Sorry, the 21st Century began on September 11, 2001, when my wife ran into our bedroom and shouted "now you have to wake up! They flew a plane into the other tower!!"
"First, let’s dismiss one parochial notion -- that the terrorist attacks of September 2001 were the major break point between centuries. Nonsense. We were engaged in the same struggle before and after. The U.S. shrugged off more damage during any month of World War II. Indeed, nothing could be more “twen-cen” or 20th century than the overwrought focus that some (not all) Americans apply to Sept. 11. Much of the world assigns no particular relevance to that date."
This was a very uplifting article, as lately I've been somewhat preoccupied by the demons of Orwellian surveillance and propaganda, growing class inequities, overpopulation, pollution, mass extinction, the eroding usefulness of antibiotics, and the march of technology putting greater and greater destructive power at the hands of the desperate. I suppose my money is still on terribleness, but hope is at least a useful thought experiment.
Directly counteracted by amazing new crypto technologies, a rising standard of living for everyone, better farming and sustenance techniques, a (successful) push for more efficient technology in general, the fact that there actually really isn't much mass extinction going around (not sure what you're referring to here), rapid development in fields like nanomachinery and nanomedicine, and the fact that technological equalization of destructive power could very easily be seen as a good thing.
"Peter Raven, past President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), states in the foreword to their publication AAAS Atlas of Population and Environment:[17] "We have driven the rate of biological extinction, the permanent loss of species, up several hundred times beyond its historical levels, and are threatened with the loss of a majority of all species by the end of the 21st century."
>the loss of a majority of all species by the end of the 21st century.
And yet, humans are going to be fine. If worst comes to worst, we can whip up some sweet GM algae that will take care of pretty much every conceivable need we have for other macroorganisms.
I'm being over-dramatic certainly, and there are incredible things going on at the same time. Lots of numbers going in the right direction. But I've been thinking both about the world my children will inherit and the continuation of the species in general. I would not say that the good things are outweighing the bad at the moment for perpetuation of the species or our way of life in general. I do hope I'm wrong and we wind up with a more Star Trek kind of world than Deus Ex.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 49.6 ms ] threadhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction
"Peter Raven, past President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), states in the foreword to their publication AAAS Atlas of Population and Environment:[17] "We have driven the rate of biological extinction, the permanent loss of species, up several hundred times beyond its historical levels, and are threatened with the loss of a majority of all species by the end of the 21st century."
And yet, humans are going to be fine. If worst comes to worst, we can whip up some sweet GM algae that will take care of pretty much every conceivable need we have for other macroorganisms.