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I think to get the crazier sci-fi stuff that isn’t just incremental iterations of existing stuff a la faster WiFi speeds, slimmer tech, etc. we require a massive corporation to dedicate absurd resources to it, a massive government investment a la the Moon Landing, or pray an ultra genius is born with a massive fortune and conscience. That or societal change.
I’m thinking the first is most likely, but is going to create issues, if Plansix was here I’m sure he’d offer some good examples of tech going bad in the hands of our corporate overlords.
The amount of money I imagine it would take to actually make this advanced tech happen alongside the time and additional money to make it viable on a consumer level seems like an insurmountable requirement as long as we live in a world where anything and everything has to be measurable as worthwhile via dollars.
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I'll respond to both at my lunch break, but I thank you for the input. Some very good observations.
Edit: Zambrah - You are right that a massive government injection of financial support and policy change is needed. And societal change is not going to be easy unless we face a true ELE that will galvanize enough people to change the way they view the environment
Unfortunately. We'd still have greedy bastards fucking it up for everyone else, so I don't think it'll happen. The genius with a fortune is only possible if it comes from an already wealthy family. I don't think that is a viable way forward because that family will only invest in it's own priorities and interests. The genius offspring could try, but I see the family becoming a barrier to the person wanting to try to save humanity or usher it forward.
Archeon: do you think that, if the lobbies were curbed meaning a limit on how much they can petition congress members to change laws that favor them or they have a deadline for certain things, would that help any? Also antitrust laws or even fair competition amongst peers would do wonders I think, even if you can't legally stop alphabet or apple from poaching or just outright patent trolling to keep small innovators from gaining traction.
The countries you mentioned, do you see a way besides the paris climate accord or something similar getting them to reduce or completely overhaul the way they consume energy and produce waste? If there were international cooperation even between "enemies" something good may come of it. But then we still have your first paragraph of issues; the powerful elite and companies that can pretty much do anything they want.
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The basic problem with lobbies is that they have multiple functions in politics. It's not just their financial influence on politicians in deciding functions including promises of additional wealth later on, it's also that they often send their experts to hearings or committees that develop laws. Especially the latter makes sense considering that the people working in an area are the ones you'd consider experts and are likely best suited to make educated guesses about consequences of laws. The problems with that is that large companies tend to be overrepresented in said lobbies and that these people will always argue for financial interest of the industry, so it's hard to get independent experts with a contrary opinion.
As a result f.e. the German minister of traffic is pretty much a puppet of the car industry, since most people he talks to about issues and in his committees come from the large car companies, since those are the ones with the most money and influence.
Imo we'd need a voting platform on issues based on the job we are in. That way small companies/employees would have a similar right to global players' CEOs to evaluate issues and have impact in hearings. That still at large wouldn't provide a contrarian view, but it would lower the influence of global players in those hearings.
Antitrust laws would go a long way if they got applied. But pretty much every large fusion in recent times I can remember just passed the courts, including insane deals like the 20th century fox deal from Disney.
@countries: I wish the UN was less of a joke. It's a platform where politicians could talk about real issues like climate change and make deals accordingly. But climate change is just too unpopular a topic to get real political solutions even if the UN was an actual platform for deals and discussions and not mainly a prestige project <.<
That being said climate change is mostly something everyone of us will have to attack individually. We'll have to deal with some repercussions eventually but we might get to the point where the "green" though becomes popular (or the repercussions bad) enough that we'll lower the amount of flights and mostly switch to electric cars etc. The main problem is doing that in second and third world countries which not just often have other pressing issues than climate change but also lack the financial strength to pursue an emission free energy production.
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So say we figure out the electric car thing and it gets large enough. Same with renewable energies. Do we export that stuff to those countries or teach them the manufacturing process? How can we help those developing nations? Like Japan and China after WW2 and the period following, they took our practices and made them better. They learned from our (western civ) mistakes and now they lead the world in high speed rail. Is it a future tech that gets developed (Tesla chargin battery for homes + solar shingles/panels) and exported? If so, do we strike some kind of economic agreement with Africa and other resource rich places that will need to provide the material needed?
Say...20 years from now we manage to get a grip on climate change and start to hold steady, what does that world look like? Are we a three tier city with rails between buildings going up 30-40 feet? Are we finally using flying cars and the like to get around? Have we figured out desalination of seawater to replenish the fresh water we no doubt depleted?
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Seeing some new designs from architects that are starting to veer away from the traditional, post-modern look and are becoming more and more experimental with the way they design buildings and how those buildings function. As part of this, NASA has done a few 3D printed habitable places for the Moon or Mars and have awarded a few firms awards and access to develop them further.
Do you see in a few years that we'd be living Gundam or still stuck on Terra Firma? Is there a scenario where we can have a cyberpunk, futuristic, future, on the moon and Earth?
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EPT
