h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Remember the Industrial revolution? well from school anyway, you know the age of steam, sabots in the machinery, farm mechanization and factories? Of course you do, and warm summer afternoons in the history room just flew by .

The villains were steam power, machines and factories. Results unemployment starvation immigration to the colonies, respect to the US Australia Canada and NZ.

Who said send me your poor, homeless etc.

Bad old days, defiantly, but hang on whats going on we have a new villain(s) technology and all its minions, are we in the midst of Industrial revolution II and have not noticed it. What scholars will call the dark days of the explosion of technology.

It could be worse as owing to three missing factors our ancestors did take advantage of to ease population growth,

1. somewhere for people to go, room to expand towns and cities and including shipping the surplus population to the colonies.

2. room to expand and improve agriculture and grow more food.

3. wars of various kinds to thin the population and relieve the population burden (the European wars were particularly effective in that respect).

The point is there looks like trouble on the way and history looks like repeating itself. Refugees flooding into Europe, callous wars, rise in crime, religious persecution and beggars in the street. Now the starvation and aid charities are working overtime.

The situation gets worse every year, anyone have an opinion is it Industrial revolution II and even the politicians have not noticed or pretending it will go away?

what goes around, comes around and politicians always fall back to an old saying "it's someone else's fault"

Trust you to get straight to the point

I'm a Yorkshireman we don't beat about the bush

A couple of things on the themes of technology, revolution and war.

Throughout history war has spawned advances in science and technology - the development of mechanics to predict the path of ballistics, materials to withstand weapons, internet protocols to support US military communications, public key cryptography to secure them - the list is endless.

Modern revolutionaries rely on modern technology - smartphones, social media - to recruit their followers and organise campaigns and actions.

As the old song goes, you can't have one without the other.

I personally think we ought simply refinance the entire planet, see to it everyone has an unalienable trust fund adequate to suport them, go to a robotics intensive labor force, mount special education programs to train displaced laborers to manage their leisure time, in order to placate 'Devil's Workshop' theorists whom think that people with free time on their hands will inevitably become a threat to the social order, begin actively promoting space colonization as a safety measure.

Where are we going to go and what are we going to do for resources when, not if, when, inevitably the planet gets into another round of volcanic disaster related climate troubles like those that brought the little ice age and touched off the revolutionary era?

Notably, it was volcanic disasters in the same areas that brought an end to the Roman Empire.

Only a matter of time till it happens again and without a pre-existing space colonial establishment when it happens, there will be no place to turn for help.

The thing that worries me about all this is, we have taken so much out of Mother Earth, and never put anything back, well apart from buried refuse tips and pollution?

Now we are causing even more damage which is not just destroying our planet, but effecting the weather patters as well!

We don't own this planet, we just take care of it for our next generation, which we seem to doing so badly?

Smudger.

Problems with the weather patters?

I remember one 1987 weather patter well:

"Earlier on today a woman called the BBC and said she'd heard there's a hurricane on the way. Well, if you're watching, don't worry - there isn't..."

And indeed there wasn't... (Technically)
But it was blooming Windy

Good points ITIWBS

Notably, it was volcanic disasters in the same areas that brought an end to the Roman Empire. Now this would make a cracking entry

That budget did more damage than years of EU membership

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33463864

damage! oh yes!

They will find excuses but the majority of the better off working population outnumber the worse off. But they have different axes to grind.

Devide and rule is what's happening here convince the better off this is fair and they will be happy with any inequality.

The only ripple of concern about the situation in Greece in the UK population is about holidays