AwareTek's Top 10 Predictions for the Future

[awaretek]

http://media1.libsyn.com/podcasts/awaretek/AwareTek_050911_Predictions.mp3

AwareTek is at www.awaretek.com/podcasts/index.html

This is a special podcast that predicts the future of our society, culture, science and technology!

[awaretek]

And actually, your predictions were kind of interesting. However, I am sceptical that they will come true. What makes you such an expert on so many topics?

Do you have a track record as a psychic, or do you claim actual expertise in all these fields of study, along with better judgement and acumen than the rest of us?

Anyway, I recommend this show to other alleycats, it is on a higher intellectual plane than most, and who knows, maybe this guy can actually see the future?

[Bruce Wright]

8) 8) 8) and I hope they pan out :lol:

[Hittman]

I just became aware of the this ‘cast a week or so ago, have listened to a couple, and haven’t decided if it will stay in my podcatcher or not. I haven’t heard this episode, but will shortly.

As for who is qualified – aren’t we all? The beauty of predicting things is that you shrug off the failures and salute the successes. Name ten things that are going to happen, and if one of them does, you’re now an expert!

Hell, you don’t even have to have one of them happen. Back in 1968 “Expert� Paul R. Ehrlich, in his book “The Population Bomb� predicted most of us would starve and run out of everything, almost immedatly. He made hundreds of predictions about the horrible future we were facing. None of them came true. He celebrated his failure with a re-release of the book thirty years later. The guy has been proven wrong over and over and over again, yet is still revered by many as an expert.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_R._Ehrlich

[awaretek]

Well, I have given these predictions a lifetime of thought, but I also use intuition, or inductive reasoning, to bring ideas to fruition.

I am a scientist, poet, and businessman who happens to predict the future. Sort of like how Bob Dylan "prophecizes", but without the grammy awards :lol:

[Bruce Wright]

Hey, your podcast is nice but the Dylan comparison is ridiculous! Your poetry could use a heavy metal backup band alright, to drown it out!

Bruce Wright

[awaretek]

Well, I never meant to compare my poetry with Dylan's, I just meant that I predict the future like Dylan does, inductively and intuitively.

[Bruce Wright]

Let's take just one of your predictions, that the world's financial system will go back to a Gold Standard. This is not possible nor practical.

Gold is a barbarous relic. We are much more sophisticated now, and our currencies can not be tied to a metal nor to any physcal substance. In case you haven't noticed, we are in a digital age. A gold standard would destroy the global economy by restricting the growth of the money supply. Why should the quantity of money be tied to the amount of a certain metal available to the world?

You are living in the Dark Ages, and you think you can predict the future!

Bruce Wright

[Bruce Wright]

Another thing, your forecast of a new language is really dumb. First of all, alphabetic scripts are far superior to iconic scripts like Chinese. Secondly, no language can exceed English in expressiveness by very much, or else it would have been invented already; you vastly understate the degree of difficulty in devising and improving language. And, human languages are tightly controlled by genetics and what we can understand is determined by the human brain. Read Noam Chomsky in order to understand this.

Bruce Wright

[awaretek]

Hello Bruce,

Well, maybe my forecast of a new language is "dumb" as you say, or maybe not. Time will tell. Also, as for alphabetic languages, I discuss this in my podcast, and I agree that alphabetic scripts are superior for most of the purposes for which written languages have been used, but I also point out that the future is different than the past, and the development of our electronic media communications tools will also alter the primary purposes of written languages, possibly favoring iconic or symbolic scripts that are not alphabetic.

And I'm not so sure that Noam Chomsky would disagree with me.

I think my forecasts and predictions will stand the test of time.

[Bruce Wright]

Let me mention another of your forecasts that I think is wrong. You forecast a World Government to be established. I don't think this will happen because the US will never give up any of its sovereignty and the US is powerful enough economically and militarily to prevent a World Government from being established.

Just look at the United Nations and how ineffectual it has become, it has almost become a joke!

Bruce Wright

[Hittman]

Interesting show. I think most of your predictions are wrong, though.

New economy – Gold standard

We’ve had the same type of economy for centuries – if there was a better way it’s likely we would have come up with it by now. And nobody will be going back to a gold standard. Even when it was used, money was still an idea, not a tangible thing. Sure, in theory you could trade a dollar for a dollar’s worth of gold, but in actual practice it was faith in the issuing government that made a dollar worth a dollar. None of that has changed, and going to the gold standard wouldn’t change it either.

New power source

I think you’re right about this one – unlike a new kind of economy, we need a new power source, so we’ll invent one. Along the way, charlatans will continue to extract money from suckers with the promise of perpetual motion machines.

World Government

Never happen, and would be a disaster if it did. It would be the end of any chance of liberty. Take a look at what’s happened with the US government. Conceived in liberty, it now has removed most of our basic freedoms, slowly and systematically. (Our national symbol should be changed from an eagle to a frog in a pot of boiling water.) Imagine how much worse it would be with a world government. The corruption and abuse would be way too huge to ever tackle.

But the real reason it won’t happen goes deeper than that. We are, deep in the core of our DNA, tribal animals. We pledge our allegiance to our tribe. These days, most of us belong to several different tribes, but we are loyal to all of them, and fierce when someone from the outside interferes with them in even the slightest way. Our tribal nature means we’ll resist any attempt at world government, as we should.

Language

Language will continue to evolve, perhaps to the point where we won’t recognize it in 100 years, as we invent new words for new things and new concepts. (No one from 1989 would know today’s meanings of “master of his domain,� “spongeworthy,� “shrinkage,� “not that there’s anything wrong with that,� or “soup nazi,� and that’s just from one TV show.) But attempts to create languages have always failed. Esperanto, anyone? How many people converse in Klingion, or Elvish?

As for iconic writing, we already have a little of that (smiley faces, icons on the computer) but it’s not likely to replace phonetic writing, because it’s just too **** complicated. I can figure out the pronunciation of a word I’ve never seen before in this handy phonetic language, type it in on my standard keyboard, and look it up to see what it means. I can’t do that with an iconic language. The written word has evolved from icons to phonetics, and it won’t be going back.

As for anything replacing books, it just ain’t gonna happen. New media hardly ever replaces old media, it merely complements and adds to it. The only exceptions I can think of are piano rolls, replaced by recordings, and vaudeville, replaced by movies and radio. (Although one could argue that piano roles (a prefect example of digital information, BTW) are still with us, not only among collectors (you can even get Paradise By The Dashboard Lights on a piano roll), but in high end player pianos that store recordings digitally.) Radio didn’t kill recordings. TV didn’t’ replace movies. Video never killed the radio star. Podcasting won’t replace radio. E-books won’t replace paper books.

No Artificial Consciousness

I think you’re probably right on this one. Although as we make machines that are smarter and smarter, the appearance of consciousness will become more common. And if we ever do make a self-aware machine, we’ll probably just re-define the word to let ourselves off the hook.

I can’t beat a $40 chess program. We used to consider chess prowess a sign of intelligence, but now that we have machines that can even defeat grand masters, we’ve changed the definition.

Intelligence <> consciousness, of course, (hey, I used in icon!) but I suspect that if we ever succeeded in making a machine that was self-aware, we’d redefined self awareness.

We’ve done the same thing with our definition of what it means to be humans. We used to say, “Humans use tools.� Then we found animals (even birds) using tools, so we redefined it: “Humans use language.� Then we taught chimps to use language, and found strong evidence that other animals have elaborate communication systems. So that’s no longer the definition of being human. We now use “Humans are aware they will die,� which is a pretty nebulous description, and if we find proof that animals have this awareness, we’ll move the goalposts again.

So if a machine ever does become self aware, we’ll simply redefine self-awareness.

Humans getting smarter

I have mixed feelings on this. Yes, overall, some people are getting smarter, using the new resources we have at hand. We can, if we want to, jack into the internet almost directly – there are people walking around with glasses permanently tuned to Google who can pull up any fact in seconds. But that doesn’t necessarily make one smarter. Many people use these resources to confirm and amplify their stupidity. For example, a creationist uses them to find more nonsense to support the nonsense he believes. Michael Moore fans use it to rationalize his lies and distortions. Such people believe the process is making them smarter, when in reality they are merely augmenting their stupidity.

In a recent survey, 60% of the American population said they believe the earth is 10,000 years old, or less. This is with out “fine� education system spending trillions of dollars on “education.�

OTOH, that does mean there’s lots of room for improvement.

Extending life span

I think you’re bang on with this one. Every year our average lifespan increases by a few months. When I was a kid, 60 was considered old. Now, just a few decades later, it’s merely the beginning of old age. I think there is a finite limit to how much we can extend our lifespan, and we don’t know where that is, but 200 years feels about right. It will probably take a few centuries to get there, though.

Understanding what Life is.

Could be. I doubt it, but it’s possible.

It’s also possible, and I think more likely, that this is one of the things we can’t understand. I suspect, and fear, just a little, that there are some things, perhaps many things, that we’ll never be intelligent enough to understand.

My current dog, Sam, is smarter than any other dog I’ve owned before. He also has loads of personality, and, I swear, a sense of humor. But even if he were the smartest dog in the world, he’ll never understand the concept of man landing on the moon, micro v. macro economics, or even an equation as simple as 1+1=2. It’s just beyond his intellectual capacity, and always will be.

Likewise, it is possible/likely, that we humans don’t have the intellectual capacity to understand some of the most basic things in our universe. We could be looking right at them, and be as oblivious to what we’re seeing as Sam is seeing 1+1=2 written on the sidewalk.

Anyhow, thanks for an interesting show.

[awaretek]

Bruce, even though I have lived on the East Coast for 12 years, very near Ground Zero, I was born and raised in the midwest in very conservative country. I know how the heartland folks view the U.N. and how much they hate the idea of a World Government.

Still I envision circumstances that will eventually change that. I'll talk about those circumstances in upcoming podcasts. Also, it is possible, you, know, that the USA will not always be preeminently powerful.

[awaretek]

Hittman, wow and thanks for your detailed analysis of my "Predictions" show. I will study your comments and think about them and then answer them.

For starters, as to your thoughts on World Government and its inherent dangers and undesirability, I suspect that similar comments were made about the inherent dangers and undesirability of National Governments before they developed; and local governments before that.

I even suspect that a lot of folks were'nt keen about the idea of having a tribal chief; but these things developed anyway.

I think our real choice is going to between a democratic, federal, global State or else a global Empire won and maintained by force of arms.

I know which one I prefer.

Thanks again for the great comments!

Ron Stephens

"From the clash and sparks of opposing opinions comes much light"

[awaretek]

I might as well post the short list of what the Predictions are about:

1. Energy Crisis-Peak Oil
2. New economic system ( better) develops
3. World adopts the Gold Standard
4. A completely new, virtually inexhaustable, cleaner source of Power is discovered and developed
5. World Government
6. A New Language is developed, combining spoken language, a symbolic or iconic written language, and electronic multimedia into a new systhesis
7. No "artificial" consciousness is developed (at least for 1000 years)
8. Human intelligence is vastly expanded in combination with electronic computing, genetic engineering and pharmaceutical engineering
9. Human lifespan reaches at least 200 years
10. A new scientific process, principle, or activity is discovered that underlies all biological life. This new principle of life will be more revolutionary, profound, and powerful than any scientifc breakthough ever.

The podcast can be found at http://www.awaretek.com/podcasts/index.html

and the rss feed is at http://www.awaretek.com/podcasts/index.xml

[Bruce Wright]

So it is actually an interesting podcast series. I disagree with your predictions, but I admire your style.

Bruce Wright

P.S. If your prediction of a 200 yeasr life span for humans comes to pass, I will have more time to find and explore good podcasts!