Ask A Genius 446 – The Future of Values (1)
November 17, 2018
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Let’s talk about the future of values and what this implies for sectors of society, we can focus on America, since this is where you’re from.
Rick Rosner: I am not talking about the Golden Rule. The last few months, my wife who seldom unreservedly likes something. She likes these little mini-mosaics from the 19th and the first half of the 20th century that were from Italy.
They were these little flower brooches and sometimes pendant earrings that are made of tiny pieces of colored glass. I have been looking at stuff 80-to-100-years-old. For the past two years, I have been a model for Lance while he creates a fantastically accomplished portrait.
I was thinking that sometime in the future; this stuff will not be valued as much. Because the dominant culture and the dominant constituents of that culture, or the dominant entities who determine what that culture is, will be to some extent augmented or trans-human.
People who have been tweaked biologically or technologically to have increased capabilities, increased lifespans, increased physical characteristics, and so on, not necessarily superhero-like.
It will be focused on information processing. You and I have talked about the near future, the mid-future, and the far future. If you are speaking in terms of the replacement of humans as the dominant entities, the near future is still human-dominated, the mid-future is the changeover, and the far future is the most powerful entities on Earth around as we add stuff to the Earth and other parts of the Solar System.
The various cutoffs are between near and mid-future. It may be 100 years from now. Then there will be more than 100 years. There will be humans around, lots. But they will not be running the show; unless, they are augmented.
The things that will be valuable will be changed. For one, anything manufactured that is not overly complicated will be dirt cheap. Because of a lot of manufacturing, e.g., food and furniture, will be pumped out by the hundreds of thousands of items with automation.
The fabrication of stuff will not cost much. Unless, you’re talking about stuff that is very intricate at a microscopic level, e.g., biotechnology, and whatever the future of integrated circuits looks like.
Everything else will be cheap. Augmented or not very augmented humans will be able to live their lives if society makes room for them – if we don’t run into some form of dystopia. People will get along even though humans are not in charge anymore.
[End of recorded material]
Authors[1]
Rick Rosner
American Television Writer
Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Editor-in-Chief, In-Sight Publishing
Footnotes
[1] Four format points for the session article:
- Bold text following “Scott Douglas Jacobsen:” or “Jacobsen:” is Scott Douglas Jacobsen & non-bold text following “Rick Rosner:” or “Rosner:” is Rick Rosner.
- Session article conducted, transcribed, edited, formatted, and published by Scott.
- Footnotes & in-text citations in the interview & references after the interview.
- This session article has been edited for clarity and readability.
For further information on the formatting guidelines incorporated into this document, please see the following documents:
- American Psychological Association. (2010). Citation Guide: APA. Retrieved from http://www.lib.sfu.ca/system/files/28281/APA6CitationGuideSFUv3.pdf.
- Humble, A. (n.d.). Guide to Transcribing. Retrieved from http://www.msvu.ca/site/media/msvu/Transcription%20Guide.pdf.
License and Copyright
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at www.in-sightjournal.com and www.rickrosner.org.
Copyright
© Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Rick Rosner, and In-Sight Publishing 2012-2018. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Rick Rosner, and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Rick Rosner 