New
complexities, irritating disruptions of trusted practices, and
accelerating change seem to characterise our times. Uncertainty
about the future is acknowledged by many. The rate of change is
unmeasured; hence it is felt. Curiously, artists, intellectuals and
laypersons, each seem self-de-rooted.
Hence,
what is 'The
New' that
is up to us, in a world of somehow self-driving cars, subsistence
fishermen and first climate refugees? Our views focus' on the next
corner, the next turn of a road. Where are the signposts? Who has a
sketch of the roads ahead? Does vision lack? What marks the debates?
The technology-fascinated disagree. Yet, their vision is just
'scale-up', massively to reach a singularity. Does this change in
quantity leads to new quality? Hence, is Mr Hegel calling?
Questions
to the participants at #SGSCULTURE #593:
What
will our planet look like in 2050 or 2100?
Who
or what will control our lives?
What
will it mean to be human?
[*]
Let's
drop the big stone, the rock, the landslide into the deep water, and
observe the waves. What to envision for the years 2050 to 2100, times
when my children and grandchildren will be getting old, respectively?
Ten
statements are offered here. Each implies a considerable alteration
of the present state of people's dealings; some deem clear-cut some
are underlying. How would artists, designers and culture-activists
anchor them in emerging trends? What seeds they could plant to give
them lives.
- People overcame the multiple societal-environmental emergencies of the 2030-ties; then life-expectancy had stalled globally. During this crisis, luckily the use of arms of mass destruction got hindered; although some 'conventional warfare' occurred.
- By 2050, collaborative Earth System Governance has emerged and the life-expectancy (number of healthy years) of people started to increase again.
- In most regions, the species extinction rates got capped. The deterioration of the vital global ecosystems has halted.
- In 2100, the global human population has stabilised at little less than 11 Billion people; slow decline seems possible now. Open societies have led to about equal levels of development in all urbanised regions.
- Networks and circular supply-chains enforce participatory handling of societal-environmental problems including large-scale migration of people.
- Joint efforts are ongoing to relocate people from the ocean shorelines (and some other now uninhabitable zones); 'managed human retreat' because of sea-level rise and 'rebuilding of (coastal) urban areas' is a global policy.
- The rate of change of societal-environmental systems has been capped, and the diversity of the 'human niche' is made a 'species goal'.
- Most production systems use processes that are derived from synthetic biology with embedded quantum-technologies.
- Since 2050, emotions emerged spontaneously in complex information systems, and since then they consolidated into stable societal features. Since then, such 'feeling systems' and the various (collective and individual) 'people-tool systems' got a dedicated legal status in most countries.
- Our outpost on Moon and Mars may be reopened soon after the burial of the bodies of the early colonists on Earth.
Such
a new may stretch our imagination to the breaking point. Hence,
Irritation! That's the purpose. The eyes stay shut, facing 'The
New',
listening to the orange clockwork.
For
many of our fellow citizens, 'The Future', with capital "F",
is the march towards "About-the-Same".
It may be a bit more
of the same. For most people, The Future
is nothing that is 'made'.
It
is something to be endured. And, disasters or war deem ready to
disrupt its regular gait.
It
is this aeon-old view, "Nihil
sub sole novum" (nothing
new under the sun) that for many provides a sense of security.
Astonishingly,
'The Future'
is
a reference frame. It embeds our myopic
starring at the next turn of events.
Yet, what to do when this reference frame seems to change, to wobble
and, hence gets uncertain. Then, menacingly, 'The
Unknown' frames
the stages of our plays. Irritatingly, 'The
Counter-Intuitive' seems
to consolidate out of our plays. Threateningly, they block the way
back. The horsemen of the modern apocalypse, 'The
New', 'The Unknown',
and 'The
Counter-Intuitive'
threat
with
insecurity, loss of competences, altered divisions of societies, and
lost sense!
Some
people relish the 'The
New', 'The Unknown', and
'The
Counter-Intuitive'.
Artists,
Explorers, Scientists feel
a
deep sensual pleasure when confronting them, as a person and as
citizens. The artist's psyche, the explorer's spirits, the
innovator's minds, the researcher's souls are resources vibrating
with imagination and passion. Hence, nutured by them the citizenries may confront Quantum-Technology,
Earth System Sciences, Artificial Intelligences, and Synthetic
Biology. Then the citizenries will draft the new 'guides to these
galaxies'. They will tell, whether '42'
is still the right answer, why your towel might be sufficient, and
who moved the restaurant(s) at the end of the universe(s)? [**]
Only
as citizens, the artists, cultural practitioners, inventors and
scientists can push the boundaries of the human imagination.
As
citizens, jointly
they may move beyond the familiar and transcend the borders towards
the future. But, are they ready to assume this task? Do they invest
collaboratively in path-changing discoveries, different fates of our
planet, and charting pathways to liveable futures? Only then, 'The
New',
'The
Unknown',
and 'The
Counter-Intuitive' will
face the broad, vigorous smile of 'The
Imaginator' - Surrender!
[*]
This post is the second 'modulation' of the scene setter for the
Salzburg
Global Seminar
#593 "The
shock of the New: Arts, Technology and Making Sense of the Future"
(Salzburg,
20-25 February 2018). This text was drafted after the seminar during
my travel home.
The
first 'modulation' of the scene setter had been published as the post
“The
New, The Unknown, and The Counter-Intuitive”
before the seminar. Hence, borrowing a notion from music, these posts
may be seen as a prose-variations of the theme of the seminar.
