db .d dXb db XXXXXXXXX TP `X$ TX$X TP `$$ `XX $$ THE O$X $$ `T d$$ O$X $$ d dX dTTL$$ dXb. O$X dXb. .XXXXb dX dTTTTb .dTTb $$..dX .8$ d$P~T$$ d8XXX8b O$X d8XXX8b .D$8XX$H .8$ I8XXXX8 .$P"H$I $$@XXX O$ $$ $$ .8X' `H8. O$X .8X' `H8. I$T'`$H O$ ,X8' `"H `' .O$I $$ `TX O$ $$ $$ I$O T$I O$X I$X T$I I$I $H O$ I$8 ` .d$$$I $$ ` O$ $$ $$ I$O T$I O$X I$X T$I I$I $H O$ I$8 . d8H"O$I .$$ .d O$ $$b d$$ IXXb dH8' O$X IOOb dX8' I$I $H O$ `O8b dH $$' X$Lb d$$sssdXX dX$ TXXXX$P THXXHHP ;X$X THXXHHP .O$I .$H dX$ `I8)iOO O$OXO$$H XXXXXXXXX XXXb TXXXX' `XXXP' iIIXB `XXXP' dIII III XXXb `TIIP' `VXXXXI' PAPERS Compiled, Edited and Sometimes Written by Greg Webster - Issue 4 Volume 1 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Many thanks for reading, my apologies again for a delayed issue, but I think that's the way it going to be for a while...not exactly sporadic, since I do plan on putting out one issue per month, but times (and milage) may vary. It's best if you do wish to submit an article on a topic, to get it to me as soon as you can for inclusion. Take a look at my spiffy new title bar and tell me what you think. Maybe next month I'll have a bit of a contest and give you folks a choice of the best. This month's topic is "Ten Years after the Millennia". It's a small issue, mainly because I neglected to tell anyone what the topic was while I got certain things straightened out here. Just me and a friend of mine. Next issue's topic is "Mind Power - thoughts affecting the outside world". This includes such things as telekinesis (moving things with the mind), pyrokinesis (affecting fire with the mind), and a little bit of such things as precognition (knowing things before they happen), clairvoyance (seeing things in your mind from far distances), and clairaudience (as clairvoyance, but by hearing). I figure that's a big enough spread of topics to really get some of your minds working and your hands writing. So, I'd best get into it... =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Here is a first submission from a friend of mine, Andy. He is the only person in my life who has read this ezine, and my closest friend. I've known him for years, know him well, and could have known how he would write this. Never one to hide his opinions, Andy has this time given none. He's a strange man, and gets stranger by the minute. Future Plus =-=-=-=-=-= Flashing light, wondrous toys, people everywhere - THE FUTURE! THE FUTURE! THE FUTURE! Interesting. What will the world - most particularly our part of it - look and feel like ten years post-Millenium? Complex question. Her is one possible (short) answer. Well, to begin, let's remember the "future" is pure illusion. It is a fictitious entity, created from our own hopes and fears about tomorrow. This is important, since most people have a tendency to consider tomorrow and the years to come as if they were seperate from today - as if they had already happened, in a way. What most know but rarely consider, is that no matter what happens, humanity always adapts. It's that or perish. We make our own destiny, and then we re-make it. And so on. So change is not so much a facet of time as it is a facet of people. Riding into tomorrow is just a matter of living with society. Excluding giant meteors crashing into the planet, or alien invasion, etc. The future, including up to the year 2009, is mostly something we look back on and talk or marvel about. Cars will be a little different, computing power yet more impressive. Technology may have plateau-ed again, in some areas, and advanced in others. Sitcoms will probably still rule the airwaves. The military will still have full-time employment. People, having failed to learn from their predecessors, will still hurt and hurt others. Nations will have changed hands, and changed hands again. The middle class will still be around in North America, or they won't. Bet on the former, but watch for surprises. Just like today. Hopefully, our eyes will be on tomorrow, but our hands will be dealing with today. With luck, corporations will not have replaced governments, shareholders instead of voters determining world leaders. On the other hand... In conclusion, the decade following the year two thousand will be 'today', plus a little more tech, and a little more pain. But there will still be sunsets and happy people. Call it today, plus. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= And once again to what I think on a topic of my own devising. Rebuild =-=-=-= Strange, I've always been somewhat of a futurist, constantly working out thoughts on what the future would look like, but now that the future (soon to be the present) time of the end of the century approaches, I find that those thoughts are not nearly so strong. I used to beleive that the future would be far stranger than we could imagine, with ease of transportation perhaps with teleportation booths, maybe some sub-orbital rockets sending us all the way around the world, and all aspects of our daily life affected by technology advancing itself at a phenomenal rate. When I was a kid in the 70's, the year 2000 seemed so far away that anything was possible. After all, look at the changes that have occured in those 26 years! From computers the size of football feilds to pocket calculators that do pretty much the same amount of work...or even more. We've moved from a period where we used as much power as possible in our cars and machines to a point where every discovery gains special recognition if it uses less power than the last. Somewhere in those thirty years, I see a loss of innocence. The flower children looked forward to the age of aquarius, and instead we've found a world that blasts us with nostalgic ideas of what could have been if we'd only have tried harder. Way back then we had the frontier of technology open in front of us, and now we've found that that frontier is about the size of a walk-in closet. So what can we look forward to in the next century? Well, as the cliche goes, 'it's gonna get worse before it gets better'. I predict more violence, more riots and more incredible extremism, especially in North America. The Los Angeles riots were only a week long effectively, and the sympathy riots that sprung up across the US and Canada were quickly supressed. I see a few more of those riots, probably culminating in something that cannot be squashed. We're heading to a revolution unless we make a rapid change in the way we think. I predict that we're going to be heading for a world government by the end of the next century. The internet is making that happen. Take a good look at it folks, because it's all you're going to see for a long while. Because of the difficulties in enforcement of laws about the internet, a world-governing body is going to have to take over. It's no good for an American law to come in when the rest of the world is just a few type-strokes away. We're going to see incredible changes in medicine in the next fifty years or so. We are so close to a perfectly controlled nanotechnology tool that will be able to enter the human body and work changes to tiny to see. The possibility of immortality exists with this, but I would bet that that idea will be stopped dead. We aren't mature as a race yet, and without perfect, universal, and reversible contraception, immortality is impractical. With this nanotechnology, all science will rapidly advance. Nanobots will be taught to build themselves and do our mining for us, or hold things as tiny as an atom so that we have control over the tiniest detail. Expect every aspect of your life to change when this is used. Watch for some impressive changes in our favorite science... virtual reality. Some of the things already out there are pretty realistic, but with the popularity of three dimensional perspective games like DOOM, everyone and their dog will be working on improvements. Nothing like huge cash flow in a commercial society to get the wheels of progress moving. One day we are going to be able to produce something so real that it won't be distinguishable from reality. When that occurs expect a new crisis: virtual reality addiction. People will live in their virtual worlds, staying long enough to forget to eat. The first occurence of that is going to scare me beyond belief. After all, why thnk about getting food when you are already eating? Impossible you say? Look at those people who play these games today. Or when this same type of person was playing Dungeons and Dragons in the 80's. Drop out of university, lose your job, or your family. I've seen in happen already to people who couldn't handle their addiction to escaping reality. So that's how the world is going to get ugly. How about how it gets better? I'm not sure. I'd bet that at some point (maybe after that revolution I mentioned) a radical mindshift is going to happen, spreading across humanity like the black plague, making people realize what they have done and where this planless activity is leading them. And then hopefully we can begin to rebuild, because that shift in perspective is going to destroy everything we've done for a long, long time. And that rebuilding is the true future. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Many thanks folks, I hope you enjoyed this issue. The Eidolonica Papers are built from your thoughts and mine, so please take a look at yourself and see if you can find something in you to tell. Without submissions, I end up writing everything myself, and as much as I love writing, I can't do a project like this by myself. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Subscriptions may be relayed to: Kick@freenet.vancouver.bc.ca, which in the next year or so will be gradually changed to kick@vcn.bc.ca. Submissions go to the same place. FTP access is available at: ftp://ftp.etext.org/pub/Zines/EidolonicaPapers And again many thanks to Rita for the help getting it there. You can find a link to that FTP site at my webpage (which will eventually be purely for The Eidolonica Papers) at: http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/~aq008 And thanks to the people at National Capital Freenet for allowing personal webpages. Submissions will be always be accepted, the more submissions, by far the better ezine. I hold the right to edit things as I choose for any reason I feel is appropriate, but keep in mind that I hate doing it, so your submissions will probably be safe from my evil hands. Everything here is (c) 1996 unless I say otherwise. You may feel free to copy it for any non-profit use you wish, as long as it remains unedited. If you wish to edit something for use, or wish to charge money in any way for what you read here, then you MUST contact me for permission. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=