01 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
The Impact of Scientific Ignorance on Society
As a society, we walk a tightrope between limbo and extinction. We’re on a threshold of survival, in a society threatened as never before to find the way, with less and less margin for error. The decades ahead to the year 2000 and beyond, as were the decades just past, can be either interrogative, presumptuous, or insane. And we have to create our own flight plan, because this Earth didn’t come with one telling us how to get to the future safely. The winds of change are blowing across th...Anticipating the future is the lesson of the past, and the modern world is increasingly disenchanted with the technological progress that makes life possible.
19 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
A Brief History of People Resisting Technological Advance...
Look at how often change is fought in history. Here’s an example that always tickles me. The chain of events back in the twelfth century that set Europe going economically after the Dark Ages was essentially the textile revolution. A new loom came in from Arab Spain. It had foot pedals, which left the weaver’s hands free to weave faster and make more cloth cheaper. The Dutch weavers smashed the thing up because it would have put people out of work. (That was a new idea in the twelfth cent...Even though the advances ultimately benefit society as a whole, people resist and riot because they are put out of work or may lose power from the change.