| Here's a thought experiment for futurists and especially the Californian Long Now enthusiasts. Imagine for a moment that Spartacus had won, Roman slaves had been freed and a mercantilist middle class had grown up. The Roman Empire hadn't collapsed under the weight of decadence and the Goths. And so a Roman Empire version of the Renaissance and Age of Enlightenment had happened around AD500-600. A Newton and/or Leibniz would have appeared around AD700 (notwithstanding the problems of trying to do Principia Mathematica in Roman numerals!) The industrial revolution would have followed in AD800 and computers, electronic and computer revolutions would have appeared in AD970. Peak oil would have happened around AD1020. So now in 2014, we'd be about 1000 years into a post industrial, post global-warming, post unlimited-resource world. What would it look like? This post was inspired by http://blog.longnow.org/02014/04/19/the-knowledge/ I'm really quite conflicted by the Long Now foundation and the idea of getting futurist darlings like Eno to produce lists of books for a "Manual for Civilisation" or rather a "Library to reboot civilisation". Somewhat in the style of A Canticle for Leibowitz, because this civilisation is doomed and it would be a shame if the last 200 years of growth were lost when it inevitably collapses. See http://blog.longnow.org/category/manual-for-civilization/ It feels like this has changed from a thought experiment to try and get people to think about what we're doing to ourselves into a business selling books and seminars, feeding vampirically on a very western insecurity. Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of a Clock for 10,000 years ( http://longnow.org/projects/ ) or the Long Player song that doesn't repeat for 1000 years. ( http://longplayer.org/ ) I just wonder about the way Doom (with a capital D) is becoming an industry in the same way as Self Help, Lifestyle Coaches and all the other WooWoo. There's VC, donations from unbelievably rich tech people, celebrity endorsement, TED talks and so on and on. Remember the words of Philip Dick; The Roman Empire never ended.   The Knowledge »One of the early inspirations for creating the Manual for Civilization was an email I received from Lewis Dartnell in London asking me for information... [from: Google+ Posts] |
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[ 20-Apr-14 10:35am ]
