The world could be a better place. Does it depend on any one thing?
Personally, I’ve spent a lot of time working on and hoping for better technical tools to solve the problems. If only we could get to the nanofactory in the next 15 years (see Dr Drexler’s website ) we could produce most of our needs without raping the Earth in the process. And reuse everything without creating pollution. But at the same time, there would be terrorists ( the other guy’s freedom fighter ) trying to use it to make ebola’s airborne step-son. Sometimes it seems like the struggle is just to get the sum game to come out even instead of lopsided on the side of evil. It is so much easier to destroy than it is to build something up.
I’m coming to the conclusion that we have to have both good tech and good people. Neither one alone is sufficient to keep intelligent life going on the surface of this planet. We are fundamentally animals and our emotions drive us to fight for resources ( oil wars, ethnic struggles for land and over religion) while our brains focus on better weapons. A few try to rise above it and see a better way, but if we don’t move the majority of us in a good direction, we really have not changed anything. And in the mean time we are reproducing like rabbits and this old ball of mud can’t support unlimited consumers for many more decades. Either we find a solution or the world will find it for us and that will not be pretty. Probably a lot of the planet will look a lot like the ethnic conflict of east Africa if we don’t grow up and figure out how to live together and keep our house clean.
Why do we need tech? Because with such a large population, we need tools that can supply food and energy and contraception a lot better than we can today. If we had a small solar powered device that could take in leaves, small sticks, grass and any other organic refuse and extrude perfect rice kernels at the other end we might have a chance. Sounds like a ordinary rice plant, the kind they plant by the billions by hand or tractor. But the difference is the rate of production, the reduction in human or machine work required and the ability to reproduce itself. It is very high tech and only available years after we reach mature nanotechnology. But it takes us out of the cycle of consumption that is overrunning the Earth. Or at least reduces our impact. At the moment, each human requires a tremendous amount of resources to live as we do. Especially those of us in the (over)developed countries.
Now, not to make things too much worse, for a smörgåsbord of delectable consumer delights go here 
Tags: conflict, nanotechnology, technology
