IMAGINING UTOPIA

12/1/2023

The human mind is finely attuned to threat, probably for good reason. When it comes to imagining the future, particularly in the context of new technologies, our tendency is to conjure up dystopian nightmares.

I often fall into this trap myself, so I thought it would be a good exercise to imagine a scenario in which technology keeps evolving, and things just kinda...work out.

The place to start is by acknowledging that the status quo is, in fact, deeply flawed. We may worry about the effect that artificial intelligence will have on labor markets, but ask yourself this: is our current arrangement of working 9-5, Monday through Friday the best possible way to organize the great mass of human activity? And don’t forget all those millions (maybe billions) of people who toil in even less favorable conditions for longer hours than the median American office employee. 

So instead of fretting about the end of work, might it be more constructive to think instead about the end of tedium and the freeing up of leisure time for more and more members of the human race? After all, this has been the gradual trend since industrialization.

We may fret about the rise of biological innovations which put the power of God in the hands of man. But again, it’s useful to think about the deep imperfections of the status quo. We, supposedly advanced modern humans, still haven’t figured out a way to prevent our bodies from mistaking its own cells for invading pathogens. We haven’t figured out a way to enjoy widely available food sources without the attendant maladies of obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. These problems alone cost billions of dollars a year. 

Which is scarier--advanced biotech or the prospect of never solving these rather basic public health puzzles? Before you answer, consider that western societies are aging and health care expenditures are rising, putting more and more pressure on the fiscal capacities of countries like the United States. 

I’ll make one last, subtler point. The dystopian vision of human beings completely caving to their base instincts and spending all day immersing themselves in Virtual Reality while becoming grossly overweight strikes me as fanciful. Human nature is not always pretty, but the idea that we would immediately degenerate so completely is too pessimistic. 

Sure, some people would take that option, just as some people today choose to waste their lives playing video games. But there’s a reason such a Wall-E-esque vision of the future scares you: because it’s counter to the very essence of what makes us human. It disgusts us. Enough people would probably be sufficiently disgusted with themselves for living in such a way that we’d manage to keep civilization chugging along. 

Don’t get me wrong, there’s always a chance that we’ll blow ourselves up or destroy ourselves some other way. But as long as we don’t, it’ll probably be fine.

***