We live in an age of miracles.

Right now i type on a wireless keyboard in front of a 23 inch touch screen.  Next to that i have my laptop which will be in court with me on Thursday for the trial.  Both are sitting in my living room where i have an undersized 45 inch HD LCD TV.  All of them can be connected wirelessly to the rest of the internet thereby granting them access to more information than the Library at Alexandria.  And of course, none of this impresses any of you because we accept this as normal.

Knowledge and information used to be hard won prizes.  Arcane texts were closely and jealously guarded by their keepers lest the undeserving gain access or worse make off with them.  Now they flow down fiber optic cables into my home at the rate of 15 megabits per second on a good day.  In such a world it becomes easy to take the miraculous for granted.

I hear people lament the widening gulf between the best off and worst off in our society.  "The rich get richer and the middle class is disappearing," they proclaim.  These fools got together and elected one of their ilk to the highest post in our country and he has set about to throw wooden shoes one after another into the machinery of our economy.  These people have missed the point.  Today the average citizen lives better than European royalty did one hundred years ago.  We laugh off diseases that killed nobles.  Childbirth is scarcely a risk now.  We live longer, healthier lives then they could imagine.  We travel around the globe faster than the sun crawls across the landscape.  We have multiple devices in every room of our homes that even the brightest men of a century ago would have found inconceivable.  We are forty-four years from achieving immortality. 

We live in an age of miracles and if the braying calls of the modern levellers do not bring us down, more and greater things are to come.

So what brought forth this outpouring?

It wasn't the release of Atlas Shrugged part I.  Mike assures me the acting is poor and the liberal movie reviewing elite are not lying to bring the movie down, it just isn't very good.  Nor is it Amazon suggesting i pick up Sonic Boom to go with The Progress Paradox and expand my Gregg Easterbrook collection.  It was something much more mundane.  Today i got up and thought about the song Pinball Wizard while brushing my teeth.


I walked down to my living room and within seven minutes i had seen Elton John standing ten feet tall in his sequined coke-bottle glasses (Edit-- HD version here) belt out the song, read three articles in the Wikipedia on Tommy, consumed a fresh batch of ice cubes, and checked the weather.

Sometimes i think about how fantastic it is to live in this world today and mean to write something, but get distracted. There is no point in the past that would be better.   Today it is Sunday morning and i have promised you all that i would post more so i took advantage of the combination of inspiration and time.

I believe in the Singularity.  I don't speculate on the outcome.  That is the point, those of us on this side cannot imagine what things are like on the other side.  I'd like to live long enough to get there.

We are at a cross roads right now.  I think at some point down the road we can have Star Trek Socialism and provide creature comforts and a good standard of living for any and every person who wishes to sit on his ass and accept them.  But we are not there yet.  Nor do we need John Galt or Andrew Ryan to rise up and make off with our best, brightest, and most productive.  All we need to do is accept that although we live in an age of miracles, we are not yet free from scarcity and our reach still exceeds our grasp.    Maybe in forty-four years we can provide free heath care, food, clothing, shelter and ultra-broad band internet to everyone who wants them.  I hope you are all there with me to find out.

Later

Bob

Post Script
Also encourage Mitch Daniels to run for president.  Unless you hate America and then you already voted for obama.