[Dialogue] The right question, continued

[jlepps at pc.jaring.my]

Here's another take on the "right" question for our time:

The function of technology is to expand human 
potential.  Current research and inventions seem 
to offer undreamed of possibilities. Virtual 
meetings, satellite radio, microwave meals, 
robotic surgery, online shopping with digital 
assistants, self-driving automobiles, 
self-diagnosing body parts, space travel – even 
avatar immortality – are all either currently 
available or in pilot stages. The interior crisis 
occasioned by all this possibility is bewildering 
potential. We face a paralyzing complexity of 
possibility. Clearly the old structures are past 
their usefulness as we saw in the past decade. 
Now we are bewildered by pure potential for 
creating a new functioning civilization. 
Technology is no longer a constraint: we can do 
even more than we can imagine. Our imaginations, 
however, seem constrained by established images 
of systems and structures that no longer work. We 
don’t know how to think in new categories, or 
even what those categories might be. People often 
speak of this as a digital generation gap, and to 
be sure there is one. But I suspect even the 
brightest young geeks haven’t set themselves to 
thinking of new ways to operate as a global 
society. Pure potential is an abyss – a gap with 
no place to stand, no security, and no certainty. 
That’s the situation in which we find ourselves.

Our existential question is “How can we operate?” 
that is, “How can we be in this world together?” 
and even the “we” is not clear. At one time it 
could refer to the family or our network of 
friends or colleagues or the community or the 
state or party or nation or race or even in our 
more generous moments, humanity as an inclusive 
whole. Now even that seems inadequate. The 
environmentalists have expanded our horizons. All 
flora and fauna now seem to have a claim on us. 
Even the mineral resources which we’ve extracted 
and manipulated with abandon seem to be crying 
for attention. Neither our economic, political 
nor cultural systems are equipped to address those cries.

John Epps


At 09:38 AM 7/17/2012, you wrote:
>Maybe Jim got it said (below)
>
>In a message dated 7/16/2012 6:50:19 P.M. 
>Mountain Daylight Time, jfwiegel at yahoo.com writes:
>  Maybe the question is, how are we as a human 
> species, going to generate a level of courage, 
> wisdom, care and creativity that is more than 
> adequate to meet the challenges of this new century?
>
>Because it deals with the human dimension, which 
>is what, as EI and ICA, that is what we have recognized.
>
>Karen Bueno
>_______________________________________________
>Dialogue mailing list
>Dialogue at lists.wedgeblade.net
>http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/dialogue-wedgeblade.net
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