[OT] Your visions of the future.

[Ward]

Dogscoff: You did some nice work here. I generally agree with you.

One more thought I didn't include in my post(Third reply on this topic - I donn't know how to make a direct connection to that post and it is too large to quote): Universal theory is very imortant. It doesn't include only physical laws like electomagnetism or gravitation. If we ever achieve something that we can call universal theory then it would change all aspects of life. Difference between organic and mechanic will become meaningless(human body IS a sophisticated machine). This will bring new views of the world. With them come changes in society.
I wanted to give this some "Time stamp". Then I thought about our world. Maybe we are slowly entering the era of Universalism.

[Aloofi]

Behold!
I've been shown the future, but I'm not gonna tell you......Muahahahaha.

I'm just gonna tell that WW3 started a year and a half ago. People just don't know it, yet.

[ March 27, 2003, 20:31: Message edited by: Aloofi ]

[Puke]

It was looking bad there for a while, when the Berlin Wall came down. the Soviet Union fell appart, and the Iron Curtain came down. It was looking like the end of the world I grew up in.

The "Green" party was gaining popularity, vegitarians were everywhere, pacifism was spreading. Old, petty, squabling, outdated, outmoded, backwards Europe consolidated into a single economic / political entity -- or at least was well on its way. Globalism, though it brought about evils of its own, was destroying borders.

But the old world wasnt gone, people had just stopped seeing it. My world was still there, you just had to look a bit below the surface. Multinational corporations still controlled the economies of smaller countries, and still ruled over them with an iron fist. Imperial France still lorded over Africa, and the United States continued to operate clandestinly around the globe to secure its economic interests. Free-industry zones in China brought about the kind of Cowboy Capitalism invisioned in the elegantly distopian views of Gibson and Stearling.

A dramatic change of tense drives my vision home. The streets of the collapsed Soviet Union are as close to a manifestation of the Cyberpunk genre as anything is likely to be. War is waged for oil, geopolitical influence, reconstruction dollars, and personal profit. International communities are robbed of any consequential significance on a whim, and decades of peace efforts in Asia are thrown out in sheer acts of arrogance. All the old demons are still dancing about the world, and the nature of mankind remains unchanged since the first bipedlas murdered each other with their bare hands.

Though the important figures will change, borders will shift, and empires will fall, the world will remain unchanged. Technology will advance, and possibly collapse, only to advance again. If exploitable resources are found in space, they will be exploited. If they are not fought over with weapons, they will be fought over with money and politics. There are only two possiblilites. Perhaps we are at the pinacle of history, looking down a dangerous precipice -- or perhaps we are poised to vault into a new era. There is one certainty, however: Though the scenery will change, the nature of man will not.

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

[Kamog]

Originally posted by Aloofi:
I'm just gonna tell that WW3 started a year and a half ago. People just don't know it, yet.

Let's hope it doesn't turn out that way...

[Aloofi]

Wow!
Puke, that was an inspired post.

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[Aloofi]

Originally posted by Kamog:
Let's hope it doesn't turn out that way...

On the contrary, let's hope it is that way.
Maybe we could have at Last a chance to create a society of free men where corporations and govertments no longer have our destinies in their hands, a free society that is not stolen from us by evil dictators or greedy businessmen.
Let's hope in war, because we have no hope in peace.
The corporations have created the current world order, and they will never let us create a society where the acumulation of wealth is not longer its engine.
Corporations and goverments will never allow themselves to become obsolete, we have to make them be!!!

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[Instar]

Information transmission will only increase with increasing computer speed, which is pretty easy prediction to make. The big issue is whether or not computer sentience will happen. I think that it can happen, it is just that people may decide against it. It also depends on how you define sentience.
Also, we humans must clean up our act environmentally. Colonizing other planets seems like a feasible way to relieve pressures here at home. (it beats the alternatives)
I really hope that the Internet matures... wait I mean the Users of the Internet... heh, we have too many CS playing "l337 h4x0rz"....
I hate to push any one product, but if the digital world of machines can consolidate with iniatives like .NET, the results should be short of astounding. For instance, you no longer have to agonize over differing data formats, or incompatible devices. It all works together. Data and meta-data flow like rivers..... ooooooooooooooooooh