Thanks to all who commented on the education post. I have more to say, mostly about how those of us with means have a stake in keeping education bad for part of the population, and how the best way to change that is to mix us all up. But I don't have the energy to post that now.
Instead, I will ask this unrelated question:
Let's suppose that Star-Trek style beaming technology became as easy and inexpensive to use as cars are now. You could be in Madagascar as easily as you can currently go to the store. The exception would be international beaming, which would have to go through some sort of customs. (I don't know technologically how that would work...but it would.)
What would the big and small impacts on our world be from that? Answer before you skip down to my friends' answers.
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My dad says "terrorism would increase greatly."
My wife says "It wouldn't ever get that cheap--business would capitalize."
I say "Kansas City Royals attendance would drop even further than it already is. Nobody could afford Broadway tickets or London West End tickets or Yankees tickets."
My dream--to teach where I teach now while living in Waimea, Hawaii, would be impossible. Too many other people would have that dream. Also, there would be no local--no real reason to know your neighbors at all.
What would happen if everyone who wanted to go to Rio or (once and in the future) New Orleans for Mardi Gras could go?
How would our world change?
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7 comments:
Business would capitalize because it would not be as easy as you make it out to be. In the scenarios you have laid out before me, when everyone on the planet wants to go to Rio for Mardi Gras then the techonology becomes overworked and breaks down. Therefore you need controls to prevent that from happening, and that would lead business to capitalize based on simple supply and demand.
And I also countered your argument that Royals attendance would not necessarily take a hit, as everyone and their brother would try to get tickets when the Yankees or Red Sox were in town.
I also continue to assert that the flame-proof ass that will allow jet-packs to become a viable option will come ages before beaming technology will work.
You think the Middle East is screwed up now? Imagine what would happen if you yanked the economic rug from beneath their feet. Oil sales fuel a huge number of economies. What happens when the demand for transportation fuel suddenly - er - dries up?
Economic disaster for any nation who does not have the resources to produce the "beam machines" to send their citizens to where they need to go to be competitive in a suddenly distance-less world economy. Economic collapse in much of the third world, chaos, revolution. Somalia on a global scale.
Not to get all Tom Friedman on you, but this world you describe is already here. With the Web in general, and the internet in particular, communication is just that easy. Why teleport staff around the world when you can hire locally?
What if the beaming technology is open-source, a la Linux?
Swankette: as I understand TRP's scenario, the transport is not free, but inexpensive-as-a-car. And driving a car to Madagascar would not be cheap. Much like the Concorde made going from New York to Paris as easy as any other 4 hour flight, it certainly was not as cheap.
GrigorPDX: I agree, partially. There would be two kinds of reactions for third-world nations: (1) those who become more open, as many of the nations of Southeast Asia have done over the last thirty years, and (2) Those who become more inwardly-focused, the Islamic kingdoms of the Middle East, and North Korea. Without the teat of oil, democracy would become a reality in many regions now in bondage to despotic rulers.
TRP: What a great, meaty, question. We should all beam over to the Left Coast and have a face-to-face about this very question. Wait. We don't have to. . . .
Hugh -
TRP has been OBSESSING over this question for at least 6 months (which is why he warned me not to read the post). In his fantasy world it would be more along the lines of purchasing your monthly transit pass (one fee to get you as many or as few places as you wanted to go) vs. a fee based on where you want to go. And that's where I start picking apart the plan, and make him obsess on it even more.
He knows I'm the business major in this relationship, he should just trust me. :)
As the resident Star Trek geek, allow me to weigh in.
1. Ease of transportation does not equal universal access. Humans are fundamentally local creatures. Just because you can beam over to NYC to catch the latest revival of "Sweeney Todd" after work doesn't mean that you will. What if you've had a really long day at the office? You're still gonna want to come home to that sweet home cookin'. So KC Royals attendance would not decrease significantly. In fact, it may increase slightly since the novelty of going to such a game may increase. (I would go see a Royals game because I was a fan a long time ago. Don't ask me why. I'm sure some girl I liked had something to do with it.)
2. Yes, terrorism would increase. But so would its response. And, unlike airline travel which you can still do relatively anonymously, most of the futurist-written pieces I've read on this subject emphasize that such travel would be highly regulated and restricted. If you couldn't precisely prove who you are (through DNA or other means) then you aren't going anywhere. Terrorists would be very easy to locate.
3. Stephen King wrote one of his best short stories on this subject many years ago. In the story, you are transported while asleep due to the fact that when you are transported your sense of time goes completely haywire. An early transport test subject was a condemned man who was offered the chance at freedom if he transported while awake. Needless to say, he didn't make it. So, if you have to transport asleep and be woken up somewhere, that may put a kink in your plans.
I think this may happen in the future, but it will be used in the exploration of space more than terran-transportation. Imagine remote ships landing on planets millions of light years away, setting down the surface, and then human beings stepping through the transport portal only minutes after touchdown. True, the ship takes several thousand years to get where its going, but the risk to human beings is greatly minimized.
Hugh--
The world I describe is not already here. If it were, when I felt like going for a walk, I'd do it in the mountains of Colorado. If it's the middle of the night in the winter and I'm cold, I'll take myself to a beach in Australia (where it would be day and summer). If I just wanted to people-watch, I might not go to the mall...I might go to Greenwich Village. There is something to be said for being there--literally being there. The internets hasn't brought that to be. Contact and conversation are not the same as presence.
Tom--
Ah, people want to go "home." But if my "home" could be on Kauai, why wouldn't I do that? Beaming would change the entire notion of what "home" and "community" is.
See, people, THIS is why he told me not to read the post. He's so enamoured with the idea of living on Kauai while working at his school that he will discount any reasonable responses people give him.
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