The Seven Nations are not Luddites but they have profound reservations about transhuman evolution and synaptic link technology in particular that is centrally networked and augmented by adaptive a.i..... at least as I imagine them. I also modeled their world view on Native American spiritual beliefs and history.aubergine wrote:Question: Why would Project be so much at odds with Seven Nations? Seven Nations sounds like they are basically doing the same as Project, just from a different perspective. I would have thought that Project and Seven Nations would have partnered long before the stories in this thread -- what kept them enemies for so long?
The Project embraces that technology. Not to the extent of Reed and his applications but still enough for the Scavs to have been wary. Not to mention Reed's culling from the Scav Populace. Both Reed and the Project use Borgs which the Scavs call "Mekka", a play on "mechanical man".
Then there are the "Mangodai", a play & ref on the Mongols of GK but also a faction belief structure that fuses Man with God through AI.
That I believe will happen well before 2086. In the late 19th / early 20th century in the USA, there were water wars. We may see those again, not just in the USA..aubergine wrote:Oh, and we'll probably run out of fresh drinking water before we run out of oil. Have a nice day!
Agree with most of that. Where Malthus may likely come into play as this century unfolds, is with a human precipitated pandemic via human enginered contagions (weaponized or not).... or as he put it in his treatise, plague. Frankly, I think this scenario more likely than all out nukes. Pandemics will take their toll as we get deeper into the 21st century I think.aubergine wrote:I'm so glad you mentioned Malthus. We are currently achieving an S-curve paradigm, but when the oil runs out my bet (and pretty much everyone else's) is that we'll encounter near-global paradigm shift to a Mathusian J-curve. To this day, my sustainability lecturer still rejects my assertion that an S-curve is merely a delayed J-curve.
Despite many "Deniers" stating that we'll never run out of oil (I guess they have some spare planets floating around that we can tap for oil?) all the evidence is clear that we are getting very close indeed to running out of oil. The mere fact that tar sands are now seen as a viable source of oil, despite the immense costs of getting oil from tar sands, not to mention the unimaginable harm to the environment, is clear indicator that oil as humanities main source of "power" is well and truly on it's way out.
This means that, inevitably, agriculture and industry will suffer massive set-backs, with optimistic predictions showing that we might be able to sustain 1/4 of *todays* population once the oil is gone. Human race will obviously do everything it can to delay the inevitable, but inevitable things will inevitably happen at some point despite our best efforts. Or will they?
Mathus would have been proved right many, many years ago if it were not for technological advances. We cannot yet predict with certainty that there won't be a technological advance that helps us overcome our oil dependence. And, if such advance happens, like allowing already-known inventions to actually reach the market, then the human race will continue to grow. And if it continues to grow at it's current rate, we will certainly hit 14 billion in about 75-85 years, at which point almost every city will be considered "major".
There are other factors, such as Agenda-21, which seek to ensure a drastic reduction in "useless eaters" by more insidious means, but with millions ready to fight against such agendas I'm not sure that will come to pass.
BTW: With a density similar to New York, it's my understanding that all 7 billion Earthlings could be crammed in to Texas.
Brit writer Terry Nation did a marvelous job in his novel "Survivors" in portraying a global pandemic which was made into a 40 hour BBC series in the late '70s and was rebooted by the BBC in a new series a couple years ago. Would highly recommend both series and both are available on dvd. Terry Nation also wrote for the "Dr Who" series in the '70s as well. He died very young. A great talent, IMHO.
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