Into the Void

YouTube – Did You Know; Shift Happens – Globalization; Information Age

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Arthur C. Clarke, “Profiles of The Future”, 1961 (Clarke’s third law)

A friend sent me this wondrous piece of junk mail this morning. I have to share it.

—–Original Message—–
From: <deleted>
Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2007 9:20 AM
To: <deleted>
Subject: Watch this Video…

Very interesting video.
Technology is a big, big thing. Globalization is happening. Fast!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljbI-363A2Q

Now you know why China frightens me…and why “I, Robot” may not be so far off…

It’s mind boggling — almost incomprehensible for me.

Hugs…

Mind-boggling? Robots? What is this fellow yammering about?

Technology isn’t the Latest Big Thing. Technology is what we have been using for millennia to enhance our senses and increase our capabilities. Technology is a fancy way of saying “tools.” Any sufficiently advanced human can distinguish technology from witchcraft. Witchcraft? Burn the Witch! (Damn, burning witches again… apologies to my Wiccan friends.)

Globalization happened already. It’s done, it’s over. We’re now in the phase where we carefully adjust Americans’ salaries to match Chinese and Indian salaries – and lifestyles. If they do it right – well, you know, like boiling a frog slowly from cold water. Maybe they’ll find new career paths for everyone whose job description is now outsourced to India. Maybe we’ll learn to downsize our lifestyles to accommodate our globalized pay rates. Maybe the U.S. economy won’t collapse. We have to get all this done before China gets into full production.

You can get off your high horse and join the rest of the world, or you can outfit your army with bibles, flags and guns and send them out to stop human evolution. I’m more afraid of one ignorant, neurologically stagnant American politician than I am of all of Asia.

The US is very backward technologically. To put new technologies in place requires the regulatory equivalent of an Act of God. The people themselves are psychologically and neurologically resistant to change, so much so that a large percentage of Americans deny that something as basic as evolution can occur. At the personal level, this means most Americans believe that self-improvement is a fallacy. Well, I don’t accept that adults can’t learn.

The recent movie “I, Robot” is an abomination, intended only to reinforce the average American’s fear of innovation. Please read the book by Isaac Asimov, a prolific writer of the 20th century. The hard-wired personalities of the robots in it started with three laws that prevented them from harming a human or even, through inaction, allowing us to be harmed. Any attempt to break those laws resulted in a mechanical breakdown. I wish humans were wired this way.

Innovation… in parts of Asia you can walk up to a vending machine and call its number on your cell phone to get a soda or an instant-heating boxed meal. I can’t even get cellphone service at my sister’s house on the Delmarva peninsula, much less dial up a soda.

People have been talking about Zero Population Growth (ZPG) since I was a kid in the ’60s. China’s draconian One-child policy was absolutely necessary. I don’t happen to like the way it was implemented.

China is going to need about 10 times the oil we need when they get up to speed. That’s 10 times the pollution, 10 times the greenhouse gases. No, more than 10 times the pollution, as they don’t have strict air quality standards. The cloud of pollution over China is clearly visible on NASA satellite photos. We’ve know about Global Warming since the ’50s.

As larger purchasers, India and China will shape what products are available in the entire world. An example of this economic inevitability, the state of Texas is the largest textbook purchaser in the U.S and for that reason Texas creationists influence public education by asking for textbooks promoting their point of view. Every bookseller wants Texas as a customer – you stock what your best customer wants. These are then made available to all American schools. You can find a number of links on this topic on Constitution.org. I hope y’all can use chopsticks.

Why do we ignore problems instead of dealing with them? I bet you’ve heard at least one person say, “Don’t bring that into my universe” or “ERASE ERASE ERASE” – with a cute little crossing and recrossing the arms – to avoid talking about Global issues. Like a little kid putting his hands over his ears so that he can’t hear you asking him to take out the trash.

The video mentioned new books – how many books have you read this month? Not magazines, not graphic novels, but real paper and ink books? How about this year? Were any of them non-fiction?

I’m interested in what you really thought about the video. I thought it was trite. It’s rather startling to me that any citizen of the world could respond with anything other than “tell me something I don’t already know.”