I'm still an optimist... though very scared

[miriam_e]

Our rapidly aging population has repercussions nobody I've met seems to think about. When the baby-boomers get old there will not be enough young people to look after them. It won't be a matter of families taking care of their own or of nursing homes taking people in. There simply won't be enough carers. We desperately need robots. But more than that, we need androids. This is more important than oil or making war or almost anything else you can imagine. But if you think it's bad for us in the west, imagine the problem to come in China, where under-breeding in an attempt to curb the population explosion has totally altered the age structure of the more than one billion people there.

Only one place will have more young than old -- Africa. AIDS has ripped through the adult population there while the West stood by and hardly lifted a finger in help. In fact the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank consistently worsened the problem by purposefully running down social support systems and forcing idealogically driven privatisation measures so that countries lost what little they already had. They -- we -- turned a tragedy into an incomprehensibly massive disaster.

Now with their youthful population of orphans and our aging population they don't need to do anything to hurt us. In fact that would be the best and most effective way to cripple the West -- to do to us what we have done to them for so long: to ignore us when we begin to plead for help. I almost hope they do. We certainly have it coming.

Of course the people of Africa could break with human tradition, forgive us our evil ways, and partner with the aging countries for mutual benefit and the good of all.

At least I hope they resist the urge to revenge. If they ever raise a hand against us it will be all that is needed by a bunch of crotchety, angry, old white men to go in, destroy everything and take what they want -- a new generation of black slaves. Of course they would be underpaid wage-slaves and it would look completely legal, but they'd still be slaves.

Yeah. I woke up this morning full of fears.

Don't mind me. Go back to work and ignore it.
But in the back of your mind just hope we get robots and androids very soon.

Comments

[sbarret.livejournal.com]

This was the basis of an SF story I was considering at one point. The rise and supremacy of the Pan-African Union. ;-P

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Wow! Cool.

There are so many threads that could be used in such a story. It could be a really interesting one. There are conflicting colonial interests, both inside and outside Africa. There are competing religions battling for control of minds. Many, many poor people who have been hurt by outside interference, and I'm sure many won't forget the sickening internal wars and power-crazed dictators. I'm sure the efforts to get cheap wage-slaves from Africa will become important in the near future too.

Africa still has enormous resources even after hundreds of years of being bled dry by greedy colonial masters.

An Australian guy has just recently produced a system that recycles 80% of your water at home removing almost all your dependance upon water supplies. In Africa this could release large parts of the country from drought-stricken poverty. We are starting to see 3d printers become more available. They are still incredibly expensive, but I hope that in the near future (years, not decades) that they will explode upon the world. All we need is one person to design a model that can be made up by the same kind of 3d printer... then you can expect that in a very short time everybody will have one. Imagine being able to create almost any household item from a downloaded design. Imagine how that would change Africa and the rest of the world. (Here is an article from New Scientist magazine from a few years ago http://users.tpg.com.au/miriame/3dprint/ )

Lastly, imagine solar power coming of age, and with it, low power electronics, based upon silicon of course. There is one place that receives almost indiluted sunshine, being on the equator and rarely getting clouds -- the sahara. What is that sand? Silica -- silicon dioxide. I know there is plenty of sand elsewhere, but people don't like their countries being sand-mined. The sahara is so vast that even utterly massive sand mining would barely scratch the edge.

Lastly, genetic engineering. People have been culturing micro-organisms for centuries. Alcohol makers work with yeasts, vinegar makers and yoghurt and cheese makers work with bacteria. Not long ago ways of making synthetic meat was developed. If you have a cat or a dog then that is probably what they eat right now -- looks like meat, and has a fibrous texture like meat, but it is made from soybeans. Work has been done on using micro-organisms instead of soy. Major candidates are algae, particularly spirulina, which has been cultured traditionally in parts Africa since time immemorial (we see it mostly in health food stores). It is high in protein and has a lot of nutritional value. If a way is found of managing micro-organisms so that a small device holding various ones in balance, in a kind of symbiosis, constantly produce enough food for a human to live on then we have suddenly freed people of one of the last great constraints.

Please feel free to use these and anything else I mention for such a story. I like your writing and you'd would almost certainly do a better job of it than I would. I'd be happy to be a help at any time.

Heheh. Today I don't feel so scared. Things are looking good again. :)

[sbarret.livejournal.com]

;-) So many story ideas, so little time!

I was also considering something on the line of say bird flu wiping out large portions of the non-African world (since it might be more virulent on children and adults) but having little affect on the AIDS-surviving younger population of Africa. So Africa is the only place that develops these advanced technologies, and the rest of the world slips into a modern dark ages. Presto-chango- reverse colonization. ;-)

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Yes. A major epidemic would have a terrible effect on our civilsation -- we over-react so badly. How many people did SARS kill in the end? I have a feeling it was much less than a hundred. Cars kill more than a hundred people every hour. If a truly virulent disease struck it would bring much of our industry to its knees because people wouldn't go to work, they wouldn't go to public places... all that would be left is those of us comfortable with computers. It wouldn't really need to kill large numbers.

I seem to recall some effect where Europe has a genetic legacy from bubonic plague and smallpox. Apparently the survivors have peculiar resistance to some other diseases (I can't remember the details just now). I guess the same may well be true of the AIDS survivors. They might have a more resilient makeup. Although there is also the possibility that they might be affected like cats. You know how cats are so obsessively clean? Apparently some time in the distant past an AIDS-like disease gutted their population. Cats now are not very resistant to disease organisms and get sick very easily. I imagine (though I could well be wrong on this) that it may be that a weakened immune system is not as open to cat-AIDS, because AIDS works by infecting the immune system.

I do know that (I think it was in Singapore... or was it Hong Kong) during the height of the SARS crisis patients were put in a terminal ward where the AIDS patients were. Doctors, nurses, and SARS patients who went in there died, but all the AIDS patients survived. Why? Because SARS kills by provoking a massive over-response from your immune system, and that kills you. AIDS patients, with their weakened immune systems were safe.

I was exploring a story idea a while back (and might still try writing this one) of a preventable, not very contagious disease which rarely kills but makes people very sick. The well-off parts of society ensure they remain safe from it. But then another disease strikes not long after, which is a mutated version of the first one and is very dangerous and extremely infectious. It rips through the richer parts of society who have no resistance, leaving only the poor who have acquired immunity from the less dangerous form. Suddenly, as you say, presto-chango, society flipped upside down. I know the poor would deal with discrimination as badly or worse than the rich did, because discrimination tends to make the discriminated-against even more racist, classist, whatever-ist. It would be an interesting base for a story.