We live in the future.

[silverlily81]

Snagged from tomorrowimokay, as shown in her child psych class.

Something about this scares me a little, but I can't put my finger on it.

Click to view

Comments

[professor_booty]

Hmm. Well, if there's anything that I find scary about it, it's the way that it makes this 'carousel of progress' seem inevitable - just like endless growth in the stock market! But the next 50 years will not look like the past 50. We are entering an era of diminishing expectations, when the in-demand skills are most likely to be in health care, farming, and repairing things...not in high tech and finance.

[pasajera]

I agree with Prof Booty about how this growth is not guaranteed to continue. But it was kind of a fascinating presentation--it's a little exciting to think how the world is changing, I can't wait for internet to gain sentience, you know? *grin*

[feileacan23]

What I find scary is that whith all the things we humans are able to make and design, and all that we consume and devour and buy into and believe, we still have disease and hatred. For all of our capacity to adapt, we still can't make the world perfect. That makes me sad.

[mirabelle1580]

Wait.

Myspace isn't a country??

;p

I agree with Prof B re: the arc of change over the NEXT 50 years - but what a brilliant presentation that was.

[clanhanna]

To quote James Burke: "The rate of progress today is such that, if you understand a technology, that means it must already be obsolete. Or to put it another way, 'Never have so many known so little about so much.'"

We live in a world of our own creation, a world of specialization. Heinlein notwithstanding, specialization is not just for insects any more, and it really hasn't been since Gutenberg.

The amount of information that the average "educated" adult needs to absorb in order to be a successful, productive member of society requires us to continue our education far beyond the formative years of the human brain. This leads to entrance into "adulthood" later in life, having families later, etc, etc. Meanwhile, our vastly improved health and diet is actually causing us, as a species, to mature at an earlier age, complicating things further, as women have only a given number of ova available from birth.

If you're worried about anything, worry about that.

[mirabelle1580]

I would only take exception to the one point: "our vastly improved health and diet". Other than that, I completely agree.

[cudacutie]

Women running out of ova isn't really a problem unless they wait till much later in life to have a child. There isn't a danger of our species running out because of it.

The things you say about education are very true. Many schools are now expecting kids to write sentences at the end of Kindergarten, and as a state we are expecting all 8th graders to take algebra by next year or so (they keep pushing the deadline back).