(contest) How should humanity steer the future?

[Michael Allan]

I plan to submit an essay of my own, based on Votorola's technology.
It might need a final proofreading if anyone is interested:
http://zelea.com/project/autonomy/a/end/end.pdf

-- 
Michael Allan

Toronto, +1 416-699-9528
http://zelea.com/


> Deadline: April 18, 2014
> http://www.fqxi.org/community/essay
> 
> Dystopic visions of the future are common in literature and film,
> while optimistic ones are more rare. This contest encourages us to
> avoid potentially self-fulfilling prophecies of gloom and doom and to
> think hard about how to make the world better while avoiding potential
> catastrophes.
> 
> Our ever-deepening understanding of physics has enabled technologies
> and ways of thinking about our place in the world that have
> dramatically transformed humanity over the past several hundred
> years. Many of these changes have been difficult to predict or
> control — but not all.
> 
> In this contest we ask how humanity should attempt to steer its own
> course in light of the radically different modes of thought and
> fundamentally new technologies that are becoming relevant in the
> coming decades.
> 
> Possible topics or sub-questions include, but are not limited to:
> 
>    * What is the best state that humanity can realistically achieve?
> 
>    * What is your plan for getting us there? Who implements this plan?
> 
>    * What technology (construed broadly to include practices and
>      techniques) does your plan rely on?  What are the risks of those
>      technologies?  How can those risks be mitigated?
> 
> (Note: While this topic is broad, successful essays will not use this
> breadth as an excuse to shoehorn in the author's pet topic, but will
> rather keep as their central focus the theme of how humanity should
> steer the future.)
> 
> Additionally, to be consonant with FQXi's scope and goals, essays
> should be sure to touch on issues in physics and cosmology, or closed
> related fields, such as astrophysics, biophysics, mathematics,
> complexity and emergence, and the philosophy of physics.