Creek Running North

Although I don’t agree with everything Brin says about the left, he certainly cannot be accused of “Julian-Simon-inspired futurism”. It’s fairer to describe him as a short-term pessimist and long-term optimist. Whether or not you always agree with Brin (I doubt he does himself), he’s one of our deepest thinkers about the future. I would encourage everyone to read his novel Earth. It’s the kind of book that makes most literature seem like thin broth.

OK, perhaps the Simon crack was unfair. It’s a twitch on my part when people who are, presumably, familiar with the laws of thermodynamics use “zero-sum” as a disparagement.

It’s better than being mocked as “dumb” in someone’s my-boyfriend’s-such-a-pig myspace journal, which happens to me all the time.

Based only on that post, Brin seems, much like some of my physicist friends, to have a rather rosy view of the positive power of technology. That he sees moonbases as a (apparently) unquestioned “good thing” troubles me.

Chris, shame on you for not contemplating WHY so many on the left refuse to look at past successes and see in them reason to encourage (rather than constantly berate) the masses.

That said, I for one will welcome our new, deeply sour and unpleasant dour indignation junky overlords of the left.

So i pull out my 1991 copy of Life magazine, that has some cool photos of Alaska by my friend Bob Ketchum, but also, and germane, a long feature article about terraforming Mars.  The premise is simple.  The same technology that is killing the capacity of the Earth to sustain the greatest possible diversity of life, can be turned on Mars, cooking the planet with greenhouse gas emissions and so forth, to manifest positive changes in its limited atmosphere.  Whoopeee. 

Why was it that the Biodome projects keep failing?? Oh yeah, they never could generate sufficient decomposers to process soils to increase green growth.  I am sure Brin will solve that problem so that billions of human can live in domes in the future. 

What’s that you say?  Oh, only a few dozen million will be living on the Earth in these technologically advanced environments.  Yes that makes better sense.  So much for the deep ecological notion that by better stewardship, and increasing the participational parity of all species, we humans could inspire the planet’s healthier ongoing evolution.  Better to just let most of it dieoff so that the few may survive to move on to other worlds.

To be deeply sour and unpleasant for a moment, I think any use of the word “stewardship”, as it pertains to our treatment of this planet, be banned. We are stewards like Delta House Fraternity are homemakers. Someone out there has us on Double Secret Probation.

Instead of “better stewardship”, I propose “less utterly blind arseholeness”. Tiny steps…

Never heard of this pompous Brin guy before now.  But thanks to this thread, I won’t ever forget not to buy any of his books if I’m ever lost in Borders

But I’m confused, can’t tell if his genre is SciFi or self-deprecating satire.....

“(Dang, that coulda made a good commentary column in a journal like WIRED and I’d’a got paid for it. Some folks deliver less than that. I hope you guys are appreciative.)”

Well, I wasn’t kidding when I said I admired Brin’s writing. I’ve enjoyed a number of his books, including the one Jane plugged above. (Though I don’t think I liked it as much as she did.)

Brin was the first writer I found who questioned the ethics of terraforming other planets.

Brin writes 1950s SF, unfortunately.  It’s as if John W. Campbell had gotten into environmentalism; there’s millions of other intelligent species out there, but we’re the *special* ones, and there isn’t any problem that can’t be solved with good American technological ingenuity.

Kim Robinson’s Mars trilogy is much better in terms of questioning the ethics of terraforming within a science context instead of a space opera context.