On War, Technology and Transportation
I was interested in the idea that 'war drives technological innovation'. It certainly drives military improvements, and those can sometimes carry over in civilian life but I think that it's a mistake to assume that violence or even competition itself is beneficial to humanity as a whole in any sense, particularly going forward. Competition is great
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The common misconception is that Tesla discovered his electric motor, as if it were a fact in reality, waiting to be discovered. Truth is, the motor discovered Tesla, he was gifted the knowledge after an entire life dedicated to wizardry.
In the meantime it means moving in new directions. So we build cities in the skies, seas, and colonize other satellites. The future doesn't exist til it gets there, and it is endlessly recreated and expanded upon as we imagine up new explanations. We don't just meet the demands of the universe, the 'verse meets the demands of the player population.
Anyway, there will be some surprises, involving the ubiquity of surveillence, and faster, cheaper, and better tools to monitor data and events.
What's going to be interesting and fun to me to witness will be way down the line when we begin to criss cross the biosphere with our technosphere. Just like billions of years ago the world was covered in monocellular organisms that poisoned themselves in their own shit (oxygen), we're doing the same with CO2. It's interesting that we would utilize our own bane as a waste product in our most prolific inventions. It seems almost like some sort of internal self-limiting function. Perhaps to see how clever we are and if we deserve to sit upon this marble throne.
Bah, tangent. Long comment... let me wrap it up:
World is becoming really PACKED lately, can't blame 'em, its a quality product. Dev's will update hardware and software functionality as required when needed. Many things we know of as "is" will return to the "is not" of hypothesis, and the most potent casters of spells will define the new bottom line.
pc bro, thx4a good convo. piece,
j
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The overpopulation thing though I you're treating with wishful optimism when the reality is far more real and dire and will impact our lives directly as the years go on. It's hard to even list all of the ways that life has changed for the worse in my lifetime due to the population explosion. My mind reels when I consider that all of these disposable, interchangeable people I see, idling in traffic or on camera, picking garbage piles in India, sold into slavery in Thailand, living on paint fumes in Rio - nearly all of them will try to reproduce and most will succeed all the while living longer with expensive needs that go on and on past the age of impoverished retirement. It's not good. It's massively redundant and dysfunctional and threatens the quality of life for everyone. It's like a fish tank where more and more fish are added to the tank at a faster and faster rate. The only solution is a larger tank, or fish eating fish.
It's understandable for humanity to be blindsided by the crush of overpopulation - it's not a situation that a species has encountered to such an extent before. The purpose of life is to reproduce, that's what it is and what it does, and we simply don't have anything to replace it even though it no longer serves us. It's not a simple sociopolitical problem, it's ontological and existential. How do we protect ourselves from our only real threat when that threat is our the essence of what we are?
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