hal@finney.org writes:
> It's one thing to talk about the future of the West, about
> the new technologies and what opportunities they will bring
> to those of us wealthy and fortunate enough to be participating
> on this mailing list. But let us not forget that "most people"
> are unlike us. It's going to be a much longer road for them
> to share in the bountiful future we hope to see.
True, with the following comments:
- Whatever needs to be done, once someone has done it, it is a lot easier
for others to follow. Example paves the way. It will be easier to show the
eastern guys that our lifestyle is good once it is *actually* good. At this
time, many of those eastern guys might argue that they have nothing to learn
from the western civilization: "Just look at yourself, what do you do all
day? Sure you're clean, sure you've got gadgets, but how are you any more
happy than we are?"
- If you manage to motivate those eastern guys by example, by showing them
that we have achieved something that they really desire, then, once people
are motivated, the road need not be long at all. Laws of slow change apply
to an idle, non-motivated society. I think that if you managed to show all
of India something that would motivate all of them to strive towards a goal,
you would be able to have them get there very quickly. [Or so I think.] Just
compare this to conductors: you can't nearly put as much power through a
semiconductor as you can through a superconductor. Yet the difference is
primarily in the internal order within the material.
The reason I am saying this is because some people tend to have a
'perfectionist' approach: let's make sure everything is nice and correct
right now, and then we'll figure out what to do next. "Let's not go to Mars
until we have Earth figured out." I think that's the wrong approach; by the
time we have Earth figured out, it might be too late.
I think a good way forward is to devote a substantial amount of resources
into trying to figure out what to do next *before* you have everything set
up nice and correctly, because knowledge of what comes next might render
your current knowledge obsolete.
- denis
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:56:26 MDT