Like the spokesmen for Arab dictators feigning bewilderment over protesters’ demands, mainstream television news reporters finally training their attention on the growing Occupy Wall Street protest movement seem determined to cast it as the random, silly blather of an ungrateful and lazy generation of weirdos. They couldn’t be more wrong and, as time will tell, may eventually be forced to accept the inevitability of their own obsolescence.
Even the sympathizers don’t always get it. I’m sure I get a lot of things wrong too, but here’s one thing I do understand: Change doesn’t begin with policy. It begins with perception. And you don’t change things by asking. You change them by acting.
While watching the Occupy Wall Street movement gain momentum and challenge the status quo, we in the transhumanist and technoprogressive communities should take note of differences between this movement and those earlier in the 20th century that were in direct opposition to some set of conservative policies.
Economists pronounce with great confidence in the media and blind us with maths and jargon so that most of us switch off and leave it to the ‘experts’—but are we wise to do so when the evidence of the last four years suggests they do not know what they are doing? The voter who votes in ignorance forges the chains that bind him.
On October 6, 2011, protestors will converge on Washington D.C. to recreate Tahrir Square here in the United States. It is important to transhumanists and non-transhumanists alike because it calls for, in the end, the reduction of the use of money and technology to feed America’s imperial war efforts and to challenge those in charge to use our defense money for environmental purposes.
Inspired by Ayn Rand, PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, along with Patri Friedman and others, are helping the Seasteading Institute plan a floating ‘start-up country’ off the coast of San Francisco, built on oil-rig like platforms in international waters.
Young Americans are a generation betrayed. Official unemployment is more than 25% for those aged 16-19. That means the real figure is much worse, especially in minority communities and depressed parts of the country. But jobs are scarce for everyone. College students are graduating with record levels of student debt before entering the worst job market for graduates in recent memory.
Can Europe, whose motto is “unity in diversity,” help to navigate humanity through the upcoming decades like a clear-eyed Renaissance astronomer? Or will it simply sink, squabbling and sniveling, into irrelevancy?
The real solution has nothing to do with techno-utopianism, monetary reform, austerity, or any of the other ideological cul-de-sacs currently being promoted.
Transhumanism is not simply something that will happen in the future; it is a general byproduct of modernity. Thinking of transhumanism narrowly, only as a future state, jeopardizes the development of desirable ethics and societal changes.
When Phil Bowermaster asked for some pithy thoughts about how to prepare for one of the Next Big Future Things coming down the pike, I suddenly sounded like a frothing street-corner Ranter.
Our future depends on the outcome of a three-way race between: 1) the development and implementation of emerging technologies; 2) the evolution of improved methods of governance; and 3) systemic breakdowns in the world economy and the global ecosystem.
Is inequality the primary cause of human suffering? Does disparity in wealth, power, opportunity, and education inevitably lead to despair and social discontent?
We’re trending towards a day where it will be impossible to create jobs in the traditional sense, and the taunting question of our time will be: How do we value human lives without livelihoods?
Right now Wisconsin is serving as the prototype for United States 2.0, a newly reconstituted nation where corporations have all the rights of personhood without any of the responsibilities—and people have all the duties of personhood without any of the rights. Welcome to your future. They’re preparing it for you right now in America’s heartland.
1987 was the first year in which one billion people boarded airline flights. In that year the world’s population hit 5 billion, meaning approximately 20% of all people experienced a fantastic luxury not available to history’s wealthiest monarchs. By 2005 two billion people were boarding airliners each year, and the world’s population had grown to 6.5 billion. In the short span of years between 1987 and 2005, airline flight grew from being a right of 20% to a right of 31% of humanity, from barely a fifth to almost a third. Even assuming more frequent flights by the wealthier, this is startling evidence of the democratization of technology.
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