In the past few decades, the digital revolution has given rise to a new modern world, one that is not dominated by pre-internet technology. The speed and magnitude of change has allowed technological advances to seep into our lives at an unprecedented rate. What this means is that while many things are better than they used to be, there are also much worse things happening from time-to-time. For instance, just recently an ecological disaster in China’s coal mines led to a catastrophic explosion in methane levels higher than those recorded in Earth’s atmosphere for all of human history thus far. This explosion could cause irreversible changes throughout the earth’s climate system and severely impact our ability to adapt for future generations.
Before the digital age, we could only have an abstract idea of what the future looks like. However, starting in the 1980s and continuing to this day, we have been able to simulate an entire new world (or worlds) in our pocket. Even with current astronomical errors and implementation problems, our simulations produce very similar results to each other. This means that some of our predictions regarding what the future might look like are accurate enough that we can use them to base decisions on how best to deal with certain scenarios today. For example, it is increasingly common for engineers and scientists to model future technology experiments and make choices accordingly by taking into account both past experimentation-based models as well as new theories.
This new ability to model the future closely has had a huge impact on our society. For example, before the digital age, we could not plan for specific changes that might be incrementally implemented over time. With rapid advancements in technology today, this is no longer the case. In essence, we can now look ahead and plan accordingly without requiring every single change to be planned and implemented all at once in order to create a new world. This allows us to consider far more complex systems (such as humans interacting with technology) than were previously possible before the emergence of computers and digital processes.
As the digital age continues to rapidly expand its technological reach, we will continue to be faced with new and unpredictable problems. For example, if humans continue their current technological expansion at the same pace we have been in the past, our world will look very different from what would have been possible even a few years ago. In fact, we may be making it so different that there will be no point in continuing our current technological advancement because it is unlikely that such a process could ever stop.
To avoid this situation we need to take seriously the idea that technology itself can not only make us obsolete as human beings but also potentially irreversibly lead us down a path of self-destruction. It is important that we do not take this too far and become overly pessimistic about the future. After all, it is not as if we will be completely unable to change our course or overcome these obstacles, there are simply many more of them than what were available to us in the past.
One of the most important tasks that we face as a species is to determine what our values are and how we can keep those values alive into future generations. Suppose for a moment that technology can no longer be used for anything but providing basic resources because some unforeseen disaster has left us technologically illiterate. For example, suppose our society has collapsed entirely and all of humankind has disappeared as a result of some long forgotten catastrophe.
In this new world we now live in, our values will be challenged by many things. As illustrated above, if our current trajectory continues, then eventually the physical resources available on earth will be depleted and a resource scarcity crisis will likely be imminent. Ironically, a resource scarcity crisis could also indirectly lead to the collapse of technology by severely limiting the availability of resources for other systems (like humans).
This is not to say that we should expect to get hit with such future events without warning; looking back at human history it seems relevant that we had no idea what we would face.
Post a Comment