2020

So I started a blog about 2020 about five years ago.

We are halfway there.

Things are not looking pretty.

Actually, I don’t know whether they look pretty or not. They are in uncharted territory.

Somewhere around 2020 we’ll have a phase change. The world as we know it, will change phases, and it will be as different as water is from ice.

Like:

1. the global debt bubble will implode. Lots of people who thought they were rich will turn out to own nothing. Lots of people who thought they could retire will not see the fruits of what they thought they had saved.
2. Governments will turn dictatorial and savage. Good bye to the bill of rights and stuff like that.
3. Well, actually, governments will be fighting over the deck chairs on the Titanic. Because their people will have left. Into cyberspace.
4. People will have left meat speace in droves, and spend as much of their time and attention as they can in cyberspace.
5. The laws of the land in cyberspace are totally different than the ones in meat space that we all grew up for thousands (millions?) of years. Your measure of wealth is not the resources that you hoard or command (and can’t be hoarded or commanded by somebody else) but the influence of your thought on others. The more you share, the richer you are.
6. Minds will exist only in cyberspace (in the approximation). They will care about the polity there, and have no concern for water, governance, food, taxes, or whatever have you in meat space.

Here it is 2015. What shall we do?