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I'm not so sure. I think Brave New World is more about shaping people's desires and expectations of what is possible. If people are brought up to believe that,

I'm not so sure. I think Brave New World is more about shaping people's desires and expectations of what is possible. If people are brought up to believe that, say, political discourse is not desirable nor ever worth having (because there's no possibility or desire for change), and the same for technology too, but sexual and interpersonal adventures are fascinating, exciting, and interesting, then people might end up like the people in Brave New World. I think we're already headed down a similar road right now. A lot of people have a very limited view of what is possible in their life. Look at the way that children are protected from the consequences of their own actions, discouraged from being on their own, discouraged from physical activities, discouraged from working with their hands. Think about how much less common it is for middle class kids to have the idea that working in a "trade" is worthwhile compared to earning a 4-year college degree and becoming a "professional". Think about how much less common it is for people to think about running their own (non-software) business. Or about how unusual it is for people to have lab space or a shop in their home. Fortunately some of those trends are turning around, but it wouldn't be so unusual to imagine a world were technology developed differently and people ended up as sort of the worst caricature of the "facebook generation". Concerned more with trivialities than anything of importance, spending their lives worrying about relationships and sex rather than politics and technology.

eli_gottlieb 13y ago
>Look at the way that children are protected from the consequences of their own actions, discouraged from being on their own, discouraged from physical activities, discouraged from working with their hands. Think about how much less common it is for middle class kids to have the idea that working in a "trade" is worthwhile compared to earning a 4-year college degree and becoming a "professional". The very fact that you expect scorn for these memes to be common shows that, "We need to get back to manual-labor values" has itself become a meme. >Fortunately some of those trends are turning around, but it wouldn't be so unusual to imagine a world were technology developed differently and people ended up as sort of the worst caricature of the "facebook generation". Concerned more with trivialities than anything of importance, spending their lives worrying about relationships and sex rather than politics and technology. The actual problem with politics and technology is that only tiny minorities of the population can feasibly participate in them, under our current systems. I mean, hell, I'm in academia, and half the time other academics don't know what academics are publishing. You think of an idea that might be useful and eventually find it was published a decade ago under a name you hadn't thought of.

eli_gottlieb 13y ago

>Look at the way that children are protected from the consequences of their own actions, discouraged from being on their own, discouraged from physical activities, discouraged from working with their hands. Think about how much less common it is for middle class kids to have the idea that working in a "trade" is worthwhile compared to earning a 4-year college degree and becoming a "professional". The very fact that you expect scorn for these memes to be common shows that, "We need to get back to manual-labor values" has itself become a meme. >Fortunately some of those trends are turning around, but it wouldn't be so unusual to imagine a world were technology developed differently and people ended up as sort of the worst caricature of the "facebook generation". Concerned more with trivialities than anything of importance, spending their lives worrying about relationships and sex rather than politics and technology. The actual problem with politics and technology is that only tiny minorities of the population can feasibly participate in them, under our current systems. I mean, hell, I'm in academia, and half the time other academics don't know what academics are publishing. You think of an idea that might be useful and eventually find it was published a decade ago under a name you hadn't thought of.