Visions of the future

[jon112981]

Okay I got this really weird assignment from the first day of one of my classes. "Write and essay for friday(tomorrow) about your worst fear/greatest hope for the future". Actually this sounds like a really cool assignment, and being the cynic that I am I immediately got a great many ideas. One of which was a fear of corperation controled America/world, especially since it is almost a reality. Anyway, what I'd like to know is if any of you guys had any ideas/thoughts or any quotes, with sources, that I could use for this. I figured techimo would be a great place to find ideas of people against a total domination by corperations. And hey, if you think I'm totally wrong about that being a fear, like if you have a reason for thinking that a corperate dominated world is a good idea, please post that... I'd be very interested to see what people think.

Thanks,

JON

[Theophylact]

You might read The Space Merchants, by Frederick Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth for a vision of a corporation-controlled America/world, or Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner. These are both twenty-five to thirty-five years old, but the situation hasn't changed. Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut, even older: the computers use punched tape and vacuum tubes, but the results are the same.

[vass0922]

wasn't somebody around here just doing a lot of reading about that stuff?!

[Knothead]

Those are good references, esp, Player Piano by Vonnegut (Actually, there's a wealth of Vonnegut work that deals with an unusual idea of the future...Like "Slapstick"...Hi ho... )

The original story behind the two "Rollerball" films is actually a short story by William Harrison, concerning this one guy, Jonathan E., who's the best in the game. Sort of in the background, Harrison sketches out a world in which there are no longer any nations, just corporations.

In the absence of war, which Harrison postulates is neccessary to human need and desire (!) the corporations have invented this game called "Rollerball" which, because of rule changes, gets progressively more lethal, until it's just bloody chaos, and only Jonathan E is left.

If you can find it, it's worth looking at (also under the title "Rollerball Murder").

[Epidemic]

Think about this... Government controlled world!!! Scary!!!

a radical muslim controlled world. Fifth columnists in all western cultures rise to power and remove all the freedoms we take for granted.


Potatos all were pink with slimey green stripes. now that is the scariest of all.

[LinuxNewbie]

how about this, what all those guys at f***microsoft.com are saying comes true!! OOOOOH

let me see if i remember some of the things...
-i think they said MS was trying to make GNU's user agreement illegal or something like that i don't really know though
-that plan (which was clearly lobbied) to make all non approved computers illegal which would make custom built computers illega, Linux and BSD illegal as well as the government monitoring everything you view on the web

as for real ideas, me dun'st know

[nomaxim]

Rollarball: James Caen (sp) saw that years ago . About same time as 'Planet of the Apes", right?