Showing posts with label accelerating change. Show all posts
Showing posts with label accelerating change. Show all posts

Monday, November 15, 2004

Accelerating Change and Horizons

While I work on my big post election essay... suggesting ways that Enlightenment Civilization can endure... let me recommend a few places to visit in the meantime.

An exceptionally cogent appraisal by Stephen Potts can be seen at Armageddon Cafe: Faith-Based vs. Reality-based America. 

Some delicious online comics await you at:
This Modern World, by Tom Tomorrow
Spiders on Electric Sheep Comics, by Patrick Farley


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One person posted a comment asking for a transcript of my recent speech at the Accelerating Change conference at Stanford University, where we blissfully looked farther ahead into humanity's future, beyond our nation's present (and hopefully brief) panicky rejection of tomorrow. A partial transcript can be found at the Accelerating Change website.

Some of the ideas can be found however in the transcript of the keynote address I gave before the Libertarian Party's national convention (proof that my political opposition to this administration is not merely based on "liberalism, but on a more broadly ranging belief in modernity). This speech is available on my website: Essences, Orcs and Civilization.

philanthropyAnother place where I explore the idea of "horizons" can be found at: Horizons and Hope: The Future of Philanthropy. Here I explore m 'EON' proposal for a philanthropic foundation, Eye of the Needle:

Is the world improvable by means of human intervention? The question can be debated endlessly on a philosophical level. But there is little argument over this basic premise within the community of those engaged in philanthropic activity. We share a common belief that vigorous investment and intervention in humanity can help humanity as a whole -- and countless individual human beings -- to achieve goals starting with basic necessities but extending to the limits of ambition.

Finally, let me leave you with some quotations:

On July 26, 1920 HL Mencken wrote the following in the Baltimore Evening Sun :

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."

And - in light of the unbelievable scandal over touch screen voting systems that lack any audit trail, operating under closed source proprietary software made by companies with blatant GOP connections -

"It's not who votes that counts but who counts the votes" -- Joseph Stalin.

Monday, November 08, 2004

A nice blog...

Just a note of thanks to Dana Blankenship for his flattering blog about my talk at the Accelerating Change conference at Stanford. Read a summary at: http://web.archive.org/web/20130729211341id_/http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail358.html

"Brin's talk was a therapy session. 'We need criticism,' Brin said: 'Karl Popper said that if you're not making falsifiable statements you're not making statements.' And he could have added, you only learn when you change your mind."

Brin's point here was, "We have to stop acting out of our own self-righteousness and recognize that we too may be subjects of propaganda." And finally, "Only in an open society can we charge into the future."

A few inaccuracies... but he and the rest of the audience at the Stanford University Conference on Accelerating Change seemed to "get it"... that we need to remain a civilization that looks ahead, with both skepticism and eagerness, toward a future of open horizons. Not one featuring a stage-set drama of the end-of-the-world.



David Brin
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