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State of the World 2012

• #41: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Fri 6 Jan 12 06:47
  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/buzz-aldrin/american-space-exploration_b_1184554.htmlI'm glad to see this elderly astronaut with this much mastery of the tech details, but this article of his is all means and no ends. There is no political or economic purpose to creating a manned colony on Mars. How would it survive in the long term, how would it pay its […]
• #40: Jon Lebkowsky (jonl) Fri 6 Jan 12 06:17
  It really is a crazy world, where a science fiction writer who makes his living as a public speaker and design theorist and a blogger who makes his living as a web strategist and developer can hold forth about the state of the world and have any kind of audience. The knowledge flows are stunningly complex and have, for many of the Internet years, been democr […]
• #39: Ted Newcomb (tcn) Fri 6 Jan 12 05:05
  Just read David Weinberger's Too Big to Knowhttp://www.toobigtoknow.com/Interesting book. His memorable take away is that "the smartest person in the room is now the room itself". His point is that knowledge is networked,and that implication changes everything.Paddy Ashdown also refers to this same point from a different perspective. The U.S. […]
• #38: Mark McDonough (mcdee) Fri 6 Jan 12 04:43
  Right. Pretending something is not taking place does not make it go away. I agree that it would be great if we could all just get along, as Rodney King said. And once upon a time, we did - when the rich folks lived up on the hill. But now that they have so many houses they lose count - even as many of us are losing our homes - it's a different story.Sli […]
• #37: Ted Newcomb (tcn) Fri 6 Jan 12 04:42
  So, in the U.S., we'll have about 20-30 of these metroplexes and the rest of the country will be pretty much unsustainable (except for whatever Monsanto and friends can cultivate). Mother Earth is already responding. Bruce had a great rant at the close of the 2011 Art & Environment Convention:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rC6yylIwyKgWould you talk […]
• #36: Rob Myers (robmyers) Fri 6 Jan 12 04:40
  Bruce - Yes my friends in Belgrade talk about NATO like that. Whilst being perfectly happy to talk to someone from Blair's own country... [Read entire topic] […]
• #35: Rob Myers (robmyers) Fri 6 Jan 12 04:37
  If the 1% were united with the rest of society, there wouldn't be a problem. This isn't about scapegoating but about recognising that there has been a delamination.... [Read entire topic] […]
• #34: Mark McDonough (mcdee) Fri 6 Jan 12 04:13
  Re: the 1%, let me be clear. I think it's important to scapegoat them, protest their actions, and if possible bring their excesses under control because the obvious alternatives are much worse. Those alternatives include: 1) Letting them continue to take American society back to the good old days of the Gilded Age - and we're more than halfway ther […]
• #33: Kieran O'Neill (jonl) Thu 5 Jan 12 22:26
  Email from Kieran O'Neill:I don't think peak oil has gone away, just the predictions of armageddon (though some of that persists). It's actually getting fairly mainstream attention these days. And the fact remains that production is falling and demand is rising, with no viable alternative sources of energy in sight. That's likely to at le […]
• #32: Jon Lebkowsky (jonl) Thu 5 Jan 12 22:16
  Alex Steffen has a good point - we're really being pushed to a point where we have to avoid persistent self-delusion, wake up and take effective action. asks what we should be focusing on now. Climate change and environmental sustainability, building a viable energy future that doesn't depend on "the burn." Also building and sustaining a […]