So tonight (Thursday 26th January 2017) I attended a talk on our energy future.
The crowd was young. New people. New dreams. In a modern "co-working space".
And yet the discussion was the same as my generation have been having for the past 15 years.
Who will pay for nuclear energy? Why do we need it? Do we need the dinosaur industries that need base-load power? If we have a decentralized grid, how will the poor get their free electricity?
The same discussion. The same fears.
And yet whilst we myopic South Africans stay trapped in our insular world, people like Elon Musk, who escaped these confines, are inventing our future.
It is one of electric vehicles, massive storage systems, 80% fewer cars, no servicing requirements, no parking garages (a huge opportunity for the poor to move into the city centres), a massive reduction in the need for fossil-fueled power, self-driving cars, no need for petrol stations.
We are heading into a massive change over the next 15 years. Nothing can stop it. The tipping points are near.
And the opportunities are immense, not just for the rich. But also for the so-called "poor", who have an immense latent talent.
We are in an age that I call "the childhood dream age". Finally our children's dreams, and our dreams as children, can be realised.
It is a dream come true. If we fight it, we will lose. If we embrace it, we embrace a world where machines, not human machines, do the physical work, whilst the mental work gets done by super-brainy humans.
The Industrial Revolution's education system needs a complete overhaul. The answers are simple, but not easy to implement, mostly due to inertia, but also due to our habit of not listening to our children.
And every single human on this tiny planet is a super brain, a super computer, able to do more than the biggest most powerful machines that we can invent.
For millennia we have hidden in work and in war whilst ignoring the depression that seeps through our society. We finally are at an age where we can focus on ourselves, where everyone will finally be equal, and where opportunities will abound to "fix ourselves" and bring the Messianic Age that we have dreamt about for eons.
Will we continue with the same conversations we have had for as long as we can remember?
Will we continue to ignore the tide of change and bury ourselves in work, and in our fears?
Or will we be children again, inventing and being a part of a future that we have always dreamt about?
I look forward to our new conversations and to everyone being able to enjoy the abundance that we have on our planet, together.
David Lipschitz
Milnerton
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