When considering the future, is it more important to focus on
the extinction risk posed by advancing technology or the massive
potential for social advancement enabled by the same?
Futurist blogger and core Lifeboat Foundation member Michael
Anissimov argues that calculating and combating existential
risk is the moral imperative of our time. 
Anissimov writes, “In less
than a decade, humanity will likely develop weapons even more
deadly than nukes – synthetic life, and eventually, nanorobots and
self-improving AI. Even if we consider the likelihood of human
extinction in the next century to be small, say 1%, it still merits
attention due to the incredibly high stakes involved.”
Jamais
Cascio, founder of worldchanging.com and a popular
futurist blogger in his own right, concurs that existential risk is
a most valid concern.
In a recent Nanotechnology
Now column he explains, “[S]ome technologies may enable
individuals or small groups to carry out attacks, on infrastructure
or people, at a scale that would have required the resources of an
army in decades past. This is not an outlandish concern by any
means; many proponents of the “super-empowered angry individual”
(SEAI) concept cite the September 11 attacks as a crude example of
how vulnerable modern society can be to these kinds of threats.
It’s not hard to imagine what a similar band of terrorists, or
groups like Aum Shinrikyo, might try to do with access to molecular
manufacturing or advanced bioengineering tools.”
But then Cascio turns things around a bit and points out that
“angry people aren’t the only ones who could be empowered by these
technologies.”
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By JC Chan
In the next eight seconds 34 babies will be born to the world.
Of these five will be from India and four will be from China. In
ten years China will be the dominant English speaking country in
the world. With world population exploding and shifting so
dramatically, it’s easy to envision a future with billions more
humans inhabiting Earth than do today. But that may not be the
case. 
Consider the scenario presented in the sci-fi film Children
of Men (2006), a bleak vision of Earth in 2027 where humans
have mysteriously lost fertility and the ability to procreate. In
one scene, a scruffy-faced man named Theo, played by Clive Owen,
and a woman named Miriam walk across the dreary rust of an
abandoned school playground. Sitting on the squeaky swing set is
the African woman they are protecting, miraculously nursing in her
hands the first newborn the Earth has seen in over a decade. Miriam
recalls her days as a nurse delivering births. She notes that over
time fewer births were recorded until the day they ceased
altogether.
“As the sound of the playgrounds faded, the despair set in. Very
odd, what happens in a world without children’s voices,” she grimly
states.
The backdrop for the film is a future England that has adopted a
survivalist policy as it attempts to police millions of incoming
immigrants into concentration camps to preserve the little
remaining natural resources they have left. When I first watched
Children of Men, the idea of humanity wiped out by
widespread infertility seemed a little far-fetched. Certainly there
are many other, more viable ways for us to go: nuclear weapons,
terrorism, a nanotechnology nightmare, a super-resistant bacteria
strain, asteroids, global warming.
Growing up in the 90’s, schools and media have always drilled
into my head the post-war baby boom, exponential growth, limited
allocation of resources, and recycling, oh lots of talk about
recycling. (Note: I am an avid recycler.) Still, though we can and
should do something about issues like global warming and runaway
population growth, scenarios like the reality of the 2027 in
Children of Men remind us that there may well be other
formidable challenges on the horizon that may not be so much in our
control.
Case in point, a recent NYTimes Sunday Magazine article
by Russell Shorto entitled “No Babies?” addresses the very
real possibility of population decline. Shorto examines the sleepy
Italian town of Laviano in Southern Italy, a spectacular sight with
magnificent steep slopes and wild poppies adorning medieval
fortress ruins of a fortress, in which a population of 3,000 has
fallen to just 1,600 and still dropping.
This has caused such alarm that the Laviano’s mayor has created
a new fund to give any woman that would rear a child in the
village, a sum of 10,000 euros ($15,000). Though the plan has
resulted in a slight uptick in residents, Laviano is still steadily
losing population. (cont.)
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Half Empty, Half Full contrasts extreme positive and negative future scenarios. To create and submit your own Half Empty, Half Full simply follow this link, download the template by clicking on the thumbnail, open it in an image editor such as GIMP (free), then go to town creating totally original Yin & Yang futures.
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