Building the Future
What is the Future?
The future is what you make of it. It is the time that comes after and it is created by the present. It is considered different from the present but rooted in it.
When we picture future, we can see two things:
- Positive progress - new technologies, peace, wealth, prosperity
- Negative progress - climate disaster, poverty, stagnation and scarcity
When thinking about the future, you can be optimistic or pessimist. The future is created either consciously or unconsciously through the activities that we conduct in the present.
The future doesn't specify technology or disaster, it is simply a linear progression of time.
Earth will go round the sun, and this will happen for the next 1 billion years until the sun engulfs it in flame. That's the future, no Earth will exist then.
The future knows no technology, technology is important to human beings as it allows us to live longer and more prosperous in our time in this universe. Technology is important relative to humans, not to the universe.
When we say that technology is changing the world, we mean that it touches human lives. We do change the Earth by extracting resources and you can call that change but every organism changes and interacts with its environment, we just have better and bigger ways of doing it.
When we think about the future, we are thinking about how our lives will be in the future. With this lense, you can start to ask the question: How do we want to live in this future? The answer to this question always changes based on culture, priorities, knowledge and capabilities of the society in question. A Maasai moran would simply want more cattle and greener pasture. A banker would want to more clients and bigger profits. The scientist will want more discoveries in our understanding of science. The future is subjective and it is chosen by people. They choose to imagine it and work on building it.