whether
we'll ever live in a world where politicians argue over the first
derivative of the unemployment rate instead of the rate itself. maybe
finland.
the social and cultural implications of a human-like species with a different average lifespan. if we die at twenty, do we retire at eighteen?
black
hole frequency in the universe: more common in the center of galaxies,
which contain more mass, are more likely home to a dead star, possibly multiple merged together.
the next breakthrough in internet searching: voice-recognition software crawling through and transcribing all posted videos.
the most unrealistic hollywood pre-death phrase, "clever girl" - jurassic park.
appropedia - where engineers improve developing country-appropriate designs - wikidemiology.
(2) the technological inevitability of privacy's death: live as transparently as you can, soften your judgment of the vices and deviations of people in your life, demand government do the same. also, the indian woman in the picture above will probably maul me once her friends find this picture with frt.
frt has one enormous advantage - it doesn't require consent, co-operation or even the subject's knowledge
there are still 'wild' human beings living in some of the remotest corners of the tropics
since the collapse of the rubber boom
a native amazonian does not know how to function in contemporary society. he or she speaks an unwritten language and is possessed of jungle skills that are of little value in the money economy. add to these handicaps the almost universal tendency of frontier societies to exploit and discriminate against the members of less acculturated ethnic groups, and the barriers are almost insurmountable. social ostracism, demoralization, and alcoholism comprise the barren netherworld between cultural states
the technology-enabled rise of much of the developing world would pose problems for america and other similarly situated western countries even if china and india consisted of five hundred independent singapores. none of them would be threatening politically, and certainly not militarily. but the implications for the western economies' competitiveness, and for their citizens' incomes and jobs and profits, would be the same
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