talkback and prose

Part 4 of the A to Z Blogging Challenge. To see all entries, click here.


Humans have developed the paradoxical ability to predict massive, long-term trends through billions of data points while simultaneously ignoring those findings on a day to day basis. Our political leaders tout a return to more prosperous times even when the most educated men and women in our nation point out the unstainability of our policies.


Smart people out of MIT recently created a computing model to forecast different scenarios based on population growth, global resource consumption, agricultural productivity, birth control and environmental protection efforts. The long and short of it: By the year 2030 the world will be pushed into the Greatest Depression due to lack of resources and overpopulation. Article here.


This is an especially big blow to futurists who hoped that 2045 would be the year of the technological singularity (the year given by TIME last year in a cover story). This "saving date" now becomes irrelevant next to MIT's disaster date.


As in most situations, it seems that we are on the cusp of epic, paradigm-shifting future possibilities. On the one hand, mass death and depression because of a lack of resources, and on the other, a technological singularity that could be as important as the creation of language.


My thoughts on the matter can be summarized best by The Imaginary Foundation, "To imagine is to perceive many potential futures, select the most delightful possibility, and then pull the present forward to meet it."


Let's select our future instead of being destroyed by it.