This is The Nooner, a (very short) daily newsletter slash podcast that has its very own section within Dispatches from Inner Space.
To see the first post, which doubles as an explainer, click here.
Also a quick reminder that you can listen to the podcast version of each post wherever you listen to podcasts.
If technology could save us…
…it already would have.
I’ll probably return to this theme again and again, because it’s something I think about all the time.
Hunger and poverty are not resource or technology problems, and have not been for a long time. They are political problems.
I grew up believing that most of the world’s problems could be solved with technology. Faster computation, more sophisticated bioengineering, advances in medical science, greater abundance of energy.
Imagine a world where energy was cheap and abundant. Cold fusion could solve everything!
But even if we solved cold fusion tomorrow, I would bet my life and fortunes that there would still be large populations of people starving to death in thirty years.
The Marxists are smiling smugly to themselves right now, muttering things about the inherent contradictions of capitalism and the inevitable concentration of wealth and power. And it’s not that they’re wrong, per se, but that they think they have any actual answers.
The deep problem we face as a species is that our technological evolution has far outpaced our ability to consistently overcome our inner demons. This is why we still fail to efficiently and effectively use the technology we already have to do things like end world hunger, or establish world peace. Our world only reflects our own contentious nature, fractured against itself.
Look, you can still get excited about technological progress — I sure do! But don’t hold out hope that some engineer somewhere is going to finally solve the deepest problems we face.
That’s all on us. Each of us, as individuals, as families, as awkward, petty communities. We have to get our shit together, we have to treat each other with respect and patience and (yep, I’m gonna say it) love. We have to study and practice the best virtues we know, and we have to keep doing that for our whole lives.
There are no shortcuts. There are no secrets. There is no killer app.
It’s just you and me, doing our best to follow the better angels of our nature.
Click at least one of these or else…
…the children of your friends from high school will mock you on the Internet.
Technology can’t save the world