FastForward Radio — The Future We make

By | March 2, 2011
4 Comments

Phil  and Stephen discuss futurism as advocacy. How does ideology impact our view of what the future is likely to be? What happens when we stop trying just to predict the future and start trying to make it happen?

PLUS: The future Phil and Stephen are trying to make happen.

 

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  • dcwhatthe

    Whenever we want to believe that we’re ‘making a difference’, that our activities have some kind of important meaning in the human scheme of things, we start looking for causal relationships between our behavior, and circumstances in the external world.

    Since we’re looking for proof that we have some kind of control over future events, we will usually find such proof. And, when things don’t work out our way, we will usually forget our expectations that we would be able to make things better.

    We could just as well enjoy ourselves, continue to follow our passion, share our ideas with the rest of the world, contribute funds & effort & thought to whatever cause we want – and then just let the world unfold the way it wants.

  • dcwhatthe

    This was a decent podcast, my apologies to Phil & Steve for misunderstanding the intent before the actual broadcast.

    They mentioned Transcendent Man. Aside from iTunes, it’s also available as a straight download for the pc, and is a nice introduction to Transhumanist optimism, with sufficient airtime for the critics. (It’s almost 2 gigs, ladies & gents, so make sure you have enough space).

    It’s clear to me, that economically we are going to crash like never before. Along with the automation factor that Steve & Phil often address, the causes for the 2008 crash have not been fixed, and the symptoms are accumulating.

    Fortunately, we’re looking at a future without money, without the NEED for money. Because of technology – 3D printers, AI, closer & closer connectivity to our brains, and the human drive to make things easier & more convenient, an economic crash won’t matter in the long term.

    In the short term, however, we are looking at strife. Individuals will have a difficult time adjusting to a non-cash society, but institutions like governments & banks will fight tooth & nail to cling to the old paradigms. Any type of man-made complex structure takes on a life of its own, and will do anything to avoid change.

    But eventually, if we don’t accidentally off ourselves, we’ll make it through, and be better off. This could be considered one of the main points of Transcendent Man, and of the Transhumanist movement in general.

  • sallymorem

    After checking iTunes and Transcendent Man, I discovered podcasts of a public radio station (KUCI) in Irvine, CA, one of which was an interview with Barry Ptolemy in 2009, soon after the movie came out. Ptolemy turns out to be a believer. He’s not your average, disinterested documentary interviewer. He takes Kurzweil’s concept of accelerating tech very, very seriously. This interview brought out a lot of concepts we discuss on FFR, including Moore’s Law, nanotechnology, and vastly powerful computer systems to be developed in the relatively near future. And, they discussed the movie, of course.

    Check out these podcasts on iTunes. They’re free for the listening.

    Here is the radio station’s web site:

    http://kuci.org/talk/

  • sallymorem

    You mentioned on the show that you’d like to have a great guest on to talk about Transcendent Man. I can’t think of a better guest (other than Ray) than the maker of the movie, Barry Ptolemy. He’s on FB…AND he’s a member of Singularity Network. Isn’t that cool?

    http://www.facebook.com/barry.ptolemy