 years (which applied from the Roman empire to
the Amazon). We had to deal with the "wizened old age problem", which
previous societies (composed almost entirely of "young" people) did not
(their problem was then-inexplicable death striking apparently "randomly").
Future shock in the trauma rather than insensate sense may occur for some
very shortly as we are only 13 years away from sufficient surface control of
bodies to ensure we look roughly like 18 year olds - skeletal structure may
lag a little bit longer but not much.
This means we have to deal with the "problem" of psychologically adjusting
to control of form BEFORE full-blown self-reproducing nanotechnology becomes
effective around 2020 - not too far away. The Singularity itself (or rather
its "obvious" or "fast" period) is not too far ahead of that. And
afterwards... Stasis shock, for some.
For others of course, the above course of events doesn't represent
negativity but sheer bliss, living life to the full with far greater
choices, the abolition of dumb work, full control of our cells and selves,
instant expansion into the solar system (via space towers, rotating and
otherwise, and nanotechnology) and so on (estimated time to terraform Mars
through self-reproducing nanotech according to NASA is 20 YEARS).
This is going to be a bit more to absorb culturally than better video.
Gotta love the Drexler!
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