EPTParadigm Shifts in History - Page 2
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alypse
2771 Posts
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Steel
Japan2283 Posts
-Discovering FTL travel. Mentioned already but not discussed. Space colonization could happen within our solar system but otherwise I don't see us going to any extrasolar earth-like planets unless we don't have a choice. Terraforming is way more feasible. If we discover FTL though...the possibilities would be endless and human civilization would finally begin to conquer the final frontier!! But for now everybody is really iffy about space because developing the technology would cost a lot and the rewards are limited. | ||
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hp.Shell
United States2527 Posts
Otherwise, the shift will come in consciousness. People will learn to stop listening to their mind and begin working together, without judgement, to make something better. Unlikely. | ||
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ZenithM
France15952 Posts
On July 30 2013 12:31 GhostKorean wrote: If this were to happen, you wouldn't know about it. For all we know, it could already be true. Wouldn't be much of a paradigm shift if it doesn't change anyone's life :D | ||
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-NegativeZero-
United States2141 Posts
People wouldn't need to make money to survive - the robot labor would provide for their basic needs. Sure people could still choose to have jobs, and there would be some positions (researchers, artists, etc.) which couldn't possibly be filled by robots, but any money they made would basically just be for luxury commodities. | ||
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calh
537 Posts
Whereto from here? I've got the feeling that the information revolution is shifting human focus and wealth too much on the superficial like entertainment, consumerism and political discussions. Perhaps to the expense of more long-term priorities like mentioned many times in this thread: energy, materials, food, water, transportation (up to space travel), environment etc. Sometimes I find it ridiculous that we have all of these iGadgets touted as the next crown of human achievement, while it still takes half a day to fly from Europe from East Asia, worse than what the Concorde did half a century ago. (Yes I am a grumpy traveller, it's easy to be grumpy when travelling eats up 10% of my annual vacation). | ||
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Mazer21Rackham
United States17 Posts
I couldn't agree more. Yet when talking about where we are heading I think it is best to review how we got here. I think one book that does that best is, "The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power" by Daniel Yergin. Nothing has changed our way of life more than cheap energy. When comparing the profitability of energy historically it helps to know the difference of cost of the input vs. the output or revenue. So a farmers energy calculation long ago would estimate this cost when considering to feed an animal to plow his fields. So If he can gain more calories by feeding an ox calories to plow his field it makes sense to do so. To put our energy consumption into historical perspective it helps to try and convert our cheap energy back to calories. A typical person can keep a 100 watt light bulb lit so taking the average energy consumption for an American and you get around 99 thousand kWh. Divide this by the number of hours in a year that an American consumes energy at an ave. rate of 10kW so the ave. U.S. resident enjoys a lifestyle that would require the equivalent of 100 energy servants. No nation in history has it ever been possible for a nation to be so wealthy for everyone to be able to have 100 servants. Yet the oil fields worldwide are aging and the barrels of oil cost vs. what is gained is no longer that attractive as it used to be. If that wasn't true we'd never look at shale or deep ocean drilling due to the cost. I'm not arguing that this is end of the age of oil but that we are in the end of the age of cheap oil and this will change everyone's life on this planet even if they never got to benefit from it. | ||
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frontliner2
Netherlands844 Posts
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nilssonen
Sweden41 Posts
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RenSC2
United States1063 Posts
The worldwide destruction of manufacturing would kill the job market. The entertainment and service sector would be the primary job provider in any modernized country and simply could not provide enough jobs for everyone. So, unemployment would skyrocket. The methods of wealth distribution would have to change to something more socialistic or else we'd have an old fashioned revolution (except with people who can print off their own weapons). | ||
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GGTeMpLaR
United States7226 Posts
It's hard to say whether it will be a Planetary government or Corporate interests that propel us into Space though. Nothing else really seems on the level of agricultural/industrial revolution. In any case, I'm guessing we won't experience it in our lifetimes though, it still seems like it's pretty far off in the horizon. | ||
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crazyweasel
607 Posts
 or The first CYBORG (edit) | ||
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doubleupgradeobbies!
Australia1187 Posts
The other big one would be an energy revolution, away from traditional fossil fuels into probably nuclear, unless we can find something better before this change absolutely needs to occur. Kinda hard to say which will come first, the former is getting kinda ridiculous where increasingly people have jobs that simply don't need to exist anymore because machines could do it quicker, better, cheaper and more energy efficiently, but for the fact that it would lead to massive unemployment rates. On the other hand fossil fuels have a pretty imminent crunch time with increasing awareness of climate change as well as scarcity issues that will soon become relevant. | ||
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kornetka
Poland129 Posts
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kukarachaa
United States284 Posts
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adwodon
United Kingdom592 Posts
On July 30 2013 16:36 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote: The increase in adoption of automation to replace menial, and increasingly, skilled labour. This isn't really a new paradigm shift, it's just the industrial revolution having not really played itself out fully yet. It's just that we have reached a stage where the primary obstacles to this are no longer technical shortcomings, but the political, social and economic ones. Primarily, our current economic system, where income is so heavily dependant on one's ability to sell one's labour/skills, is simply not able to accommodate the level of automation that is now technically both possible AND efficient without causing major social upheaval. This plus diminishing scientific returns and global warming leading to a Malthusian catastrophe of sorts. I think there will probably be a good century or so of serious social and political unrest and we really can't predict the outcome, a shift will be required to get out of it but exactly what that shift will be isn't easy to call. | ||
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xM(Z
Romania5281 Posts
On July 30 2013 16:15 crazyweasel wrote: the revolution of proletariat as marx predicted i'd also go with that but with a different outcome. another dark age that would be ushered in by the massacre of said proletarians. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland25665 Posts
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wingpawn
Poland1342 Posts
On July 30 2013 16:36 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote: The increase in adoption of automation to replace menial, and increasingly, skilled labour. This isn't really a new paradigm shift, it's just the industrial revolution having not really played itself out fully yet. It's just that we have reached a stage where the primary obstacles to this are no longer technical shortcomings, but the political, social and economic ones. Primarily, our current economic system, where income is so heavily dependant on one's ability to sell one's labour/skills, is simply not able to accommodate the level of automation that is now technically both possible AND efficient without causing major social upheaval. The other big one would be an energy revolution, away from traditional fossil fuels into probably nuclear, unless we can find something better before this change absolutely needs to occur. Kinda hard to say which will come first, the former is getting kinda ridiculous where increasingly people have jobs that simply don't need to exist anymore because machines could do it quicker, better, cheaper and more energy efficiently, but for the fact that it would lead to massive unemployment rates. On the other hand fossil fuels have a pretty imminent crunch time with increasing awareness of climate change as well as scarcity issues that will soon become relevant. Great post, though I feel that energy revolution will come faster considering how quickly global demand is increasing. Also, due to synergy effects, I expect the tempo of changes to accelerate so that people will really struggle to adapt and the 'mentality gaps' between generations may increase. But on the other hand, if this happens, it will be way harder to actually develop any paradigm in the first place. Other than that, let's not forget that the tempo of every next paradigm shift will be completely different depending on wealth and technological prowess of given country or region. For example, today we have regions fully adjusted to post-industrialism (USA, Western Europe), regions with industrial and post-industiral paradigms coexisting (China, India, South America) and where no real shifts happened except for external investments into higher-tier paradigm resources, the less-developed cannot explore due to their shortcomings (most of African countries). So I expect the future progess to be probably even more relative and selective than it is now. | ||
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mihajovics
179 Posts
Thomas Kuhn - The Structure of Scientific Revolutions great summer read | ||
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