Category — Hey Eckhart - think about the future!

Well-known  Sci-fi author Bruce Sterling gave his annual State of the World assessment on New Year’s eve, and as usual, it’s filled with interesting insights into how our world will look in the coming year.  This year’s discussion was understandably more economy-heavy than usual, but makes for an interesting read.

Wired has an interesting article about the best green technology breakthroughs of the last year.  My personal favourite is the solar power plant in the desert… it’s about freakin’ time!

Groundbreaking Economist Herman Daly has an article in Adbusters that explains the current global financial situation pretty well:

“The turmoil affecting the world economy unleashed by the US sub-prime debt crisis isn’t really a crisis of “liquidity” as it is often called. A liquidity crisis would imply that the economy was in trouble because businesses could no longer obtain credit and loans to finance their investments. In fact, the crisis is the result of the overgrowth of financial assets relative to growth of real wealth— basically the opposite of too little liquidity. We need to take a step back and explore some of the fundamentals that growth-obsessed economists and commentators tend to neglect.”

Daly is well-known for his willingness to question the utility of a growth-obsessed economy, and championing the concept of a steady-state economy (things I’ve harped about before on this blog).  Also check out this piece (PDF) Daly wrote for the UK Sustainable Development Comission for an interesting discussion about how the US growth economy has become uneconomic, and some more information about the possibility of a steady-state economy.

Humanity+ (recently re-branded from the creepy-sounding ‘World Transhumanist Association’) has released their first issue of H+, a webzine that follows the development of the various technologies that show promise of leading us into our post-human future.  The first issue is free, and available in PDF format on their website.

It’s an interesting read, covering everything from the battle to stop ageing to genetic engineering to the efforts being made to improve the human brain.  Not all the technologies described are quite so ambitious, of course.  The magazine also covers more “mundane” technologies (such as robotics, advanced nutrition, and some very cool gadgetry) that should improve our lives in more subtle ways.

A big part of the challenge for transhumanists worldwide is gaining acceptance for their vision of the future.  The magazine by necessity devotes some of its pages to the social and ethical issues surrounding these technologies, in an attempt to show that even the most ardent transhumanist considers fair and responsible use of the technology to be the main priority going forward.

Once again, it’s FREE, so download it and see what you think!

I got this brilliant video in my work inbox the other day, and just had to share it:

There are a series of similar ads, which I believe were all made by Norwegian Hydro. Check ‘em out on the YouTube!