Philip Longman - “The Depopulation Problem”
August 17th, 02004 by Stewart BrandSummary by Stewart Brand. Full PDF of the talk here, slideshow here.
No need to summarize this time. Phillip Longman wrote out his whole talk, with the illustrations more viewable even than they were at the Seminar and talk.
It is full of rethink-the-news sentences like: “Notice that Japan’s lengthening recession began just as continuously falling fertility rates at last caused its working-age population to begin shrinking in relative size.”
One thing worth adding from the Q&A at Phil’s public lecture August 13th. Kevin Kelly asked him what he thought the world might feel like in 100 years.
“People a century from now will have so few blood relatives I think it could be very lonely.” The audience, convinced by then, was utterly still.
October 19th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
“”People a century from now will have so few blood relatives I think it could be very lonely.” The audience, convinced by then, was utterly still.”"
I guess this depends on your blood relatives. If they are Jerry springer quality it might not be a bad thing.
January 26th, 2009 at 9:24 pm
[…] Longman spoke to the LongNow Foundation seminar on Long Term Thinking, a think tank on the West Coast (not Christian, but thoughtful). Here’s a link to the talk he gave five years ago, which is still thought-provoking: MP3 Ogg Vorbis And to the accompanying PDF file on the talk and the slides. […]
May 27th, 2009 at 4:57 am
I have visited Japan, and was astonished by how crowded it was. People must work like dogs to afford their tiny apartments. Not conductive to having large families at all. Yet this is never mentioned as a reason for low birth rates. I think that as the population declines, living conditions will improve and people will then start having more children.
This talk also does not address the issue of immigration from high fertility countries to those countries with low fertility. If more people is such a great thing, why are we building a wall between USA and Mexico? Even wealthier educated people are being kept out. I would be happy to move to Europe, but they don’t want me!
I chose to become a parent via adoption not only to benefit the environment but also to benefit existing humans. Isn’t it more humane to give a starving child a chance at a better life than to create a new life?