OPPORTUNITIES BEFORE EFFICIENCIES

Oil paint, keyboard, opera, pen…

–all these opportunities remain. But in addition we have added film, metal work, skyscrapers, hypertext, and holograms as but a few of the new opportunities for artistic expression. Each year we add more opportunities of every stripe. Ways to see. Methods for thinking. Means of amusing. Paths to health. Routes to understanding.

The Great Asymmetry of economic life ceaselessly amasses new opportunities while relinquishing few old ones. The one-way journey is toward more and more possibilities, pointing in more and more directions, opening more and more new territories.

“A few decades from now there will be ten billion people on the planet, and sophisticated computers will be cheaper than transistor radios,” writes science fiction writer David Brin in his manifesto The Transparent Society. “If this combination does not lead to war and chaos, then it will surely result in a world where countless men and women swarm the dataways in search of something special to do–some pursuit outside the normal range, to make each one feel just a little bit extraordinary. Through the internet, we may be seeing the start of a great exploration aimed outward in every conceivable direction of interest or curiosity. An expedition to the limits of what we are, and what we might become.”