I finally listened to the Saffo’s Long Now talk on forecasting.
What really excited me is that he said some things that I’ve been thinking about. I wonder if I picked it up from the same folks he’s picked it up from. But, for sure, for me, these thoughts were all framed by thinking extremely long term.
Golden Age
One thing he mentioned was the hubris (my words) of folks in the present – we always think we live in a Golden Age.
Link: One night – a global story of one night in the mobile life (a story I wrote)
Granted, every generation thinks they live in the Golden Age, the height of their civilization. And, granted, later generations dwarf previous Enlightenments. Yet, the Dark Ages these are not, the inevitable trumping of our Age by some future Age in no way diminishes the Wonderment of our Hyperconnective Age.
I think it is natural for us to look back to earlier times and think that we’ve had it best. Of course, it’s usually because we are accustomed to life in a certain way and can’t imagine what life would be without all our ‘accomplishments’. I find it a fun exercise to imagine 1) what it was like to live like in the past; 2) to think like someone from the past looking back and being proud of their ‘accomplishments’ and how folks in their past were ‘behind’.
Acceleration
Which leads me to the other thing he mentioned that I like to throw out at parties – the fact that every generation thinks things are accelerating. He also managed to put in a swipe at the technopositivists who believe in the local exponential trend meaning that in 25 years we’ll merge with machines.
I think every generation has seen an acceleration of invention and creativity. I like to think back thousands of years to the Stone Age and the old guy (maybe in his 30s) shaking his head at the pace of change in flint technology.* Saffo give me more material, quoting a guy from 1902 and also mentions records lamenting the rate of acceleration, one all the back from the 15th century. Heh.
City-state
One thought that came to my head while trying to thing way long term was what happens to our governments. I was thinking 5 thousand years from now (was writing a story, actually), so I looked back 5 thousand years. If you chart the arch of human social organization, from a corse perspective, you see tribes going to city-states to kingdoms to empires (collection of ‘nations’) to nations (especially in late 19th century) – which is where we are at.
But if you look closely, in the past 20 years or so, nations have been breaking up along cultural lines – think of the Balkans and the CIS. My favourite example is how Kosovo does not want to be part of Albania (any more than Austria wants to be part of Germany).
I then took it further, also keeping in mind the rise of the cities (half the world in urban areas), and figured there was a trend towards city-states.
Indeed, Saffo fills out the thinking by mentioning that cities are more relevant to the citizen than a large nation. He was bold to say that city-states would dominate already this century. Wow.
But, look at how in the US the states are becoming stronger (due to weak federal leadership). This is not bad (at least not any more to me, with this city-state thinking).
It was refreshing to hear Saffo. I was always intimidated by him, but finally hearing one of his seminars (especially with him touching on some pet issue) just made me a fanboi.
Heh.
*As an aside, I find humans to be pathologically inventive (hence all gods create the world) and I think, much like we sit around gabbing about mobile phones and the latest tech (in previous times it was hi-fi or cars or what not of the day), cavemen sat around gabbing about the latest flint or carving technology. As a species, we can’t NOT invent.