And Faint Hopes

Crumbling Futures and Faint Hopes Results of an environmental scan January 2000-March 29, 2002 For The Judiciary of The Commonwealth of Virginia Complied by Jim Dator, David Brier, Avigal Lemberger, Mark Nickum With assistance from Robin Brandt and Kaipo Lum The Hawai'i Research Center for Futures Studies University of Hawai'i at Manoa 2424 Maile Way Honolulu, Hawai'i 96822 808-956-2888 http://www.futures.hawaii.edu Table of Contents Introduction and Overview . .. 4 1. 9/11: From "Land of the Free" to a "Gated Community"? .. 7 1.1 Surveillance .. .. .8 1.2 Government is good .. .. ..14 1.3 Other Consequences .. .. .. .15 2. After 9/11 – Some Alternative Futures .. .. 17 3. Faith .. .. .. 22 4. Judiciary and Law .. .. .25 4.1 Do it yourself .. .. .. 25 4.2 Cybercourt .. .. .29 4.3 Jurisprudence of Artilects .. .. 33 4.4 Crime, Its Causes and Cures .. .. 33 4.5 Causes of Violence .. .. 37 5. Science and Technology .. .. .40 5.1Breakthroughs .. .. 40 5.2Internet Society .. .. 41 5.2.1 Internet Futures .. .. 41 5.2.2 Internet Sex .. .. 44 5.2.3 Internet Commerce .. .. 45 5.2.4 Internet Crime .. .. .47 5.2.5 Internet Learning.. .. 48 5.2.6 Internet Health Care .. .. .51 5.2.7 E-Books .. .. .52 5.2.8 Telecommuting .. .. 52 5.2.9 E-Government.. .. .53 5.2.10 China and the Internet .. .. 57 ' 5.2.11Beyond Reading and Writing .. .. 57 5.3 Robots and Artificial Intelligence .. .. .59 5.4 Physics and Electronics .. .. 65 5.5 Teleportation .. .. 66 5.6 Space .. .. .. 68 5.7 Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology .. .. 70 5.7.1 Beyond the Genome .. .. .71 5.7.2 Business opportunities .. .. .72 5.7.3 Threats and dangers .. .. 75 5.7.4 Genetic Testing .. .. 79 5.7.5 Biology Primer.. .. .80 5.8 Nanotechnology .. .. .81 5.9 Other Developments .. .. .82 6. The Economy .. .. .. 84 6.1 Gratis Economy .. .. .. 84 6.2 Growing Rich/Poor Gap .. .. 85 6.3 Consumer Debt .. .. .. .90 6.4 Work and Not Work .. .. .94 7. Globalization .. .. .. 99 8. The Environment .. .. .. .101 8.1 Global Warming and Climate Change .. .. .101 8.2 Responding to Climate Change .. .. 104 8.3 Population .. .. .. 107 8.4 Water .. .. .. 112 8.5 Energy .. .. .. 113 8.6 Inventing and Managing Artificial Worlds .. .. .117 9. Futures of Human Evolution .. .. .. .122 10. Futures Studies: Practices, Theories, Methods and Institutions .. .123 10.1 Foresight and Prediction .. .. .123 10.2 Age-Cohort Analysis .. .. .126 Some Thoughtful Words to End On .. .. ..128 2 3 Introduction and Summary INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY In the years since we first began doing environmental scans for the Virginia Judiciary, we have seen many things that were viewed as quite marginal when we identified them zoom into immediate relevance and then burst forth as major challenges and opportunities for the courts. We hope that the advance information we have provided in our past scans has proven useful to the Virginia Judiciary so that it has been able to anticipate these aspects of the futures appropriately and manage them effectively. Among the items we identified in early warnings that have by now become pressing realities with multiple implications for the futures are: 1. Biotechnology Completion of Human Genome Project Problems caused by gene testing Problems with genetically-modified food Controversies over cloning Controversies over stem-cell research 2. Nanotechnology. Although this is still in its early stages, nanotechnology has moved quickly from being decidedly on the fringe to becoming a major target for public and private research funding. Indeed, nanotechnology was dubbed "The Breakthrough of the Year" by Science magazine in 2000, indicating it has moved well up the emerging issues curve towards becoming a powerful problem/opportunity. A related development is DNA computing that was a faint possibility we identified in earlier scans and is rapidly becoming useful reality. 3. The emergence of "E-everything" The Internet has moved from being a play toy of a few to a vital, growing, and all- encompassing environment for all aspects of life, with even more impact over the near future. Of special importance in this present scan is the movement of the Internet away from a dependence on surface lines (telephone or cable) to various forms of wireless interconnection. A mobile, global net using hand-held (or smaller) devices is replacing the fixed web with large, expensive equipment, enabling "E-everything" to emerge where land-based telephones may not even--or ever--exist. 4. Artificial intelligence, artificial life, and autonomous robots seem fully on track of achieving what might have seemed to be exuberantly optimistic claims in previous scans. Every day brings new stories of artificially-intelligent robots doing things and making judgements in areas once thought to be the sole purview of humans. Concern for the "rights of robots" is rapidly becoming a matter of fact and not speculation. 5. Global Climate Change Virtual consensus exists among the world's scientific community that significant global warming and climate change is happening. There is overwhelming scientific agreement that while some of this might be due to "natural" events, enough of it is a consequence of recent human action to require immediate and substantial global human ameliorative response. Unfortunately, the official US position is still to ignore or trivialize the matter, thus irresponsibly foisting the growing problem off on future generations. 4 Introduction and Summary 6. The triumph of artificiality over nature, largely as a consequence of all of the items listed above, continues unabated, and indeed accelerated. A slight ray of hope is found in the recent emergence of "Sustainability Science". Unlike traditional science which pretends passively and objectively to study a vast, given, and orderly "nature", proponents of Sustainability Science understand that even if such a "nature" did at one time exist, there no longer is such a subject "out there" patiently awaiting our understanding. Science now must study and manage a world very much under human influence, and do so for the survivability of human and other life on the planet--and not out of idle curiosity or intellectual novelty. 7. More potential good news for the future is the hope that global population growth may be slowing down so that the worst-case scenarios for the 21st Century may be avoided. Nonetheless overall population of the globe by the end of this century will still tax the carrying capacity of Earth on the one hand and the organizational abilities of humanity, on the other. And global population may still exceed current optimistic projections--policies are being formulated in some depopulating parts of the world to encourage women to have more children. In part, this results from the growing recognition (especially in Europe and Japan, and to some extent in North America and eventually throughout East Asia) that the problems of substantial population decline are almost as challenging as rapid population growth, since much past "economic development" has been in large measure a by- product of population increase. Maintaining economic growth--if that remains the goal--while population declines will be a new challenge for more and more communities worldwide. 8. Indeed, the economy remains a matter of enormous anxiety. Unlike our most recent scan, the current views we encountered vary only concerning how bad it might get, not how good it might become. The euphoria over the "New Economy" that had forever banished the business cycle so that we could look forward to twenty or more years of expanding prosperity is totally absent in our current scans. While many aspects of the New Economy have been incorporated into the modified Old Economy--E-commerce being the most obvious part--serious problems remain, highlighted not only by the collapse of the "dot.com" stockmarket boom, but also by the profound doubts about the fundamental fairness of the economic system caused by the Enron/Arthur Andersen collapse and other scandals. 9. Moreover, the poverty gap between north and south continues to widen with powerfully damaging consequences. Indeed, one of the most important lessons that could have been learned from previous scans is that the gap between the superrich nations of the north, especially the US, and the superpoor nations of the South will sooner or later very directly impact all of us comfortably living with the wealth of the north. That certainly must be one of the.

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