What's Next? A Tribute To Stanislaw Lem

It’s not easy to describe Stanislaw Lem

— to summarise his heritage to the world. But one thing is sure: he was a visionary strategist and a scholar spanning over multiple fields of science.

He wrote about future half century ago. It is easy now to decide how serious we should take his predictions.

Basics

The world is changing faster than we can imagine.

The moral canon has completely disappeared, there are no more

Taboos

and moral considerations about what we should do, and how we should do.

We live in the era of total freedom, whatever this means.

Politics

The world is over hyped due to cold war. From this grandiosity we should step back to earth.

Asymmetry is the new world order: small is taking over huge, and in the same time huge is getting bigger by taking over smaller.

Masses are taking control over their lives of consumption, polls and rating rules media & politics.

Politics takes over masses through control of freedom: tight security, no more human rights.

Culture

This is the end of the high culture. Only pop culture matters.

There is full freedom, there are no more moral obstacles and considerations. Sensational is the basic value without any morals.

The overall presence of information overflow, the logorrhea of information introduces anarchy.

Creative people are crazy, schizophrenic, absurd, and shocking without having enough lived experiences to serve as background for really valuable creations.

In arts the next paradigm is reincarnational postmodernims: I’ll reborn to destroy more.

Civil Society

Emotional over rational.

Earth is overpopulated and resources are running out.

It is very common the Bad wins and the Good is always a looser. No more Tom & Jerry.

Is driven completely by the media.

Science & Technology

Energy — Oil and uranium is running out; we might have luck with the revisited cold fusion.

Nature — Despite any technological advancement we are always vulnerable by supreme forces.

Speed — Using the words of Paul Virilio, we are living

The aesthetics of disappearance.

Universe — Is just an illusion: an illegal loan with no cover. The Cosmos exists on an unlimited credit.

Evolution — Is non-linear but random.

Scientists — There are lots of magicians and charlatans masked scientists; there are no more polymaths; the space of inventions is limited for a person, we are repeating themselves independently from others — everything will become a pseudo-plagiarism.

God and Illumination — We have a system (the limbic system in the human brain) relating ourselves to the Everything; illumination is based on admiration and respect, it is Dostoevsky’s

Touch of God,

reachable during meditating yourself into deep silence, or using hallucinogenic drugs. However all these can be bought using Prof. Persinger’s Transcanial Simulator.

Genesis — Procreation and extinction are strongly related. Any cosmic holocaust is followed by biological innovation/evolution of life.

Artificial Intelligence — The border between natural and artificial will disappear. There will be an electronic brain and soul not distinguishable from the original.

Information and Communication Technology

The Information Market is crucial for capital and corporations.

Information becomes genital, fully sexualised:

Everything that would serve humanity turned to be a strangehold of restrictions.

Ubiquity is exponential power.

It is more difficult to distinct truth from fake. Information leads to paranoia.

Internet has a Marxist / Communist aspect: information & knowledge as individual property goes to service providers, corporations.

The American Dream is replaced by Virtual Reality.

Biotechnology, Genetics

The strapline is

You can do better than nature (James Young of MedImmune)

which leads to autoevolution.

Genetics is a pure market product. In 10 years no one can recognise a genetically pimped sportsman. Molecular and quantum biology to watch.

Patenting human genes reintroduces slavery.

Humans are nothing without culture — and nobody takes into consideration the cultural aspect of cloning humans.

Homo sapiens is the latest specie of the natural evolution. We are the latest reliquiae of the uncivilised nature.

What's Next? A Tribute To Stanislaw Lem

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People

Donald Knuth

John Horton Conway

Stanislaw Lem

Bertrand Russell

John C Lilly

Gerd Gerken

Valentin F Turchin

Paul Virilio

Craig J Venter

Adam Curtis

Bela Hamvas

Steve Yegge

Arthur Rimbaud

Hasan Elahi

John Dos Passos

Dostoevsky

Albert Laszlo Barabasi

Julian Assange

Stephen Hawking

Lyudmila Ulitskaya

Nikita Mikhalkov

Dimitri Verhults

Alexander Brody

Samuel Butler

Aleksandr Kuprin

Jorge Luis Borges

Charles Bukowski