Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!klaatu.rutgers.edu!josh From: josh@klaatu.rutgers.edu (J Storrs Hall) Newsgroups: comp.society.futures Subject: Re: More ball gazing Message-ID: Date: 4 Jan 90 02:56:19 GMT References: <9001032345.AA17793@encore.encore.com> Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 116 Bob German posts a fairly reasonable set of technical predictions but then wanders off into a completely imaginary phase space with: Everyman's global communications network will remain an illusive dream during the 90s. True enough. Worldwide economic and environmental crises will lead to less global teleconferencing and more local, grass roots communication. Last I looked, we weren't awash in global teleconferencing. And a worldwide crisis would surely increase, rather than decrease, the amount of it. With the economic unification of western Europe in 1992 and the stated intention of the new eastern European democracies to promote market economies, the 90's have a good chance to be one of the biggest boom decades on record. Information technology will be of great use, however, in helping local groups to share ideas and to explore possible solutions to the problems of pollution, resource depletion and global warming. In a sense. Information technology may make it possible for people to learn the truth rather than blindly swallowing these political scare stories. In the 90s, the world will begin to reevaluate the meaning of "progress" as constant expansion of the economy and of endless cities, suburbs and shopping malls. How sharper than a serpent's tooth are the words of an ungrateful child. There are three billion people on this planet for whom "suburbs and shopping malls" are something beyond the wildest fantasy of heaven. If I have any single hope for "global teleconferencing", it is that it will bring home to some of our more mindless social tinkerers just how well off we are here, and that THE ONE big problem in the world today is that most of the people do NOT live in "suburbs and shopping malls." Instead, progress will be seen as our ability to work together to achieve goals such as world peace, an end to hunger, and a clean environment. World peace is now in sight for the first time in history as a result of three TECHNOLOGIES: communications, transportation, and nuclear weapons. Hunger is ended by TECHNOLOGY allowing each farmer to feed 30 rather than 1.1 people, and transportation to take the food where it's needed. A clean environment is a middle-class value, suddenly found to be necessary by people who have always had roofs over their heads and food in their bellies. It is a luxury that we can afford in this country, but whose cost our political activists are all too eager to force on those in this world who have neither roofs nor food. Buying this luxury honestly, costs us a 10-20% productivity increase, which can be had only with more and better TECHNOLOGY. People will turn their minds to survival of the planet, and will apply our information technologies to that goal. The process of shifting our priorities will begin in the 90s, but will not be complete until early in the next century. The process of shifting our priorities began in the 60's and peaked in the 70's with Jimmy Carter and the Thermostat Police. Luckily it has been in decline ever since. If we are very, very lucky, the 90's will see an explosion of suburbs and shopping malls as billions of the world's poor begin pulling themselves into the middle class. It would be nice to believe that these changes will happen due to a general sense of altruism and good will. It is more likely to occur because we will be forced into it by ecological and economical crises. An Ecological Crisis: A ship runs aground spilling oil. No one is killed. No one is even hurt. A global corporation pours a billion dollars into the local economy for cleanup operations. This could have been prevented by a Politically Correct Ecological Consciousness. An old-fashioned crisis: An earthquake strikes a city killing thousands of people. People keep dying for weeks because of inadequate transportation and medical facilities and supplies. This could have been prevented by "the old idea of progress," primarily the money and knowhow to build the buildings to modern structurally sound specifications. When pollution begins to make the disease rate skyrocket and global warming becomes more apparent, we will be forced to take environmental issues more seriously. The increasing cost of energy and other resources will force us to turn to local food production and manufacturing, and to turn "back to basics." Please notice that throughout the 80's, pollution has been going DOWN, energy prices have been going DOWN, and usable reserves of most mineral resources have been going UP. As I mentioned before, the indications are that the economy in the 90's will become a truly global one and take off in a big way. There is certainly no reason to expect the opposite, beyond short-term fluctuations. Political reforms in Europe, and, somewhat less ballyhooed, Africa, have unlocked enormous reserves of our most precious resource --people!-- and I have to hope that this will prove a major upward force. The only economic crisis on the horizon is in the mind of that Oprah Winfrey of economists, Lester Thurow, who is fearful that when everybody else takes off, we (the U.S.) will be left behind. It is true that we are going to have to get up off our fat rear ends to maintain a leadership role, because lots of other people are on the move; I think we will (already are) doing this in some areas, and will simply assume a perfectly respectable "followership role" in others. The global economy will have room for lots of specializers, and *everybody* will be better off. --JoSH