So today the task I’ve assigned myself is talking about the worst case scenario for modern empires. Luckily the heat death of the universe will come for the human race eventually, but maybe we’ll be wiped out by global warming before then?
Or knocked back to medieval levels of civilizational development. But wait, maybe first the Zika virus will spread everywhere! (By the way, read Spillover. Your paranoia levels will shoot up.) All kinds of exciting possibilities!
Artwork by Robin Weatherall.
In the near-term, I think it would be pretty bad for basically the whole globe if Donald Trump won the US election, but not as catastrophic as the Twitterati sometimes makes it out to be.
For someone who often shares links with captions along the lines of “I CAN’T BELIEVE HOW DYSTOPIAN THIS IS”, I have little to say about worst-case scenarios. Truthfully, I’m an optimist. My views roughly conform to the Exponent podcast’s latest episode.
I think the internet will have a positive long-term effect. But yes, of course, settling into the next economic paradigm will be painful.
“[I]t is important to understand that technology always is situated and gets developed within a particular set of political and economic institutions — institutions that from time to time must be reconfigured in order for a country’s political economy to be able to maximize the productivity benefits of emergent technology platforms.” — Nils Gilman
I mean, really, just go read Gilman’s essay.
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