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Can we invent our way out of our coming crises?
In his talk: The Future is Abundance it is posited that we will or al;ready have invented all that is necessary to meet the needs of the future in terms of food, energy and water shortages that we currently face.
The statement that he made that really caught my attention was "demonetizing".
I fear that there are two problems with inventing our way out, first, scarcity is profitable and there are those who do not wish to lose that profit regardless of what scarcity costs humanity. The second is that humans are slow to adapt. We are an incredibly adaptable species, but we do fight it. I think the retreat to religiosity that is gripping nations from Iran to the US is a reaction to swift technological change.
So, is he right? Can we invent our way out of the crises we face in energy, food and water?
Charalambos Paraskeva
Amaterasu Solar
I say We already have invented Ourselves out of the crisis, but that the real question is: Can We get Our hands on the technology hidden from Us?
See My conversation here: http://www.ted.com/conversations/10401/call_for_the_release_of_electr.html
Damian Poirier
Eliu Sarante
Eliu Sarante
Our voice should be heard and spread all over the WORLD. Not leaving it to the wish of luck but to the cause and effect law. We must work a lot! Very hard!! Give OUR best!!! Bring awareness to the world is the best solution.
We all need this change. At the same time, as we know, some POWERFUL people don't want the change, being that a matter of ignorance that we can only fight together. If we can bring awareness of the advantages of a new world, for the best of ALL. If we allow people to enjoy the view of a global perspective with roots on love, peace and education. If we could only tell the people who they really are and how powerful we can be all together. If we could expose all the truth with a very well planned strategy that allows everyone to hear us.
If we could once again believe in ourselves and not the rest of them , it would be easy to never face a crises after the last one ever again.
If 2012 is the year that was chosen it is the best year to start building the beginning of ourselves again. To allow us to learn from each other and show who we really are. NOT for personal benefits but to benefit OUR WORLD, planet Earth, shouldn't we be grateful about it? Let's take good care of it and together make a better place for the upcoming generations, for our children and everything that comes after them. WE ARE THE WORLD!!!! LETS GET TOGt ETHER AND GET IT DONE!! !!! the people that have been trying to keep us separated.
Raveen Beemsingh
Sharon McCann 10+
Damian Poirier
Jason Campbell
Might be tofu, might be robots.... who knows?
All that matters is that 'we' have always found a way, and this will continue.
Historically this has meant pushing what were thought to be limitations to our existence, this is likely to continue as well.
..just sayin'...
Paul Taravella
Damian Poirier
We are only seeing the beginnings of what people can do with this novel manufacturing method (akin to the PDP11 stage of computers). The system will shift with each new capability of printers. First the corner paper print shops closed. Next it will be the makers of plastic nicknacks and widgets. Eventually industry will be limited to those that make printers.
Damian Poirier
It's true what you say that it's how we use technology. Should we be terrified of publicly available molecular manufacturing? Our society has grown up under the umbrella of scarcity economics and the public/corporate mindset has fully embraced what it can expect from what it calls reality... but it's all wrong! One huge problem is how do you transition the entire population of the world from thinking it's all a zero sum game run by scarcity economics to one that sees very little difference between bits and atoms.
My question to you is what will this earth matter after it gets eaten up by the sun?
Sharon McCann 10+
Humans are remarkably intelligent, but we are far from wise. If we do not have a significant increase in our wisdom soon we will end. I don't find that idea frightening at all. The thing I find frightening is that I have children. In the short term the "ending" if we fail to find some level of wisdom will be hard and may be sooner than people think. Like most parents I wish my children to have easy, happy lives. And it is this wish above all that may very well be part of our problem.
Damian Poirier
I do not understand what we are waiting for. The programmable catalyst which lay at the heart of a perfect nano-construction system has already been demonstrated with femtosecond conditioned laser pulses. Bell labs produced then shelved the quantum cascade laser which could easily and cheaply produce these femtosecond conditioned laser pulses on demand.
Sharon McCann 10+
When steam locomotives were replaced by diesel everyone blamed the powerful labor unions for trying to keep the advance from happening in order to save their jobs. And they were right. But, the people who stood to make the money and who had the pwoer pushed the advance through in order to make more money. The advances we need now would cause those people now to lost their grip on the things that are keeping money in the hands of a few. Most advances are kept form the people. Most people have no idea how many technologies already exist that could address our energy problems (not solve them but certainly help) that are kept off the market. It snot a crazy conspiracy theory, it is market reality. Scarcity is profitable, need is rofitable, panic and deprivation can be not only profitable but a wonderful opportunity to consolidate power.
natasha nikulina 50+
Thank you for asking !
Developing new strategies, technologies... finding the solutions...whatever.. is only superficially helpful. The greenhouse effect( for example), a result of planetary pollution, is a direct consequence not so much of a rapacious commercial culture as of the attitude that makes that culture possible. The direct consequences of the me-first competitiveness of the ego-self. The only way to reverse this planetary degradation is to break down the barriers that wall us from nature and each other. Such aphorisms like "the brotherhood of man" " we are one" are not romantic nonsense or mystic/religious preaching cliches but practical patents for survival.
Jaime Lubin 10+
natasha nikulina 50+
Any phrase is 'edulcrative' by definition...it's our job to make it dense, if we choose to :)
The illusion that our world is big and we are different is the first illusion we should part with. Cultural diversity doesn't suggest different paradigm, I believe we share the same.
And whatever the face of the crisis, we'll suffer or even perish together. I truly believe we are one... it depends on the scale of observation.
That's what I think, you may think differently and it's OK
Thanks for the response !
Jaime Lubin 10+
Beyond the scale, I realize that we all are in the same planet but not in the same level of crisis....I dont believe in the way out method....maybe its better to confron the crisis from inside...the community or the individuals...the same
the"crisis paradigm" for me is the crisis enigma.
CRI...from sanscrit : cry .....in greek means: the very first cry from a newborn baby....
So if we want to translate crisis, is just a wayout from some point to other....the crisis in itself have the way out, we cant invent anything to do the same...is already done.
natasha nikulina 50+
Thanks for the etymology of the word " crisis" it's deep and communicates its meaning fully !
In the very end there is a beginning. You believe that life is self regulated. And problem is always a part of the solution. If that is your point, we are on the same page here.I don't believe in grandiose plans either. " The crisis in itself have the way out" by pushing us to change towards greater caring, a lessened regard for material things, a desire to be of service to others, a more integrated awareness : we are not two with nature ,we are one. The rest will come with. Maybe it's the face of the baby , we are labouring together to bring to birth ?
Definitely " Love your neighbour as thyself" needs resurrection.:)
Jaime Lubin 10+
natasha nikulina 50+
It's brilliant ! ! !
Through Etymology the human history is seen in 3D image + Time. Historical facts are only surface the history, let alone that there is no such thing as an uninterpreted fact, so History is a highly manipulated and tricky subject. Language, on the other hand, is the reflection of the human psyche and 'words' reveal undisturbed/uninterpreted history in its real cause-effect flow. Inspired by your comment I googled the word "society" and found this :
Adam Smith wrote that a society "may subsist among different men, as among different merchants, from a sense of its utility without any mutual love or affection, if only they refrain from doing injury to each other."
Any comments ? Mask has been glued to face irredeemably, no "mutual love or affection" required .
Jaime, what can I say ? Thank you very much for opening me to this !
Anything else to share ? I'll be delighted !
Thank you !
Jaime Lubin 10+
Thanks for the 3D metaphor....plus time is Multiple D......
Time in history is more than chronological line....is a flexible net with multiple dimensions, if you see behind the words (the history raw material) we can discover that multiple dimensions.
The mask is made from words,,,,the glue is all the credos and beliefs. Smith is just an example of desintegration in words and facts. In the XVIII century they all(philosophers included) invented the "Horror House" where the immigrants from the country side spend a lot of weeks tight unchained to a pole in a dump full of water un to their their mouths while all pedal a pump to avoid drawning. After that reeducation they start to obbey everything from a new kind of alimentation (artificial nurturing) to sexual prohibitions, except the procreation. The new industrial system need more slaves. (in Smith words "to produce a lot of pins). And they dont have any way out from any crisis. As today. (sorry for my english)
natasha nikulina 50+
"the human history is just a lot of words...no more."
Maybe you are right, but i am not quite ready to absorb this idea. :) Too radical for me.
And talking about crisis, I'd like to share with you this revelation :
WE ARE NOT IN CRISIS, WE ARE CRISIS.
Here it is ,everything included , "why" and "how" bound together as they should.
Thanks a lot for this conversation !
Damian Poirier
natasha nikulina 50+
Thanks for sharing, I agree with your mild approach, it does work already for many and it's good !
You are right, I am not going to eradicate...anything... "me first" mentality included :) It should die peacefully through awareness.
Adam Smith was wrong saying, that what is better for you is automatically better for the community. We are now in the mid of the mess, created by this industrial age mentality.
Nash came later with different assumption : what is better for the community is eventually better for you.
Now thinking 'quantummechanically' we are ready to ask " Who am I ?" Even educated guesses make "me first" mentality redundant.
That's what I am hoping for :)
Damian Poirier
Sharon McCann 10+
natasha nikulina 50+
"I'm very proud of my gold pocket watch. My grandfather, on his deathbed, sold me this watch."
( just joking )
Damian Poirier
natasha nikulina 50+
I don't know, but something prompts me that it didn't. Sorry, but I don't see any possibility to shift the mindset of the advertisers. Advertising is part of the system, it can thrive or die with it. It doesn't have a destiny of it's own. I've come up with only one solution so far, .. BE that change you want to see in the world. Is it enough ? I don't know, but it's what we have, all of us.
Damian Poirier
natasha nikulina 50+
Sharon !
We are talking about the same John Nash whose theories are used in market economics.
Adam Smith stated that the optimum in society occurs when everybody works in their own best interests. John Nash’s Nobel prize winning dissertation in economics states that society works best when we work in our own best interests and in the best interests of society as a whole.
Frankly, I don't have my own opinion here, I am not an expert, that's what I was told. If it's false I would appreciate your clarification :)
R H 20+
natasha nikulina 50+
Thanks for your support and understanding ! It's hardly possible to be convincing suggesting "the change from within" as '' a way out of..."
But I believe that it IS a way, simply a way.
Thank you !
Thomas Anderson
Frans Kellner 100+
Do you think there's someone that can orchestrate the world like a music conductor?
Technology wouldn't be the problem to put things in the right order for a happy future it is the masses of ignorance around the world that allows power to those that follow their self interest.
To inform the people over the globe will help to get some good thing done here and there and if it's enough the disaster will be limited in the end. However change will happen and we have to cope with that, we being those that's left of us humans. Maybe they're the same few that now profit from the destruction of nature and which can buy the right technology to safe themselves.
Mary M. 100+
Let's hope not Frans...........I personally do not think they will be the ones left......
"Wisdom along with an inheritance is good and is advantageous for those seeing the sun.
For wisdom is for protection the same as money is for a protection; BUT the advantage of
knowledge is that wisdom itself preserves alive its owners." Wise king Solomon at Ecclesiastes 7:11-12
Sharon McCann 10+
natasha nikulina 50+
Honestly, I don't envy those "few" :) What is the world they'll find themselves in ?
Riela Isabel Antonio 500+
Sharon McCann 10+
R H 20+
Damian Poirier
Really? Mature nanotech means the emancipation of every individual. How can that NOT have an effect on how are we going to regard each other? It means 100% recycling and the end of poverty for everyone. How can that NOT have an effect on how are we going to regard each other? It means DNA repair and the end of cancer (at the very least) and ultimately negligible senescence.How can that NOT have an effect on how are we going to regard each other?
R H 20+
Damian Poirier
This question exemplifies this whole problem of how do we teach people what a difference this difference makes. There is no "can't afford to pay for it" in the above scenario. The universal programmable matter assembler is among other things universal. This is, it can make a copy of itself. They can become in very short order cheaper than air and everyone will be able to use them to make anything that can be made. The rest of your question illustrate that you misunderstood they all pertained to the development of mature nanotech (the above mentioned universal assembler).
After that inventions go from inventor to the world directly through the internet for whatever passes for currency (if anything)
R H 20+
Damian Poirier
"What do they get out of it? A peaceful world? An understanding that their contribution to the 'whole' is their necessary satisfaction? I would say that communism has tried that and failed."
"our tech creations in-of-themselves can't do it for us."
I disagree. Generally, people WANT to do things. What stops them is the problem. Incentive is only required to overcome the problems that are mostly associated with evolutionary baggage and NOT what a person would prefer. Otherwise positive incentives wouldn't work. Given the evolutionary baggage that motivates us to conserve calories by being lazy is probably the number one hindrance to people "getting out there and doing", I'd say that a sensible cure for that problem could be a high priority. Negative incentives like threats work to push people to do what they do not want to do. In a post nanotech world where everybody is autonomous, has whatever they want, they will still have their desires to do things but they won't need incentives to do them. They will simply have removed the disincentives to do them. one way to do that is to alter the genes that push us to conserve calories by being lazy. LOL, can you imagine a planet full of type A personalities?
Thomas Brucia
Jaime Lubin 10+
Jaime Lubin 10+
Then we could done some intelligent ,sensible, beautifull, and efficient....but we have to face the crisis. Its no way out.
Crisis is just a term to define our daily lives. Crisis is not fear or danger. The real way is take the risk and in the last place see if we have to invent something...maybe in the wisdom from our grandparents we can find some clues.
tishe Hires 10+
Andrea Morisette Grazzini 30+
Several factors are converging that make what he posits somewhat plausible.
The first is disruption, the second is innovation.
Third: in many ways is informed, undermined and abetted by both: information.
The ubiquity of information parallels the distributed effect of so many crises. On the one hand we know more. On the other, we are squandering more. Including much of our knowledge.
For example, we have irrefutable knowledge that monetary systems have fatal flaws that are accelerated by the massive prioritizing of monetary systems. Thus, their failures have catalyzed a world-wide disruption in the monetary systems and their methods.
With this knowledge and the same accelerating effect modern knowledge (thanks to technology and media) has on information, we are also uniquely equipped to engage equally accelerated "inventions" or solutions.
If money is the prevailing problem, such solutions must logically consider non-monitary solutions.
Thus innovations that somehow mimic the "indoctrinated" profit system but adapt maximum humanity by measuring and incentivizing non-monetary profits not to win-lose equations but shared abundance should be seriously entertained..
There are nascent supportive systems for such in the works.
Among them, in some US states, are new For-Benefit Corporation status businesses may choose. With it, both shareholders and stakeholders outcomes are considered fiscal priorities. Making such companies a hybrid of non-profit (ostensibly measured by success achieving positive stakeholder impacts, which include non-monetary) and for-profit (measured by success of increasing shareholder value, which are almost always monetary).
Its fair to Q if we can sustain and grow such "for the greater good" methods. And particularly non-monetary efforts. None the less, it is also fair to acknowledge, times are ripe for such innovations.
Andrea
Sharon McCann 10+
Andrea Morisette Grazzini 30+
Yes, agreed. If the problem is money the problem is humans. I'd develop your point by adding human's problem with money is deeply related to human's inclinations towards transactional solutions.. So is the solution humans.
Where, when and if humans choose in greater and sustained measures to see that linear transactions (like money) undermine, rather than maximize their long-term "return-on-investment" they can experience rewards and success that far exceed what money can buy.
Andrea
Damian Poirier
Mary M. 100+
Who exactly needs to suffer in addition to those suffering now in order for something to be done about it?
He that is faithful in the least, is faithful in the most.
If humankind cannot, or better yet....WILL NOT, feed a few today, do you really expect humans to solve a major crisis in energy, food and water in the future??
I find it hard to believe that humans will solve the issues plaguing mankind.
Maybe we need divine intervention?
Just my humble opinion.
Roy Bourque 20+
We may find that the end of the Mayan calendar is signaling the very divine intervention that we need. There are signs of the times, there are signs in the heavens, and there are ancient signs all leading to an event that no one really knows how it is going to all play out. The Mayans referred to the return of Quetzalcoatl. Jesus spoke of the return of the master. The book of Revelation predicts the final triumph of good over evil. I don't believe that we can do this alone, and I don't believe that we are going to have to do it alone.
Mary M. 100+
Also, the master that Jesus spoke of as returning, is said to be happy at the faithful slave who is providing food at the proper time to Jesus' sheep.....who is the slave, and who are the sheep? Do you have any idea?
I am not familiar with the Mayan calendar, and do not put faith in doomsday predictions....seen too many....noone knows the day or hour.....
Roy Bourque 20+
The war in heaven is between the carnal verses spiritual centers of the mind. The carnal are the forces of darkness where the animal passions rule. The spiritual are the messengers of light where we come to understand the true nature of the cosmos and are able to work in harmony with it.
The master of deception personifies all the misconceptions that exist in the mental field. We compute decisions based on what we know. When our knowledge is plagued by lies and deceits, our answers are all going to be distorted and twisted. To cast the master of deception down, is to expose all those lies and falsehoods so they no longer have an effect on us.
There are those who seek money and power. They will fight anything that stands in their way. These are the ones that will bring the war in the mental field to play out on earth. They will not give in to "Christ", rather they will play the game until it is finished and they don't care who they hurt in the process.
The slave is among the oppressed that continues to do his/her job in reaching out to others. They share in love to one another without seeking power or greed. The sheep are the ones who know the shepherd, which is "Christ Jesus". They are willing to follow the shepherd, as opposed to goats, in which the word was chosen because goats are stubborn animals and will not be led, thus it refers to those who have to have their own way no matter what.
The Mayan calendar is not about doomsday, it is about transformation. The end of one age will lead into the one that follows. The calendar ends because things will have changed from what they are now. As the scriptures say, look for a new heaven and a new earth, for former things will have passed away. It isn't the earth that will pass away, it is only our current way of seeing things that will pass away. We will have a new vision to follow, guided by the creator and not the created.
Mary M. 100+
Roy Bourque 20+
If we are going to succeed, we need to get religion on board. But the return to religiosity has pros and cons. The pros are the humanitarian efforts that come from a well organized religious body as well as the creativity that spirituality fosters. The cons are all the misconceptions that modern religions are teaching, leading to psychosis in the religious body. The misconceptions are going to need to be dealt with, otherwise, you will have a fighting force that will sabotage what technology can offer. Getting rid of religion is not an option, unless you intend to set the world on fire by extermination, in which case, you will have your population boom dealt with.
The biggest misconception is religion's definition of God. They present God as a person, not a life force. Quantum fields are everywhere. They are invisible. They are the source from which all things come and back to which they go. They are what is doing the creating. They have all the qualities attributed to God because that is what they are. We are made in their image because they are a part of us, and our understanding of them is what allows us to come up with the inventions that we do.
The second biggest misconception is religion's concept of damnation. They teach that we are all sinners and not worthy of God's love, and only in the afterlife can we come under God's grace. What they don't understand, is that the afterlife is not what happens to you when you die, it is what happens to you when you wake up to the truth (become enlightened). As a human animal, we can offer nothing positive as religious holy wars attest. As an enlightened being, we can do all the things that technology allows us to do. That is what "born again" means, and most of you are.
I am one of many that are trying to deal with the misconceptions. They distort how we think and act. They distort how we compute solutions. They undermine positive growth and rational thinking.
Paul Taravella
Paul Taravella
Morpheus: The human body generates more bio-electricity than a 120-volt battery and over 25,000 BTUs of body heat.
It seems the really big problem is cooling during the summer months. To solve this problem I believe there are several solutions that can be used
Sharon McCann 10+
http://www.controlmod.com/cabaire/
Paul Taravella
Zyrus Deri
Eddie Solomon
Sharon McCann 10+
But, it is politics that will also keep it from happening. Just look at America right now. We face serious problems in our energy needs, environmental problems, food issues, lack of jobs, massive debt huge amounts of fraud and corruption in our banking system, and the most dangerous thing we need to regualte seems to be my uterus.