2-19-08

things that are ridiculous

• professional parents (but there are trained nannies)
  
• buy embryos (we do have surrogate mothers, sperm banks)
  
• no longer university degrees--everyone would have a unique education (we do have more non-standard degrees developing--but degrees are becoming more important)
  
• people living permanently in spacestations or the moon by 2001
• people living under the oceans--some is developing but perhaps slow because of law of the sea treaty
  
• artificial pregnancy
  
• the dates at least are way off
  

things he got right

• test tube babies
• some awareness of environmental issues
  
• homosexual marriages
• shift from production of food/clothing/shelter to entertainment
  

things we are close to

• growing organs (in the works)
• genetic modification of humans
• cloning
• ethical issues haven't changed much

what aren't people willing to give up?
are we lumpers or splitters?

book argues that increasing rate of change is hard on us, more stress
"he doesn't embrace things the way we do"
it seems normal to us

we have bought the idea that the pace of technological change is increasing
the world is changing somewhat in the way he predicts
do we need to do something about it?
change is a bit slower than he predicted
we are doing better than he expected us to--we are used to an accelerated rate of change
we expect turnover of technology
we have more tools to deal with problems (particularly illness)
so it doesn't seems like our stress is lower than a hundred years ago
even if the younger generations are each more adapted to change will we be able to keep up forever?  with logarithmic change how can that continue
things that don't change, like automobiles--technological momentum makes it hard to change

should we do something to better manage change?

• focus-only keep up in some areas
• accumulation over a lifetime matters
• change that has upset us:
• change from cassette to cd to mp3 or from dvd to blueray
• no one is in charge of technology?
• in some areas, the military is in charge
  
• corporations develop those technologies that are profitable
• is it true that everything we can do we will do?  some people think we can't stop something that some people want enough
  
• we choose not to embrace some new technologies
• or is it just that the length of time varies
• if it is useful it will find its way in
• globalization is making government regulation more difficult
• we can at least choose between alternatives
  
• should we try to change the pace of change
• should we organize ourselves to decide which technologies we want to discourage
• some kind of citizen panels to make decisions--