My meaning was that there may BE no "long term." We'll be
extraordinarily fortunate to stagger through another century.
jm
On 15 May 2001, at 1:33, Spudboy100@aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 5/15/2001 12:59:05 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
> johnmarlow@gmx.net writes:
>
> << Marlow's Axiom of the Long Term: All talk of a long-term contains an
> unwarranted assumption and is therefore unduly optimistic. >>
>
> Define long-term, in a practical sense. Is 500 years too soon for Star Trek
> level technology, 5000 years, 50,000 years, or 5 million? There are
> certainly maturation's of technologies, which either produce plateaus of
> capability, as well as slow and fast evolutions of capability. Revolutions
> tend to be fewer and farther between. We need some guides, some examples, to
> help us properly measure what is achievable and what it will take to gain
> that achievement. In an Aristotelian sense we need something that is neither
> the fantastically, optimistic "hand-waving" of magazine peddling journalists,
> nor the vituperative, pessimism of the leftists and anti-tech sociopaths.
>
> Mitch
>
John Marlow
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