Are we being good ancestors?
September 10th, 02007 by Kevin Kelly
Jamais Cascio, friend of Long Now, and now a “foresight consultant” posted his recent speech to the Singularity Summit on his website.
Besides being a pretty fine manifesto for an open future, it started with a very long-now-ish quote:
I was reminded, earlier this year, of an observation made by polio vaccine pioneer Dr. Jonas Salk. He said that the most important question we can ask of ourselves is, “are we being good ancestors?” …..In our work, in our policies, in our choices, in the alternatives that we open and those that we close, are we being good ancestors? Our actions, our lives have consequences, and we must realize that it is incumbent upon us to ask if the consequences we’re bringing about are desirable.
It’s not an easy question to answer, in part because it can be an uncomfortable examination. But this question becomes especially challenging when we recognize that even small choices matter. It’s not just the multi-billion dollar projects and unmistakably world-altering ideas that will change the lives of our descendants. Sometimes, perhaps most of the time, profound consequences can arise from the most prosaic of topics.
This entry was posted on Monday, September 10th, 2007 at 11:41 am and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Posted on September 16th, 2007 at 3:15 am
seems to me, that, although we are so advanced in so many fields, then our ancestors were, we are still leaving pretty much at a surviving concept rather then being well aware and conscience of the qualities of our actions, even our every day actions…no wonder the planet is in danger, and our human race is facing so many challenges in order to survive.
Yet, i agree with this observation, I’ll be trying to change my action as from today…even regarding the dinner and nutrition values for dinner tonight
Posted on March 5th, 2009 at 11:49 pm
Hi nice post, i have come across your site once before when searching for something so i was just wondering something. I love your theme, would it happen to be a free one i can download, or is it a custom one you had made? In a few months i may get my own domain, but i don’t know how to setup themes so i don’t mind paying someone to make me a nice one and set it all up. Do you know any good Wordpress designer companies, thanks for your help. :)