Long Conversation, an epic relay of one-to-one conversations among some of the Bay Area's most interesting minds, took place over six hours in San Francisco on Saturday, October 16, 02010. Interpreting the Long Conversation in real time was a data visualization performance by Sosolimited; an art and technology studio out of M.I.T.
Long Conversation was presented with a live performance of 1,000 minutes of composer Jem Finer's Longplayer.
Bio
Danese Cooper
Danese Cooper is a programmer, computer scientist, and advocate of open source software. Known as the "Open Source Diva" after stints as an open source community builder at Sun Microsystems, Intel, and REvolution Computing, she is currently Treasurer on the board of the Open Source Initiative. Since February, 2010, she is the Chief Technical Officer of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Peter Schwartz
Peter Schwartz is co-founder and chairman of Global Business Network (GBN), a unique membership organization and worldwide network of strategists, business executives, scientists, and artists based in Emeryville, California.
Established in 1988, GBN specializes in corporate scenario planning and research on the future of the business environment. From 1982 to 1986, Schwartz headed scenario planning for the Royal Dutch/ Shell Group of Companies in London. His team conducted comprehensive analyses of the global business and political environment and worked with senior management to create successful strategies.
Before joining Royal Dutch/ Shell, Schwartz directed the Strategic Environment Center at SRI International. The Center researched the business milieu, lifestyles, and consumer values, and conducted scenario planning for corporate and government clients.
Schwartz is the co-author of both The Long Boom, and When Good Companies Do Bad Things: Responsibility and Risk in an Age of Globalization. Schwartz is also the author of The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World. This seminal publication on scenario planning has been translated into Dutch, Portuguese, and Chinese.
Schwartz also co-authored Seven Tomorrows: Toward a Voluntary History with James Ogilvy and Paul Hawken in 1982, and The Emergent Paradigm: Changing Patterns of Thought and Belie with James Ogilvy in 1979. He has published and lectured widely and served as a script consultant on the films War Games and Sneakers. Schwartz received a BS in aeronautical engineering and astronautics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Study of current trends in order to forecast future developments. The field originated in the “technological forecasting” developed near the end of World War II and in studies examining the consequences of nuclear conflict. Studies in the 1960s sought to anticipate future social patterns and needs. The Limits of Growth by Dennis Meadows, et al. (1972), focused on global socioeconomic trends, projecting a Malthusian vision in which the collapse of the world order would result if population growth, industrial expansion, pollution, food production, and natural-resource use continued at current rates. Later reports reiterated many of these concerns, with critics contending that futurologists' models were flawed and futurologists responding that their analytic techniques were becoming increasingly sophisticated. Other notable works include Alvin Toffler's Future Shock (1970), Daniel Bell's The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (1973), Jonathan Schell's The Fate of the Earth (1982), and Nigel Calder's The Green Machines (1986).
Well according to current trends as more of the world becomes like the first world with rising incomes there will be lowering birthrates. If the current trend continues this will naturally lower the worlds population and increase it income of all. However what is important to note is that with fewer people there will be fewer minds to help solve problems and fewer to invent. Of course increasing the standard of living for the bottom third will enable them to use their minds towards important myriad challenges.
Perhaps there is room for another utopian vision of the future which has an ever growing population of well to do people and therefore (hopefully) educated who will be able to overcome the (artificial and/or perceived and/or current) limits on population. Humanity has been able to progress at such breakneck speeds because of our histrionically enormous population; I think I can rightly extrapolate that our innovativeness has a very strong correlation with our free(read:non heavily religious) population.
Yes, he should've specified whether he meant the population decrease would come about through natural attrition or disaster, but since he is optimistic, I assume he means natural attrition. He didn't say the next 200 years would be full of pandemics and nuclear wars and THEN things would get good.
So this Schwartz guy thinks we are moving towards a more "positive" future with the fact that in 300 years the lowest paid position/laborer in the world will be making $100,000 dollars a year?... but that is with a world population of only 2 to 3 billion... it is now 6.8 billion and rising... meaning that for "his" great future to happen we will have to "lose" between 4 to 7 billions of people between now and then depending on when the birth growth starts to decrease, when war eliminates some, when the lack of resources takes some... and we start mandatory limiting of births (like China)... in other words, in the next 300 years we'll have to prevent, let die, or kill off more people than are on this planet currently in order for "his" future to be "positive"... interesting thought, don't you think? Thank God I'll be long dead before that "Great Social Global World Economy" (no he did not use those terms but he was thinking it all the time and intimating at it) will come to pass.
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