Coming Soon - How to Fix the World

What a great present, full online access to the MIT Technology Review year-ender magazine, "The Long Term Issue."

A glance through the index page produced a bevy of terrific articles on often overlooked issues such as "How to Escape the Present," an exploration of the damage short-term thinking is causing and how to escape its hold.

"When More  Is Not More." The failure of capitalism to solve our biggest problems.

"How the Truth Was Murdered." We're awash in conspiracy theories. We were warned.

"The True Dangers of AI." They're already here and, no, it's not the takeover of humanity by supercomputers.

"What Do You Really Know? A massive physics experiment shows just how much we rely on one another for knowledge - and how society is threatened if that reliance breaks down."

That's about half of the articles in this edition but I've chosen these to review in the days ahead. I think they speak to a lot of the anxieties and challenges many of us are confronting today. A little fresh thinking could be very worthwhile.

Stay tuned.






Comments

  1. TrailblazerDecember 23, 2020 at 3:30 PM

    Could add these..

    https://thedriven.io/2020/12/09/major-breakthrough-quantumscape-hails-test-results-of-solid-state-batteries/

    https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/worlds-most-powerful-computer-simulation-ai-b1760338.html

    We live in interesting times.

    TB

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Disaffected LibDecember 23, 2020 at 6:03 PM

      We really do live in interesting times, as often as not pretty worrisome. The articles I mention were chosen for their primary focus on how we must change if we are to have a better, even viable future. The problem I have with the solid-state battery and other technologies is that it reinforces our assumption that we can always engineer our way out of our troubles. Sooner or later and, with any luck, not too late, we have to understand that any worthwhile future depends on mankind, the planet's most dangerous species, coming to recognize we have to learn to live within Earth's finite limitations.

      Delete
    2. Owen GrayDecember 24, 2020 at 7:59 AM

      Much to mull over here. Happy holidays, Mound.

      Delete
    3. The Disaffected LibDecember 24, 2020 at 8:55 AM

      And a Merry Christmas to you and yours, Owen. I think we've earned it. Tonight I'll be honouring my family's tradition of Christmas Eve oyster stew. My father couldn't say when it began but it goes back at least as far as my great grandparents. There's so much cream and butter in it that I keep my indulgence secret from my cardiologist. Here's to a vastly better 2021.

      Delete
  2. TrailblazerDecember 24, 2020 at 7:58 AM

    We have also the most difficult question of the day.
    How do we control our population?

    Merry Christmas.

    TB

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Disaffected LibDecember 24, 2020 at 8:59 AM

      I think human responses to overpopulation will be limited to constructing fortified borders and, in some places, wars, Trailblazer. The rest of the culling will be done by nature.

      We simply don't have the vision to address overpop peacefully or constructively, TB. My next post deals with the trap of short-termism that now has us in its grasp.

      And a Merry Christmas to you and yours, TB.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Up in Smoke. 300 Sq. Mi. of Amazon Rainforest Lost Every Day.

Image
  The Amazon rainforest is disappearing at what should be an alarming rate. 312 sq. mi. or 808 sq. kms. every day. Over the past 30 years humans have destroyed a patch of the Amazon equal in area to the states of Texas and New Mexico . The Amazon – historically a great carbon absorber, since trees take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen – now releases more carbon than it stores, which adds to, rather helps to reduce, our global climate crisis. Deforestation rates decreased slightly from 2004 to 2012. But since then, they’re back on the rise, especially in the past couple of years, since Jair Bolsonaro became president of Brazil. In 2018, as Bolsonaro campaigned as a patriotic man of the people, scientists predicted that once the Amazon lost more than 25% of its tree cover, it would become a drier ecosystem, all because deforestation changes weather patterns (due to how trees respire), which in turn reduces rainfall. Furthermore, as the forest becomes fragmented, areas surrounded by
Read more

The Cognoscenti Syndrome

  There is a group of people I think of as the Cognoscenti, people who are well educated, very informed and of rapidly diminishing relevance. Their ranks include writers such as Chris Hedges and Glen Greenwald. These are people who have honed an almost Puritanical value system, readily finding fault in any direction. They are scathing in their attacks on Republicans and Democrats alike to the point where they become nihilists. They don't endorse. They prescribe. This is where they fail. They're unable to advocate for anything that might resonate with the public whose interests they argue are being trammeled. Donald Trump was bad but Joe Biden is scarcely better. This is where their elitism comes in.  74 million may have voted for Trump but, hey, they didn't know any better. The mob that stormed the Capitol. They were just victims of the system venting their frustrations. All the racism, bigotry, xenophobia, misogyny, white nationalism - inevitable side effects of their oppr
Read more

"Creeping Normalcy" in the Plague Age

Image
  Britain is experiencing a new wave of Covid cases, 40,000 per day .  Yet it hasn't caused much reaction from the public. It sounds like the legendary stiff upper lip, the "Keep Calm and Carry On" resolve. Health officials think it's something much more troubling. “We’re in a phase where we still have large numbers of people dying from this disease,” said Linda Bauld, professor of public health at the University of Edinburgh. “But it has gone into the background. We’ve become used to something that has not gone away. I think there’s been a desensitisation to the mortality.” On Thursday, the UK reported more than 45,000 new coronavirus cases – the most since mid-July – and more than 800 deaths were reported in the past seven days. Hospitalisations are rising, with one-fifth of ICU beds occupied by Covid patients, and the latest figures showed an estimated 200,000 pupils absent from school. The UK is faring far worse than its European neighbours, with a rate of death
Read more