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@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
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