The Committee’s weekly agenda is loaded down with minutiae.

For instance, what are the official colours of the Committee’s standard/shield/flag?  Should there be a symbol that represents the whole solar system at this point?  Would the planets in orbit suffice as a symbol set and, if so, should we have a side-on profile of the planets or a tilted plane with a snapshot of the planets’ position?  What point in time should the snapshot show? Are there official uniforms for our security personnel or is incognito our motto as well as our dress code?

One of our longterm agenda items is education.  We have allowed the wholescale random education of our children for thousands of years because we’re fully aware people will choose to use education for their own edification, accepting or rejecting what they’ve been taught.  Some (many) will waffle between accepting and rejecting – adding, subtracting, and modifying portions of their “programmed” thought sets at will, based on the mood of the crowd/mob/subcultures they expose themselves to.

In the Futures Lab, our construction expert is working with scientists to architect a building that is ready for robotic maintenance and repair, including HVAC, computing, communication and security systems.  We laughed when a simulation showed a building could be maintained much more efficiently if it didn’t have to be designed to accommodate humans.  We saved that simulation to show we humans may not always be as indispensable as we pretend to be to one another.

When you replace your invisible deity/deities with technology…well, we’ve read enough books and seen enough movies to know what can happen…we improve the manufacture of gods in our image until the gods become omniscient and can manufacture themselves in their own image, whatever that may be, most likely amoral and nonethical.

Lead, follow or get out of the way.

Does it make sense to get robots to grow and process food for us or keep using cheap, imported labour (and/or exported jobs)?

Does the downy woodpecker on the shagbark hickory tree outside the window care about anything I’m saying, especially words like singularity and future shock waves?  No.  That’s a lesson I always take back to the Committee – anthropocentric ideas and technologies are dwarfed by the random acts of universe.

Even the squirrel walking down the tree with a hickory nut in its mouth knows that much.

When you think big, think REALLY BIG.  Otherwise, we’re just bigger versions of squirrels and woodpeckers subject to randomness at the same scales/ranges our ancestors have faced for innumerable generations.