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In 1997, Wired Predicts Things That Could Go Wrong in the 21st Century (2021)
- pmdulaney 4y ago
- suture 4y agoHow has progress been stopped dead in its tracks by wokeism? The social/cultural backlash clearly refers to a backlash against technological progress. If anything one could make an argument that the current anti-vax/anti-science elements pervading society would fit the description should their views gain more traction.
- pmdulaney 4y agoNo. 10 is: A social and cultural backlash stops progress dead in its tracks. Projecting this forward 25 years, and knowing that WIRED is a progressive publication itself, I was seeing this as a prediction that wokeism itself would be stopped in its tracks by cultural backlash. So far as I can tell, that has not yet happened.
- MatthiasWandel 4y agoThat's very subjective. Some would say wokeism threatens progress, others say anti-wokeism ghreatens progress because wokeism IS progress. Anti-science is just saying that the other side disagreees with some science that is incovnvenient to them (both sides). I would say they didn't get that one right. They didn't predict today's divisiveness.
- KerrAvon 4y ago
- epicureanideal 4y ago> How has progress been stopped dead in its tracks by wokeism? It hasn’t taken full effect yet but it has definitely bent the arc of progress toward a lower angle. The extremely harsh imposition of woke views has impacted my own enjoyment of the tech industry, my ability to raise money (I stopped attending a popular Bay Area seed capital meet up because several people repeatedly commented about my white skin color and other details of my background, and due to the terms and conditions of another I never bothered to attend.). I had to leave one company because of its extreme discriminatory positions, and I’ve repeatedly heard moderate amounts of discrimination at several other companies. There are plenty of doctors and scientists who have given up on or reduced their activity in their field due to similar issues, unfortunately I don’t have time to link all this at the moment. Also all the ideological statements people need to make to become professors etc I suspect are influencing people away from academia and so academia becomes more about advocacy than research. It’s a miracle that we’re continuing to progress, but it would’ve been even better I suspect if we hadn’t had all these hindrances. Also think about all the men who are crushed in biased divorce outcomes, which is tangentially related to the woke issue, and influences their productive activities. It’s all sort of related to the oppressor oppressed narrative.
- inciampati 4y agoI want an egalitarian society. Because it opens opportunity to everyone, it should be the way to make the most value for the world. But it is hard for everyone to simultaneously agree not to profit and exploit based on superficial genetic and life histories that are clearly outside of individual control. Can we wake up enough to see each other as equals? I know what you are saying. Can it be expressed in an inclusive way? I mean that whatever woke you're talking about is still sleepwalking. And you want to explain this to others without sounding like you also are asleep or fixated on your own immutable personal situation. Perhaps I'm not making sense, but it's a try.
- zionic 4y ago> I want an egalitarian society What happens when party A wants this, and plays the game accordingly, while parties B, C, D, E, and F say they want it but don’t follow the same rules?
- the_third_wave 4y ago
- the_biot 4y agoThose are really broad conclusions. Do you have numbers/facts/studies to back them up? It's my gut feeling as well, but gut feelings and personal anecdotes have no place in rational debates.
- the_third_wave 4y agoThere is plenty of proof to be found, from the lowering of standards in education which focuses on 'other ways of knowing' and 'lived experience', eschewing 'facts' for 'cultural knowledge', closing schools for high-performing students because these either have too many Asian and white students or not enough 'students of colour', the removal of standardised tests because these are supposedly 'racist', the implementation of race-based grading to create 'equity' through the Smithsonian claiming that 'rational thinking and hard work are White values'. Here's a few articles to plough through for more information on the detrimental effects of critical theory praxis: https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/06/17/critical-race-theory-distracts-from-real-problems-in-education-this-reformer-says/ https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/06/17/critical-race-theory-... https://www.newsweek.com/smithsonian-race-guidelines-rational-thinking-hard-work-are-white-values-1518333 https://www.newsweek.com/smithsonian-race-guidelines-rationa... https://www.politico.com/newsletters/the-recast/2021/10/29/woke-racism-john-mcwhorter-494906 https://www.politico.com/newsletters/the-recast/2021/10/29/w... https://christopherrufo.com/crt-briefing-book/ https://christopherrufo.com/crt-briefing-book/ https://newdiscourses.com/tag/critical-education-theory/ https://newdiscourses.com/tag/critical-education-theory/ Most of these deal with education in one way or another since that is the main avenue for critical theory-derived ideologies to enter society. For more pointers towards the detrimental effects of other 'critical' theories like 'queer theory' [1] you'll find a good start in the New Discourses 'Translations from the Wokish' [2] [1] https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-queer-theory/ https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-queer-theory/ [2] https://newdiscourses.com/translations-from-the-wokish/ https://newdiscourses.com/translations-from-the-wokish/
- logicalmonster 4y ago> How has progress been stopped dead in its tracks by wokeism? I think its hard to make the argument that technical progress has stopped, but to some extent the woke ideologues do introduce friction to technical progress. Here’s one simple example: before wokeism took root in corporations, the ideal that most wanted to strive towards was something like a color-blind meritocracy. Today, the prevailing idea in hiring/promoting in many corporations isn’t “is this person the absolute best scientist/engineer/inventor that we can get” it’s “does this person have the right identity?”. It’s not hard to imagine that some technical progress is being left on the table by the focus on identity and not on merit. > If anything one could make an argument that the current anti-vax/anti-science elements pervading society would fit the description should their views gain more traction. Deciding whether to take a medication is not the domain of science: that’s a risk-management decision. The well of discourse has been poisoned by the repeated false claim that not finding enough benefit in a particular medication is anti-science. Science can’t and doesn’t command anybody to take any medication, it just gives you tools to understand the possible risks and benefits. People can reasonably disagree that the risks aren’t worth the benefits, even if you personally disagree.
- matthewmacleod 4y agoI think this comment is perhaps evidence that we can all read whatever we choose into any sentence.
- krapp 4y agoParticularly since "woke" is starting to become slippery, like "cancel culture" , "the left" and "political correctness," so that it no longer really has a definition (certainly not its original definition) beyond a general pejorative and fear trigger.
- havblue 4y agoI suspect that's just the nature of language though as there are plenty of other definitions that are in flux. Here's one that isn't controversial: "cringe". Cringe is whatever you cringe at according to your own subjective reaction. If people can't agree on general concepts though, good luck having any kind of a productive discourse.
- matthewmacleod 4y agoWell, indeed. I'm just old barely enough to remember the 90–2000s debate about "political correctness," and one of the things I find most fascinating about the discussion of "wokeism" is how completely indistinguishable it is from the discussion of "political correctness".
- AnimalMuppet 4y agoMy impression (just an impression) is that the "woke" (or whatever label you want to put on in) stuff is much wider spread and much longer-lived than "political correctness" was. Political correctness didn't get much traction outside of universities. "Woke" has.
- brewdad 4y agoUntil they latched onto Woke, the talking heads on the Right were still using PC as a pejorative. That was only a few years ago. PC never went completely away but flowed in and out of fashion like the tide.
- baybal2 4y agoExcuse me, what is that "woke" thing everybody is talking about, and nobody seem to be able to tell what it is?
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- permo-w 4y agowell I suppose you could say it's the idea that everyone's feelings matter, but some people's feelings matter more, because their feelings mattered less in the past
- pfdietz 4y agoIt's where people point out painful truths about society that we're supposed to obediently ignore.
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- Aloha 4y agoEvery time there is a leap forward in any kind of progress, there is a backlash that occurs after. I didn't expect the moral scolds to be on the side of progress - usually there on the side of the status quo. My only gripe with the woke-scolds is their concern seems to be about the appearance of progress rather than material measurable progress. I agree with most of their stated aims, but not their methods, the way they communicate them, or their seeming lack of care about meaningful progress.
- KerrAvon 4y agoOK, but who are “they,” specifically? I increasingly think this is just a set of strawmen created by some narcissists on both sides on Twitter.
- Aloha 4y agoPeople who are very online, and generally left, they create the social pressures needed on people who are otherwise uninvolved to take interest in things they might not. I've been caught in the crossfire and had various distant parts of my social network try to vote me off the island at some point for one reason or another, they usually come back when the moment moves on - but not always.
- MatthiasWandel 4y agoThere's an awful lot of points on there that are true or partially true. But some things, like terrorism, loomed much larger then than they do today.
- labster 4y agoNo. 3 on Russia and its threat is almost accurate down to the word. If you replace “quasicommunist” with “authoritarian dictatorship” (not a stretch) it represents the world as we know it.
- akomtu 4y agoTechnocommunism is the word.
- the_biot 4y agoI'm pretty amazed they called Russia. It wasn't clear to me at that time that Russia would become an out and out gangster state, even if the economy had turned into an oligarchy by then. It wasn't until some years after Putin came to power, when it became clear he really was a gangster running a country.
- ianai 4y agoIt’s kind of an extension of the resource curse.
- bigodbiel 4y agoHalf and half: nationalist mafia!
- hammock 4y agoWe also haven’t gotten the “uncontrollable plague killing upwards of 200 million people.”
- kzrdude 4y agoThe "catch on like wildfire" part was true though. One moment you hear about it on the news, the next (the next weeks) half your family gets it - talking about Omicron in this case. Thankfully very low lethality.
- ianai 4y ago“Alternative energy sources fail to materialize.” I wonder how likely this seemed back then? Today generation seems like it could be covered by renewables and even further grown/expanded without much debate. The questions shifted to storage and generally “the will to do”. I wonder whether to complain about those colors or be thankful. Looking at that combination seems to make me so much more appreciative of everything else after looking at it.
- naniwaduni 4y agoDepends whether we're discounting nuclear as "alternative", really.
- ianai 4y agoEh. That kind of highlights for me how “odd” it is that converting things to electric feels very new, but could probably have been developed out much more much earlier.
- dv_dt 4y agoWhy? Multiple studies have concluded that renewables can power 100% of grids, and they seem to be scaling from a manufacturing and installation basis much faster than nuclear.
- naniwaduni 4y agoRenewables failing to pan out could have seemed plausible in 1997. Nuclear as a reaction to an oil shock had already panned out two decades earlier.
- pfdietz 4y agoWhat? The nuclear buildout in the US that started in the 1960s collapsed in the 1970s. The oil shock and energy crisis led to changes, like reduction in growth in electricity demand and widespread introduction of cogeneration (due to PURPA) that ruined the market for nuclear power plants here. It didn't help that the costs in that first buildout had been way over what was promised.
- jwilk 4y agohttps://www.ladbible.com/news/news-1997-magazine-predicted-10-things-that-could-wrong-in-21st-century-20211123 https://www.ladbible.com/news/news-1997-magazine-predicted-1... includes text version of the list.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- SMAAART 4y agoGreat book: "The 500 Year Delta: What Happens After What Comes Next"
- hexnuts 4y agohttps://archive.org/details/500yeardeltawhat0000tayl https://archive.org/details/500yeardeltawhat0000tayl Archive link
- perardi 4y ago“7. The cumulative escalation in pollution causes a dramatic increase in cancer, which overwhelms the ill-prepared health system.” That’s the one that stands out as an unambiguous miss. The rest of the predictions were either spot-on (Russia), or predicted too large of a change or effect (COVID, by about an order of magnitude). But cancer? Pretty flat. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-population-with-cancer?tab=chart&time=1990..2017&country=OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-population-with-... And the death rate has decreased. https://ourworldindata.org/cancer#is-the-world-making-progress-against-cancer https://ourworldindata.org/cancer#is-the-world-making-progre...
- walrus01 4y agoCancer statistics may be pretty flat, but go spend a week breathing the air pollution in new delhi, lahore, dhaka, Beijing, etc and tell me that a huge number of people aren't suffering from it.
- seoaeu 4y agoThe prediction was "a dramatic increase in cancer, which overwhelms the ill-prepared health system". The fact that pollution hasn't gone away is obviously bad for those impacted by it, but doesn't make the prediction any more accurate.
- mrelectric 4y agoThis is sadly still left to be seen
- zinekeller 4y agoWhile I'm worried about PFAS and microplastics in general, I'm not sure that the "ill-prepared" part will happen as a) it was stressed-tested by COVID and b) there are now research that tracks what's happening now and c) bacteria and fungi has evolved to break down plastics (whether this is a good or bad thing is up to debate). I'm more worried with anti-microbial resistance, considering the still-unfettered access to powerful antibiotics in developing countries (usually for veterinary and agricultural use but some as OTC) to be honest.
- lemursage 4y agoReading that today, at the moment when Ukraine is at war with Russia, when post-Brexit EU internally struggles to present a unified front and when global food supply seems to have become a subject to a gamble, it may seem that parts of those predictions look accurate. But, on the other hand isn’t it “just more of the same” of what was going on in 1997, be it turned up a notch? I’m too young to remember, but I feel the world hasn’t changed fundamentally after 1997 (though the local perception may have been different due to events like 9/11 etc.). See what’s trending now, extrapolate, amplify?
- drewcoo 4y ago> isn’t it “just more of the same” of what was going on in 1997 Yes. That's what I thought when I read it. And not so turned up, actually. Bird flu was '97. Russia was "embracing capitalism" in the form of a kleptocracy. There was impending climate catastrophe. China was clearly an economic juggernaut and there would be future tensions with the US because of that. We'd been proclaiming peak oil for years by then. New tech never lives up to its hype. The crime/terrorism one seems like a near miss to me. On terror, they couldn't have guessed the response to 9/11, though domestic terrorism was already on the rise by then. On crime more generally, rates over all are lower now. And I have no idea what stopping progress, "dead in its tracks" or not, even means. But it sounds very Wired.
- abraxas 4y agoI disagree. As someone born in the early seventies I was already an adult in 1997. The problems did exist back then but the scale of them was different and hence was the focus and so the mood of the population not just in America but in places like Eastern Europe, Asia and hell, even the Middle East was that of unbridled optimism. Sure, Africa was a mess and South America wasn't a lot of fun but the mood after the end of the cold War was jubilant to the level I don't recall before or since. It culminated in the dotcom mania of 1999. But somehow it all made sense. We all read Kurzweil and believed it. I bemoan young people who never got to experience this brief and obviously misguided period of euphoria but it was so much fun while it lasted :)
- dehrmann 4y agoI guess we're still asking if Java's bad.
- antisthenes 4y agoSome notes: 1. While there is tension, the consequences of a hot conflict between such economically intertwined behemoths will make Russia/Ukraine conflict seem like knocking over wood blocks in the playground. Neither country is willing to gut their standard of living (at the moment). 2. If you interpret this as a dig at blockchain tech, it makes some sense. But there have absolutely been leaps and bounds made elsewhere. Renewables and medical treatments just to name a couple. 3. Pretty much unchanged since the Cold War, except much more openly hostile and desperate to keep its dwindling sphere of influence now. 5. Well, there is still 75+ years to go, so this may very well happen in a few decades. 6. Crime and terrorism? No. Corporate grift and hostility towards customers who can't defend themselves. Squeezing both workers and customers towards unrealistic short term goals. General diminishment of trust. 7. Fairly wrong, but the effects of microplastics could be just as negative 8. Fairly wrong again, shift to renewables is humming along. 9. COVID was controlled fairly well, despite massive media outcries about forced lockdowns and masks and whatever else. 10. Too vague to be a useful prediction.
- ajmurmann 4y agoNumber 10 to me is one that hasn't quite come true but is looking on the horizon. Automation and global trade are the golden goose that has brought us enormous prosperity. We've failed to distribute the spoils in a way that makes even feel the progress. Especially in the developed countries the lower and middle class haven't been taken part in the more recent growth that's mostly been benefitting the mega wealthy and the extremely poor globally who've been lifted out of abject poverty. I think average people on developed countries would soon benefit again as a global equilibrium will be reached. However, I'm concerned that the backslash is growing to the point where we'll end up killing the golden goose. Nationalist, authoritarian movements seem to be rising and so are insane conspiracy theories.