Submission + - Ask Slashdot: The Projects That Will Save The World?
theMassOfToe writes: Civilisation faces many looming difficulties; peak population, climate change, threats arising from the increasing ability of the few to harm many, along with perhaps fundamental problems in our economic system.
A person’s response to these future perils seems to depend largely on a kind of ‘faith’. On one side, technological optimists say ‘don’t worry! The inexorable forces of the market and technology will provide solutions, just as they’ve always done’. The other side points out that past events provide no certainties about the future, and claim that without substantial cultural change, our civilisation is headed for a ‘Global Somalia’. Either viewpoint demands some major developments if the general trend of increasing wealth and health is to continue.
Slashdotters: Which are the projects you are watching, rooting for, or helping with, that’ll hopefully provide the solutions to these looming global predicaments?... ITER? Open source governance? Alternative currencies? Golden Rice? ... SETI? And where on the techno-optimism/pessimism spectrum do you lie?
A person’s response to these future perils seems to depend largely on a kind of ‘faith’. On one side, technological optimists say ‘don’t worry! The inexorable forces of the market and technology will provide solutions, just as they’ve always done’. The other side points out that past events provide no certainties about the future, and claim that without substantial cultural change, our civilisation is headed for a ‘Global Somalia’. Either viewpoint demands some major developments if the general trend of increasing wealth and health is to continue.
Slashdotters: Which are the projects you are watching, rooting for, or helping with, that’ll hopefully provide the solutions to these looming global predicaments?... ITER? Open source governance? Alternative currencies? Golden Rice?
