Newberry on The Four Great Challenges

Take your pick on the Stirling posts:
Daily Kos | BOP News
I could add some man-enabled potentially brewing natural disasters to the challenges as well, but the four that Newberry picked have a logical synergy that usually doesn't get articulated this concisely. I find the analogies between information extraction and energy extraction fascinating. Much more up my alley than the old comparisons between Y2K and Peak Oil.

Newberry closes with the Four Great Realizations

They require uprooting old attachments – an entire society has evolved to extract, and to search for information that leverages extraction. In the United States the political right is the party of extraction, and the political left is the party of information, and they are engaged in a death struggle over which side gets more of the non-existent profits of extraction. In fact, the US is bleeding debt, because the entire trade of “information for extraction” that the US relies on is dying. The United States does better under Democrats because Democrats favor the information side of the equation, and the US sells information, but neither side can deal with the vast demographic realities and end of extraction realities which will dominate the 21st century and be the basis for reaching the 22nd century.

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Meanwhile, the mainstream media has given up on trying to explain anything and has resorted to pure symbology:



But that's nothing; just wait until we reach the "Ball of Confusion"!

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Update: Soviet-style extraction courtesy of Big Gav HERE.