@timemender
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That is a good point Jean-Paul. They probably would not be able to replicate and replace every animal in a food chain. Something that popped into my head though is the idea that this journey of theirs is going to take something like 2400 years if I remember correctly. f they could care less about the time the journey takes, then they probably already know their ecosystem would not be as diverse as it once was. My bet is that they have or are developing a plan that would speed up evolution and changes in these animals so that they can expand the biodiversity when they arrive. Or maybe they are banking on just waiting and watching the population until they change and evolve naturally. That’s just my spin-foil thoughts though.
(this is debatable, but I hope I can prove my point) If I had to pick one sci-fi story that gives examples of eco-modernist innovations and ideas, it would be The Wandering Earth. I know how that sounds, it probably doesn’t make much sense but let me explain. The eco-modernist manifesto says that they are trying to save the earth by grouping people together and freeing up land for the enviroment. They also need energy that produces no waste and that can power the world constantly. If you look at The Wandering Earth they are checking those boxes and more. They congregate all the people in cities underground freeing up all the land for the enviroment, they power their cities by Geothermal and Nuclear energy, arguably the greenest energy you could get, and they are saving the earth from obliteration by star. Human activity is improving the enviromental and ecological situation because if humans did not act by moving the earth, then the earthwould no longer exist. You may try and argue that by freezing the surface they killed all of our bio-diversity and harmed the earth, but it is mentioned in the fim that they have copies of every lifeforms genetic structure so as to re-create them. They also mentioned having a storage of seeds as well, but I may be wrong. so to recap, The Wandering Earth is a sci fi story that embodies eco-modernism because all of the people have migrated to cities, they are powered by Geothermal energy and nuclear energy, and they are removing the earth from a situation where if it remained it would be obliterated and no longer exist. Without human intervention, the earth would no longer exsist and as suchthey are both improving the ecological and enviromental situation.
I hope this actually counts, at first the idea popped in my head as a joke but the more I thought about it the more it actually made sense. I mean it ticks every box the eco-modernist manifest speaks about even though its not in the same spirit they meant. Either way feel free to debate or call me out on this matter, because I want to hear what other people think.
This is an interesting and thought-provoking question about sci-fi and society. If I had to choose just one sci-fi story that I think we could learn from to improve society I would choose the Fallout series. I know it may seem cliche but there is something major to be learned from Fallout about nuclear war and it’s consequences. We see with our current national and social climate that our leaders seem to be inching closer and closer to all out war. Fallout gives us a best case scenario for nuclear war as weird as it sounds. Currently we do not have vaults that could save the lives of civilians and it is unlikely that if the world went into nuclear war that anyone would be able to survive it for 50 years, let alone 200 as stated in Fallout. If we were to launch nukes at each other, then humanity is over, there is no more history and even if there were any survivors their DNA may be damaged from the fallout of the bombs. The final nail in the coffin is that after the bombs went off there would still have to be enough survivors to have a wide enough genetic pool that prevents a genetic bottleneck even without the possibility of damaged DNA. Fallout paints almost a happy picture (at least as happy as you can be after nuclear annihilation) but also makes sure that you know it is still a sucky time to live in. Raiders, mutants, disease, and many other hazards await in the Fallout universe that are not all possible in our world, but those are mostly just for the game. I guess what I am trying to say is that we need to learn how to broker peace between the nations of the earth and Fallout is our warning. Now is the best time to do it, and I am afraid that if we wait any longer then it may be too late. Peace is important, far more important than some people seem to realize and we need to achieve peace to better ourselves and save our planet.
So this might not fit the prompt exactly but I feel there is a story to it. If it doesn’t work let me know and I’ll put in my backup song.
So the link above will take you to the Rammstein piece, Amerika. The song is mostly in German with some parts in English, but the parts that are in English as well as the music video tell the tale without needing to understand the German.
Amerika ist Wunderbar :America is Wonderful
Every lyric in this song as well as the music video is a statement on how America is turning into this mythical wonderful society that all of these other places want to emulate or live in but America is just corrupting these other cultures and societies. The reason why I chose this song for sci-fi (even though it isn’t really the most sci-fi song I could have chosen) is because it sounds and looks like it is portraying America as becoming more dystopic than utopic like it is portrayed. It reminds me of 1984, the country Oceania portrays itself as wonderful and better than all the others. They inflate their successes and cover up their defeats so that no one can tell they are lying. I imagine if Oceania hadn’t taken over almost a third of the world then other countries would be seeing Oceania as some kind of Utopia from the outside.
Coca-cola sometimes war
I feel this line magnifies what they are saying. America has been in an almost constant state of war or skirmishes with other countries since its creation. Yet aside from the major wars it almost seems like we forget about our wars in favor of our creature comforts like Coca-cola.
We’re all living in Amerika
This is my final point, and I feel it is one of the more striking lines even though it appears frequently throughout the song. In a sense America and America’s influence has invaded and pervaded many different countries and regions throughout the world. In this way we are all living in America if we cannot escape the influence of America.
I know this may not fit the prompt exactly, but it spoke to me in a sense. Kind of like how the Jetsons Tv show was a statement about what to expect the world to look like in the future, this music video does the same but set in the past. During the height of what could be called the “golden age of America” when we went to the moon and imposed ourselves onto other countries and became a superpower to be modeled after.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/10/21/justice-department-google-lawsuit-congress/
This link above leads to a news article regarding the recent announcement of the Department of Justice to pursue a lawsuit against Google and its monopolistic practices. When I wrote my revised article I made it out where the government had been pursuing a suit against Google, but Google in an attempt to avoid this suit and possible break up begins supporting smaller tech startups and companies. This would lead to more innovation and competition possibly opening the way for even more support of the human race through technology. However this article posits that in the act of pursuing this lawsuit the government may be putting itself in a bad spot. It sounds to me like they are suggesting that if the DoJ loses this case America could turn into a dystopia where the tech giants rule and control the populace. They state that if we lost the case the tech giants like apple would become emboldened by Google’s win and would double down on their monopolistic tendencies. This is a far cry from what I had been imagining as a utopia where the tech giants could fuel change and innovation that could lead to saving lives and helping the Human race. It seems like their idea is far more possible than mine, after all money begets money, and its unlikely a money making company would begin giving away their money. But one can hope, and its not like it is unheard of, with say Bill Gates who donates and gives money to the betterment of human kind. The dystopia this article pictures honestly reminds me a lot of this series of books I read a little while back. It was kind of similar to ready player one, but it was basically all of these gaming and tech companies were siding with governments to compete with the other companies for resources and opportunities. The people lived a sad life and almost every aspect of life was advertised or connected to a company, they even had aerial billboards that encircled almost every part of the globe, preventing view of the night sky. If I can remember the name of the series I will post it, it was really good.
I personally found myself in the middle of the argument on regulation versus innovation. I one hundred percent believe that there needs to be at least some regulations on technology. But we should not go too far with the regulations as that would stagnate our development of technology. Without regulations technology innovation would climb, yet this would lead to many unintended side effects, some less dangerous than others but still bad. Without these regulations the workers and scientists could be taken advantage of and there would be human right violations. However on the flip side if there are too many regulations technology becomes grasped in a stranglehold and people would begin to suffer. Lets say a scientist and engineer come up with a breakthrough device that could save lives from something that couldn’t be stopped before like pancreatic cancer. These regulations would slow the development and approval of this device or treatment and would cause many preventable deaths. If you can balance the regulations to prevent dangerous situations and human rights violations while still allowing creativity and freedom for experimentation and development, then you can both minimize deaths and suffering while maximizing quality of life and technical development. However I can see problems with this idea and I will admit nothing is flawless because of human intervention and ideas. With these more lax regulations I’m suggesting there will inevitably be someone who takes advantage of the system to hurt or steal. This will lead to stricter regulations as time progresses which will cause the stagnation anyways, but I believe it is worth the risks to push technology ahead now while we still have the chance before it becomes impossible in the future. It does make me wonder though, what technologies would we loose by having even some regulations, because with complete freedom and no restrictions human ingenuity shines.
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