[FOOTNOTE: This is a topic which I have studied, contributed to, and written about for well over a decade, with varying degrees of accuracy and efficacy. My record here stands on its own merits, with fans and detractors often in equal measure.]
The only remaining question to ask is this: what are we, collectively, going to do about it? As always, history gives us many guides as to what we will see in the coming years, so let's revisit the past in order to pre-visit the near future.
YINPAL?
It has not gone unnoticed that technologists, business people, and bureaucrats focus on using technology to solve a problem at hand, often missing the unforeseen negative consequences of its use. Only later, after we have opened a new Pandora's box, do we understand that the laws of the universe dictate that we never get something for nothing, and our efforts towards greater civility and humanity are always and relentlessly countered by the universal forces of entropy and chaos. Recognition of this fact is deeply rooted in Eastern thought, and manifest in the concept of Yin and Yang. As stated in the now-current version of Wikipedia, Yin and Yang
“is a Chinese philosophical concept that describes opposite forces which are interconnected. In Chinese cosmology, the universe creates itself out of a primary chaos of material energy, organized into the cycles of yin and yang and formed into objects and lives. Yin is the receptive and yang the active principle, seen in all forms of change and difference such as
