[NetBehaviour] Our Future

[Marcus Kirsch]

Alan Sondheim wrote:

>
>
> Our Future
>
> In 1973 I taught "The Year 3000" at the Rhode Island School of Design.
> Most of the predictions described for the year 2000 have already 
> occurred.
> Now for the modest future of thirty years hence:
>
> All megafauna in the wild will be extinct. The population of the earth
> will be close to its carrying capacity. Disease will run rampant due to
> pollution. Global warming will bring about fast-forward environmental
> effects, including rising seas, increased desertification, and extremely
> violent hurricanes. The life-span of humans will begin a temporarily
> exponential decrease. The rich will live in highly defended enclaves.
> Fundamentalisms will be the order of the day, since belief alone 
> commands.
> Terrorism will be increasing exponentially, since future paradise is all
> there is. Capitalism will be bankrupt as national currencies collapse and
> world-wide depression sets in. The information explosion will continue on
> localized data-networks and stuttering global communication systems. The
> global communications infrastructure will have reached its carrying
> capacity as well. For the first time, information will begin to corrode,
> decay, as structures can no longer be protected against the world-wide
> environmental crisis. The smaller generalist flora and fauna will 
> begin to
> dominate the earth. Great portions of the globe will be uninhabitable. 
> The
> larger aquatic species will have gone extinct, and the oceans will be
> dominated by off-shore algal blooms. Most urban drinking water supplies
> will be polluted and rationed. Suburbs will be abandoned as gasoline
> becomes an almost inaccessible commodity. The planet will seethe with
> continuous war, no longer fought among nation-states, but among private
> militias, guerilla groups, and individual cowboys. Religions and
> extremisms will be intertwined. There will be heavily-defended 
> holdouts in
> the North American mountains, and relatively isolated land masses such as
> New Zealand. Fluid urban structures will be composed of well-armed gangs
> dealing with the major currency of drugs and weaponry. At least a 
> third of
> all births will result in deformed infants. Ozone depletion will be 
> almost
> complete and skin cancers will be exponentially increasing. Most 
> hospitals
> world-wide will have closed their doors to all but the extremely wealthy.
> Knowledge-structures will have broken down as specialization and 
> increased
> mathematical difficulties result in the problematizing of any theoretical
> work at hand. Computers will have reached a plateau of speed, complexity,
> and miniaturization. They will not have achieved consciousness. Robotics
> and nanotechnologies will not be the order of the day - plagues will.
> Sports franchises will be local and heavily subsidized. The air will be
> almost unbreathable, and asthma / allergic reactions will be one of the
> primary causes of death. Most deaths however are the result of violence.
> Local police will perform rearguard holding actions at best. Highway
> systems will have fallen into disrepair as economies collapse. Air travel
> will be almost non-existent; space travel will have disappeared. The 
> space
> station will be a rusted hulk, if it has not already plummeted to earth.
> Literacy will be on the decline. There will be a world-wide energy 
> crisis.
> Child abuse will have become child use and child discard; a high
> percentage of children will be proffered for labor and sexual slavery, in
> return for food and goods. Informal economies and the barter system will
> characterize most local trade. Transnational trade will be at a minimum.
> The genetic revolution will result in new and uncontrollable pandemics as
> viruses and bacteria become increasingly resistant. Highly modifiable
> immune deficiency diseases will appear on an exponentially-increasing
> basis. The greatest percentage of murder victims, per capita per age
> level, will be the elderly. Despair will be transformed into religious
> salvation. More than twenty nuclear weapons, most of them small and
> poorly-constructed, will have been exploded in various urban areas. Most
> of the countries of the world, such as they are, will have weapons
> programs which will absorb a large proportion of the gross national
> product. Political economy will be ad hoc. Political ideologies will be
> fragmentary and situational. Electrical grids will be hard-put to 
> maintain
> even the most minimal of services. The arts will have reached the limits
> of extremity, with suicidal art movements in the fields of theater,
> performance, ballet, and installation. The new media 'movement' will have
> become a thing of the past. Art history will have disappeared as museums
> fall victim to gang warfare and destruction. Most national heritage
> monuments will have been at least partially destroyed. Most populations
> will be drugged...
>
> _
>
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>
i think you been watching too much Mad Max...

-- 
Marcus Kirsch
MA (RCA) Interaction Designer and Technoartist
UNVOID.net
London, UK
email: marcus at unvoid.net
phone: UK: +44 (0) 7950 177633
       US: +1 347 220 4047



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