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The Eidolonica Papers Issue 04
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PAPERS
Compiled, Edited and Sometimes Written by Greg Webster - Issue 4 Volume 1
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Many thanks for reading, my apologies again for a delayed issue, but
I think that's the way it going to be for a while...not exactly
sporadic, since I do plan on putting out one issue per month, but
times (and milage) may vary. It's best if you do wish to submit an
article on a topic, to get it to me as soon as you can for
inclusion.
Take a look at my spiffy new title bar and tell me what you think.
Maybe next month I'll have a bit of a contest and give you folks a
choice of the best.
This month's topic is "Ten Years after the Millennia". It's a small
issue, mainly because I neglected to tell anyone what the topic was
while I got certain things straightened out here. Just me and a
friend of mine.
Next issue's topic is "Mind Power - thoughts affecting the outside
world". This includes such things as telekinesis (moving things
with the mind), pyrokinesis (affecting fire with the mind), and a
little bit of such things as precognition (knowing things before
they happen), clairvoyance (seeing things in your mind from far
distances), and clairaudience (as clairvoyance, but by hearing).
I figure that's a big enough spread of topics to really get some of
your minds working and your hands writing.
So, I'd best get into it...
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Here is a first submission from a friend
of mine, Andy. He is the only person in
my life who has read this ezine, and my
closest friend. I've known him for years,
know him well, and could have known how
he would write this. Never one to hide
his opinions, Andy has this time given none.
He's a strange man, and gets stranger by
the minute.
Future Plus
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Flashing light, wondrous toys, people everywhere - THE FUTURE!
THE FUTURE! THE FUTURE! Interesting.
What will the world - most particularly our part of it - look
and feel like ten years post-Millenium? Complex question. Her is
one possible (short) answer.
Well, to begin, let's remember the "future" is pure illusion.
It is a fictitious entity, created from our own hopes and fears about
tomorrow. This is important, since most people have a tendency to
consider tomorrow and the years to come as if they were seperate
from today - as if they had already happened, in a way.
What most know but rarely consider, is that no matter what
happens, humanity always adapts. It's that or perish. We make our
own destiny, and then we re-make it. And so on. So change is not
so much a facet of time as it is a facet of people. Riding into
tomorrow is just a matter of living with society. Excluding giant
meteors crashing into the planet, or alien invasion, etc.
The future, including up to the year 2009, is mostly something
we look back on and talk or marvel about.
Cars will be a little different, computing power yet more
impressive. Technology may have plateau-ed again, in some areas,
and advanced in others. Sitcoms will probably still rule the
airwaves. The military will still have full-time employment.
People, having failed to learn from their predecessors, will
still hurt and hurt others. Nations will have changed hands, and
changed hands again. The middle class will still be around in North
America, or they won't. Bet on the former, but watch for surprises.
Just like today.
Hopefully, our eyes will be on tomorrow, but our hands will be
dealing with today. With luck, corporations will not have replaced
governments, shareholders instead of voters determining world
leaders. On the other hand...
In conclusion, the decade following the year two thousand will
be 'today', plus a little more tech, and a little more pain. But
there will still be sunsets and happy people.
Call it today, plus.
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And once again to what I think on a
topic of my own devising.
Rebuild
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Strange, I've always been somewhat of a futurist, constantly
working out thoughts on what the future would look like, but now
that the future (soon to be the present) time of the end of the
century approaches, I find that those thoughts are not nearly so
strong.
I used to beleive that the future would be far stranger than we
could imagine, with ease of transportation perhaps with
teleportation booths, maybe some sub-orbital rockets sending us all
the way around the world, and all aspects of our daily life affected
by technology advancing itself at a phenomenal rate.
When I was a kid in the 70's, the year 2000 seemed so far away
that anything was possible. After all, look at the changes that
have occured in those 26 years! From computers the size of football
feilds to pocket calculators that do pretty much the same amount of
work...or even more. We've moved from a period where we used as
much power as possible in our cars and machines to a point where
every discovery gains special recognition if it uses less power than
the last. Somewhere in those thirty years, I see a loss of
innocence. The flower children looked forward to the age of
aquarius, and instead we've found a world that blasts us with
nostalgic ideas of what could have been if we'd only have tried
harder. Way back then we had the frontier of technology open in
front of us, and now we've found that that frontier is about the
size of a walk-in closet.
So what can we look forward to in the next century? Well, as
the cliche goes, 'it's gonna get worse before it gets better'. I
predict more violence, more riots and more incredible extremism,
especially in North America. The Los Angeles riots were only a week
long effectively, and the sympathy riots that sprung up across the
US and Canada were quickly supressed. I see a few more of those
riots, probably culminating in something that cannot be squashed.
We're heading to a revolution unless we make a rapid change in the
way we think.
I predict that we're going to be heading for a world government
by the end of the next century. The internet is making that happen.
Take a good look at it folks, because it's all you're going to see
for a long while. Because of the difficulties in enforcement of
laws about the internet, a world-governing body is going to have to
take over. It's no good for an American law to come in when the
rest of the world is just a few type-strokes away.
We're going to see incredible changes in medicine in the next
fifty years or so. We are so close to a perfectly controlled
nanotechnology tool that will be able to enter the human body and
work changes to tiny to see. The possibility of immortality exists
with this, but I would bet that that idea will be stopped dead. We
aren't mature as a race yet, and without perfect, universal, and
reversible contraception, immortality is impractical.
With this nanotechnology, all science will rapidly advance.
Nanobots will be taught to build themselves and do our mining for
us, or hold things as tiny as an atom so that we have control over
the tiniest detail. Expect every aspect of your life to change when
this is used.
Watch for some impressive changes in our favorite science...
virtual reality. Some of the things already out there are pretty
realistic, but with the popularity of three dimensional perspective
games like DOOM, everyone and their dog will be working on
improvements. Nothing like huge cash flow in a commercial society
to get the wheels of progress moving. One day we are going to be
able to produce something so real that it won't be distinguishable
from reality. When that occurs expect a new crisis: virtual
reality addiction. People will live in their virtual worlds,
staying long enough to forget to eat. The first occurence of that
is going to scare me beyond belief. After all, why thnk about
getting food when you are already eating?
Impossible you say? Look at those people who play these games
today. Or when this same type of person was playing Dungeons and
Dragons in the 80's. Drop out of university, lose your job, or your
family. I've seen in happen already to people who couldn't handle
their addiction to escaping reality.
So that's how the world is going to get ugly. How about how it
gets better? I'm not sure. I'd bet that at some point (maybe after
that revolution I mentioned) a radical mindshift is going to happen,
spreading across humanity like the black plague, making people
realize what they have done and where this planless activity is
leading them.
And then hopefully we can begin to rebuild, because that shift
in perspective is going to destroy everything we've done for a long,
long time.
And that rebuilding is the true future.
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Many thanks folks, I hope you enjoyed this issue. The Eidolonica
Papers are built from your thoughts and mine, so please take a look
at yourself and see if you can find something in you to tell.
Without submissions, I end up writing everything myself, and as much
as I love writing, I can't do a project like this by myself.
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Subscriptions may be relayed to: Kick@freenet.vancouver.bc.ca,
which in the next year or so will be gradually changed to
kick@vcn.bc.ca. Submissions go to the same place.
FTP access is available at:
ftp://ftp.etext.org/pub/Zines/EidolonicaPapers
And again many thanks to Rita for the help getting it there.
You can find a link to that FTP site at my webpage (which will
eventually be purely for The Eidolonica Papers) at:
http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/~aq008
And thanks to the people at National Capital Freenet for allowing
personal webpages.
Submissions will be always be accepted, the more submissions, by far
the better ezine. I hold the right to edit things as I choose for
any reason I feel is appropriate, but keep in mind that I hate doing
it, so your submissions will probably be safe from my evil hands.
Everything here is (c) 1996 unless I say otherwise. You may feel free to
copy it for any non-profit use you wish, as long as it remains unedited.
If you wish to edit something for use, or wish to charge money in any way
for what you read here, then you MUST contact me for permission.
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