Hello, and welcome to my new space on the internets. I chose the name the Reboot for a variety of reasons, both personal and thematic.
Personally, I wanted a clean white page in front of me to work from and I wanted to make a fresh start in terms of subject matter.
Topically, I want to move away from the day to day political horse race, away from the latest scandal and the most recent offensive thing that Donald Trump tweeted and toward a more substantive look at serious issues facing the world.
Whether we are ready or not, whether we want it or not, civilization is preparing for a significant ‘reboot’. Before this century is out, just about everything is going to change. Long before that we’re going to have to make decisions that impact the future of the human race and the planet.
For Example:
- As absurd as it is, we still have to deal with various forms of bigotry, prejudice, and discrimination (issues that should have been done and settled in the last century).
- We’re going to have to confront climate change, rising sea levels, changing weather patterns and the serious and ongoing pollution of the world’s oceans, rivers, and other waterways.
- We’re going to have to decide how to respond to technological innovations that surpass anything our parents would have dreamt of, including robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology and genetic engineering of plants, animals, and people.
- We’re going to have to invent a social and economic system that isn’t reliant on anyone having a permanent, full time ‘job’
- We have to find our way through a seismic shift in global power as economic and political influence shift east and south.
- We have to determine how society deals with a ‘globalized’ world. There is no point in debating globalization anymore, it already happened. Most of the issues we have to deal with are global issues that do not recognize borders.
- We have to orchestrate a long overdue revamp of the way we do health care and education.
- We’re going to have to improve the ways we deal with human migration, mobility, and refugees, which are likely to become more plentiful as the climate changes.
- We have to find ways to ensure food and water security as many of the world’s fresh water repositories dry up and farmlands turn to desert or swampland.
- We have to prepare for being a multi-planet species because, while we don’t know who will get there first, it is a safe bet that there will be permanent settlements on the Moon and Mars in the coming decades
So, rather than focus on the latest gossip about the Mueller investigation, the latest political outrage, speculation about who might win the next election (wherever in the world it may be) I’ll try to focus on issues, because very little of the day to day in Ottawa, Washington, London or Brussels has anything to do with any of these issues.
Opinions will definitely make its way into these pages frequently, but I’ll try to rely heavily on hard data, on emerging science and technology, on what we know about human behavior from science and from history and on real politics and economics rather than sound bites and talking points.
I will also not tell people what they want to hear, even if the truth is going to suck.
These, anyway, are my goals and they are laid out here as much for my benefit as for the readers so that I can refer back to them and try to stay on track.