Things to Come

Having just returned from a Foresight Institute conference on “The Synergy of Molecular Manufacturing and AGI,” I am struck by the educational implications of what I heard about transformative science and technology. One speaker, Stanford forecaster Paul Saffo, proposed a metaphor:  “Engineers and Druids.”  He senses that public attitudes about science are hardening and becoming as polarized as Red state-Blue state politics.  “Engineers,” he explained, are optimists, expecting technological solutions to life’s problems.  “Druids” are pessimists, seeking a return to pre-technological existence.  Both types, I think, are Utopians:  the engineers beavering away on their techno-nirvana while the druids are yearning for a farmer’s-market Eden. The Saffo Split is most obvious in academia with the engineers night-owling in the labs and the druids moping around humanities lecture halls.  Druids hiss at engineers because there is little venture capital available for their composting research; engineers simply ignore druids as irrelevant.  But Saffo’s real worry is not the extremes; it’s the polarization that has left no moderates who know both some science and some poetry. So why is there no middle?  With AGI and synthetic biology rewriting the definition of “human” itself, why aren’t druids more interested in the probable techno future?  For one thing, where would they have learned about it?  The number of futures studies programs on American campuses can be counted on one hand.  Elsewhere, Taiwan’s Tamkang University requires students to fulfill a futures requirement in order to graduate.  A typical Tamkang exercise is to articulate what futures are possible, what future is most desirable, and what future is most likely.  In Silicon Valley, Singularity University does something similar in nine weeks but only for 40 hand-picked entrepreneurial types who can drop 25 large. The absence of a moderate middle produces two armed camps and what Saffo calls a “foresight deficit,” a systemic societal inability to look ahead, anticipate, and shape policy.  Solid education about what the engineers are doing is needed to rebuild an influential middle that can moderate the extremes.  All schools should produce graduates like Tamkang’s who have learned “how to recognize the future, adjust to its changing nature, and create the future.”