I think I’ve seen enough in a lifetime of living to be receptive to rethinking what really needs to happen to improve our lives. Just not to make things better, but to make them more exciting, bold and breathtaking. Things that stir the imagination.
Here are four possible events that might do the job:
Techno Utopianism, super charged equality, life beginning at the ninth decade, the Garden of Eden.
TECHNO UTOPIANISM: This is a term coined by global forecaster Ian Bremmer. The titans of the digital world (Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, intel . .) provide so much of the goods and services to the overwhelming majority of the world’s population that they could, according to Bremmer, become utopian in philosophy and create a government without boundaries in space. Governments on the ground with boundaries, and governments in space with no boundaries. I say, why not.
SUPER EQUALITY: Out of the utopian model there will be an assurance that basic freedom and protections are made possible to every human being on the planet. We’ve been playing around with this ideal too long. Something always gets in its way. For example, America passed many laws whittling away at slavery, but finally ended up in civil war. Slavery was done away for good. But then came the Jim Crow laws of the south. Then came the great Supreme Court decisions knocking down Jim Crow. Now we have states creating new laws meant to cut the rights of all people to vote. This chicanery will only stop by taking the fight from the ground and elevating it to the digital space. EQUAL MEANS EQUAL.
LIFE BEGINS AT THE NINTH DECADE: If we can have driverless cars by chucking them full of embedded sensors, why not with humans the same ways. Especially humans of the ninth generation (90 year olds). For example, if your legs no longer are strong enough to let you walk, put sensors in them that are tied to tiny micro machines that override your brain and let those legs walk via sensory stimulation and software programs that regenerate sensory pathways. This would be an automatic right granted all those of the ninth generation. The first digital humans.
THE GARDEN OF EDEN: When Star Trek star 90 year old William Shatner took his first trip into space, he came home with a profound appreciation for earth once he experienced its image from space. The irony of space travel will not be the venture to the stars but the craving of the light and beauty of the Garden of Eden left behind. After all, once you commit to space, all you will see is the continuous darkness of an empty universe. It’s light on earth every twelve hours or so. Soon we will do whatever we can to preserve the beauty and health of the tiny little planet the prophets of the Book of Genesis called the Garden of Eden. Let space travel flourish, and by the way, it’s these digital companies that are providing that space travel opportunity. You can’t see a world worth saving until you see it from dark, cold, empty space. And God looked down from the heavens at his creation and said it was good and placed Adam and Eve on it and called it the Garden of Eden. Why not?