Dan Carlin's Hardcore History is finally getting the attention it deserves as the best history podcast. His other series Common Sense is also good for provocative political comment. A recent episode featured legendary BBC mind blower James Burke, really I think just to get Burke's take on Brexit and Trump. Burke talks about using AI gestalts for everyday voting, dereliction of the press, and his new Connections app.
But his response to a question about oncoming doom has stuck with me and I've tried to use it to lighten up every gloomy pub conversation since.
About 33 mins in responding to a question about climate change denial
http://www.dancarlin.com/common-sense-home-landing-page/#1489641597761-6eb3932e-085a
"These major problems of .. things like climate change and pollution and over population and so on
these will be utterly irrelevant with 50 years and yet we are busting a gut in some cases doing serious harm socially and economically to our societies in order to solve these problems when the problems will be gone in 50 years time when the Nano Fabricator arrives and blows them all away.... and everything else in the present day economy"
Dan Carlin responds somewhat skeptically that he'd heard his uncle predict the end of cancer, only to die of cancer, but Burke thinks is possible and is worth researching right now.
"If the United States decided to run a project with all the intensity and involvement that it ran the Apollo project on bringing the Nano Fabricator into existence sooner than 50s years.. putting money into nano technological resource then we would know fairly rapidly if it is going to happen, and if it is we could start planning socially for what we'll do when it turns up.. because it's going to cause, like all technological advance, massive social ripples....What do we do when the Nano Fabricator gives you everything you need using dirt air and water and a minor amount of other things that most people can get hold of for nothing?"
He talks about this here on New Mexico in Focus, with correspondent Gwyneth Doland
at 17.17
And again on Eddie Mair's droll PM show on Radio 4
and this article by James Evans in the New Statesmen
http://www.newstatesman.com/business/2013/09/forty-years-until-we-get-personal-nanofactories
When I try and explain this optimistic future
(in the pub)
the next thing mentioned, with regard to the Nano Fabricator is this..
Crazy eh? that'll never happen
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