Originally Posted by
Artkansas
Such hypotheses are good and can provide a warning. "1984" is a good example. Typically, we don't listen.
And always, the future turns out different. Seems like now that we know big brother is watching, most people just don't care. Many people want more video surveillance, not less.
In High School, Ecology classes gave us the dire warnings of the Club of Rome and it looked like our generation would see lifetimes of world famine. But then the green revolution came in and changed the game. There has been famine, much of it caused by inability to get the food to the people rather than the ability to produce it. But not the way futurists imagined it.
All we can do is to lead our lives the best we can and correct the problems that are here and now and hope that people in the future do the same with their lives.
The Club of Rome, as I recall, warned that population would correct itself through four mechanisms, famine, war, disease, or birth control. Without AIDs enhancing the effects of TB and Malaria the african population would be larger wouldn't it? Something else the limits to growth predicted was that population pressures in the South American countries would result in a mass movements of people to the North.