Tuesday, May 16, 2006. HOTSPOTS ... see this island of the modernist ... civilization, improvement of you as individuals, or improvement of products that you can.
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
HOTSPOTS IV: PERSONAL VIEWS OF THE FUTURE DAVID BRIN PHYSICIST AND AUTHOR, THE TRANSPARENT SOCIETY
Hi, folks. I’m going to do the unprecedented: I’m going to fit a Castro-length speech into four minutes. [Laughter] Where is that clock? Oh, there – is this it? No. I don’t see it. Oh. Agghhh! It’s already running. [Laughter] Okay. Inspired by Bill and Don [Budinger] and by the VCs and by Project Inkwell, I’m thrilled to see this island of the modernist agenda active and still healthy. What do I mean by the “modernist agenda”? I mean people who believe, fundamentally, that children can be better than their parents. That is the fundamental premise behind the self-improvement campaign that we’re all engaged in: either self-improvement of our civilization, improvement of you as individuals, or improvement of products that you can then sell and get rich by. That is your model for getting rich – not what Adam Smith had contempt for, which was the passive accumulation of rents. The point is that we are considered crazy. Historically, for 5,000 years, people like us were burned at the stake. And many people in our civilization, especially since the trauma of 2000 – we all saw that two-zero-zero-zero – thought everybody was going to go crazy, like in the movies. When they didn’t go crazy like in the movies – bleagghhh, waving their arms around – we thought, “Oh, Zebai.” It turns out, in retrospect, I’m sure, that most of our neighbors were deeply traumatized, and every time they write the zero-zeros in the middle, they think eyes are looking at ’em. And that doesn’t sound like me. Usually I’m all in favor of the masses. But I’ve got to say that we wouldn’t have seen the last six years if there weren’t trauma. And it’s not just on the right, where it’s obvious. You see it on the left, too. And, I mean, if the right hates science, find me an extreme person on the extreme left who likes an engineer. If the right wants to return to feudalism, the left wants a return to the wisdom of
sacred ancient tribes. This nostalgism is rampant; we see it in our movies, in the huge – oh gosh, Brin is going to go bitter now – the huge effluence of fantasy as opposed to science fiction. [Laughter] Never mind. The Iranian president’s letter really indicated this. Have any of you read that thing? Oy! First, he’s smart! He’s cogent! He makes a reasonable series of connected arguments! And it’s as if you were reading Ted Kaczynski. And he redresses President Bush as “brother.” And he makes it very clear, appealing to Bush to step back, take a wider picture, see how you’re our allies against liberal democracy: two things that have failed. And we, in this house, are of the other clan, and we’re under threat. Now, Bill Janeway spoke of uncertainty in dealing with the future. I want to just – hoioi-oi – I want to just quickly run through a few things. First off, avoiding clichéd traps. Katrina – we hear a lot about Katrina and 9/11. You heard me last time I was here mention that on 9/11, the only things that worked that day were things done by private citizens. Anticipation failed. Our professional protectorate caste failed that day, utterly, in all ways. Even when they were brave, and they charged into those buildings, the fires had to be fought by amateurs. The only fight back that day took place on UA 93. It was a day that typified the change from the 20th to the 21st century, the 20th century being a monotonic increase in the degree to which we rely upon professionals, and the 21st century being an increase in the way we rely upon ourselves, resilient amateurs. But Katrina – the one common theme was all professionals – Democrat, Republican, state, local – their first priority was to repress action by private individuals. I have a lot of other things to point out, and I won’t have time. I’m on my way to the Defense Threat Reduction Agency meeting on mad scientist scenarios, and I wanted to point out this whole business of [laughter] – yeah, yeah – the predictions and modeling we’re obsessed with in order to help the anticipators do better. But we’re still doing scenarios! Scenarios are dumb! And yet I am restricted to doing scenarios for these people, because that’s how bad the predictive process still is, and we need it to be better. Ai-yi-oi-oi-oi. I was going to get on to what Mr. Saito said about synchronous online communication for kids, developing new systems for debate and argumentation, and selfrighteousness addiction, but as you can see, I failed. [Laughter; applause]. But I tried. See you next year! [Applause]
Transcription and design by Sally Anderson. Photographs Copyright © 2006 Tim Tadder. All material Copyright © 2006 Strategic News Service Conference Corp. Redistribution prohibited without written permission.
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