Technology and the Future - GTI Forum February 2022

What could be the agent of sufficient change that would lead to the adoption of such a global infrastructure? Our answer is that the commoners are the agents of such a change, following cosmo-local models, which we see as the “third possible future” for humankind.5 The first future is the continuation of multicultural neoliberalism, as espoused by the World Economic Forum.6 It is a world run by pu. [...] This system is intended to maximize the value of the users’ attention, which incentivizes the platforms to manipulate the algorithms that control the distribution of information across the dominant platforms in ways that provoke emotionally resonant responses from the users. [...] More broadly, the effect might be described as the shaping of the consciousness of the users in ways that suit the needs of existing economic interests of platform capital, and of the consumer capitalist economy more generally. [...] He was a consultant to the Presidential Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and is a board member of the Council for Responsible Genetics. [...] The impressive expansion of the “miracle crops” in the Green Revolution depended entirely upon the increased use of non-renewable fossil fuels for the development of the fertilizer, the pesticides, the herbicides, the expanded use of tractor power, and the construction of water management systems and pumping for the irrigation of vast tracks of land.