It seems like, for the last 30 years of my life, we didn’t really need to spend much time struggling with what to do with the long-term future of humanity. The idea in my head has always been “what folks around me currently have, but for more people, and using less stuff.”
If fusion is ever going to be a thing, if energy production keeps getting cheaper, if AI is contributing significantly to the knowledge economy…that’s just not gonna be enough of a vision anymore.
@hankgreen Hank! You are alive. So nice to see you again.
I thought we never see you alive again, your New Year's hangover lasted 24 days.
Normally, if people have that long hangover they need to go to rehab.
Any vision of the future that centers around technology making the world better has to reckon with how wildly different human views of a better world are, and how easily subverted to different ends technology can be.
@shauna @hankgreen AI / cyber-ethics is going to be supremely important if we don't crash industrial civilization before the economy is restructured around post-energy scarcity and AI.
I don't subscribe at all to Marxism as such but a Marxian-esque critique of the ownership of the means of production or the means of driving the knowledge economy is going to be absolutely essential too.
You don't have to be a Marxist to disagree with how resources are owned and distributed in society.
One of the greatest successes of the wealthy has been convincing the mainstream that anyone raising a critique of capitalism was a central planning communist hoping to jail enemies and starve millions.
@dalias @hankgreen >All it will ever do
Oh shut the hell up.
@blherrou @hankgreen Very cheap and clean energy means a lot cheaper construction costs, you could start to capture CO2 and solve climate change... It has a lot of ramifications.
That's still a lot of ifs from Hank, but that's the hype among true believers. Fusion is still like religion regardless of how many startups there are. I admit to reading that canon now and then.
Is it? I'm not sure how to measure a zeitgeist, and I'd have a similar leaning towards you by default. But thanks to historical perspective from people like @adapalmer and Cat Rambo, I think that the evidence is that #scifi is becoming more positive.
Case in point (with a̶p̶o̶l̶o̶g̶i̶e̶s compliments to @annaleen), the #hopepunk trend that has gained recognition over the last ten years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopepunk
@DawnPaladin Glad to help :) I recently discovered it myself.
Also, on reading your profile: "Interested in building resilient systems and making complex things easier to understand."
Brilliantly stated goal. I may borrow it.
@annaleen @DawnPaladin @hankgreen @adapalmer @ouropinions
Thanks for the clarification! So hopepunk is a more story feature, less a b̶u̶g̶ genre or genre or sub-genre? Makes sense to me. :)
@annaleen @NiftyLinks @DawnPaladin @hankgreen @adapalmer @ouropinions
#hopepunk is largely a reaction to an excess of #grimdark stories, where everything is rotten and people do whatever benefits them, regardless of the consequences to anyone else.
The characters find unexpected solutions to improve the situation, which can be more interesting to read. And avoids unrealistic smarmy characters of #noblebright.
It can be used with almost any setting.
@annaleen @NiftyLinks @DawnPaladin @hankgreen @adapalmer @ouropinions
I'm thinking that Princess Mononoke might be an #anime example. It's a complex situation, and doesn't boil down to a good vs evil story, but the ending situation is better than a total loss for Eboshi, the Gods, or Ashitaka.
I hate to appeal to an over- and misused term, but is this not the von Neuman style technological singularity: "accelerating progress ... approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue."
Vernor Vinge brought it up in his 1993 _Whole Earth Review_ article (and NASA Lewis VISION-21 symposium) discussing his superintelligence driven singularity.
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