Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Welcome to the 2024 State of the World conversation, hosted by the
trailblazing online community platform, The WELL. I'm Jon Lebkowsky,
co-host at the Plutopia News Network, also co-host of the
Inkwell.vue forum here on the WELL. This is our 25th annual State of
the World conversation. You can find links to all of the annual
State of the World conversations at
<https://weblogsky.com/state-of-the-world/>.

My partner in this annual conversation is Bruce Sterling - author,
journalist, and world traveler. Bruce has written popular and
influential science fiction novels, particularly within the
cyberpunk subgenre which he helped create. He's also written a
number of features as a journalist as well as nonfiction books,
including _The Hacker Crackdown. Law and Disorder on the Electronic
Frontier_. He's also a popular speaker and design critic. His
insights create the framework for this annual conversation, which
began when I interviewed Bruce here in 2000 about the "a Viridian
future." <inkwell.vue 61>: Bruce Sterling: A Viridian Future

Other members of the WELL will be joining the conversation. If
you're reading this and you don't have an account on the WELL, you
can send comments and/or questions to inkwell at well.com.
  

    
As we stumble into 2024, the State of the World is stumbling with
us. Our planet is overheating, authoritarians are moving to squash
democracy (ironically finding power through ~democratic elections),
our minds are occupied by narratives planted via manipulation of
media, mass and social, attention commodified to serve the gods of
commerce and power. 

Post-pandemic we've seen the global economy rebound, but looming
threats like climate change, ongoing global conflicts and wars,
social inequality and receding democracy are significant, possibly
catastrophic issues. 

Technological advancements offer some solutions, but navigating
their equitable distribution and tackling pressing issues like
economic slowdown and resource scarcity remain crucial challenges.
Ultimately, the narrative of our world depends on whether we choose
cooperation and sustainable progress over division and short-term
gains.
  

    
Trends/concerns going into 2024...

1. Climate Change Catastrophes: The effects of climate change are
becoming increasingly evident, with more extreme weather events such
as heatwaves, droughts, floods, and wildfires. These events are
causing widespread damage and loss of life, and they are only
expected to become more frequent and severe in the years to come. 

2. Rising Political Polarization: Political polarization continues
to worsen, with both sides becoming increasingly entrenched in their
own views and unwilling to compromise. This has led to gridlock in
government, increased social division, and a rise in political
extremism. 

3. Cyberwarfare Threats: Cyberwarfare is becoming an increasingly
serious threat, with nations and non-state actors developing
sophisticated cyberweapons that can be used to attack critical
infrastructure, steal sensitive data, and disrupt communications.

4. Information pollution (misinformation and disinformation): The
spread of misinformation and disinformation is a major challenge,
eroding trust in institutions and making it difficult to have
informed public discourse. This is being exacerbated by social media
platforms, which can amplify the reach of false information. 

5. Social Media Addiction and Mental Health: Social media addiction
is a growing problem, particularly among young people. This can lead
to anxiety, depression, and other mental health problems.
Additionally, social media platforms are increasingly being used to
spread misinformation and hate speech, which can have a negative
impact on mental health. 

6. AI Job Displacement: AI has the potential to automate certain
tasks and jobs, leading to job displacement in some industries.
Routine and repetitive tasks are more susceptible to automation,
while jobs that require creativity, emotional intelligence, and
complex problem-solving are less likely to be easily replaced by AI.
But AI also has the potential to create new jobs and industries. As
technology evolves, it often opens up opportunities for innovation
and the development of new skill sets. So we'll likely see
disruption and shifts in demand for skills - it's a complex
situation with a lack of clarity about the impact on global
employment.

7. Growing Anti-Science Sentiment: There is a growing anti-science
sentiment in some parts of the world, with people rejecting
scientific evidence on issues such as climate change and
vaccinations. This is a dangerous trend that can have serious
consequences for public health and safety. 

8. Increased Surveillance and Privacy Concerns: Governments and
companies are collecting more data about people than ever before,
raising concerns about privacy and the potential for misuse of this
data. 

9. Global Food Crisis: The war in Ukraine and other factors are
contributing to a global food crisis, with rising food prices and
shortages of essential supplies. This is putting millions of people
at risk of hunger and malnutrition. There's also a water crisis: 771
million people -- 1 in 10 -- lack access to safe water and 1.7
billion people -- 1 in 4 -- lack access to improved sanitation.  

10. Deepfakes and the Erosion of Trust: Deepfakes, realistic videos
that can be used to make it appear as if someone is saying or doing
something they never did, have become increasingly sophisticated and
widespread. This raises concerns about the erosion of trust in
media, the potential for manipulation, and the possibility of
deepfakes being used for malicious purposes. 
  

    
Twenty-five years of this ritual?  Good Lord, no wonder we're so
antique and creaky.

On the bright side,  a quarter of a century gives you tradition and
continuity.  For 2024, I'm anticipating 2023 redux.   It's the same
thing.  No better.  The climate's definitely worse, the ongoing
land-war's a little worse, the same oligarchs and blowhard
demagogues suck all the social and political oxygen out of the room,
only they're more tiresome, less exciting, novel and provocative. 
The ongoing plague is a pandemic and it's part of the human
condition. Which is to say, continuity.

Also, I'm logging in from in Ibiza for this State of the World, as
I've been doing for years.  I seem to have sunk into this rocky
little Balearic island, there's no particular novelty about that,
it's become the routine. A tradition.
  

    

However, being a science fiction writer, I really don't like to be
this staid,  boring; and lamentably predictable.  "More of the same,
only more visible decline and it feels worse," that is very much  a
guy-of-70 lived experience.  And, yeah, here in 2024, I'm becoming a
guy of seventy.   I can rightfully boast of impressive futurist
chops now, because I've survived so much past.

So, still, clearly -- in an attempt to keep WELL SotW readers
engaged who aren't dusty septuagenarians -- I'm gonna need some
sources of off-the-wall futuristical razzmatazz.  
  

    

That's why, this year, 02024, I'm gonna be calling on the State of
the World services of a notable young guest-celebrity with his own
point-of-view: the Microsoft Bing GPT-4 large-language-model.

I know this young, up-to-date Bing guy pretty well by now, because I
frequently "human-AI collaborate" with him, meaning that I type some
prompting phrase and I hit RETURN, and he does all the verbal
organizational work that a "creative writer" like me would normally
have to do (and maybe get paid for).  Bing works for "free" 
(meaning, for Microsoft platform surveillance) and his grammar and
punctuation are great.

A lot of people still don't use Bing GPT-4, or any of the other
newfangled, super-sort-of-informed, modern neural-net chatbots,
either,  but I don't this fellow needs further introduction.  So,
let's hear what he has to offer us.

"Bing, what is the state of the world in 2024?"
  

    

****

"Hello, this is Bing. I can give you some information about the
world in 2024 based on the latest news and web sources.

"Here are some of the main topics that are happening around the
globe:

"Ukraine-Russia conflict: The situation in Ukraine has escalated
into a full-scale war, with Russia launching air strikes and
shelling across the border, killing dozens of civilians and injuring
hundreds more. Ukraine accuses Russia of using banned weapons and
violating international law, while Russia claims it is defending its
interests and allies in the region. The UN Security Council has
condemned the violence and called for an immediate ceasefire, but
the prospects of a diplomatic solution seem bleak."
  

    

"Climate change: The world is facing a climate emergency, with
extreme weather events, natural disasters, and rising sea levels
threatening millions of lives and livelihoods. The COP26 summit in
Glasgow in 2023 resulted in a historic agreement to limit global
warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, but many experts warn
that the pledges made by countries are not enough to achieve this
goal. The year 2024 will be crucial for implementing and monitoring
the actions and commitments made at the summit, as well as for
mobilizing public awareness and support for the transition to a
low-carbon future."
  

    

"US presidential election: The race for the White House is heating
up, with former President Donald Trump announcing his bid for a
second term in 2024, despite being impeached twice and banned from
social media platforms. He faces a tough challenge from the
Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, who became the first woman and
person of color to serve as vice president under Joe Biden. The
election is expected to be highly polarized and contentious, with
issues such as the pandemic, the economy, immigration, and climate
change dominating the agenda.

"These are some of the major issues that are shaping the world in
2024. If you want to know more about any of them, you can ask me for
more details or visit the links I provided. Thank you for using
Bing."
  

    

*Thanks so much for that input, Bing!  Any WELL reader can witness
that Bing directly validates what me and Jon Lebkowsky are also
saying about the state of the world.   The year 2024 is all about
climate crisis and warfare (it's great that he agrees).  As for
"President Kamala Harris," her formal nomination is especially
exciting and unusual.   I bet you really didn't expect that "black
swan,"  eh?

*With Bing "hallucinating" for us in this way, we WELLperns won't
need the long-established, continuous WELL-user tradition of
gobbling psyechedelic substances at the keyboard.  Because, man,
Bing excels at that.

*I promise that he'll be back later during our two-week discussions!
  

    
A Substack newsletter I actually pay money to support: Heather Cox
Richardson's "Letters from an American." Richardson is a historian
teaching at Boston College, and author of several books, the latest
of which is _Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America_.
Her superpower is her ability to explain the historical context for
the state of the USA, if not the world. You can get an idea what
she's seeing from the title of her latest book and the preceding one
published in 2020: _ow the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy,
Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America_.

One of her most recent newsletters was inspired by Republican
candidate Nikki Haley's recent gaffe, omitting slavery when asked
about the cause of the American Civil War. She calls it "It was the
death knell of the Republican Party," a party that was originally
built on opposition to slavery in the Civil War era.

<https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-29-2023>

She includes this bit of history:

"In the years after the Civil War, the Republican vision of a
harmony of economic interest among all Americans quickly swung
toward the idea of protecting those at the top of society, with the
argument that industrial leaders were the ones who created jobs for
urban workers. Ever since, the party has alternated  between
Lincoln's theory that the government must work for those at the
bottom and the theory of the so-called robber barons, who echoed the
elite enslavers' idea that the government must protect the wealthy. 

"During the Progressive Era, Theodore Roosevelt reclaimed Lincoln's
philosophy and argued for a strong government to rein in the
industrialists and financiers who dominated society; a half-century
later, Dwight Eisenhower followed the lead of Democrat Franklin
Delano Roosevelt and used the government to regulate business,
provide a basic social safety net, promote infrastructure, and
protect civil rights."

What's happening now in the USA is another in a series of attempts
to abolish the progressive vision for the USA and return to a view
of a government that protects the rich, and how recently "the power
in the party shifted from those trying to protect wealthy Americans
to Trump, who increasingly aligned with foreign autocrats."

"MAGA's determination to impose white Christian nationalism on the
United States of America is a rejection of the ideology of the
Republican Party in all its phases. Rather than either an active
government that defends equal rights and opportunity or a small
government that protects property and relies on market forces, which
Republicans stood for as recently as eight years ago, today's
Republicans advocate a strong government that imposes religious
rules on society."

This is part of a global autocratic movement that includes Russia
(Vladimir Putin) and Hungary (Viktor Orban). The state of the world
currently is aggressive attack on democracies and progressive states
and potential creation of a network of dictatorships. 

At this point, even Ronald Reagan seems like a leftist in the
context of the contemporary "MAGA" Republican party. Here's a famous
Reagan quote: "I've spoken of the shining city all my political
life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when
I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks
stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with
people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free
ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to
be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone
with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it, and
see it still."

You won't see that on this cycle's Republican platform. In fact, in
2020 they didn't feel that they needed a platform - just a candidate
seeking power.
  

    
Welcome back, Bruce. Hello, all. For those who don’t know me, I’m a
longtime WELL member (and since the fall, co-host of Inkwell) and
environmental journalist. For the past few years I’ve been a
contributing editor at DeSmog, where we document, investigate and
report on climate denial and disinformation. 

Jon, to your state of the world list, I’d like to add: women losing
hard-won rights; the extinction crisis paralleling the climate
crisis; further attacks on and erosion of the free press worldwide;
and new heights of wealth concentration among a minute percentage of
people.
  

    

For the sake of our collective mental health, though, here’s a list
of what’s good in the world at the start of 2024, from the astute
cookies at electoral-vote.com:

“This Week in Freudenfreude: Good News from Around the Earth”

For the last freudenfreude of the year, we thought we'd do a rundown
of some of the good news that 2023 brought, around the globe. And
so:

Pandemic I: COVID-19 is still with us, but the worst is in the
rearview mirror. There are both vaccines and medications that are
generally effective, the World Health Organization has declared it
is no longer a global emergency, and the Global Happiness Index is
back to where it was before the pandemic hit.

Pandemic II: Medicines that treat those individuals affected with
AIDS, and that block transmission to new carriers, raise the very
real possibility that the disease will be effectively eradicated by
2030.

Begone!: Individual countries have also had success with vanquishing
epidemic diseases. Bangladesh became the first country to eliminate
visceral leishmaniasis, Iraq became the seventeenth to eliminate
trachoma, and Belize has banished malaria from its borders.

Golden Age of Medicine: In addition to the above advances, 2023 saw
the introduction of promising new cancer treatments based on mRNA,
dramatic progress toward cracking the code on Alzheimer's Disease,
the promulgation of a new cost-effective malaria vaccine, the
release of the first RSV vaccine, the creation of two new treatments
for sickle cell disease, and the development of a new pill that
targets postpartum depression.

Fossil Fuels: Nearly 200 nations signed an agreement at COP28 to
"transition away from fossil fuels." It's not the end for
fossil-fuel-based energy, obviously, but it's a big first step. Also
on that front, global carbon emissions and emissions from China both
dropped for the first time ever, thanks primarily to increased
adoption of wind, solar and hydroelectric power. Worldwide, for
every $1 invested in fossil fuel extraction in 2023, $1.80 was
invested in renewables. This year also saw the launch of the world's
largest solar farm (in the United Arab Emirates) and the world's
largest wind farm (in the United Kingdom).

1.21 Gigawatts: Scientists are also getting closer to making nuclear
fusion a reality, potentially unlocking a major source of power that
is much more eco-friendly than fission-based energy.

Electric Vehicles: Industrialized countries around the world saw
record sales of electric vehicles. In the U.S., EVs now account for
8% of all new vehicle purchases.

Gay Pride, Worldwide: Five nations began allowing same-sex
partnerships in 2023: South Korea, Peru, Estonia, Latvia and Nepal.

Wage Gap: Women workers in the U.S. still earn less than men, but
the aggregate gap is as narrow as it has ever been, with the ratio
for full-time workers now standing at 84 cents (women) for every
dollar (men).

Votes for Women: The final holdout in the world, Vatican City,
granted suffrage to women in 2023. Women now have the legal right to
vote everywhere, even if their rights are not always observed (ahem,
Afghanistan).

We narrowed it down to 10, to make things manageable, but this is
not an exhaustive accounting by any means. The world is getting
better, in many ways, even if most of the stuff we hear about is how
it's getting worse.
  

    
As host of <ai.ind.> ...  (chatGPT4 isn't up to date)

Bard, what is the state of the world in 2024? Just a few paragraphs.

2024 dawns amidst both uncertainty and opportunity. The hangover
from 2023's challenges lingers, a potent mix of geopolitical
tensions, climate anxieties, and a teetering global economy. In the
coming year, the world may be navigating:

Election whirlwinds: With over 60 countries holding elections,
including critical ones in the US and Taiwan, political landscapes
face potential reshuffles, impacting everything from trade alliances
to regional security.

Geopolitical ripples: The ongoing Ukraine war continues casting a
long shadow, while rising US-China competition and regional
flashpoints simmer, testing international cooperation and pushing
alliances.
Climate pressures: Extreme weather events like floods and droughts
are expected to intensify, demanding greater focus on resilience and
adaptation, while the race for clean energy solutions gains
momentum.
Economic tightrope walk: Inflation and a potentially sluggish global
economy could trigger social unrest and fuel protectionist policies,
further fracturing interconnectedness.

But amidst these challenges, glimmers of hope shine through.
Technological advancements in renewables, healthcare, and AI offer
glimpses of a brighter future. International collaborations on
climate change and pandemic preparedness are increasing, showing
renewed commitment to collective action. Additionally, grassroots
movements advocating for social justice and equality continue to
gather strength.

Overall, 2024 presents a complex picture. It's a year where the
choices we make as individuals and communities will significantly
shape the future. Whether we face the challenges with unity and
innovation, or succumb to division and stagnation, remains to be
seen.

- - - - -

Bard's Google-Check confirms the first two paragraphs, nothing
disproved.
  

    
I like human voices that offer insight over artificial ones that don't.
  

    
People with no insight to offer like AIs that let them fake it.
  

    
Bard responding to Bing's <5-6>
  

    
For unwellians : <5-6> means posts 5 to 6 of this topic.  I don't
know if that's clickable if you're not logged in.
  

    
This conversation is world-readable, i.e. can be read by anyone on
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If you're reading this conversation, and you're not a member of the
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If you're not a member of the WELL, but you'd like to participate in
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This conversation will last for two weeks, through January 15. In
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use the pager (dropdown at the top and the bottom of the page).
  

    
Total agreement with Andrew (#14).

Bring on the humans!
  

    
My young friend Bing will be back, but it's time for me to humanly
confront the new year's ongoing land-war in Europe.  Although it's a
melancholy topic, I spend a lot of time with it.  I've spent time in
Russia and Ukraine, and the war ongoing there also has many
commonalities with the Yugoslav war, which preoccupied me so much
that I even married into it.

There were a lot of Yugoslav personalities involved in the
Russia-Ukraine conflict, which was natural, because, like in Serbia
Croatia Bosnia etc, it's a bunch of Slavic guys fiercely beating up
other Slavic guys when nobody else can tell them apart with a
microscope.  
  

    

My particular barometer figure in this war, the ex-Yugo vet Igor
"Strelkov`' Girkin, ended up in Russian prison with no particular
charges and no public trial.  Strelkov's suffering angina pectoris
in there while expecting somebody to poison him.  He's also trying
to "run for president," (somewhat like his hated colleague,  Alexei 
Navalny, who's in prison like Strelkov, but in Siberia).  

The heroic Strelkov was an angelic ethnoliberation figure in his own
mind, and he was the progenitor of today's massive shooting war in
many ways, but his own side threw him into the slammer.  A
significant development -- for him and people like him, anyway.
  

    

So Strelkov's version of a People's Liberation Struggle really went
skewed, it's old-fashioned, over.   Strelkov used to lead events
from the global spook-warrior avant-garde. He lost the thread and
became yesterday's man, because the "Little Green Man" thing just
isn't working.    

The "Little Green Man," also known in Russian slang as `'the Polite
One,`' is an armed covert operator.   He's a plausibly deniable
Russian operative, not a deep-cover  civilian spy, but an
other-than-war armed operator.  He's there to fatally poison
somebody, to set fire to an arms plant, to gather an armed gang and
take over a police station, and,  eventually foment a coup and move
his area-of-operations into Russian influence.   He has some
autonomy for his own supplies and fund-raising; if he makes some
mafia money offshore, or human-smuggles people, or seizes an oil
well or something, that's okay, too.
  

    
There were quite a lot of these Little Green Men around besides
their moral leader Strelkov, especially `'Wagner Group." Of course,
as a class, they're by no means restricted to Russian patronage.
There are literal private armies of sort-of-Blackwater people here
and there, offshored Turks with drones in the dunes of Libya, etc
etc.  

They're hard to count, because nobody official wants to count them. 
For a good while in the past ten years of so,  they even seemed
quite sucessfully menacing and efficient, and even like geopolitical
5D chess for a while, truly subversive and tricky.   But in 2024,
they seem to be to be done with, except in Africa.

Mostly it's because the covert pretense is over.  The Ukraine-Russia
War is very loud and blatant indeed, it's not a `'special operation"
or anything with political cover.  This is a big, tank-grinding,
trench-digging, attritional military conflict that's draining the
arsenals of the whole planet.  Polite Green Men need not apply.

 So how long will it last?  Quite a while more.  I think it can last
as long as the Syrian War and the Libyan War, and for similar
reasons because they're all geopolitically linked.
  

    

The "Little Green Men," who were always "plausibly deniable" figures
-- they're volunteer martyrs, and if you shoot one, the Russians pay
no attention -- have been replaced by a new successor species, the
"meat soldier.'  

The "meat soldier" also volunteers, most of the time., anyhow.  The
pioneer "meat soldiers" were recruited straight of out Russian
prisons by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the deceased paymaster (and chef) of
the Wagner Group green-man contingent.

The meat-soldiers are expendable.  They're not deployed to win
battles themselves.  They're scarcely soldiery at all, for they have
very little training, lousy uniforms, rusty small-arms, iffy food
supplies, etc.   Instead, they're deployed to dig ditches and
attract enemy fire in the ongoing trench war, while under the icy
gaze of drones and satellites.  

When the enemy is forced to shoot the meat-soldiers, the enemy makes
themselves visible to automated surveillance.  Then the enemy is
pounded with artillery, and also missiles.  These weapons are manned
by professional Russian soldiery, who aren't getting killed, because
they have this underclass "meat soldier" bait force deployed in
front of them.  

The meat-soldiers are historically similar to gulag forced-labor
battalions; they're not entirely novel.  The Russians get it about
managing massed groups of this kind.
  

    

So the war, as it stands, is about Ukraine throwing away  (extremely
posh and expensive) NATO weaponry, versus Russia deploying waves of
expendable meat-soldiers and battalions of cheap artillery.   The
Russians also randomly hammer the Ukrainian civilian population, but
not, like, Dresden-firestorm style.  The Russian still officially
imagine that they'll own those cities someday.  And, also, if they
really flatten cities in huge civilian massacres, there will be
reprisals.  The Russians have suffered military losses that do
matter to them: not the meat-soldiers, but navy depots, ships of the
line, pipelines, fighter-jets, even a submarine.