It has been really uplifting to see humankind coming together as we never have before. Good job, people! Keep it up!
If there is anything to take away from this global event, it’s just how minor this pandemic will turn out to be in the bigger scale of things.
Now, I’m not trying to downplay the severity of this outbreak. It has already been devastating and millions more could potentially die. Workers on the frontline of this disease will likely bear life-long effects.
But there are so many worse things that can happen. We could be wiped out entirely by any one of the horrible things that have threatened us for eons – things like asteroids or super-volcanos. And now there’s all the new ways that we are coming up with to annihilate ourselves – things like gene editing, robotics, AI, and nanotech.
Again, don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to say we should be glad or grateful for Covid-19. Rather, my point is that this is just a wake-up call. There is some far crazier shit coming down the pipeline, some of which we can barely comprehend.
Let’s keep working together as we have been to survive this crisis. Afterwards, we can use the momentum to do something even greater – we could create a tech-enabled open-source global democracy, redistribute the world’s power and wealth, and even dismantle the world’s military industrial complex.
Our best chance, our highest odds of survival, comes from uniting as a species to overcome whatever stands in our way.
If you are looking for a great reason to feel optimistic – another truly legitimate rationale for believing our world is undergoing remarkable and rapid transformations for the better – then consider the LifeBox.
The LifeBox is a deployable mini-building that provides the basic necessities of modern life: water, food, electricity, internet and a 3D printer. This single self-contained building, the size of a garden shed, can sustain and improve the lives of everyone nearby.
LifeBox uses both wind and solar energy to drive the entire unit along with public power outlets. Inside an atmospheric extractor and purifier creates several gallons of drinking water a day. As well, tanks housed within automated greenhouses grow Spirulina, a protein-rich, highly nutritious whole food. Of course, the entire unit doubles as a wifi-hotspot, connecting to the Internet as well as all nearby LifeBoxes.
The best part of the LifeBox concept is how the entire life-saving building can be constructed using nothing but local materials and a 3D printer, anywhere in the world. All it takes are the plans (which get updated from free sites on the web), access to a 3D printer, and the gumption to build your own.
Just imagine the impacts on global poverty and instability when, on every street corner in the worst slums or in even the most remote, despondent villages, these seemingly magic boxes – day in and day out – churn out the tools needed by those on the bottom rung to rise out of their dire circumstances.
This is exactly what our world craves! So much of the world’s conflict stems from societies living in desperate conditions, where people are at risk of starving to death every day. This desperation fuels the feelings that lead to violence, and it breeds the soldiers to carry it out.
When we could create a world where every single human has access to the most basic means of life – which will exist when everyone can get the things provided by a LifeBox, then we are set to see a world where wars get exposed as the unnecessary and unwanted travesty that they are. Peace can finally take hold of our world.
All the pieces are falling into place. Affordable, consumer-level 3D-printers are already on the market and producing incredible objects. Solar and wind generators are getting cheaper by the day. The Internet is forever expanding. And the need for a LifeBox on every corner is as urgent as ever.
The end goal is in sight. How long it takes to get the basic necessities of life to each person on earth really depends on us. 5 years? 10 years? If we pushed hard it could happen. But no matter what, the day when every single human can get access to what’s in a LifeBox is clearly within our future.
Why does it seem like people in positions of power are too scared to speak their minds? Is it the same reason the vast majority of us don’t always stand up for what is right? There are these tremendous tasks ready to be accomplished, yet no one seizes the reigns. Reigns which are just waiting there idle, well within anyone and everyone’s willing grasp.
I speak to these blights on our world which, if we had our shit together as a species, would have been eradicated decades ago. Extreme poverty. Mass starvation. A behemoth industry that profits off the very war it creates. This faux-democracy perpetuated by businesses and their puppets within the political system.
We cannot afford to wait.
Especially when millions of lives are hanging in the balance daily, and the only ingredient missing is enough people willing to take action. We have the resources. We have the know how. But we don’t yet have the get-off-our-assedness enough to breach the threshold.
Take modern warfare, as an example. It is completely unnecessary It serves no purpose, other than charging entire nations billions of dollars to kill a high percentage of our fellow global citizens. We don’t need it in our world to survive. In fact, it’s pretty much the opposite of what our world needs. Yet war, as so often is the case, remains absent from mind and mouths of the mainstream media, politicians, and most importantly – we the people. We know it’s wrong but we haven’t risen to the occasion and stopped it.
And speaking of war, the war on drugs is a proven failure which – thanks to conservative governance – we continue to pursue with greater ferocity than ever. What the hell, people? It’s like in the movies where a boulder or car is barrelling down from behind, and our only inclination is to run faster in the same direction when a step to either side would see our problems end.
The evidence is overwhelming. Making drugs illegal has done nothing to stem the harm they can cause society. If, on the other hand, drug prohibition is a means to institutionalize racism, reinforce poverty, and bolster a militarized domestic police force, then the war on drugs has been a resounding success.
But I digress. My point is that all of these institutionalized mistakes can be readily fixed, if only enough of us were to speak our minds. Just look at Women’s rights and minority rights. It works for them. And right now LGBT rights are at the crux of their struggle for same rights on Facebook and elsewhere. Plus, marijuana legalization is making some great headway. All this happens because a big enough collective of people found ways to share their voice.
It’s not that these injustices went unnoticed for generations. It’s that we regular people have been too scared to campaign against them with enough determination to make change. Only now, when for years just a handful of brave souls would dare to make noise, does the majority hop on board and then make what’s right become integrated into society as a whole.
Still, we have yet to reign in the banks, gain way more accountability over global corporations, clean up the collusion and corruption in the news media, end the war on drugs and then dismantle the whole war machine for good. And… oh yea, I’m gonna need us to go ahead and end world hunger while offering every human, at the very least, the most basic necessities for life. That’d be great.
These goals are quite clear. The sooner we get them done, the better. So what the hell are we waiting for?
So it appears we wily humans managed to skirt disaster once again. Truly fortunate, seeing as how existing – as opposed to not – is pretty sweet.
For thousands of years humans have been predicting the end of the world. And you know what? None of them ever come true.
Well, it is a fact that all those people did eventually die. But life itself always finds a way to go on.
So even though at any given moment the world and every single one of us could be wiped out of existence in a flash – a reality of being alive as we know it – this persistent potential demise needn’t be feared.
Instead, embrace the impermanence of life so that every second alive is one cherished as precious. This way you’ll be ensured of getting the most out of your time here.
In early 2013 a tool by The Spark Project will help concentrate people power into a force so powerful that it can counterbalance giant institutions like corporations and bad governments, even rivalling the biggest scourge of the earth – the military industrial complex.
The Spark Project was started 1 year ago by a group of Redditors who were inspired by the site’s amazing ability to filter through nonsense while bringing the best and brightest ideas to the top. They thought, ‘why not take this effective formula of crowdsourcing and use it to foster a true democracy?’. And so they did.
While still looking for funds and volunteers, the team have made tremendous headway and will likely release their tools early in 2013. Read more about the project at thespark.org.
It is tools like these which, once refined and widely adapted, can truly reshape the world. By channelling the voices of millions (and billions) of people into practical political clout, we’ll finally be able to enact real changes to the global establishment. We can finally make our world what we want it to be.
No more gross inequality where billionaires can hoard more for themselves while billions of people are left to starve. No more rampant exploitation of weaker nations by the more powerful in what is no less that modern-day slavery. No more politically or corporately organized armed conflict, meaning world peace will finally be upon us.
All this, and more, can and will be ours once we truly start working together as one people. Awesome!
Who wants to live forever? Who doesn’t??? Maybe you’re one of those people who’d still like to be able to die… but what if you didn’t have to worry about kicking it until you’ve crossed off everything on your bucket list. And for the rest of us, why not live forever? Sure beats croaking like a mortal.
You’d be around long enough to explore our entire universe, but why stop there. Computer game makers are already giving us vast, alternate universes to play around in and there’s always more to come. Imagine when we have incredibly lifelike computer simulations, accessible in our own dwellings, indistinguishable from actual reality. Yes!!! I’ve always wanted my own Holodeck.
Yes!!! I love to hear it! Such brazen optimism is exactly what our world needs more of.
For a while now I’ve been preaching about the coming human revolution, where we rise up as a species to restructure our world’s economy and power structure. And one by-product of this great upheaval will be the end of institutionalized warfare, meaning we finally find world peace. Plus, to top it all off, I believe humankind’s most monumental achievement – this impending insurrection – is due to happen within a decade or two!
So it’s always nice to see when other people – scientifically minded industry leaders – also agree that good things will continue to happen for us on a planetary scale.
Patsy politicians pandering to plutocratic priorities threaten to pilfer our precious privacy. Lousy legislation like ACTA, SOPA and now CISPA have come to the forefront of this fight, and these bills will all be, hopefully, crushed without mercy beneath the feet of millions of vigilant citizens.
Still, as disheartening as it may be to hear, these exercises could ultimately prove pointless because privacy is fast going extinct. (more…)
A drug called DRACO, which stands for Double-stranded RNA Activated Caspase Oligomerizer, works by specifically impeding the replication process used by every virus.
Awesome. If tests pan out, we could have a solution for AIDS, Hepatitis, and other deadly diseases within a decade.
It’s news like this that reaffirms my belief that humankind stands on the brink of a fantastic new world… a global civilization that has the tools to provide the basic needs for every human, and the means to cure any sickness.
This fantastic future is not centuries away. It is already happening, right now. And the more it does happen, the more of us will awaken to be overwhelmed with the hope and optimism so imperative for creating a lasting peace on earth.
Watch out for more drones in the sky! Only this time, instead of bombing innocents and invading privacy, new unmanned aircraft are being designed to host Internet web sites.
So, once launched, even if some corporate lobbyists manage to convince governments to execute a take-down on The Pirate Bay’s servers, their raids will prove futile, since the information they seek will be, literally, up in the air.
For now, the idea is just that, an idea. There are several technical issues to overcome, including building solar powered aircraft that can hold computing equipment and networking devices while staying airborne 24 hours a day.
Still, once completed, the implications will be awesome!
ACTA, PIPA, SOPA, C-11, and whatever other censorship nonsense the government tries to impose on us will be no match for human ingenuity. If they want to crack down on our free Internet, we will build a new one.
Picture thousands of wireless hotspots forming a meshed network, mounted on rooftops, street poles, cars, and robotic drones hovering above, to provide everyone with free access to an unrestricted Internet.
With 3D printers churning out more amazing stuff every day, and solar getting so effective and accessible, a decade or two is all it will take to deploy an indomitable mesh Internet across all of earth’s major hubs.
Channel 4’s provocative Brave New World series, where Stephen Hawking and other prominent thinkers describe the phenomenal technologies we are in the process of unleashing, really paints a well-founded picture of the future.
And WOW! Talk about a solid dose of optimism!
Films like these just unleash the imagination, setting one free to dream about the fanciful future that is well on its way.
The world today is already awesome – the best that humans have been able to create so far. But, as long as we remain free and alive, the world we’re set to create will be even more mind-blowing.
All the more reason for us to try harder to get along now, so that we are more likely to be around to experience the splendid potentials that await us all.
