From: Michael S. Lorrey (retroman@turbont.net)
Date: Sun Apr 30 2000 - 18:06:45 MDT
GBurch1@aol.com wrote:
>
> In a message dated 4/28/00 5:10:12 PM Central Daylight Time,
> sasha1@netcom.com writes:
>
> > Do you know of any lists of important social (also economic, medical, etc.)
> > problems that are yet unresolved, but could possibly be resolved with some
> > yet-non-existent technology?
>
> Many of the things that people consider to be serious unresolved social and
> economic problems COULD be solved with existing technology (used in the
> broadest sense), but are hard problems because of deep-seated social inertia.
> I count hunger, population control and ignorance as three of the largest of
> these. There is no technical reason today for any human being to be hungry,
> or to have more children than they can raise properly, or to be ignorant.
But all three of these problems are known to have no technological
roots. They are entirely political.
>
> > If you were asked to name such problems, what would you say
> > are the most important?
>
> I would say that the root problem of these serious soluble issues is
> ignorance. Getting more and higher quality information into the skulls of
> the world's poor would do more to solve all the other problems than any
> other. I've written about my "Brain Seeds" idea here recently, so I won't
> repeat it. I think it's a worthwhile, tractable technical project that the
> "data rich" could undertake to help all of the world's poor.
I particularly like the idea of 'knowledge pills', if RNA can actually
be used to transmit knowledge to the brain. At the very least nanotech
devices ought to be able to do the same, as should hardware memory
augmentation by neural interface.
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