Articles in Unfounded Speculation
Articles on wide-ranging topics, all of a speculative nature.
Technological Progress
Posted on December 20th, 2009 by
Stephen DeGrace
Topics:
Crystal Ball
One's view of scientific and technological progress depends on the time in which one lives. In the ancient world, progress plainly occurred, but the way in which a person lived in general tended to differ very little from the way their grandparents lived or the way their grandchildren would end up living, so the state of human knowledge and skill must have seemed very static. As we progressed towards the end of the second millennium, the advance of science and technology was obvious and changing lives in real time, and people conceived progress as a linear process. Finally, as science and technology exploded in the 20th century, people could actually see the rate of progress itself increase in real time, and progress was conceived of by many science fiction authors as an exponential process leading to God-like and unimaginable powers for those who command it.
Global Warming, Oil, and American Supremacy
Posted on December 15th, 2009 by
Stephen DeGrace
Topics:
Crystal Ball
I recently read a couple of very interesting books. Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization by Jeff Rubin (blog) is about our rapidly diminishing capacity to keep up with demand for oil and its consequences for the world economy. The other, Climate Wars by Gwynne Dyer, is a frank and realistic assessment of the global strategic challenges posed by global warming. The topics of these books are heavily interrelated, but each has its particular concentration. I believe that a synthesis of the arguments presented by these authors leads to some interesting and disturbing conclusions about our future.