Imagining the Future - Utopian or Dystopian?!

[welshbairn]

28 minutes ago, AlbionSaint said:

Do you mean wind turbines, or wind mills?

Turbines, but you should hear the Dutch banging on about fucking windmills. They're still there though, too busy fingering dykes to do anything about it.

[Arabdownunder]

On 29/11/2021 at 23:08, Ross. said:

This system is available in Switzerland and has been for years. Not sure if it is a private company who do it, or if it is some government scheme. There are always a few cars parked near the train station where I live that you can hire by the day on the Mobility website/app. You pick it up from the car park, and drop it off either back there or at another of the designated parking places for those cars. I know a few people who use it relatively regularly. They all think it's a brilliant system.

There's a couple of similar services here. Targeted at people living in urban areas where driving a car isn't something you do everyday. Folk who commute by public transport, have local amenities within walking distance and only use the car for a big shop or for weekend leisure activities. The people I know who use it love it; no registration/road tax, parking permits etc. and a range of vehicles to suit your particular need on the day. GoGet is the biggest one.

[Ross.]

9 hours ago, AlbionSaint said:

An extract from Orwell's 1984:

 

 

I first read 1984 when I was fifteen years old, and I read it again recently and the above paragraph really resonated with me. There are some people who will enthusiastically endorse the proclamations of the existing power structure regardless of what it is, because they're either too stupid to realise its flaws or are looking to advance their social status. The same people will promote communism, fascism, feminism or anything else just so long as they think it accords with the prevailing culture.

If you doubt the above, ask yourself how many people would publicly defend homosexuality in their work place in the 1980s? Aye, there will be a few, but most would stay silent or denounce it as a sickness. The vast majority of people will comply with whatever agenda is promoted...and that has changed the values we hold, for better or worse.

 

Based on what I have read of your posts, the only Orwell I can paraphrase is “4 brain cells good, 2 brain cells better”.

[Ross.]

18 minutes ago, Snafu said:

We'll know when we are really in trouble when we log on in the morning to find two advertising spam bots have been arguing with each other since 4am on the food thread and Spambot1 has challenged Spambot2 to a fight in a Vietnamese Supermarket carpark.

At around 5am Spambot2 starts using memes of Patrick Bateman and Sponge Bob!!!

Half an hour later Spambot2 appears in the Headsgone Thread giving advise on relaxation and how to keep calm in stressful environments while promoting relaxing oils and candles. Spambot1 uses the report option.

The AI learns.

 

This is the future.

Spambot 3 quotes both while posting Spider-Man gifs.

[Lex]

People have been predicting doom and gloom about the future for as long as humans have existed.
They were especially obsessed with it around the 1600’s when the received wisdom was that the world was going to end in fairly short order.
They’ve always been wrong of course, and the world now is in better shape than ever.
Across the world life expectancy’s are going up, poverty is going down, average wealth is increasing and there’s less war now than ever.
I think the world and humanity will be just fine for the foreseeable future tbh.

[Ross.]

5 minutes ago, Snafu said:

8:10 it kicks off again and this time Spambot1 challenges @Shandon Par to a fight in a Vietnamese Supermarket Carpark after being referred to as 'its just a bot'.

Spambot3 uses the Micheal Jackson Thriller popcorn gif.

09:15 Spambot2 suddenly has mod powers and bans the other two bots.

What do you think happens next?

@Shandon Par injured himself at work.

[Glennie]

12 hours ago, Arabdownunder said:

The difference being that for the natural landscape there is an established system of ownership and permissions to do this (however imperfect this system) . Space seems to be open slather for Musk and the like to use as they like. Its the Tragedy of the Commons in the night sky

aye point is its already happened here and plebs have no power either

[The Moonster]

54 minutes ago, Lex said:

Across the world life expectancy’s are going up, poverty is going down, average wealth is increasing and there’s less war now ever.

Suicide rates up. 

[Fullerene]

1 hour ago, Lex said:

People have been predicting doom and gloom about the future for as long as humans existed.
They were especially obsessed with it around the 1600’s when the received wisdom was that the world was going to end in fairly short order.
They’ve always been wrong of course, and the world now is in better shape than ever.
Across the world life expectancy’s are going up, poverty is going down, average wealth is increasing and there’s less war now ever.
I think the world and humanity will be just fine for the foreseeable future tbh.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah but all I was asking was do you really think we are going to win on Saturday?"

[Lex]

Suicide rates up. 

Not according to the world health organisation:
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/1-in-100-deaths-is-by-suicide-but-global-rate-falling-who/2277625

[The Moonster]

16 minutes ago, Lex said:

 

Not according to the world health organisation:
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/1-in-100-deaths-is-by-suicide-but-global-rate-falling-who/2277625

 

Fair enough. It's up in Scotland. 

[resk]

9 hours ago, Arabdownunder said:

There's a couple of similar services here. Targeted at people living in urban areas where driving a car isn't something you do everyday. Folk who commute by public transport, have local amenities within walking distance and only use the car for a big shop or for weekend leisure activities. The people I know who use it love it; no registration/road tax, parking permits etc. and a range of vehicles to suit your particular need on the day. GoGet is the biggest one.

We've got Co-wheels here.  I've used it a few times and it's quite good, but given most of the parking spaces are on streets and not under cover, seagull shite can be a bit of an issue.  Keeping the cars clean is a big challenge I guess.  

[DiegoDiego]

Across the world life expectancy’s are going up

Correct apostrophe usage is going down.

[coprolite]

2 hours ago, Lex said:

People have been predicting doom and gloom about the future for as long as humans have existed.
They were especially obsessed with it around the 1600’s when the received wisdom was that the world was going to end in fairly short order.
They’ve always been wrong of course, and the world now is in better shape than ever.
Across the world life expectancy’s are going up, poverty is going down, average wealth is increasing and there’s less war now than ever.
I think the world and humanity will be just fine for the foreseeable future tbh.
 

True as at 2019

Covid reversed the poverty and income trends. 

Hopefully temporary, but what other shocks to the economy are still to come? 

[coprolite]

1 hour ago, Glennie said:

aye point is its already happened here and plebs have no power either

The tragedy of the commons never happened. It was a thought experiment to demonstrate a hypothetical point.

In real life the commoners generally solved the collective action problem between themselves because they weren't all stupid and selfish. 

What actually did for the commons was enclosure. 

Edited December 1, 2021 by coprolite
Splleeing

[BFTD]

13 hours ago, welshbairn said:

Why did the people who complain about windmills keep silent about all the electricity lines and towers crisscrossing the countryside for the last hundred years?

Have you forgotten all the pylon action community groups? There were loads of them when I was a kid. Dismantle the power grid because I only want to see "natural" things from the house people built for me.

I got the impression they all consisted of a single person. As recently as the early 2000s, there was still some loon in Stirling who'd plant anti-pylon signs on local farmland and occasionally send out leaflets.

[HeWhoWalksBehindTheRows]

On 30/11/2021 at 11:53, Arabdownunder said:

The occasional satellite is one thing, a stream of them dominating the night sky is another.

Stand looking up, somewhere there is very little light pollution, like say Skye, and it's a hell of a lot more than the occasional satellite.