I do not have the time today for a long post but wanted to address a few questions that have come up recently.
First, in response to my post on Paradigm Shifts, I wanted to thank Eric Gisin for reminding me of Mimsy Were the Borogoves, a delightful and thought provoking short story that has lingered in my memory for a good many years.
In response to Gloria's question concerning my focus on robotics, my response is two-fold. First, no single teacher can perform the kind of teaching job that Middle Ages tutors could offer wealthy aristocrats' children, that is, there is simply too much and too complicated a mix of information that should be conveyed to the youngster that a single teacher (in a home school environment, for example) could never hope to do the job adequately. Second, with the collapse (in slow motion but ongoing nonetheless) of our traditional models of schooling, only a robotic (or web based) software construct could learn the individual child's learning style, adapt to it, and help the child learn what the he needs and wants to know. There is no way to offer this kind of individualized instruction to more than handful of students at a time without resorting to software to multiply the effects. My use of the term "robotics" is as a shorthand and actually covers any software based agent, ie non-human, that interacts with the child or facilitates human to human interaction.
An upcoming post on Demographics will more directly address the devolution of our educational system and the implications of such a change.
In response to my first post On Demographics: Part I, Gary and Tom are both partially correct. In the short to middle term, getting to space is so costly that the possibility of large numbers of people living off planet is minimal. However, the technology already exists to bring the price down significantly and with further development of nanotechnology, the price of getting into space should eventually be low enough for large numbers to begun to emigrate. Unfortunately, even the best case scenarios suggest that large scale emigration to space is at least 50 years off, if not more likely 100 years. On the other hand, the carrying capacity of the Earth is far higher than most people, unwittingly under thrall to radical environmentalism, actually recognize. Past a certain level of development, more technology does not translate to a despoiled environment. For example, America has far more forest today than when the first settlers arrived. It is possible, and indeed likely, that a far higher population can live with a far smaller environmental foot print (not just Carbon, but in every way) as new technological developments come on line. This will be a secondary subject of a future post in the series On Demographics.
Finally, the future will indeed belong, in part, to the most highly fecund, though precisely who those people are will be determinative. Further, such development will be much more complex than one might imagine and will not be without surprises. This, too, will be addressed in some detail in a future post.
In the meantime, for a succinct look at the disaster of Healthcare reform and the arrogance that is fueling the process, make sure you read John Stossels' article today on Arrogance. It is a must-read.
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