Thoughts on a future
culminating in a singularity.
Light has duality -
being a particle, and a wave.
The future has
duality too - it can be a trend (of moving forward in time) or it can be an
end-state.
Ever accelerating
ambitious socially/human-driven change (most recently manifested in the
maniacal "disrupt" movement) leads one to assume that there is an
end-goal in mind, an ambition to achieve, a place to reach, and outcome to get
closer to.
Once that is
reached, accomplished, arrived at…. And then what?
Turning around the
popular "what's next?" theme (commonly applied to futurism) into…
what's next after the future has manifested?
In this blog, we'll
entertain and explore the concept of societal/cultural singularity - when
things can't get any more extreme/faster/newer/more different - when the end is
reached, whatever that may be.
The obsessive
yearning for ever faster change, in pursuit of "the future" is a
manifestation of greed - not ever getting enough/more in limited (life) time,
hence everything must happen faster, so there can be more had of it. Greedy for time,
greedy for more experiences in lesser time, so there can be had more. Faster,
more, better - the same mental reward circuitry running awry as in drug
addicts. The culture openly promotes addictive behavior, with the literal
wording "something to get addicted to", "binge watch…" etc.
To what extremes may this obsession and greed lead? Or what setbacks will result from over-doing it, going beyond the sustainable? So far every hype, every bubble eventually came down and burst. The faster, the larger the change movements driven by obsessive fervor, the more disastrous the outcomes, as many historical social tragedies have demonstrated (world wards, totalitarian ideologies, etc.)
An interesting question to explore.... how much and how fast of societal/cultural change is sustainable before it causes a backlash (and what is the criteria for recognizing/acknowledging a "backlash" as something undesirable, or can there even be consensus?)
To what extremes may this obsession and greed lead? Or what setbacks will result from over-doing it, going beyond the sustainable? So far every hype, every bubble eventually came down and burst. The faster, the larger the change movements driven by obsessive fervor, the more disastrous the outcomes, as many historical social tragedies have demonstrated (world wards, totalitarian ideologies, etc.)
An interesting question to explore.... how much and how fast of societal/cultural change is sustainable before it causes a backlash (and what is the criteria for recognizing/acknowledging a "backlash" as something undesirable, or can there even be consensus?)
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