020051005 23:51 • 
Private sector spaceships, hobbyist gene-splicing, silicon trees generating electricity, ethics and extraterrestrial life, extra-solar colonization as necessary human expansion, modified humans populating millions of experimental societies on far-flung planets, man’s best friend with an engineered intelligence increase, regret mitigation via dissociated personalities living separate lives…
All this and more was discussed after Freeman, George and Esther Dyson took the stage at the Fort Mason Conference Center for an evening in The Long Now Foundation‘s ongoing series of Seminars about Long-term Thinking. Moderated by Stewart Brand, President of the Long Now Foundation, “The Difficulty of Looking Far Ahead” was a perfectly apt title for this soiree of futurism via science, history and business. Freeman himself offered this caveat at the beginning- “Science is organized on unpredictability… and is not conducive to long range projections.”
I found myself in disagreement often, and they often disagreed with one another, but that’s what makes science go. This accomplished, intelligent man and his accomplished, intelligent children blew the doors off all opposition to the scientific method as the best tool for the advancement of human society. By simply speaking with each other and the audience of what may or may not come they demonstrated Hegel’s thesis/antithesis/synthesis as the basis for everything we already are.
Freeman Dyson on the mic:
A few small bites of the free-ranging discussion:
Freeman likens the rise of biotech to the computer industry’s growth, and sees domestication and widespread acceptance of biotechnology 50 to 100 years in the future. Early computer developments never showed the advent of small, cheap and ubiquitous computing, and Freeman feels the same course will be followed by biotech. He envisions home genome programming kits engendering “new art forms as lively as cinema, painting or sculpture.” While he spoke of dark hazards, he considers our current global situation much less dangerous than the threat of nuclear annihilation posed during the Cold War. Quote of the night- “What can be done with microbes is much more dangerous than orchids and roses, even more dangerous than lizards and snakes. Rules must be rewritten so kids can play with dinosaurs but not viruses.”
George envisions cultured structures of living tissue, buildings grown for specific use, modified kelp given vascular systems growing from ocean floor into light gathering dwellings above the sea surface. He sees human climate control as a natural outgrowth of our eventual change-over to more eco-friendly energy sources and is against nuclear power generation. He endorses a complete archiving of every fragment of information possible, allowing future historians to “keep history honest.”
Esther, the business (and, by extension, politically) oriented member of the trio feels we can see a repeated and yet unlearned lesson in Iraq and Afghanistan: bringing down the bad guys at the top doesn’t fix the problem. As a result of fast flowing info and technology, we fail to comprehend the deep-rooted, systemic problems and apply band-aids rather than fixes. Surprisingly, she spoke against anonymity in favor of systems of trusted reputations- “Everything works best when it’s transparent, including people.”
In keeping with the aims of the evening, Stewart Brand asked the Dysons how much contemporary science fiction they read.
All three answered “not enough.”
Photo by Jacob Appelbaum.
Photo License: Creative Commons - Some Rights Reserved.
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