From: Harvey Newstrom (newstrom@newstaffinc.com)
Date: Tue Nov 30 1999 - 12:05:54 MST
Jeff Davis <jdavis@socketscience.com> wrote on Tuesday, November 30, 1999
4:36 am,
> I call it the Henny Penny Syndrome ("The sky is falling! The sky is
falling!")
I agree totally. I would also expand this to cover other traits of the
unknown.
Humans have long had a habit of exaggerating the consequences of the
unknown. It either our savior or our destroyer. We have had both doom and
utopian expectations toward agriculture, industrialization, electricity,
computers, space exploration, genetic research, AI, etc., etc.
Some people predict that each new breakthrough will dawn a new age of
paradise. Other predict that each new breakthrough will bring about the end
of the world as we know it. Thus far, these predictions are always extreme.
Statistically speaking, the truth is usually somewhere in-between.
Now for my heresy: None of the topics discussed on this list will
dramatically change humanity, bring about more freedom or free time, or will
result in mass deaths. We will adapt, and everything will stay the same
according to human nature. Yes we have evolved a long way thus far, but the
future will be the same only faster. We will use computers instead of
camels. We will move planets instead of piles of rock. We will dispute
rights to subspace quantum frequencies instead of freespeech. We will argue
whether AIs have rights rather than race relations. Everything will be
faster and on a grander scale, but basically the same. We will adapt to new
technology, just as we upgrade our PCs or game systems to a new version
without much thought. A few weeks later, we forget how different the new
system was, and go on with our lives.
Yes, we have come a far way from living as nomads in the desert, but our
cities with computers and networks and health advances, are still basically
the same. We have politics, crime, debates, problems.
-- Harvey Newstrom <mailto://newstrom@newstaffinc.com> <http://harveynewstrom.com> Author, Consultant, Engineer, Legal Hacker, Researcher, Scientist.
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