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Revolution, Flashmobs and Brain Implants in 2035
siddesu writes "Marxist revolution, WMDs, flashmobs and other sci-fi items are coming soon in a country near you, according to the UK Ministry of Defence. 'Information chips implanted in the brain. Electromagnetic pulse weapons. The middle classes becoming revolutionary, taking on the role of Marx's proletariat. The population of countries in the Middle East increasing by 132%, while Europe's drops as fertility falls. "Flashmobs" — groups rapidly mobilised by criminal gangs or terrorists groups.
This is the world in 30 years' time envisaged by a Ministry of Defence team responsible for painting a picture of the "future strategic context" likely to face Britain's armed forces.'"
Or watched too much television or other media ''predictions''. This strikes me on par with the typical predictions made 30 years ago. Allmost none of them have come to pass.
Bottom line: These people should be liable for wasting taxpayer money.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Information chips implanted in the brain. Electromagnetic pulse weapons. The middle classes becoming revolutionary, The population of countries in the Middle East increasing by 132%, "Flashmobs" Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling! Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes! The dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats living together - mass hysteria!
Well, let me quickly write a scenario for my boss. What will happen in 10 years if they dont immediately fund my division with an additional 3 million bucks and 22 new engineers. Can I say our customers will come to the corporate headquarters and sack and pillage it and carry away the fetching executive assistant the CFO has hired? Nah, wont work. Our management is not as dumb as the UK DoD.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Islamic fundamentalists currently fume against the shower of western culture entering their lands - TV, movies, etc., and the presence of US soldiers. Fairly soon they will face (or already face) a torrent of goods and products from China, which will surely bring with it some cultural impact. Perhaps this will not be of critical impact until Chinese soldiers are stationed outside of China, but that too may occur, as China becomes the main consumer of middle-eastern oil and other resources, prompting it to secure those resources, if only by token military presences in various locations.
No
It was also a comic book!
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I'm in favour of radical systemic change, but let's not make the mistake of 20th century revolutions. The main problem was creating an all powerful state that owned everything, including the people. In one word: centralisation.
The new goal should be the total opposite: decentralisation, community sovereignty, individual freedoms. Instead of creating a centralized state to control everything, lets create global networks of autonomous local communities and workplaces. No central authority, no presidents, effectively no nation-states. Democracy works best when people can meet in real life, face to face. Direct democracy, or horizontal democracy (no hierarchy) means everyone can have a say on issues that effect them. That means small scale is best.
A.K.A: Anarchism.
The system I've just described is not unlike the Opensource community. So we have an example already that works.
If you want a revolution, you're a dumbass. Forget communism, with the implications of violent overthrow of the ruling class. We've already had that, and it didn't work. Meanwhile, in other parts of the world, we HAVE thrown off the ruling class, and we're letting them back into their old jobs by small measures, through tax cuts and corporate welfare.
This is how socialism and eventually communism will happen - by default, naturally, no revolution. The cost of capitalizing a new activity will eventually drop to near zero for everything. I don't know if this is going to happen through a universal nanotech assembler, or through ubiquitous robotic slaves building shit for us in exchange for duracells, but it's going to happen. Everything is going to eventually be so cheap that it won't be worth selling. When you can get your robot to build you a car of your own design, and all you have to do is plug it in, you won't be going to Ford to buy a piece of shit Tempo-like ugly box. No, you'll design your own, or you'll download a GNU car schematic of something cool like the Linux-go-cart and tell your robot slave to build it for you. Richard Stallman will finally become relevant to everyone when his ideas move up a level of implementation from computers to the real world. It'll be just like Second Life where you use a computer editor to change your house - and your REAL house changes into a castle. Plus you can edit the length of your own cock to keep up with the Jones's. Hell, your wife could edit the length of her cock too!
That's my fantasy. Now, who's written a nice sci-fi novel about that?
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Not really. Remember that religion is the excuse, not the reason. The reason is power.
There are only four paths to power:
#1. Political
#2. Economic
#3. Family/Tribal
#4. Religion
As long as there is flexibility in those, only the hard-core nut cases will become extremists. Once you start blocking access to any of them, you start creating more extremists.
And look at that. The goods represent economic issues. The soldiers represent political issues (political power flows from the barrel of a gun). Crack those and the fundamentalists become just more street lunatics who don't bathe regularly.
This is where I believe the Chinese will learn from our mistakes.
DO NOT make your presence visible in the volatile areas. Have them travel to see you.
DO NOT make your economic advantage visible in the volatile areas. Adopt their appearance.
Work with their family/tribal structures.
Keep your religious practices subdued. We have a big problem because of the Crusades. China doesn't have that issue.
You can actually extend that concept to the entire world. The income and quality-of-life disparity between, say, the US and Afghanistan/Iran/Iraq/etc. is enormous. Someone needs to tell Bush that they don't hate us because they hate freedom, a growing number of them hate us because they want a piece of the pie.
This, I think, is the crux of the disagreement. On one hand, you have people -- usually but not always social liberals -- claiming that the source of the world's problems are mostly economic, and that terrorists are produced by folks envious of our plasma TVs, SUVs, and 40-hour-workweeks.
On the other hand you have others -- usually but not always social conservatives -- claiming that the source of terrorism and related global instability is philosophical, religious, and dogmatic: e.g., what the terrorists hate isn't our conspicuously consumptive lifestyles per se, but really they hate the concept of a secular society in general, and really only hate McDonalds, etc., as a symptom of this essential problem.
I don't think the differences between these views can be overstated, because they lead to vastly different ways of visualizing and dealing with the threat of Islamic radicalism and terrorism generally. If the problem is economic imbalance, then you could theoretically correct it through trade and economic-aid programs. But if the problem is philosophical, then by fixing the wealth disparity, you're just enabling terrorism; giving people whose motivations are fundamentally opposed to secularism the means with which to really attack us.
I've seen little convincing evidence and lots of rhetoric on both sides. The fact that people like Bin Laden came from wealthy families, not poor ones, would seem to at least partially substantiate the theory that you can't just give radicals a house, a car, and a front lawn, and suddenly transform them into happy little proto-Americans.
I would much prefer to believe that the problem is economic rather than religious or philosophical, because that to me seems like a tractable problem. However, I'm not particularly upbeat on that being the case.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
You fuck with the middle classes at your peril. A large, prosperous middle-class is the best guarantee of social stability -- unfortunately in the past it has accompanied appalling treatment of classes below, and neglect of the classes above.
If you can somehow engineer middle-class contentment along with opportunity and encouragement for those less fortunate, and keep the rich or aristocratic in their place at the same time as letting them use their wealth, you'll have solved it. But somehow I don't see either a surveillance UK or a fundamentalist USA as the places for this Brave New World to arise.
We have such a world now in the US. It's called the public school system. The rich can afford to send their kids to private schools, where discipline is enforced and kids are motivated, almost guaranteeing entry into college, which they can also afford. All the kid has to do is put forth the slightest effort.
Meanwhile, public schools suck. There is no discipline and if a kid falls behind, they get left there. The kids that "get it" have to sit there and wait while the teacher has to explain it over and over to the kids that don't understand or don't care. Teachers have no choice but to teach to the lowest common denominator in every class, ensuring the entire class learns at the pace of the slowest minds. Granted, if a students wants it bad enough, he or she can learn. They do more than is required of the class and learn all the material before the class is even held. For these kids, the class itself is a waste of time, but they still have to be there. These kids graduate high in their class and score well enough on standardized tests to get admitted to college on scholarship or loans. This is where the middle/lower class opportunity comes in. It's rare, but it happens and it allows for poor kids to climb out of their "class".
Of course, you have the occasional entrepreneur that makes it as well, but even Gates dropped out of Harvard. Not a whole lot of community college drop-outs make it to the billionaire club.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
In your comment, both sides tend to view the "problem" through their political / economic / religious filters.
Then they discard any examples that doesn't match their model while over emphasizing the ones that match.
A rich guy can turn extremists because he sees how poor people he identifies with are.
The models you describe do not account for empathy or other forms of social awareness. They are purely mercenary.
Terrorism is linked to extremism. You cannot eliminate extremism so you cannot eliminate terrorism. But you can can reduce the appeal of extremism by increasing the accessibility of political and economic power.
One nut case is just one nut case. If there isn't a ready pool of converts, that nut case will eventually take care of himself. The problem is when that nut case finds a pool of potential converts and those converts usually do result from political / economic / family / religious inequalities.