teb_art t1_j2a4nqf wrote on December 30, 2022 at 7:19 PM

I’m going to go a bit off-topic and simply list a handful of items that make me nervous about the next couple of decades:

machines/AI increasingly obsoleting jobs; I think basic income for all MUST be established at some point or universal poverty will ensue.
current trends showing fewer people in the US going to college (can someone speak to other countries?). This is frightening, because the less educated you are, the more easily manipulated. We see that already.
less educated people reproducing faster than more educated.
too many people on the planet, overall. Total global births MUST diminish.

As for technology, I mostly love it. Who wants to go back to paper maps?

noonemustknowmysecre t1_j2d6jdc wrote on December 31, 2022 at 10:53 AM

> too many people on the planet, overall. Total global births MUST diminish.

OR, alternatively, we need to stop polluting so much and use what limited resources we have more efficiently. Thanks to all the technological advances, food isn't one of them. We have plenty of food. It's cheap. It's the first one that everyone jumps to, what with all the extra mouths to feed, but it's really not the problem.

Let's not advocate for genocide or holocausts.

jbuchana t1_j2cutmb wrote on December 31, 2022 at 8:12 AM

As a 60-year-old, who's seen much of today's technology developed, I love it. I'd hate to go back to the technology of my youth, just the example of paper maps really highlights how much better we have it from a technological perspective. Now if we'd just mature socially...

makesomemonsters t1_j2d936m wrote on December 31, 2022 at 11:27 AM

I think the bigger problem with maps a few decades ago was that most people didn't have access to detailed maps of most places near them, so had to rely on bad directions and guesswork to get them where they needed to go. Even now, I almost never use any type of sat nav because I can generally memorise the route to anywhere I'm going from a map in a few seconds, but I still need to see the map in the first place and that wasn't possible 20 years ago!

themanfrommars101 t1_j2dkp6q wrote on December 31, 2022 at 1:41 PM

Due to falling birthrates in the developed world it looks like the population is going to plateau so I'm not too worried about it. Economically some of those countries are going to hurt but places with a lot of immigration like US and Canada will be fine.

People are going to college less because they're realizing it's a massive long-term financial risk depending on their field of study. More people are going into trades that are always in demand and have skills to show for it. College, at least in America has become an overpriced social club for 20 year-olds where the quality of education has been decaying thanks to administrative garbage and tenured professors. I don't like this elitist notion that those who didn't go to college are inferior people. I know plenty of college dropouts who are intelligent. It's arrogant to believe the "educated" aren't being manipulated.

teb_art t1_j2drqpm wrote on December 31, 2022 at 2:41 PM

The trouble with college is that even STEM areas “age” - what you studied may no longer be in demand 20 years after graduation. So, you do have to keep evolving, or else. But, of course, everyone is manipulated to a point; we live in a sea of info and misinfo.

There are absolutely tradesmen and craftsmen who provide useful services and do fine without college. My point was that, at least in the US, non-college people are more likely to be suckered into voting Republican (excuse the politics), which is detrimental to the Earth as a whole. Republicans don’t care about climate, poverty, human rights — or doing ANYTHING that helps people.