FastForward Radio
Sunday night Phil Bowermaster and Stephen Gordon visited live with futurist Wayne Radinsky. Wayne became a futurist in 1997 when he was working as a software developer and asked the question, "Why does Moore's Law happen?"
Wayne was part of the Bay Area Future Salon in Silicon Valley for five years before moving to Colorado and starting the Boulder Future Salon. He is also a director of the Global Futures Network.
We talked about how groups such as GFN and futures salons can help us to shape both our understanding of and expectations for the future.
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The topics:
- Michael Darling attended the FIRST Robotics Competition.
- Are we Rome?
- www.lonelyplanets.net
- Peter Thiel (who founded PayPal, not eBay) on globalization.
- Collapse:How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
- Ralph Peters' article, "Spotting the Losers: Seven Signs of Non-Competitive States"
The seven signs are:
- Restrictions on the free flow of information.
- The subjugation of women.
- Inability to accept responsibility for individual or collective failure.
- The extended family or clan as the basic unit of social organization. (rather than being able to hire the best person for the job, the job must go to never-do-well second cousin Herb)
- Domination by a restrictive religion.
- A low valuation of education, and
- Low prestige assigned to work.
- Dmitry Orlov's article, "Closing the 'Collapse Gap': the USSR was better prepared for collapse than the US."
- The Boulder Future Salon
- Acceleration Studies Foundation: Future Salon Network
- Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe
- We also mentioned a book on quantum mechanics - Seth Lloyd's Programming the Universe.
Our front bumper is a sample of Marginal Prophets' "The Difficult Song."
Our exit music this week is from Thundas Ink. The song is "Bigger than Us."
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Comments
Zimbabwe would appear to be a good (that is, tragic) example of a country in collapse per Peters' or Orlov's criteria.
To cite just one statistic, in the past two decades life expectancy has dropped from about 63 years to about 37.
Posted by: Phil Bowermaster![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.blog.speculist.com/nav-commenters.gif)
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March 31, 2008 07:01 AM
One of the reasons I'm a big believer in Peter's analysis is that it seems to predict failure so well.
It should be noted that - as judged by Peters' criteria - no country is perfect. No, not even the most successful industrialized nations are perfect.
These are seven sliding scales. If a country does poorly enough on several scales, or terrible on just one - that country might be headed for collapse.
Posted by: Stephen Gordon![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.blog.speculist.com/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 1, 2008 09:59 AM
"National success is eccentric"; is the part that caught my eye in Peter's article. I'd like to hear some Speculist action about that! You see, I think the best form of nation hasn't been invented, but suspect it includes some greatest hits of previous attempts. I invented one called the "The Maslow and Liberty Then Some Capitalism" nation. For that, people attack me with memes at parties.
Posted by: Harvey![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.blog.speculist.com/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 3, 2008 08:09 AM
I still disagree with Peters' criteria 4, "The extended family or clan as the basic unit of social organization." Looking at US businesses, a lot of family businesses are quite successful. They often maintain a focus and long term planning not present in many of the publically traded companies.
As I see it, the real problem comes when the clan is also responsible for such things as law enforcement or other common public goods/services.
Posted by: Karl Hallowell![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.blog.speculist.com/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 3, 2008 07:20 PM