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What will the problems of the next generation be, and how do we prepare them for that? On the face of it the next few generations face huge issues. The only t
by motters 14y ago
What will the problems of the next generation be, and how do we prepare them for that? On the face of it the next few generations face huge issues. The only thing we know for certain is that the way we live now is totally unsustainable in the long run, and that new solutions will need to be found to old and unglamorous problems. More localised food production might be one way to help them through what looks like a turbulent few decades, by building in resilience to political and economic shocks.
Is it still valuable to teach kids to code, in the same way that it might have been in the 1980s? I think so, and for the same reasons why growing your own food might also be a good idea. It makes you more independent and more resilient, and reduces your dependency upon increasingly centralised systems which are vulnerable to failure or being co-opted by parties who don't care about your interests. As time goes by code makes up the fundamental infrastructure of life, so who writes and controls that code, and what their priorities are, becomes a critical question.
- Turing_Machine 14y ago"The only thing we know for certain is that the way we live now is totally unsustainable in the long run" We "know" this how, exactly? Malthus was saying the same thing in 1798. Paul Ehrlich was saying the same thing in 1968. They were both dead wrong. "The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970's and 1980's hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now." "Hundreds of millions of people will soon perish in smog disasters in New York and Los Angeles...the oceans will die of DDT poisoning by 1979...the U.S. life expectancy will drop to 42 years by 1980 due to cancer epidemics."
- wazoox 14y agoMalthus was exactly right, but he couldn't anticipate the coming industrial revolution and the explosion of energy availability through fossil fuels. There may be an equivalent revolution looming, but I can see no sign of it. For all purposes, Malthus could be right 200 years late. Most people seem to stick to "the system has worked for 350 years, so it must be able to go on indefinitely".
- twoodfin 14y agoThat's a long way from "The only thing we know for certain is that the way we live now is totally unsustainable in the long run".
- Turing_Machine 14y ago"There may be an equivalent revolution looming, but I can see no sign of it." Plenty of material here: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/index.html http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/index.html
- wazoox 14y agoYes, I know of this one and it's precisely the sort of wishful thinking I was mentioning, particularly the sheer disregard of energy related problems (obviously, everything will be easy for ever if finding energy and getting rid of waste heat has some magical solution). You should study some posts from this for a contradictory POV: http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/ http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/ I particularly like the discussion between the "exponential economist and finite physicist": http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/ http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/04/economist-meets-... Or see also "Galactic Scale Energy" for a quick use of math to kill J. McCarthy arguments: http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/ http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-scale-e...
- Turing_Machine 14y ago"particularly the sheer disregard of energy related problems" Did you actually read this? We have enough fissile material to last billions of years. "Billions". With a B. http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/nuclear-faq.html http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/nuclear-faq.html
- wazoox 14y agoYes, I've read this several years ago, but you didn't read my links. Because my link use actual arithmetic, while McCarthy only says that those who don't use arithmetic are condemned to fail, then happily proceed with vague numbers and absolutely ZERO actual data.
- Mz 14y agoWhat we are doing currently is unsustainable. A lot of our farms are propped up by oil-based fertilizer, which is kind of a bigger problem than our transportation systems being so dependent on oil. We will need to do things differently because oil is a finite resource. (That doesn't mean I agree with doomsayers. Change is a constant. <shrug>)
- motters 14y agoIt's unsustainable in the sense that behind almost everything we do or eat is a lot of fossil fuel. That's a finite resource which will not always exist.