Future Shock: Truths About the Future

A schema for keeping track of future trends:
  1. Free is the new model for media, artists must adapt to survive tidal wave of freely produced amateur works.
  2. American Minorities will soon be the majorities, but they are still underprivileged. This is bad for the future of this country.
  3. Student Loan debt is the next economic bubble. It will reduce the market value of education.
  4. Global Warming is getting worse, but it is unstoppable through legislation. Only catastrophe will stop it.
  5. Things posted on the Internet are forever.

Memes

14 JUN 2013

 Prediction Errors for the Information Age

Perhaps the best way to describe the flawed vision of fin de siecle futurists is to say that, with few exceptions, they expected the coming of an ''immaculate'' economy -- one in which people would be largely emancipated from any grubby involvement with the physical world. The future, everyone insisted, would bring an ''information economy'' that would mainly produce intangibles. The good jobs would go to ''symbolic analysts,'' who would push icons around on computer screens; knowledge, rathe...
  2  notes

Economists misunderstood the value of information and material goods in the information revolutions.

11 JUN 2013

 WWW Makes the Improbable Normal

Cops, emergency room doctors, and insurance actuarists all know it. They realize how many crazy impossible things happen all the time. A burglar gets stuck in a chimney, a truck driver in a head on collision is thrown out the front window and lands on his feet, walks away; a wild antelope knocks a man off his bike; a candle at a wedding sets the bride's hair on fire; someone fishing off a backyard dock catches a huge man-size shark. In former times these unlikely events would be private, know...
Folksonomies: new media normality
Folksonomies: new media normality
  1  notes

YouTube and other videos capture the many unusual occurrences happening all over the world out of sheer statistical probability, making them seem average.

02 JUN 2011

 Reasoned Debate Online

I find that the biggest barrier to a reasoned debate is time rather than space, restrictive though it may be. Everything goes so fast that there is pressure to react sooner rather than later without allowing time for reflection. People then fall back on popular "truths" that can quickly be thrown out there. You can see this on Slashdot too where people pounce on articles to post the established group-think for a quick ' 5' (as well as the ubiquitous "frist psots".) Those who come relatively l...
  1  notes

Is hampered by the need to get opinions out quickly before the discussion goes cold, reducing the propensity for reflection and thoughtful discourse.

01 JAN 2010

 Capitalists are Forever Exploring and Revolutionizing

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch...
Folksonomies: politics economics centrism
Folksonomies: politics economics centrism
  1  notes
Within the context of Marx's work, this reads like a bad thing, this ever-present restlessness in the market; however, it also sounds like growth and progress.


References

14 JUN 2013

 White Collars Turn Blue

Periodicals>Newsletter Article:  Krugman, Paul (September 29, 1996), White Collars Turn Blue, New York Times, Retrieved on 2013-06-14
  • Source Material [www.nytimes.com]
  • Folksonomies: futurism
    Folksonomies: futurism
     2  
    11 JUN 2013

     The Improbable is the New Normal

    Electronic/World Wide Web>Blog:  Kelly, Kevin (7 January 2013 ), The Improbable is the New Normal, Retrieved on 2013-06-11
  • Source Material [www.kk.org]
  • Folksonomies: new media
    Folksonomies: new media
     1  
    02 JUN 2011

     Tim Berners-Lee: Stop Foaming At the Mouth, Twitter

    Electronic/World Wide Web>Message Posted to Online Forum/Discussion Group:  CharlyFoxtrot (1607527), (April 19, 2011), Tim Berners-Lee: Stop Foaming At the Mouth, Twitter, Slashdot, Retrieved on 2011-06-02
  • Source Material [tech.slashdot.org]
  •  1  
    01 JAN 2010

     The Communist Manifesto

    Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book:  Friedrich, Marx, Engels (1888), The Communist Manifesto, Retrieved on -0001-11-30
  • Source Material [www.gutenberg.org]
  • Folksonomies: politics economics
    Folksonomies: politics economics
     1