Bill Joy, Chief Scientist of Sun Microsystems, once wrote a comprehensive exposition in Wired back in April of 2000, titled "Why the future doesn't need us."
Aside from touching on a wealth on insightful points of conversation, ranging from a detailed evolution of technology in the computer age to dystopia and the complexity of non-linear systems, Joy notes a particularly interesting description of how our perception of utopia has developed over time in accordance with our environmental conditions:
I recently had the good fortune to meet the distinguished author and scholar Jacques Attali, whose book Lignes d'horizons (Millennium, in the English translation) helped inspire the Java and Jini approach to the coming age of pervasive computing. In his new book Fraternités, Attali describes how our dreams of utopia have changed over time:
"At the dawn of societies, men saw their passage on Earth as nothing more than a labyrinth of pain, at the end of which stood a door leading, via their death, to the company of gods and to Eternity. With the Hebrews and then the Greeks, some men dared free themselves from theological demands and dream of an ideal City where Liberty would flourish. Others, noting the evolution of the market society, understood that the liberty of some would entail the alienation of others, and they sought Equality."
Jacques helped me understand how these three different utopian goals exist in tension in our society today. He goes on to describe a fourth utopia, Fraternity, whose foundation is altruism. Fraternity alone associates individual happiness with the happiness of others, affording the promise of self-sustainment.
