π Faster, Please! Week in Review #65
Please check out some great highlights from my essays and interviews!
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Melior Mundus
Now on sale everywhere:
My new book The Conservative Futurist: How To Create the Sci-Fi World We Were Promised
In This Issue
Essay Highlights
From the ArchiveΒ
Essay Highlights
Thinking about the future canβt just be musings and speculations about AGI, space colonies, and fusion reactors. To that point: One of the scholarly catalysts for this newsletter and for my new book The Conservative Futurist: How to Create the Sci-Fi World We Were Promised, is a paper by Yale University economist Ray Fair, βU.S.Infrastructure: 1929-2019,β in which he makes an important point about Americaβs future orientation (or lack of it). After noting that βinfrastructure as a percent of GDP began a steady decline around 1970, and the government budget deficit became positive and large at roughly the same time,β he concludes that βthe overall results suggest that the United States became less future oriented beginning around 1970. This change has persisted.β Fixing your roof while the sun is shining and curbing spending before the bill collector calls require some foresight and the ability to place the current you in the shoes of future you.
‴⩠Some surprising Up Wing and e/acc films
Author Michael Crichton said stories require tension, not utopia. But techno-optimistic fiction with problems can still convey an Up Wing message. 1960s sci-fi was overshadowed by dystopian visions, and today's dark view of technology echoes 1970s assumptions. To balance AI coverage, reporters could reference films where technology helps humanity, but few exist. Letβs imagine an optimistic sci-fi festival: The Martian β innovation rescues a stranded astronaut; Interstellar β humanity returns to the stars; 2001: A Space Odyssey β space-faring humanity has only begun. Even bleak The Road shows disaster from an asteroid, arguing for more tech progress. Koyaanisqatsi inadvertently shows humanity's engineering marvels. Sunshine and Jurassic Park interlace caution with techno-optimism. We need more inspiring sci-fi, but new AI tools let anyone create positive visions.
πͺ Parenting as pro-progress, Up Wing policy
The American economy is a $25 trillion supercomputer of connected companies, cities, governments, and universities that processes information. Its purpose is reordering matter to create greater abundance and prosperity. Public policy must help each node of this economic supercomputer work creatively to produce educated, connected people who can acquire knowledge and collaboratively generate complex innovations. Economic growth, much like(but not exactly like!) Soylent Green, is made out of people. And people grow up in families which are the basic units of society. Also: They are the building blocks of human capital. Families shape the skills, values, and aspirations of individuals, who in turn contribute to the economic supercomputer. Families provide stability, support, and socialization for their members, who can then participate more effectively in the networks that form the economy.
From the Archive:Β
β’ How close are we to nuclear war?
Now seems as timely as ever to revisit my newsletter from just over a year ago exploring the possibilities of a catastrophic nuclear war. The TL;DR is that itβs not likely.Β This column was written in response to heightened tensions in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war in Europe. Although our framing of global military conflicts has shifted rapidly in the past week or so, the take-retake land nature of the current Isreal-Palestine conflict does have similarities to the Russo-Ukraine conflict. In additon to differing motivations in the two conflicts, another key differnece is the power players involved and their percieved nuclear capabilities. While Israel has nukes, Hamas doesnβt β although the latter is back by Iran, a country with enriched uranium but no actual weapons. To this point in time, it contiues to seem as if any esclation to nuclear war is incredibly unlikely. Iβll once again post nuclear-war-theorist-turned-futurist Herman Kahnβs ladder of the apocalypse as a helpful tool.Β