Most people, when they try to imagine paradise, imagine their present life with all the things they don’t like removed, and all the things they do like available in abundance without effort. My own answer does not escape that pattern. The mediaeval peasant’s paradise was the mythical land of Cockaigne, where there was endless feasting and no work and no masters. Surveys have found that people generally think that the maximum income anyone could possibly want is about 10 times whatever their current income is. Few have imagined new joys.
How many people just 50 years ago managed to imagine anything like the present? “A Logic Named Joe” did a pretty good job of anticipating the Internet and the issues we are currently dealing with around AI, but how many other bullseyes like that are there? Or other truly novel futures that could have been?
Most people, when they try to imagine paradise, imagine their present life with all the things they don’t like removed, and all the things they do like available in abundance without effort. My own answer does not escape that pattern. The mediaeval peasant’s paradise was the mythical land of Cockaigne, where there was endless feasting and no work and no masters. Surveys have found that people generally think that the maximum income anyone could possibly want is about 10 times whatever their current income is. Few have imagined new joys.
How many people just 50 years ago managed to imagine anything like the present? “A Logic Named Joe” did a pretty good job of anticipating the Internet and the issues we are currently dealing with around AI, but how many other bullseyes like that are there? Or other truly novel futures that could have been?