I wonder who, but I also wonder why people simply tell things.

Don't you ever wonder whether there's more to be done than simply raising awareness?

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How do you know that I don't?

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Were the questions for funnybook babylon too long, or are you just so backlogged it'll take a million years before you can get to them? If it's the former, I'd be able to do a rewrite.


And now I'm pretty excited for Doktor Sleepless.

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You're a liar!!

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Someone stole your future. Don't you ever wonder who?

It was a long line of people, starting with the Persians conquering Ionia.

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POOR WATER?

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In most underdeveloped nations, minimum wage for water is still less than 13 cents a day.

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I need a creative outlet for all this anger.

Icon-making doesn't cut it, but I think it turned out okay.

How do you explain being angry enough to kill when what you want to kill isn't a person but a whole chain of events and people and societies leading up to the mess we're in right now?

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socialism.

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You stole my future. Don't blame it on poor doktor.

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I ate it, too.

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The bit about car accidents always gets to me.

I still don't know how to drive, and probably never will bother to learn. I just don't care.

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glad i'm not the only one.

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I just assumed it had something to do with too few guns and too many fuckwit morons breeding, but on a more serious note, yeah. I'm worried. Things like this have been known to keep me up at night.

Although, if you can't operate water--WATER--you and your spawn are no loss to society.

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Society doesn't know how to operate water. It's not the kids' fault.

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So Doktor Sleepless is going to bring about the Singularity?

Keen.

I hear it'll smell like bacon.

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We did. Most people like thinking small, in terms of maybe 3 years. Not thinking in terms of tens of years or even thousands of years.

That, and humanity is a pile of scum.

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I'm going to space, dammit.

And that's why I bike.

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Yes.

Someone might kill us, but at least we won't 'accidentally' kill anyone else.

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Yes.

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This future is rubbish. I want a better one now. If you haven't seen this this link from the BBC website already I suspect it might interest you. Outbreaks of the future still happen from time to time.

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Yeah I do, but I have some ideas.

It pisses me the fuck off.

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I don't expect cancer to be cured in my lifetime, but I do expect it to be contained, or even made benign. Full immersion virtual reality will help to ease the pain of the rest of what I can't have in RealTime, because if it feels real enough, I think the question becomes "should I care if it isn't."

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I've wondered who stole my future ever since 3 a.m. on the 1st of January, 2001. True story. But, y'know, not a story save in the sense of a news story, a report of real events. None of this is false.

I was in Edinburgh, standing in the middle of South Clerk Street, completely fucked out of my skull on beer, vodka, rum, and not a little whisky. I was deadly certain that the cars coming towards me would either pull up at the last minute, or were just holograms to help the morons adjust to the future when the cars were really airborne.

Then our token sober person (well, someone sober enough to know that being hit by a car fucking hurts) pulled me out of the road about half a second before a taxi turned me into roadkill. It was 2001. Where the fuck were all the flying cars?

I've wondered who stole my future since then. Key homeostats in the world. Focused nexuses of the past. When I find them, I'm fucking coming for them. Me and my beard both.

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The group that I used to run with back in those days had an important rule when taking hallucinogens: Cars are always real.

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In the US they let them drive cars at the age of 16 and wonder at the high 'accident' rate.

In Spain they let you drive 75cc motorbikes legally at the age of 14. It's not cool to wear a helmet when you're 14, it's too hot to wear a helmet in the summertime. Shorts and t-shirts are the standard clothing you'll see on on them driving by.

I have a pretty good idea who goes around stealing futures.

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In the US, a motorcycle endorsement is in addition to the license for a car. In Japan, motorcycles and scooters are allowed first, and the age where it's permissible to drive a car is higher. I always thought that was one of the best examples of a society focused on the individual vs. the group. An inexperienced driver doing something stupid on a motorcycle can kill themselves. An inexperienced driver behind the wheel of a car can kill lots of others, and stands a decent chance of getting out of it okay.

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Every damn day.

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Fuck. Yes.
Okay, between this and the script page you posted, I'm pretty utterly sold on Doktor Sleepless.
Way to prime me for a new addiction, Warren.

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Call me naive, but I still hope to see the Singularity in my lifetime...

People like Bush can't stop it, but they CAN slow things down. :/

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The trouble with the Technological Singularity, is its kinda dependent on cheap (free) energy, which is just about... done. All the energy from 2005 on is expensive and will get moreso. Food is directly linked to cheap oil, as well. Before cheap oil, world population was around 1.2 billion. We've developed better methods, but also forgotten and abandoned most of the old farmland, paved and built over considerable amounts of the rest, so carrying capacity with remaining land and sustainable (non-oil linked methods) is around 2 billion. If the transition to sustainable farming is over 4-6 years instead of 1-3, then there's hope for the third world to relearn farming and restore their soil. Very best case, 1 billion dead.

We're going to live (or die) through that.

After famine caused by the Peak Oil collapse, the world population will shrink abruptly from 6.3 billion to 2-4 billion, though worst case it will drop to 1 billion. This basically means that 5 out of 6 people alive today won't be in a few years, or best case, 1 out of 3 will die. All in the next half dozen years or so.

The singularity will have to happen AFTER the recovery from this massive famine and economic collapse. It will have to happen with renewable cheap energy, not oil, probably cheap solar and expensive (to build and maintain) wind turbines. Nuclear takes 10 years to get built and running. Coal releases mercury and other toxins into the air (heavy metal poisoning, cancer, poisoned water are side effects of burning coal). Will people, who have killed others to stay alive, or at the very least, looked away while others died, having harsh feelings towards each other, be ready and willing to share? This level of catastrophe leads to long and painful hatred, wars of retaliation, and terrorism. But the terrorists will arrive via sailboat, carrying plagues or backpack nukes tucked into the bilge.

The upshot is, best case, we'll have cheap solar power, ride bicycles, and all of us spend time in our gardens. You'll know where your food comes from or you won't eat.

Hope for the best case. And study gardening.

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Babyboomers? Terrorists? Anal Skrulls? Kittens?

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I read - but cannot find the source - that for what Americans spend on bottled water, clean water could be provided to the world.

I was able to find "we" (but not myself) spend $11 billion/year on bottled water, so I very much believe it.

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Too many people writing about the future and not enough people making it.

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so get on with it.

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We stole our future, because for the most part we're fucking complacent.

Fortunately a few people stand back from the whole thing and say "WTF?", and that gives me a little hope.

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