Time Magazine has a great discussion with some of my favourite writers and thinkers about trends for the future. Some choice quotes:
Malcolm Gladwell:
One of the most striking things in observing the evolution of American society is the rise of travel. If I had to name a single thing that has transformed our life, I would say the rise of JetBlue and Southwest Airlines. They have allowed us all to construct new geographical identities for ourselves. Many working people today travel who never could have in the past, for meetings and conferences and all kinds of things, and this is creating another identity for them.
Esther Dyson:
The Internet is like alcohol in some sense. It accentuates what you would do anyway. If you want to be a loner, you can be more alone. If you want to connect, it makes it easier to connect.
Tim O’Reilly:
The generation now growing up is going to expect access to information in a way us fuddy-duddies don’t take for granted. Some say the Net will lead to a radical democratization–power to the people–but I don’t think so. When you harness collective intelligence and the power of blogging, it doesn’t mean power to individuals. It means power to the people best able to aggregate those individuals.
David Brooks:
As the information age matures, you’re getting social stratification based on education. […] People at the top of the income scale pass down the skills one needs to thrive in this economy to their kids who get into Harvard–where the median student comes from a family making $150,000 a year–and they go on to an affluent suburb. And they pass it down, so you get really good public high schools, and people there are more likely to marry people like themselves.
Moby:
[C]ultural production always goes hand in hand with technological development. Like with the records I make. I wouldn’t have been able to make them 20 years ago. It would have cost half a million dollars to make a record instead of $20,000. Now it’s just me with a laptop.
Malcolm Gladwell again:
We will have more debates and disputes, like the one over creationism. When you’re having 100 arguments at once, no one of them matters the way it used to. It’s important not to use a 19th century moral lens to evaluate the kind of debates we’re going to have in the 21st century. We have to accept that the general noise level will increase, but that doesn’t matter. You can be a creationist at night and go to work in the morning as a pediatrician and save lives.
(via BoingBoing)