Light vs. dark: the future then and now

To brighten things up a little, here's another TED talk, this one by Matt Ridley, author of The Rational Optimist:



Two points in particular that I want to emphasize here:

• First, notice the opening few minutes especially, in which he mocks and demolishes various versions of apocalypse that were popular 30 or 40 years ago -- and then, with a single chart and a few simple facts, demonstrates quite vividly why modern global society, and the historical moment we're still occupying, is unlike anything ever seen. (To indulge in self-reference again, see "The Theme".)
• And second, note how the notion of trade or exchange is at once simple, concrete, and powerful -- and also how it demystifies the more abstract notion of "the Market", which tends to be reified on both right and left as some kind of entity or force in its own right, whether for good or bad.

Geeks's rapture: the movie

A review of what seems like a kind of docu-drama based on Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near (h/t Instapundit). What's intriguing is the description of the character of "Ramona", who begins as a crude construction in Second Life, but ends as something else altogether:

Could such a simple construct of vocabulary and interaction cues really evolve into a thinking and feeling person? The answer is...maybe. Maybe Ramona can one day become like us.

But the movie doesn't end there. It ends with Ramona, speaking to us from the future she has helped to create, inviting us to hang in there long enough so that we might live to join her in that world. So the question then is flipped: can we someday become like Ramona?