Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0509170351320.17222@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>,
"WRYTING-L : Writing and Theory across Disciplines" <WRYTING-L@LISTSERV.UTORONTO.CA>
Subject: Our Future
Date: Sat, 17 Sep 2005 03:51:51 -0400 (EDT)
Our Future In 1973 I taught "The Year 3000" at the Rhode Island School of Design. Most of the predictions described for the year 2000 have already occurred. Now for the modest future of thirty years hence: All megafauna in the wild will be extinct. The population of the earth will be close to its carrying capacity. Disease will run rampant due to pollution. Global warming will bring about fast-forward environmental effects, including rising seas, increased desertification, and extremely violent hurricanes. The life-span of humans will begin a temporarily exponential decrease. The rich will live in highly defended enclaves. Fundamentalisms will be the order of the day, since belief alone commands. Terrorism will be increasing exponentially, since future paradise is all there is. Capitalism will be bankrupt as national currencies collapse and world-wide depression sets in. The information explosion will continue on localized data-networks and stuttering global communication systems. The global communications infrastructure will have reached its carrying capacity as well. For the first time, information will begin to corrode, decay, as structures can no longer be protected against the world-wide environmental crisis. The smaller generalist flora and fauna will begin to dominate the earth. Great portions of the globe will be uninhabitable. The larger aquatic species will have gone extinct, and the oceans will be dominated by off-shore algal blooms. Most urban drinking water supplies will be polluted and rationed. Suburbs will be abandoned as gasoline becomes an almost inaccessible commodity. The planet will seethe with continuous war, no longer fought among nation-states, but among private militias, guerilla groups, and individual cowboys. Religions and extremisms will be intertwined. There will be heavily-defended holdouts in the North American mountains, and relatively isolated land masses such as New Zealand. Fluid urban structures will be composed of well-armed gangs dealing with the major currency of drugs and weaponry. At least a third of all births will result in deformed infants. Ozone depletion will be almost complete and skin cancers will be exponentially increasing. Most hospitals world-wide will have closed their doors to all but the extremely wealthy. Knowledge-structures will have broken down as specialization and increased mathematical difficulties result in the problematizing of any theoretical work at hand. Computers will have reached a plateau of speed, complexity, and miniaturization. They will not have achieved consciousness. Robotics and nanotechnologies will not be the order of the day - plagues will. Sports franchises will be local and heavily subsidized. The air will be almost unbreathable, and asthma / allergic reactions will be one of the primary causes of death. Most deaths however are the result of violence. Local police will perform rearguard holding actions at best. Highway systems will have fallen into disrepair as economies collapse. Air travel will be almost non-existent; space travel will have disappeared. The space station will be a rusted hulk, if it has not already plummeted to earth. Literacy will be on the decline. There will be a world-wide energy crisis. Child abuse will have become child use and child discard; a high percentage of children will be proffered for labor and sexual slavery, in return for food and goods. Informal economies and the barter system will characterize most local trade. Transnational trade will be at a minimum. The genetic revolution will result in new and uncontrollable pandemics as viruses and bacteria become increasingly resistant. Highly modifiable immune deficiency diseases will appear on an exponentially-increasing basis. The greatest percentage of murder victims, per capita per age level, will be the elderly. Despair will be transformed into religious salvation. More than twenty nuclear weapons, most of them small and poorly-constructed, will have been exploded in various urban areas. Most of the countries of the world, such as they are, will have weapons programs which will absorb a large proportion of the gross national product. Political economy will be ad hoc. Political ideologies will be fragmentary and situational. Electrical grids will be hard-put to maintain even the most minimal of services. The arts will have reached the limits of extremity, with suicidal art movements in the fields of theater, performance, ballet, and installation. The new media 'movement' will have become a thing of the past. Art history will have disappeared as museums fall victim to gang warfare and destruction. Most national heritage monuments will have been at least partially destroyed. Most populations will be drugged...