Remember those visions of the miraculous "cities of the future," like something out of "The Jetsons"? Never happened. Instead we got urban decay and suburbia.

We were told there would be a vaccine for HIV infection within 5-10 years. Never happened.

Etc.

Technology will always promise far more than it can deliver, because man's reach exceeds his grasp. Also because we're undermining the natural resource base on which everything depends.

What technology has been most successful at is delivering more and more potent ways for us to exterminate ourselves and other life forms, and for a few people to become incredibly rich at the expense of others.

France has an *official* 35 hour workweek. Most European countries have similar laws and loads.

I work 3.5 days a week, my income is above EU-15 average. I have 3 months vacation a year.

Progress: In many European countries, a woman's average life expectancy is now well over 80 years.

But I do agree, in most parts of the world, including the US, wealth is unequally distributed. If the top-100,000 earners of the US were told to hand in 20% of their wealth (that would still keep them multi-millionaires), then the average American citizen would be much wealthier.

If you look at the total value of wealth created since the industrial revolution, I think you would be surprised to see how much it really is though. Life expectancy alone is a great way to look at this progress. A mere century ago, people died before the age of 50.

I mean, you can't deny that we have made some progress, can you?

Half a billion Chinese people and a quarter of a billion Indian people have joined the global middle class in less than 3 decades. Progress does exist, don't you think?

Anyway, I work 3.5 days a week (of which 2 seriously), and I don't do bad, if I may say so myself. My parents' generation used to work 5 days a week. Their parents all week long; and our grand-grandparents had to slave to scratch some food together.

Progress does exist. The question is: is it being distributed in a fair way. And there, I agree, we have some work to do.

Are you mad? Your luxury and leisure are purely an exotic and temporary derivative of planetary destruction. Ditto for the "progress" of the Chinese and Indian middle classes (whose lifestyles still mostly suck, BTW).

There is no progress, just some temporary fun, a sort of drug high, for a few individuals, at the cost of the future.

You just don't get it, Lorenzo. You aren't following the developments on the fronts of resource depletion, global warming, mass extinction, overpopulation, death of the world ocean, ad infinitum.

How can you say we're making progress when we're systematically destroying our life support system, aka the earth?

^^Likewise you obviously are not following the daily advances in the many diverse fields of science.

Don't worry, we've nearly finished the job.

And doomsday.

i work a 4 day week and get 6 weeks paid vacation per year.

if i'm sick, i can take up to 6 months off work on full pay, then 6 month's half pay if necessary.

if i'm fired for any reason i can take my employers to an industrial tribunal hearing.

Sucks to be American!

I’m sorry, but this is very amusing. “We aren’t living like someone 50 years ago predicted we would be in the distant future, and so science and technology has failed us and sucks.” Sorry if you thought the fantasies of the likes of Roddenberry and Kubrick were how you would be living by now, but just because popular entertainment has failed to accurately predict the future doesn’t mean science and technology has failed.


You obviously aren’t following the developments in all those things either but rather are just focused on the problems. All those issues have solutions. It’s not a matter of hoping for some magical technology to come along and save the day – the technology exists. It’s a matter of getting small minded luddites to acknowledge that there are workable solutions that need to be put into action (Bush is a great example). It’s a matter of making the necessary social change to coincide with the technological change so that things can get better.

The problem isn’t science and technology, its politics. Fortunately, technology and society are intimately bound, and as technology continues to progress, so too will society transform and adapt to the realities of the world.

Good. Care to give a brief overview of the solutions, then?

Interested people may went to check out the July-August issue of Technology Review and read the cover story. I have copied and pasted the summary page.

It’s Not Too Late

Our planet faces a grave threat from global warming and
climate change, which are caused largely by emissions of
carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases generated by
human activity. Yet readily available energy technologies could
be put in use today to forestall their worst eff ects. In this issue
of Technology Review, we examine some of these technologies
and argue that they require not further refinement but a
considered, long-term strategy for their deployment.

Atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide—the most common
greenhouse gas—have shot up 32 percent in the
last 150 years. Geological evidence and climate science
suggest that we are approaching a tipping point beyond
which sea levels will rise catastrophically. Nevertheless,
immediate steps to sharply reduce emissions could still
prevent the worst consequences of global warming,
according to famed NASA climatologist Jim Hansen
(see “The Messenger,” by Mark Bowen, p. 38). In the
meantime, however, humankind is increasing, not
decreasing, consumption of fossil fuels—and even
getting cleverer about extracting them (see “The Oil
Frontier,” by Bryant Urstadt, p. 44). For the foreseeable
future, we will continue to burn fossil fuels:
they now provide 80 percent of the world’s energy,
and global energy demand will at least double by
2050. “Controlling carbon dioxide while also doubling
energy use is a rather remarkable challenge
to contemplate,” mused Ernest J. Moniz, an MIT
physicist and former undersecretary of the U.S.
Department of Energy, earlier this year as he discussed
an MIT research and education initiative aimed at confronting
the energy crisis.

In meeting this remarkable challenge, we must, in
particular, address the problem of coal. It is among
the largest sources of carbon dioxide and, regrettably,
is also the cheapest and most abundant fossil
fuel. But cleaner technology—in which carbon dioxide
could be captured and sequestered—is ready to go into
new coal plants now (see “The Dirty Secret,” by David
Talbot, p. 52). Similarly, improved versions of today’s
nuclear power plants await construction (see “The Best
Nuclear Option,” by Matthew L. Wald, p. 58). Unfortunately,
implementation of cleaner technologies has been
thwarted by federal aimlessness. The Energy Department
keeps changing its nuclear-research strategy, and
a “FutureGen” zero-emission coal demonstration
project announced three and a half years ago by
President Bush hasn’t yet picked a site.
At least one alternative energy technology is
also coming into its own. Ethanol production from
biomass is already a booming business in Brazil
(see “Brazil’s Bounty,” by Stephan Herrera, p. 28);
with help from bioengineered organisms, it could
soon be effi cient enough to compete directly with
traditional energy sources (see “Redesigning Life
to Make Ethanol,” by Jamie Shreeve, p. 66).
There is no escaping the reality that in the end,
we will need an energy economy based on solar,
wind, and other renewables (see “It’s Not Too Early,” by
Marty Hoffert, p. 69). We’d like to have an all- renewable
energy portfolio today. But we cannot wait any longer
for new technologies, as Joseph Romm, an Energy
Department renewable-energy offi cial during President
Clinton’s administration, made clear at a conference
in April. “The point is,” he said, “whatever technology
we’ve got now—that’s what we are stuck with to avoid
catastrophic warming.” DAVID TALBOT

Are you mad? Your luxury and leisure are purely an exotic and temporary derivative of planetary destruction.

I wouldn't say he was mad, he's just a prime example of 99.9% of peoples' thinking. Only concentrating on what they see in front of their face, no thought as to how it got there, whats' behind it, the damage it causes. As is clearly evident, people can deny anything if it doesn't fit their world view, right till the end.

Are you mad? Your luxury and leisure are purely an exotic and temporary derivative of planetary destruction.

I wouldn't say he was mad, he's just a prime example of 99.9% of peoples' thinking. Only concentrating on what they see in front of their face, no thought as to how it got there, whats' behind it, the damage it causes. As is clearly evident, people can deny anything if it doesn't fit their world view, right till the end.

It isn't a matter of style, Omnitir.

Science and technology have failed because they have not demonstrably improved the human condition or contributed to human happiness. They have also failed because they have created the tools of biosphere destruction, which are now being applied with withering effectiveness. The one possible exception is in the area of medical science; however, even that is debatable because most people in this world cannot afford the benefits of modern medicine and because many of our diseases are direct products of the technologically shaped lifestyle.

Well, of course politics is an issue. Give the scientists free reign and they'll foist on us Frankenstein, or clouds of self-propagating nanoparticles choking off our alveoli, or the thorium bomb. They need to be controlled.

However, there's also the little problem of money. Research and the applications of research findings are often hideously expensive and getting more so all the time. We ultimately may not be able to afford your "solutions," even if they get invented in time.

It's funny how the technology viewpoint is, "Trust us, we'll come up with the answers if you give us the money and the power"---when technology is in large part responsible for our dilemma in the first place! Technology produced the atom bomb, the land mine, DDT, advanced high-speed pumps draining the world's aquifers, the chain saw, the harpoon gun . . . technology is no better than the creatures who use it, which is why it will fail.

Just off the top of my head;

Permaculture, electric vehicles, planting trees, public transport, nuclear power, biofuels, geothermal power, hydro-electric power, solar panels, solar towers, wave power, wind power, waste reduction, cycling, seed mutation, genetic manipulation, space mirrors, growth in cyberspace, growth in aerospace, carbon sequestration, coal liquefaction, atmospheric particle injection, 250mpg vehicles, sky sails, walking, car pooling, rapid prototyping (or 3D printing), telecommuting, turning things off when not using them, enhanced oil recovery...

And that’s just some of the stuff that is ready to go right now. The decades ahead will see far more solutions become viable.

Politics didn't do this to us, science and technology did:



Society will not "transform", it will collapse. Its method of adapting to the realities of the world will be to implode in a cataclysm of mass starvation.