My almost 4,000-word essay on futurism and the problems generated by linear projections of technological change is finished and has been loaded onto Scribd. Here’s a sample:
Here is where we get to the nub of my contention that projecting linear trends based on what effects future radical life extension alone would have on present-day American society simply is not good enough, certainly not for the well thought out, detailed prognostications we need from professional futurists in order to think through some serious questions on our rocketing, accelerating, technological civilization. We need the kind of robust future scenarios that deal with developments in a wide range of fields and social sectors. We need to see how these developments may fit together, spurring each other on. In short, we need better predictions in order to plan our own lives. Unfortunately, we’re not getting them.
It is misleading to tell people that if you scrimp and save, refuse to retire early, educate yourself for jobs that are quickly vanishing, do this, do that, and do those other things, you may, just may, survive (barely) in an economy dominated by a bunch of healthy, skilled, very experienced old people you can’t possibly compete against.
Why? Why is this misleading? Because this simply will not happen. Yes, I know a number of bad science fiction stories have posited the war between the generations in response to shrinking societal wealth, but as I mentioned above, there is simply no way aging will be cured while nothing else changes. These scenarios are structured in this way by writers in order to give their woebegone protagonists sad, dreary lives that they struggle against in vain. They do this, presumably, to amuse their readers.
It is misleading to assure people that they will continue to enjoy the privilege of living in a society with Social Security, pensions, companies, even money, in a society that has the technological wherewithal to defeat death. Any “technosphere†that’s advanced enough to produce a radical life-extension technological revolution must also be capable of generating technological revolutions of comparable power in all other aspects of life—and will do precisely that.
The trends we are already experiencing in such fields as genetics, manufacturing automation, computer hardware and software, robotics, and finally nanotechnology and artificial intelligence will continue due to popular demand, barring a large disaster. As we track these trends, we foresee them converging in very interesting ways. We can project a wide range of scenarios to a time when we won’t have or need many of the traditional societal institutions we now believe to be indispensable.
We simply cannot tacitly assume that the society we live in today will continue to bump along for 20, 30, 40, 50 years with but a few minor technological upgrades. This isn’t realistic. This isn’t what the trend lines are telling us.
Proponents of the existence of accelerating technology are telling us we will be living in an extraordinarily rich information environment worked by superbly crafted robots that do all of the physical labor far better than we can with the enormous riches of invention and production that only a Midas could envision. And life-extension technologies will play an integral role. They won’t be hermetically sealed away from those other technological developments.
It’s time to replace the linear concept of “this will happen, which will cause this to happen, which will cause this to happen…†with the non-linear concepts of technological synergy and convergence. Synergy occurs when two or more trends catalyze and amplify the effects of one another. 2 + 2 = 16. Convergence occurs when once separate technologies draw closer to one another, integrate, and produce wholly new and largely unanticipated technological offspring.