SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
posted by
janrinok
on Saturday January 24 2015, @12:03PM
from the your-guess-is-as-good-as-mine dept.
from the your-guess-is-as-good-as-mine dept.
Politico Magazine asked 15 other big thinkers and doers for their ideas of what will change the world the most in the next 15 years. We got back lots of inspiration—from the transformative power of opening up national borders to the commercialization of the human genome—and one dyspeptic dissenter. Read on, for a sense of the possible in the world of 2030.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/01/15-big-breakthroughs-in-2015-114486.html
Would you agree with their predictions? What would surveillance be like in 2030? Would we have any freedoms at all, any privacy?
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
All this time I've been VIEWING a RUSSIAN MIDGET SODOMIZE a HOUSECAT!
(Score: 2) by fadrian on Saturday January 24 2015, @03:26PM
All techno-socio-utopian crap except for Leslie Gelb of the CFR who, I think, nails it. Because he has the balls to say that the rich really don't care much about the poor other than using them to burnish their image so no problems will actually be solved and, as such, the world descends into chaos.
Very shortly, the only way for the rich to continue increase the relative amounts of the wealth they own is to start to "decrease the surplus population" and that they will do so by not addressing problems until the unwashed start taking themselves out due to frustration and anger.
That is all.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Saturday January 24 2015, @05:32PM
One word: Pandemics.
With nuclear weapons and guided missiles you can't even risk warfare so a world where the rich ignore poverty and starvation is a world where the rich die off to diseases right along with them.
So, whether it would take 30, 50 or 100 years no one can say for sure, but the "techno-socio-utopian crap" just might end-up being the only remaining outcome after all other options would be exhausted.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by tibman on Saturday January 24 2015, @07:25PM
A pandemic would kill rich and poor in equal percentages. Unless it was curable or preventable with medicine. In that case the poor are screwed.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday January 24 2015, @07:40PM
A pandemic would kill rich and poor in equal percentages. Unless it was curable or preventable with medicine.
Pandemics are always preventable with medicine by simply figuring out the vectors of infection and preventing them in your environment.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Saturday January 24 2015, @10:29PM
People breathing near you is a pretty difficult vector to eliminate : )
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Arik on Sunday January 25 2015, @12:26AM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by tibman on Sunday January 25 2015, @01:05AM
hahah, nice
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 25 2015, @08:04AM
People breathing near you is a pretty difficult vector to eliminate : )
Unless you don't have sick people breathing near you. Then it's quite easy to eliminate.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday January 24 2015, @05:58PM
Rich vs poor is a big problem but not the full story. Many of the poor do plenty of stupid things to themselves, bringing their poverty upon them. Of course that's no excuse for the rich to rig the game and cheat everyone else, as they do now. What I see is that the age old competition with each other could easily turn ugly and self-destructive in the near future. We've grown so powerful that we've won decisively against our old adversary, the rest of nature. Forests are not mysterious and scary anymore, and we can harvest them any time we want. No large animal can compete against bullets. There's not an obvious external common threat to help hold people together, now our biggest dangers are ourselves. We have so far avoided nuclear war. We see the perils of Climate Change, which we caused, but so far, our response has been mixed.
One problem is slack. Just like muscles weaken when not used, our easy living has eroded our good senses, and spoiled us a bit. This is most easily seen among the children of the rich, who may not have to work a day of their lives.
At the other extreme is crippling poverty. Children who did not get enough nutrition and got a bad or no education, perhaps because the rich stole from their parents, are weaker from the privation they suffered.
When the Climate Change chickens come home to roost is when it could turn ugly. We tend to use everything available, don't hold back, so that if something causes a reduction, we're hurting. The obvious consequence is a reduction of us. The easy way out is fewer children, but that's slow. The hard ways are war and famine. Which way will we go? If we don't plan for these problems, if we're stupid, maybe made ourselves stupid from easy living for the rich and too hard living for the poor, we'll go the ugly route.
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Saturday January 24 2015, @08:45PM
Societies will be deeply fragmented and overwhelmed by irreconcilable religious and political groups, by disparities in wealth, by ignorant citizenry and by states’ impotence to fix problems.
That pretty describes the last few thousand years. Yet here we are. Maybe we don't need these things which he complains of not having in order to have a good society. Maybe it's not even a good idea to have them! It's also worth noting that his complaints are in large part purely imaginary. For example, there aren't growing global disparities in wealth, religious differences are far more reconcilable now than they've ever been, and most of the problems we face, we fix without the need of the state to get involved.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday January 24 2015, @10:22PM
All techno-socio-utopian crap except for Leslie Gelb of the CFR who, I think, nails it. Because he has the balls to say that the rich really don't care much about the poor other than using them to burnish their image so no problems will actually be solved and, as such, the world descends into chaos.
Very shortly, the only way for the rich to continue increase the relative amounts of the wealth they own is to start to "decrease the surplus population" and that they will do so by not addressing problems until the unwashed start taking themselves out due to frustration and anger.
All this angst over "The Rich".
You know the whole article was by "Political People" and their predictions. CLUE: These are not people you take seriously. They rouse their rabble, and then retire to their rockers. The world is better served by one competent plumber than the entire group of these pundits.
"The Rich" all end up in a pine box just like every one else. Some can be hastened toward that end by 148 grains of fast moving heavy metal, but amazingly few of them ever stir up enough wrath to have that happen.
Take Gates for example, at one time one of the most hated people on earth. Now he spends his money building wells and toilets in Africa. It must be his clever plot to eliminate these useless people, because they get in the way of him making more money.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.