I often wonder what others would think about various thought experiments I run in my head. In particular, how would the various potential futures I contemplate rank in terms of desirability. Given that each of our ideal futures has a unique composition of features, what would be some of the common trends? Could we agree on any goals at all? And if not, could we agree on a process for determining the goals even if we can't all agree on what they are? There are so many people that don't even speak the same languages that I do; what do they want? Where do we agree and disagree?
Additionally, I'm curious about the prospect of global visions for humanity, rather than today's focus on the meager expression and internal agreement in nation-states. While there is clear, if ineffectual process for guiding nations, the international community's process is certainly less developed. In considering potential futures on this scale, it strikes me that I find some of them very displeasurable.
***
Specks of light dotting the night sky gleamed meagerly in the distance. As the cool artificial breeze of the Martian domes brushed gently against Kaiya's cheeks, she couldn't help but wonder what became of her grandmother's friend's grandchildren. Her Terran peers' parents lost the technology for communicating with the colony Mars over two decades ago now. As the population surpassed one million in 2081, just a few years ago, the celebration was bittersweet, unshared with so many friends from humanity's home world.
***
Do others fear cataclysmic rifts in our species as I do? The Martian example is particularly illustrative for its physical divide, but techno-socioeconomic partitions scare me just as much.
Already, we see segregated communities around the globe - in the Arab States, Nigeria and the United States and elsewhere - stratified greatly along economic lines. When groups with money tend to see positively reinforcing feedback loops that grant them privilege to compounding gains, they stand positioned to run away with our global civilization's power and control. Even now, elites often control laws or have the money to evade them. The top tier of human society stands apart from the rest.
Technology also feeds into the feedback loops. Technology can be adopted first by elites. They know about it first, and they can afford it. If technology Z is build on Y which is built on X and so on, and if an elite group gains access to Z before anyone outside the group has access to A, it may well be fair to say that the elite group has sufficiently separated itself from the rest of humanity. The specific technology could further reinforce this idea. For example, genetic control of our offspring down to the level of individual base pairs and epigenetic fingerprinting would be a game changer in terms of our evolution as a species. Evolved intelligence where humans are integrated with AI in a manner that gives some individuals orders of magnitude more cognitive processing power might also render the unprivileged people powerless and obsolete.
If we really care about human inclusion, equality and the value of individual human lives, we soon must contemplate the implications of technology, resource distribution and economic stratification on the development of our species. Extrapolating backwards the idea of inclusivity in the face of such major technological progress of our potential future, are we in the right place today? While I think we are still largely okay - it's been less than a generation since cell phones and the internet became common - I do worry about the next generation. What if 10% of the world is still without cellphones in 2030? That would mean that many children in developed nations have parents that grew up with cell phones while 1 of every 10 humans couldn't even get one then.
More broadly though, my question is about whether or not we are, as a species, simply alright with that prospect. Do we even care? If we have 9 billion people and the top 7 billion don't really notice when the bottom 2 billion suffer, why would we change? And if the top 10 million can simply ignore or even subjugate the rest of the 9 billion, would there be enough impetus within the elites to prevent it? If your children are part of the future mainstream, if you are, do you care?
No comments:
Post a Comment