Blogging the Noosphere

Ever since reading a wonderful essay a long time ago by SF author David Brin, extolling the virtues of the progressive rationalist vision of Rodenberry’s Star Trek universe over the elitist world view of Lucas’s Star Wars, I knew here was a thinker after my own heart.

Brin recently published a new piece in Salon on a topic I have been thinking a lot upon lately.  I have commented on this before in the blog.  Somewhere else (that I can’t  find now) referred to it as that “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” paradox we seem to find ourself in.  We live in a time of great abundance, at least for most people in modern western societies.  At no time has so much wealth and power been available to so many, and at all levels of society.  Yet it also feels like no time has been more perilous, with the threat of unimaginable horrors barely held back, threatening the health of our planet, our societies, even the very existence of our species.

Brin’s article concerns the recent incarnation of this dichotomous view between the techno-transcendentalists and the (neo)Luddites, with the optimists proclaiming the near miraculous posibilities of our new information technologies to solve the world’s problems, and the pesimist’s predictions of imminent disaster and decline because of the very same technologies.

Brin argues for a truth to be found somewhere in-between the two perspectives. This is a vast over simplification of the argument, however, and one that Brin does a good job of developing in depth.  It is not so much that the truth is somewhere in the middle of these perspectives, but more so that each is correct but limited in context where it is applicable.  In the end Brin concludes that the optimal stance is that of the pragmatist.  The pragmatist attempts to understand and discover all of the facts, both the good but especially the worst.  But the pragmatic mind set of the Enlightenment, as Brin refers to it, can and does face such seemingly insurmountable problems.  Not with fizzy optimism, but with hard work, determination, and enlightened perspectives.