A lack of parallax

[gfish]

In the SotU last night, Bush claimed the fight against terrorism was the defining struggle of the 21st century. Which, 7 years in, seems like a rather arrogant claim. What would someone from 1908 have said the defining struggle of the 20th century would be? That was 10 years before the Bolshevik revolution and 13 years before the word 'fascism' was even coined.

What do think the defining struggle of the 21st century will be? Personally, I'm hoping for giant robots vs. genetically engineered uber-kraken.

Comments

[airlinepilot.livejournal.com]

I'm hoping the struggle will be who are the "real" humans: those who remained on Earth, or those who moved off-planet. :)

[gfish.livejournal.com]

Screw the dirtsuckers!

[airlinepilot.livejournal.com]

Consorting with groundpounders, eh? You're out of the colony! ;)

[ionan.livejournal.com]

"Transhumans Do It With Nanotech"

[bakeme.livejournal.com]

I. climate change
a. water shortages
b. weather events
c. desertification

[adularia.livejournal.com]

Energy crisis? Climate change? Massive global shift in the concept of 'superpower'? No, he'd never admit to any of those...

[eleventoes.livejournal.com]

I imagine that mid-century it will be the struggle for robot/AI rights.

Towards the end it will probably be the struggle to reclaim human rights from the AIs.

[sistawendy.livejournal.com]

Any of:

1. what to do with tens of millions of people in oil exporting countries who suddenly find their entire countries without income
2. what to do with hundreds of millions of people unemployed by robots
3. what to do with billions of people who didn't die as scheduled

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Science vs. Greed and Superstition.

[ashley-y.livejournal.com]

Zombies, duh!

[sickyprincess.livejournal.com]

Hey, a friend of mine and I are going to Vancouver for a long weekend in February - any suggestions?

[gfish.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm a big dork that likes riding the Skytrain loop around. The anthropology museum at UBC is supposed to be good, but I've yet to go. I can recommend some good all you can eat sushi places, if you're interested.

...I'm afraid grad students make lousy tour directors.

[sickyprincess.livejournal.com]

It's all good. I'm excited about the Skytrain, actually, and I read about the anthropology museum, but I don't think it's really my cup of tea. I want to go into the aquarium and see the beluga whales, though.

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

Well, he has only one year left to try and jam his square peg into the round hole of history and establish a legacy other than lies, cronyism, and poorly managed wars of aggression. The good thing is: he's young enough that with any luck he'll be forgotten within his lifetime.

[anansi133.livejournal.com]

I think it depends on what the viewer/audience thinks is important. A rich corporate bigwig is likely to think that the defining struggle will be all about integrating markets. Someone like me is likely to think the defining struggle is about articulating democracy.

But that's not specific to any century. It's *always* been about articulating democracy. (or integrated markets)

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

What might be more specific to this upcoming century is the possibility of universal surveillance, available to governments and large corporations, and how society copes with that. When autonomous, unnoticeable, cam-toting robots can creep into celebrities' bedrooms and facial recognition software can track people's visual persistence on objects and turn that into targetted advertising, what sort of effect will that have on our sense of freedom? When politicians have real-time analysis and feedback of the effectiveness of their messages, how does that change what they're willing to say to get elected?

[anansi133.livejournal.com]

This scenario was laid out in excruciating detail, 3 years before 9/11.


http://www.davidbrin.com/tschp1.html


My opinion is that once enough people live inside the panopticon, it's no longer a struggle to obtain the dirt on those you want to dis'... but then it's a mighty struggle to find meaning in the ocean of irrelevant data.

I think freedom is mostly a propaganda term. In practical sense, true freedom means the freedom to make mistakes: freedom has no meaning without power. And the teeming masses have always had less power then we're led to believe.

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

Tangentially, what does your icon mean? I know школа, but translate.ru is not giving me anything for пази, and I don't have my deadtree dictionary with me. (It says паз is "groove" but somehow that doesn't seem right...)

[anansi133.livejournal.com]

Here's where I got it from:

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/12/22/caution-children-vio.html


Maybe "groove" has to do with the warning that children are likely to ignore road boundaries.

[pandora233.livejournal.com]

ja ja aliens is da gud