

We need to get a lot better at imagining the future - platz
http://lemire.me/blog/archives/2013/04/01/imagining-the-future/

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jpxxx
Boots stamping on faces forever, also it'll be really goddamn hot. Next.

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jes5199
I know that it's supposed to be taken for granted that change is accelerating,
but I'm not so sure. Except for smartphones, what's really changed in the last
ten years? twenty years?

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dontstealmyname
The internet? it really only took off late 90s early 00s.

Also I like how you discount a major change as if one pivot isn't good enough.
Remember changes used to only happen every 100 years or so a while back and
going back even further it was longer.

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drewcoo
Well, no. The article does not mention the Internet. It talks about the web.

The article is very well-meant and sincere. It is also vapid, vague, and shows
no actual direction for a possible future. And it blames "technology" for the
current disparity of wealth. Welcome to HN. This kind of crap is posted too
often imho.

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brc
I'll agree that the article is of very poor quality.

FTA: "Maybe we need to grant more university degrees. Maybe we need more PhDs.
Maybe we need more government workers. Maybe we need more subsidies. Because,
you know, 40-hour jobs is what we had so it must be what we will have. But
nobody, it seems, can conceive a world where most of us work far less for
money than we do now. "

What on earth is he talking about? It's hard to say whether he thinks more
people at university is right or wrong - but 'conceiving of a world where most
of us work far less for money' - a very naive understanding of what work and
money is.

The key to working less is more productivity. But a funny thing happens when
productivity increases. Instead of people accepting the same standard of
living and working fewer hours, most people will opt for working the same
amount of hours and increase their standard of living.

Many blurry-thinkers see this as some type of evil that must be stopped, when
in reality it is the concious choice that many people make. It's not right or
wrong, it just is.

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7952
The web lets me instantly view a video from a mis-remembered TV show from
fifteen years ago. I can instantly fly to anywhere in the world and peer at it
from space. I can communicate across thousands of miles and search a massive
repository of information. Humans have been imagining such god like powers for
thousands of years. We don't lack imagination but self knowledge. Will that
power corrupt us or make us better?

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pmcg
I think "power corrupts" applies more to relative power, not absolute "power".
If you were the only person in the world with those abilities, you could use
that to exert control over other people and that kind of power might corrupt.

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venus
I'm imagining a future where stock wordpress blogs can survive more than a
couple of concurrent users...

