Re: Predicting the Future

Damien R. Sullivan (phoenix@ugcs.caltech.edu)
Fri, 2 Jan 1998 20:22:04 -0800 (PST)


TechnoRapture alert.

On Jan 2, 1:47pm, Yak Wax wrote:

> Even 20 years from now computers will be a millions times more
> powerful, you couldn’t even begin to imagine what to do with that kind

Only if power doubled every year, instead of every 18 months or 2 years
as is the usual formulation of Moore's "Law".

> Looking at politics we can already see the Internet undermining local
> governments, what authority they have over their small areas cannot
> stop globally connected citizens from accessing whatever information

We can? What local governments are you thinking of? For the US I
associate the term with cities, or at best states. I haven't noticed
the Internet undermining these, or them attempting to restrict
information. California is moving to embrace the Internet, which may
allow for stronger and better government through greater
accountability.

Elsewhere... it'd be nice for China to collapse, but it has yet to
happen.

> to what I see as a pre-anarchic state, where government still exists
> but it feeds the chaos rather than trying to impose order on it.

What does that mean?

> everyday I hear more and more extropic thought coming from the most
> unlikely of places (personally I don’t think we have to worry about

"Ban human cloning." "Lock up drug users." "No manipulation of the
human germ line."

-xx- Damien R. Sullivan X-)

And so the harper was told these fairy tales,
Of these fairy hills of the ancient Gaels
Some big, some small
Si bheag, si mhor,
And never the battle is won.