Just in case you were beginning to worry that you weren’t worrying enough, I’ve compiled a list of concerns that aren’t dramatic enough for the front page, but that will do perfectly well if you’ve been getting too much healthy sleep and need something to keep you up at night. (And if 20 nightmare scenarios aren't enough, I recommend the above book, What Should We Be Worried About, a collection of essays in which really smart people talk about what keeps them up at night. Guaranteed to make you lose sleep.)
- AN UNFAIR AND UNEQUAL EDUCATION. Is it a coincidence that political corruption is most rampant in states that have the lowest test scores? I worry that state funding of education creates a system that incentivizes corrupt politicians to deliberately undermine schools. After all, who’s more likely to continue to elect corrupt politicians – a well-educated citizenry or a bunch of kids who never developed critical thinking skills and who, therefore, are stupid enough to believe the election commercials? Unlike many teachers, I was a big fan of No Child Left Behind because it required at least some accountability for educating students. But ever since the Supreme Court began ruling that anything that isn't explicitly stated in the Constitution isn't protected, we're a decision away from states deciding to eliminate mandatory public schooling entirely. One of the few sacrifices of a well-functioning democracy is that it requires an educated citizenry capable of making considered decisions. We need to stop forgetting that.
- REALITY DENIAL, aka “Just a moment while I interrupt your evidence-based reality with my unsubstantiated opinions.” I worry that in their rush to ensure “fair representation,” media outlets are creating the impression that opinions deserve as much weight as reality. There’s a famous quote by Asimov: “There is a cult of ignorance […] measured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as [valid] as your knowledge.” Every time media organizations allow newsmakers to express "alternative facts" without calling them out (or, even worse, treat these alternative facts as legitimate) they reinforce the fallacy that opinion is somehow equivalent to truth. In a world where technology makes it all too easy for people to bypass legitimate forms of news in favor of self-validating and self-reinforcing "alternative realities," I worry that we are at risk of forgetting what "truth" is, and why it matters.
- KIDS THAT CAN’T PASS THE MARSHMALLOW TEST. You’ve heard of the marshmallow test, right? You put a child and a marshmallow in the same room, then promise the child that if they don’t touch the marshmallow until you return, you’ll let them have two. In other words, twice the marshmallow. 100% more marshmallow. And yet an alarming number of the kids, lacking the tiny amount of self-control required to resist the urge, consume the marshmallow at once. I worry that in a world where video games now incorporate “mini-games” so you don’t have to wait until the end to win something, where mature adults whine when websites take more than an instant to upload, where drivers explode into road-rage when intersections are slow to clear, and where one-day delivery still isn’t quick enough – in other words, in a world where instant gratification has become an expectation rather than the exception – what hope is there that future generations will possess the patience and willingness to embrace near-term sacrifice in order to ensure longer-term gain?
- GENERATIONAL HOMOGENIZATION. I worry that current and future generations are losing their unique identities. It’s hard to witness my little nieces and nephews watch Disney movies (some of them over 70yrs old at this point), to listen to my sons stream Spotify’s “I Love the ‘80S!” radio station as they do homework, to watch my students cycling through every unfortunate fashion trend from the past 50 years – and not worry about generational homogenization. Back when I was a kid I remember attending ‘60s parties (everyone wore poodle skirts), ‘70s parties (everyone wore hippie finery), ‘80s parties (think big hair and disco). Then came the millennia and suddenly – thanks to DVD players, internet, and streaming sites like Hulu – teens aren’t inventing their own culture so much as appropriating all the cultures that came before them. When I’m not worrying about what the hell I’m going to wear if – God help me - I ever get invited to a ‘00s party, I worry about the lasting social and cultural impact of generations with no unique, original identity to call their own
- Speaking of which: CULTURAL HOMOGINIZATION. I worry that the same forces that are hastening globalization – internet, multinational corporations – are hastening the homogenization of international cultural identities. Remember when American cities like San Francisco, Boston, and Nashville used to have their own unique personalities? Now, with the exception of a few districts, these cities are practically indistinguishable, overtaken by identical chain restaurants, big box stores, and cars. How long before every country has its own Hollywood/Bollywood, its own food courts featuring a variety of faux-ethnic cuisine, roads overrun by identical cars, store windows filled with identical fashions, radios playing identical playlists? I weep to imagine a world in which globalization robs us of cultural diversity and identity.
- IS IT LIVE OR IS IT MEMOREX? I worry that we aren’t ready for the onslaught of virtual reality about to descend upon us. Keep in mind that our brains are so susceptible to intense emotion that grief has been known to trigger heart attacks, childhood trauma to trigger life-long mental illness, and intense fear/horror to trigger PTSD. And then there’s the flipside: brains so giddy on opioids that their owners will literally self-destruct rather than do without. In other words, we humans are pretty fragile vessels when it comes to handling intense emotion. So what happens when super-intense virtual reality experiences inadvertently trigger these responses; or, perhaps even worse, when our species begins developing a tolerance for them? What happens when natural beauty fails to enchant as completely as virtual beauty; when actual violence fails to appall when compared to the excesses of virtual violence; when the burdens of actual life pale in comparison with the non-stop entertainment of virtual life?
- Speaking of which: AUTONOMOUS WARFARE. I worry that anything that reduces the social or emotion costs of war, runs the risk of perpetuating war. There’s a reason the minds of soldiers are so easily scarred by warfare: it’s a traumatic, grotesque, and wholly unnatural act to slay a fellow human. That makes the very best disincentive for waging war, war itself. By gradually transitioning to a system of remote warfare, where soulless drones, submarines, and long-range missile systems deliver armaments to GPS coordinates rather than human settlements, however, we have created a more politically palatable system of killing. People are still dying horrific deaths, it’s just that we don’t have to be there watching as they suffer and die. Whoever developed PTSD from watching a blip on a screen? By placing violence at an arm’s distance, I worry that we’re making war socially, emotionally, and politically palatable, allowing us to cling to the pretense of “civilization” even as we continue to commit barbaric acts of violence.
- VIRAL VIRUSES. I worry that viruses (the microscopic type, not the digital type – though they can be lethal too) are going to take us out. In case you’ve forgotten everything you learned about viruses in 7th grade, let me remind you that these are scary dudes. From the standpoint of evolution, they were here before us and they've used that lead time to figure out how outlive pretty much everything else. They laughed off the last five mass extinctions as if they were hiccups. Unlike bacteria, viruses hide inside your cells so your immune system has difficulty finding them. They mutate rapidly, making them a moving target, they can't be killed by antibiotics because they're not living organisms, and they're wicked contagious because the only way they can propagate is to constantly infect new hosts ... all of which enables them to sweep through populations like tsunamis - sudden, violent, unstoppable (see: flu, HIV, ebola). I worry that in our natural state of hubris, we humans aren't taking viruses seriously, at our peril.
- Speaking of which: LONGEVITY. I worry that people are living too long. Sure, immortality sounds great, and it would solve that nagging problem of how to explore space when the shortest trip to a habitable planet takes longer than the average human lifespan – but in practical terms, immortality would be a disaster in almost every conceivable way. How can we possibly control Earth’s growing population if new babies continue to be born but no one dies? How do we find jobs, homes, food, water for all those extra people? More abstractly, how do we grow socially, creatively or intellectually as a race unless we keep innovating – which process which requires a steady turnover of new brains entering a given field? (See also: Cultural Homogenization.) How does natural selection continue to improve the survivability of our species if our birthrate slows to a crawl? How do we find the money to research the diseases of youth if most of the Earth is ruled by elders who have the power/money to divert medical research to their own needs? How do we meet the health and social needs of aging populations without burdening their children – essentially robbing them of their chance to live independently because, from the age of ~40 on, they’re tethered to the needs of elderly relatives? How do we fill all that extra time in a meaningful way, so that everyone doesn’t go bonkers from boredom? Plus, in the immortal words of Queen, who wants to live forever when love must die?
- SPACE JUNK. I worry that if we keep launching stuff into space, it’s going to become impossible to ensure the safety of the satellites and other objects up there that we rely on to do important stuff like facilitate satellite communications, track major weather events, and make GPS work. I get that space is vast, and the chances of collision are small. However, I’m also betting our satellite systems don’t have a lot of built in redundancy, especially since nearly all of them were built by the lowest bidder.
- Speaking of which: GPS HACKING. Has anyone been paying attention to just how much we’ve come to rely on GPS? It helps guide airplanes to airports, fishermen to where the fish are, and weapons to where the enemies are; it sets our clocks; it supports accurate mapping of weather phenomenon; and it keeps us from getting lost when our doctors relocate to new office buildings. And yet, the system is so antiquated and vulnerable to hacking that even the U.S. military is urging its branches to develop their own backup systems. Think about all the money we’re spending on “smart weapons” that require GPS guidance; now consider that all those weapons could be rendered unusable by $20 worth of electrical components available from Amazon
- THE IMPENDING MAGNETIC SHIFT. I worry about what happens when Earth’s magnetic poles decide to swap – as in, the north pole becomes the south pole and visa versa. This has happened periodically throughout Earth’s history and, geologically speaking, we’re overdue for next shift. In fact, there’s ample evidence that a switch is coming: the magnetic north pole has been shifting up to 5miles per year, a traditional sign that polar shift is imminent. This is a much (much) bigger deal than just having to recalibrate all the compasses in the world. Earth’s magnetic “shield” is all that’s preventing deadly subatomic particles from pelting all life on earth to extinction. And while the shield doesn’t actually disappear during polar shifts, it does becomes significantly weaker, meaning some stuff is going to slip through. I’m not sure tinfoil hats are going to be enough.
- Speaking of which: ANTICS IN ANTARCTICA. I promised myself I wouldn’t mention climate change here, since everyone’s worried about climate change. What bothers me is that I don’t hear anyone talking about what happens when Antarctica melts. Is anyone paying attention to what’s underneath all that ice? Copper, iron, oil, coal, silver, gold, platinum and … wait for it … stores of unexploited rare earth minerals, the ones that facilitate our advanced electronics. At various times countries as diverse as Argentina, France, Australia, Chile, Norway and the U.K. have claimed ownership of bits and pieces of the continent, before they all buried the hatchet and signed The Antarctic Treaty in 1959 agreeing that no one would make any more territorial claims. How long do you think everyone’s going to keep holding hands and humming It’s A Small World once those gold deposits defrost? A hint of things to come: Russia is already fortifying their "research stations" with troops.
- TOO MUCH CONNECTIVITY. I worry about what happens when we connect all our important systems to a single grid and then the grid goes down. While the whole Y2K thing was much ado about nothing, I worry that we’ve too quickly forgotten the reason we were worried – that as our communications systems (satellites and internet), banking systems (encrypted trading systems running over wireless), navigation/weapons systems (GPS) and social systems (smart phones) become increasingly interconnected, the collapse of any one of these systems might bring them all down. Forget North Korean nukes – I fear we’re one well-aimed computer virus away from the collapse of civilization as we know it.
- Speaking of which: WHO’S BACKING THIS ?#$ UP? I worry about what happens to all that lovely digital data if the electricity goes out. Recently I was at a presentation by one of Nook’s designers, who happened to mention, in passing, that individual servers in server farms have a three year life span. Think about that. Servers have to be replaced every THREE years. Which means one year of inadequate electrical supply could wipe out one third of all our bits and bytes; two years might put paid to up to two thirds of our cumulative digital wisdom, and a third year could wipe it all out entirely. If young adult authors are to be believed, three years sans electricity isn’t even reaching when it comes to potential dystopian futures. Just in case, I’m hoarding books and printing out my photos.
- Speaking of which: WHO CONTROLS OUR DIGITAL CONTENT? Even supposing our data survives a digital apocalypse, we’re still not out of the woods. I’m not talking about digital hacking, which is on everyone’s radar and thus fails to qualify for this list. I’m talking about the more nefarious forms of digital alteration, perhaps introduced under the guise of profit (“I bet we’d sell more copies of literature classics if we omit the boring chapters!”), political correctness (“Rather than risk causing any emotional distress, let’s just remove ALL the scenes that might trigger people”), or patriotism (“If we release those statistics about civilian deaths, popular support for this war might wane). The problem with digital information is that it’s so easily modified, that modifications are so incredibly difficult to detect, and that excuses for engaging in digital modification may present as innocent, possibly even logical. I worry that as our society moves towards digitizing every form of communication – from journals to journalism, from interpersonal communications to entertainment, from commerce to conversations – “digital alteration” may gain the power not just to alter our perception of reality, but reality itself.
- SCIENCE FICTION: NOT JUST FOR NERDS. I worry that we’re not paying enough attention to science fiction writers. These guys think about the future for a living, and if past experience is any guide, they often do a scarily good job of projecting potential outcomes of current technology trends. Take Isaac Asimov, who back in the 1940s invented the 3 Laws of Robotics that still guide robotic engineering today. (Seriously: look them up.) Take Ray Bradbury’s short story, The Sound of Thunder, from which the Butterfly Effect derives – a precept that has come to shape the way we think about time travel into the past. Take 1984 and compare its use of surveillance and news jargon to what exists in the world today (“alternate facts!”). More importantly, look at predictions that have been made by these guys that haven’t yet come true but that should serve as precautionary tales if we let them: Arthur C. Clarke’s Dial F for Frankenstein, in which a telephone network gains consciousness and gradually takes over the world’s financial, transportation, and communication systems; the implicit warning of Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park against the hubris of assuming we can control nature (or, substitute the implicit warning in his Prey against the hubris of assuming we can control nanotechnology, genetic engineering, and AI); or what Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 has to say about the dangers of eliminating texts that make us feel “uncomfortable” (think trigger warnings). Science fiction isn’t just a genre, it’s a think tank of great minds devoted to predicting possible future. That’s why smart people read it, and why more of us should probably heed it.
- Speaking of which: ROBOT SHORTAGES. While everyone else seems to be worried about too many robots, I’m worried we won’t have nearly enough – at least not enough of the sort capable of doing the work that actually needs doing. Every time I turn on NPR, someone’s talking about how U.S. jobs are being replaced by robotics. Don’t worry about closing the immigration tap: those unfilled jobs will replaced by robots. Don’t worry about the U.S.’s unsustainable productivity figures: robots will take over when humans can’t keep up. My question is: who’s making all these robots? Moreover, who’s making them cheaply enough that it’s going to be affordable to put them to work landscaping, doing construction, and working at McDonalds? It’s far more likely that robots will be taking over skilled jobs, the ones that pay the good money, leaving it to us humans to perform all those manual labor jobs.
- A MORE PERFECT UNION? I worry that in our patriotism-fueled enthusiasm to spread Democracy throughout the world, we give up looking for other forms of government that might be better. Consider: in a democratic system, every time a majority party wins an election, there’s a whole minority party in the background feeling royally resentful. If recent politics have taught us nothing else, we’ve learned just how resentful (and destructive) those minorities can be. European countries have tried dealing with this by implementing coalition systems, but is a compromise where no one gets what they want any better than at least some people getting the government they wanted? There’s got to be a better way, and I’d like to believe someone’s still looking for it.
- THE DEATH OF CONTEMPLATION. Finally, I worry about the death of contemplation. The problem isn’t that we’re working longer hours; the problem is that we now have an enormous choice of entertainments with which to waste away our remaining spare hours. Remember back in the “olden days,” when people with time on their hands engaged in such past-times as strolling, gardening, reading, playing music, writing letters, doing needlework, sitting by the fire getting warm? All these occupations had one thing in common: they left time for thinking. For letting the mind wander where it will. For musing, examining, questioning, conjecturing, imagining, evaluating, reasoning, reflecting. Time for allowing ideas not just to stash themselves away for later retrieval, but to wander around a bit before arriving at their ultimate destination, allowing for the creation of fanciful juxtapositions and the discovery of curious connections. The kind of reflection that leads not just to life-long learning, but to the development of wisdom. I worry that in our rash to gain and share knowledge, we are forgetting the importance of giving ourselves to reflect upon what we’ve learned and thereby gaining wisdom.
