However, with that in mind I've decided that I should probably take this blog in a slightly different direction. I will continue to write about bands and music that interests me but I'm also an engineering student. So there's probably going to be a bit more fucking around with technical concepts and perhaps some discussion of technical activism as I am still "tru punx" at heart (of course, my love of material things, showers and expensive liquor prevents me from being "tru punx" in life).
With that in mind I thought I might try to talk a little about "the future", the nebulous and grandiose place that we all dream of living in and yet fail to reach on account of time's constant failure to move faster than one second per second. If you don't dream of living in a better and brighter future I suspect you and I probably won't get along (neo-primitivists fuck off *to the tune of nazi punks by Dead Kennedys*) so now might be the time to stop reading.
As ever, I haven't planned this out and am making it up as I go along so this will get rambly.
I'm likely to be wrong if I attempt to make any kind of predictions about the future so I won't try to do that. Instead perhaps I will talk about the kind of future I want to live in and ways in which this might be achieved. Tamora and I have been talking a little about solar-punk (a reaction to steampunk/cyberpunk/life in general) and the nature of the future. Rather than just send her an email I figured I'd write something a little more public.
So:
3D printers. Gonna be huge and ubiquitous at some point (perhaps also invisible like plumbing and electricity in the first world now). That point is still at long way off though. People more eloquent and informed than myself have predicted that 3D printing will replace all basic commodity goods but that crafted/boutique goods will still be in demand so retail isn't quite dead just yet. That said, there's going to be a massive market for printable object maps and hopefully we'll solve the whole intellectual property/copyright debate before then.
Interestingly the Pirate Bay is already offering "physibles" for download, the first of which I believe was a bust of the head of the MPAA. The IP debate is something I'd like to talk about further but I'll save that for another post.
If we can come up with a 3D printer that's cheap enough and easy enough to use I don't see a reason we couldn't have a similar project to One Laptop per Child.
This leads nicely to the next point;
Climate change/peak oil. The question of peak oil is not whether or when we'll run out but rather will we actually have enough energy and capability to make the transition away from fossil fuels. Bruce Sterling's Viridian Design movement connects nicely to this in the sense that sustainability is crucial to our future.
I'm confident that the current moves to mitigate climate change are too little too late but similarly, I don't think we're going to see an apocalyptic collapse of society either. Things are going to change (probably radically) but I suspect we'll (my generation) live to see a shift in the functioning and power structures of society thanks to climate change. I don't know enough (any) geopolitics to accurately talk about who will come out on top but I don't think the USA has what it takes to survive as a super-power any more.
India, China and SE Asia I think will be the new rich of the 21st century with Australia and maybe Scandinavia in strong positions also. This of course assumes that climate change doesn't obliterate Australia, drown Scandinavia and starve Asia.
Then there is the demands of the developing world to have "luxuries" and lifestyle of the first world, something that climate change may well prevent.
More on this later.
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