Information chips implanted in the brain. Electromagnetic pulse weapons. The middle classes becoming revolutionary, taking on the role of Marx's proletariat. The population of countries in the Middle East increasing by 132%, while Europe's drops as fertility falls. "Flashmobs" - groups rapidly mobilised by criminal gangs or terrorists groups.
This is the world in 30 years' time envisaged by a Ministry of Defence team responsible for painting a picture of the "future strategic context" likely to face Britain's armed forces.
(Via Betterhumans.)
Somehow, a bleak, anarchic future controlled by flashmob decree strikes me as infinitely more likely than the "Singularity" I'd prefer to anticipate.
I can't wait to find out. Can you?
8 comments:
I have already The chip on mi head.
The majority of these are already a reality and occur, for now at least, without attracting too much publicity.
-Jason
Jason/Terry---
I'm sending the brain police over to your respective domiciles right now!
How dare you expose the conspiracy!
There will be consequen ...urg... ulp...we now return you to the program already in progress....
I have a friend that I have political discussions (somewhat argumentitive) with once or twice a year.
In the last discussion, he pointed out something to me that I had not taken into account. In trying to predict the future, major unexpected events often shape the course of civilization.
We never would have expected the meteoric fall and break up of the Soviet Union.
Before the break up, the vision of the future was that of nuclear holocaust. Now there are new images. But, the chaos theory has to be taken into account (kind of an oxymoron).
Stan
Very interesting, although I suspect the MoD has lots of reports and studies that analyse potential future developments, some rosier than this. That's what they get paid for.
For example, until WWII the Canadian general staff routinely reviewed plans for fighting a war with... the United States! Of course it wasn't going to happen, but it always pays to be prepared. Besides, in peacetime staff officers have to do something.
The other thing to remember, as a good friend pointed out to me once while I was nattering on about the Singularity, is that we've heard all this stuff before - go look at the predictions of futurists fifty or a hundred years ago, and see how many actually came true. The percentages aren't very good.
So, while it's important to take note of these things, and keep an eye on the way things are developing, the only way we'll ever really know what the future holds for us is to get there and find out.
Paul
No one does doom and gloom like the British. Somehow I find it hard to imagine people who are riveted by the Anna Nicole show ever becoming revolutionary.
It's not either/or. We could get something like the Singularity *and* the more dystopian riffs suggested in the article. Too often futurists play into a bogus utopia/dystopia mindset. Reality isn't nearly that simple.
Ha! Mac is correct--the future is not ours to see, but only try to get to thru progressive efforts, and what will be, will be, and that is a complexity of possible outcomes, with "singularities" of all sorts intertwined with various utopian, dystopian, and "mid-topian" mixes all thrown together as the future takes hold thru time--the real challenge is to create a sustainable future wherein the human race can not just survive long-term, but succeed to overcome our worst and most self-destructive tendencies in order to achieve our very real transcendant potentials.
How the future is, is related in turn to how we perceive it at any one or more points in time--a lot of this "philosophizing" has to do with who we are as individuals, our culture, and whether things develop along the lines we wish for or are perhaps expecting.
Make your own future, now! Today! Before it's no longer on sale! 8^}
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