way, way OT:
re: You have an awful lot of faith
I have no faith. I simply expect people to act in their own self-interest, and use the tools at their disposal. Since 1945, there has been uninterrupted peace in the homelands of every country possessing nuclear weapons. In the future, I expect all wars to be civil wars, or token border conflicts. Events like WW1 or WW2 can never happen again.
Any attempt to stop the spread of information (even dangerous information, and who is going to decide what is dangerous?) will fail. The Information Revolution means that everything will be known by anyone who wants to know it, anytime, and anywhere. All institutions based on the limiting, channelling, and toll-gating of scarce information (without value-adding anything) are finding the ground shifting beneath them. Most won't survive. I include in that catagory Real Estate agents, full-service brokers, car dealers, many physicians, and all authoritarian governments. You're probably imagining the chaotic transition period, while I'm thinking about the eventual benefits.
We are all going to become pacifists and democrats (small d), or die trying.
We live in interesting times. |
