Comments on: The world is flat

By:

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 02:37:10 +0000

Trade routes, schmaderoutes, if nanotechnlogy progresses exponentially as it has begun doing, far sooner than 2050 we will not need trade. Each one of us will be able to manufacture what ever we want, from food to vehicles to housing using air, water and dirt. If we can progress morally and intellectually as well, we will not need governments, nations and warfare either. Let us not think small, and limit ourselves to the outmoded wrangling of the previous million years or so of human evolution. We don’t NEED to war if we lack for nothing, as long as we realize that the alternative of nanotechnological warfare brings horrors almost beyond conception.

By:

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 03:56:28 +0000

And drive-bys like yours are higher value than Friedman’s thinking because…?

By:

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 01:58:36 +0000

Friedman isn’t unconventional, he’s a standard issue neocon hack.

By:

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 04:21:16 +0000

My advice would be not to argue with George Friedman about history. He’s right that the US domination of the seas is unprecedented; the British tried, but failed to achieve the level of domination that the United States enjoys, and aggressively pursues. I’ve read a great deal of Friedman’s material over the years, and while he’s not infallible– no one is– he certainly knows his history and his geography. (And US dominance of the seas isn’t Friedman’s pet theory, it’s pretty much a consensus view among historians. Mahan won the argument with MacKinder, at least for the moment.)

On the other hand, my advice to Friedman would be to leave the futurism to the futurists. I don’t find anything fundamentally wrong with his ideas about, say, solar energy, but his notions of the time scale and impact of robotics strike me as being linear rather than exponential. Or in other words, as I put it to a friend a few months ago, I don’t think he “gets” Moore’s Law. Not really. Not really.

For instance, right now, and for pretty much all of written history, controlling trade routes has been the route to power. But after another twenty generations of Moore’s Law, especially as it applies to robotics and manufacturing, what exactly are the trade routes going to be? These are not questions with obvious answers, which means that the geographical route to dominance is no longer obvious, either.

By:

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 23:03:31 +0000

Let’s see – a rosy scenario – accept what about over population, climatic Armageddon. I’m afraid if your counting on technology, you may be dead before the end of this century. Only massive world cooperation can change the course we are presently on. We all live in glass houses and the world is going to be full of rude shocks. By the way, if you are an employed nanotechnologist, see how your view of matters changes when your funding dries up. But on the bright side, you may die of starvation before you are replaced by intelligent machines.

By:

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 11:50:50 +0000

What about millions of towers of glass and steel to create all described