Reader Eisendorn has an interesting idea:

i recommend a survey on how many speculist readers actually think that the world is in *some* way becomming a better place. or does ACO pertain only technology? not for me at least.

I like the idea of a survey on general attitudes about the future, although I think our Singularity Survey probably provided a good general impression. The overwhelming majority believe it will happen and most of them think it will either be a good thing or at least not a bad thing.

I’m not sure what ACO refers to, but accelerating change can’t help but impact everything. Ultimately, every technological development is an improvement on some previous capability. As a species we are becoming generally more capable. Some of that capability is deliberately destructive (weapons technology), some inadvertantly so (carbon emissions) but the vast majority of technology comes into existence in order to enable somebody to do something better than he or she could before. Something useful.

Society can’t help but be reshaped by this. Or, if you prefer, reshape itself around these capabilities. Speaking very broadly — and recognizing that there are excruciatingly horrible exceptions — I believe that the people of the world are becoming wealthier and more independent largely due to technological development. On a per capita basis, every year fewer are concerned with subsistence and more with improving the quality of their lives.

Ultimately, the State has a lot to say about how free or economically enriched an individual can be. Not all governments are thrilled at the idea of their citizens becoming empowered through technology or by any other means, and will do what they can to slow these effects. And then there are many who are ideologically opposed to technological progress on religious or environmental grounds. As things continue to progress, I think the former ideologies will simply become less important, while the latter will come to recognize that, in the end, technology will do more to protect and nurture the environment than it initially did to harm it.

How will it all end? Well, as several of our astute survey-takers pointed out, we can’t really see what’s on the other side of the Singularity. That’s why it’s called the Singularity. But if things don’t go horribly wrong — and of course they might very well go horribly wrong — we may see a world that has a lot in common with Marx’s “worker’s paradise.”

Poverty might be just one of several of the perennial foes of human happiness that is struck down once and for all. And we may all enjoy freedom that we can scarecly even imagine now.

But as James C. Bennett recently warned us: beware of utopian thinking. Even if everything I just described comes to pass, the world will still be a difficult, risky, place. “Happily ever after” only looks like that from this side of the rainbow.