io9
To-do lists are a great way to plan your week, and it turns out they're also not a bad tool for futurists either. We've put together 20 to-do list items that anyone can use to stop environmental disaster, speed the invention of artificial intelligence, jumpstart a moon colony, and help everyone become posthuman. Usually it seems like ordinary people can't contribute to massive projects that require scientific minds as well as philosophers and other specialists. But there are actually a lot of things you can do. Over the past week we've posted four separate to-do lists for futurists, and now we bring them all together so you can print them out, tuck them in your pocket, and start checking items off to change the world.
To-Do Lists for Futurists:
1. Five ways to build an ecotopia, an urban space that exists in harmony with nature
Sure, recycling helps, but so does repurposing an old machine.
2. Five ways to contribute to the creation of artificial intelligence
You can help bring about machines with the ability to reason just by surfing the web.
3. Five ways to start planning for a future moon colony in your bedroom
From growing plants with LEDs to participating in a space elevator contest, there are a lot of things you can do to make that moon vacation in 2030 a reality.
4. Five ways to become posthuman by this time next year
A software download that makes your computer search for proteins that cure cancer while you sleep, and a tiny device that will make your body machine-readable tomorrow.
Comments
I enjoyed this series and would look forward to the occasional future installments. I especially liked the idea of tutoring in your AI list (although my personal math skillz should be kept out of the hands of children).
Population control seems the most important task for our species now and one we have a better chance of actually doing something about. Spay and neuter ourselves. Educate the heck out of the precious darlings that have to inherit this shiny dys/utopia we're building for them.
What about jumping to stop global warming? ;)
Grey Area, humans have to be fruitful and multiply so we can populate the universe/s! We are Von Newmann machines. Thank goodness the Unverse/s is nearly infinite.
How about not having more than two children?
Think if the cops bust me for growing marijuana in my bedroom I can just claim that I'm planning for a future moon colony?
@Jeff-Minor:
I disagree. We are currently in a lot of trouble right now because we were too fruitful, in addition to being wasteful of limited resources.
My opinion is that unless we learn how to manage our population and whatever finite resources we need to use, the stars will remain forever out of our reach.
We have no hard facts, but it's my guess that most space-faring super-civilizations have extremely rigid population control. It's either that or the universe is already full of predators (tool using or not.), parasites and diseases (technological or not.) to cull the overly exhuberant breeders.
If the universe is finite, there will probably be a long period where a stable, global ecosystem will emerge where diversity is maintained and monocultures are avoided.
Corpore metal, I was agreeing with you, but was being a little hyberbolic. Althouhg, population presure might drive us to invent things that we otherwise wouldn't have to. Like better sanitation, fresh water purification, atmospheric reclaimation....All those things we might need to use on board a large ship.
@Grey_Area: I believe global warming and disease will help population control. Living off-world would be the best way to handle this problem but we would probably overpopulate another planet again within time. Humans grow more than twofold. We're like tribbles.[www.trekfrontier.com]
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