FootprintsintheWind.com

Pinpoint where your thinking rolled over to thought. From there, continue to think.

:- Doug.

I wrote this story for you.

:- Doug.

See that cloud? It is not where you think it is. What you see is past—if only speed of light instants past. What you hear is speed of sound past. What you feel might be years past. Your thoughts being reified thinking are also past. Running these through your imagination you craft decisions now. What do you conceive is real and now?

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1910

Send us your stories for 300-year grandchild elders.

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This is the best of times to hone your storytelling.

:- Doug.

A better humanity does not arise from technology, but could arise within it. It must arise in the essence of humanity.

:- Doug.

A computer—machine intelligence—only thinks one way. Humans think many ways, and all at once, confusing ourselves. Checking ourselves. Amazing ourselves. Humans can be of two or more minds.

:- Doug.

Whether they live in utopia, dystopia, protopia, or some other future, what do our 11th generation grandchildren need to hear from us?

:- Doug.

If we could have a practical future, what would you design?

:- Doug.

If humanity finally arrives, what and where would that home be? What is forever? One one-thousand year generation? Then?

:- Doug.

What if you lived a very long life without a job?

:- Doug.

What if rich did not matter, did not get you anything or anywhere important?

:- Doug.

What comes after the information age?

:- Doug.

Death could go away by genetics and other biologic advances. Taxes could go away because there would be not much income or ownership of value to tax. (Except maybe those if any outside the commons who controlled the artificial intelligences and algorithms.) We may no longer have the poor with us. What is life without these complaints?

:- Doug.

What if we were enabled to retire in our prime—or even as we entered our prime? Again, if we retired on and off for most of our lives, or worked only a few hours a week or year? What would you do with life? What if everybody had enough food, clothing, shelter, transportation, medical care, and computing power to do whatever they wanted? How would their wants increase?

:- Doug.

Whatever good futures at which we arrive it will be an interim, just like all history. For those in this place and time, it may be for ever.

:- Doug.

In our possible futures, is there a home for the humble, a life for people of dignity?

:- Doug.

Will what we do today with people in nursing homes who cannot help themselves inform what our society will do with useless humans after machines put us out of work?

:- Doug.

Do leads to hope.

:- Doug.

What are we learning from the desire for divisiveness current in our culture? How could this inform our lessons and messages for the generations?

:- Doug.

I dream the futures of story.

:- Doug.

When you tell a story to the 11th generation, remember you are quickly becoming part of their future. And past.

:- Doug.

Let us work to clearly see our 11th generation: they might be different from us in ways we cannot understand: quicker in thinking; composed of a significant proportion of machine; have challenges and worries we cannot foresee (but could we yet understand?); they may in fact be a different species.

With changes occurring exponentially in genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics, and humanity changing more slowly, what then?

There will be spurts and different sections of technology and society will stagger at different paces. What then?

What can we project for sure? These things in the last three paragraphs probably.

:- Doug.