As I indicated when I wrote about Davos, I don't have any faith that the state of the world is going to be "improved" through the "top down efforts" of the rich and famous, and certainly not by the corporate powers that command the world's wealth.
Paul Mason, a British economics journalist, seems to believe that information technology, which does have a type of "bottoms up" aspect, will be able to accomplish that result.
Color me skeptical on that one, too!
However, if you'd like to read a quick review of Mason's book, Postcapitalism: A Guide To Our Future, you can click on this link. That link will take you to what Peter C. Grosvenor has to say about Mason's prognostications. Grosvenor's review appears in the online edition of In These Times.
Based on the Grosvenor article (and not my personal perusal of Mason's book), my skepticism is rooted in what appears to be the thought that technology can, in and of itself, act as an autonomous force, "changing the world" in positive ways without any need for the application of a specific human intention.
I think that either "we" change "the world," or "the world" will change "us." In other words, we will either make things happen the way we want, or we will find that the future "happens to us."
When the future "happens to us," we almost always find that this is not a future that meets our deepest aspirations, or that fulfills the hopes and desires that should drive our lives.
Image Credit:
http://inthesetimes.com/article/18776/paul-mason-on-techs-post-capitalist-promise
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