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Humanity 3000 Participant Statement
Foundation For the Future
Please answer the following questions within the space allotted in these
two pages.
I. CRITICAL FACTORS
A. What are the factors that are most critical to the long term
survival of humanity?
1. The augmentation of our individual and collective intelligence so that
we would be able to tackle the complex problems that confront an
interdependent, changeful, information-rich world
2. The development of a universal "world view" that ties all our knowledge
together and shows us how we fit into the larger whole of evolution, thus
providing us with a "meaning of life". Its system of values should help us
to tell right from wrong in the most general contexts. It should be based
on scientific and philosophical insights about which everybody can agree,
rather than on dogmatic or culture-specific traditions.
3. The development of a practically enforceable political system, based on
the above values, that would allow us to manage global society and the
ecosystem, so as to increase the quality of life for humanity as a whole.
B. What are the current map and trajectory of these factors?
1. As demonstrated by the "Flynn effect", individual IQ has been increasing
over the past decades, together with the general level of education and the
technological support for processing information.
2. Developments in various fields, such as general systems theory,
cybernetics, evolution, complexity, self-organization and artificial
intelligence, seem to point to the emergence of a new scientific world
view, which is dynamic and holistic, and which would transcend both the
Newtonian world view, which is static and reductionist, and the different
prescientific, religious world views.
3. There is some movement towards supranational, political integration with
institutions such as the UN, EU, WTO and IMF. Awareness of global and
ecological issues is growing in different countries
C. What are the problems and opportunities with the factors identified?
1. The growth of complexity and available information in present society
has been so large that even with their increased cognitive level most
people still feel overwhelmed and unable to cope. The danger is real that
some classes of poorly educated people will be completely left behind,
while the most educated will suffer severe stress because of information
overload.
2. In spite of the many promises, 50 years of attempts to build a unified
systems science have met with little success, mostly because of the sheer
complexity of the task. In the meantime, existing scientific,
philosophical, ideological and religious systems of thought have continued
to erode and fragment.
3. Supranational integration and global management meet with huge
resistance, because of the intrinsic selfishness of nations and groups, who
are unwilling to give up their privileges for the common good. After the
fall of communism, there is as yet no credible political system to counter
the obvious shortcomings of capitalism.
II. POTENTIAL IN YOUR FIELD
What do you envision as the greatest potential/future in your field in
the 1000 year future?
The single most important opportunity is the emergence of a world-wide,
intelligent, computer network, a "global brain", that would make the whole
of existing knowledge instantly available to every individual. Its
intelligent processing of data and knowledge would help us to overcome
information overload, to solve extremely complex problems, such as managing
the global ecosystem, and to develop a unified world view that is both
firmly rooted in scientific results and applicable to every-day decisions.
Borderless exchange and discussion of ideas would make it easier to reach a
supranational consensus on values and global policy, while extensive,
real-time collection of data would help us to monitor progress towards the
chosen objectives.
III. DISCUSSION TOPICS/QUESTIONS
What are two or three topics/questions, critical to the long term future
that you wish to explore in small group settings at H3000?
How can we minimize the ill effects of too fast change ("future shock") on
individuals and society?
What are the opportunities and dangers associated with the overall
reduction of "friction" in technology, society and the economy?
How can we tackle the "inertia of desires", because of which people
continue to want more of some quantity (e.g. food, transport or
information) long after the real need has been saturated?
What are the prospects for reaching biological immortality?
IV. 1000 YEAR VISION
Please articulate your vision of the 1000 year future in a 3-5 line
statement.
I see humanity undergoing a "metasystem transition" to a higher level of
evolution. Humanity would be integrated into a single "superorganism",
where individual humans would play the roles of the cells in a
multicellular organism. The superorganism's nervous system, the "global
brain", would have a superhuman intelligence, and reason at a level of
abstraction or consciousness beyond anything we can presently imagine.
For more details, see http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/FUTEVOL.html
Name: Francis Heylighen .
_________________________________________________________________________
Francis Heylighen <fheyligh@vub.ac.be> -- Center "Leo Apostel"
Free University of Brussels, Krijgskundestr. 33, 1160 Brussels, Belgium
tel +32-2-6442677; fax +32-2-6440744; http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/HEYL.html